Oh great, now copper prices are 'surging' and threatening to make PC hardware even more expensive

PC hardware YouTube channel der8auer has posted a video covering "surging" copper prices and explaining the potential impact on PC hardware. And it's not good, peeps.

Roman Hartung who fronts the der8auer channel is also CEO of PC cooling specialist Thermal Grizzly. In that capacity, he's directly involved in buying 12 mm thick copper plates which are used via CNC manufacturing to produce items such as water cooling blocks for graphics cards.

Hartung says he attempted to make a routine order for the plates back in October. Normally, the copper plates are shipped out within a few weeks of placing an order. But this time, he was told a price couldn't be confirmed and delivery would not be possible until February. Another supplier said they could deliver plates, but at a 40% higher price than before.

Thermal Grizzly was paying around 190 euros per plate last year, with each plate enough to make four RTX 5080 GPU water cooling blocks. Today, he says the company would have to pay 280 euros per plate, potentially making the cooling block product non-viable.

Hartung points out that in terms of market commodity pricing, copper has increased from $9,000 per tonne a year ago to an all-time high today of over $13,000 per tonne. He does explain that this is somewhat mitigated by a weakened dollar over that period. But even in euros, the price is up over 30% in the last year.

Of course copper is used in a wide range of PC products. Most air coolers use copper in their cooling plates. CPU heat spreaders are often copper, while the wiring or traces inside the CPU itself are also copper. The same goes for motherboard and graphics card traces, and indeed GPU internal traces.

Long story short, copper is a very important raw material for the PC and broader electronics industry. Hartung says aluminium and nickel are up a touch, too, but only around 5%, while steel is down. But tin prices have also spiked massively.

Tin is used in PCBs and power supplies and Hartung speculates that servers and data centers (yup, that's AI again) are implicated in rising demand for those metals. He also reports that the threat of tariffs has motivated many US companies to import and horde supplies of copper and tin for fear a sudden change in US government policy. Apparently, copper stocks in US warehouses are now five times higher than the same period last year.

That's lead to shortages in Europe and Asia that have further driven up prices locally. For Thermal Grizzy, that's likely to mean an increase in their copper GPU water cooling block pricing from 500 to 550 euros.

So, will this have a really broad impact on PC hardware prices? That's hard to say. For whatever it's worth, the masters of the dark arts of finance over at Goldman Sachs think the problem with copper pricing specifically will be short term.

"Goldman Sachs Research increased its copper price forecast for the first half of 2026 but believes prices will decline later in the year following clarity on US refined copper tariffs," the investment bank said a few weeks ago.

However, Goldman Sachs also pointed out its "base case is that a 15% tariff will be announced in mid-2026 and implemented in 2027, but any delay in either its announcement or implementation could dramatically impact the direction of copper prices this year."

So, yeah, it looks like you can certainly add copper to the list of things pushing up PC hardware pricing in the near term and include it as a worry for further out, too. At which point all I can say is, can I get off this ride, I think I've had enough.

Kthanksbai.