Supply Chain Analysis of Gaming-Hardware

Date: June 25, 2025

The world is currently experiencing profound changes. For Millennials, these are the most significant upheavals they have consciously witnessed, while for younger generations, they are first-in-a-lifetime events. Gaming is known for largely keeping politics out of the picture—unless it’s part of the gameplay. E-sports is a prime example of boundless communication. Nevertheless, we must ask a crucial question:

How is the current global situation affecting the supply chains for our gaming PCs?

From this initial question, further inquiries arise:

• Will the components become more expensive?
• Where do our PC parts come from?

In this article, we dive deep into these questions with thorough research.

This article is divided into the following sections:

• Introduction to ASCII
• General Supply Chain Analysis by ASCII
• NVIDIA Supply Chains
• Academic Focus
• Conclusion

Supply Chain Intelligence Institute Austria (ASCII)

Here at ASCII, we’re not talking about the character encoding, but rather an institute dedicated to researching and monitoring supply chains in Austria. This Austrian institution was founded in 2023. No similarly specialized organization exists in Germany yet.

ASCII does not specifically focus on gaming hardware, but the importance of microchips is frequently mentioned in their publications, and the institute provides a solid general overview of supply chain structures. This makes their information a good starting point for this topic.

This first graphic shows the current state of supply chains in Austria, where we at HI-TECH for Gamers manufacture for you.

This graphic is updated monthly, allowing the impact of global events to be tracked almost in real-time. The customs threats in the first half of 2025 did not even push the Austrian Supply Chain Index (ASCPI) into the yellow zone.

The institute views U.S. customs threats as a reason for subdued demand, which has spared supply chains. The scaling back of production and replenishment of inventories are also factored into this index. The low prices for shipping containers from Asia and the general lack of bottlenecks among manufacturers—ourselves included—are also reflected in the index. Thus, it’s no illusion that Austria’s supply chains remain in the green zone.

General Analysis of the Semiconductor Market

This paper provides a general analysis of the global production and supply chains for semiconductors. Taiwan and South Korea are identified as significant for production. The United States of America plays a major role in global research and design development. Regarding raw materials and demand, China holds the top position. The graphic highlights a noticeable European significance but no leading positions.

Figure 1 by ASCII

It must be emphasized that Europe consumes 20% of the world's chips but produces only 10% of them, resulting in significant dependence on other regions.

In the production of processor chips, Asia and the US are clearly ahead, highlighting a particular dependence for graphics cards and gaming processors.

A Look into NVIDIA's Supply Chains

The previous section highlighted a key factor for further consideration: The chips in our Gaming PCs are designed in the US, and the chips are subsequently manufactured in Asian countries with a variety of partners. As an example of a U.S. company that should be familiar to all gamers, we examine the NVIDIA Corporation.

Before that, however, let’s provide a quick overview of the key parts of the supply chain in the manufacturing of GPUs:

• Chip Design
• Manufacturing of Silicon Wafers
• Assembly
• Packaging and Testing

The design process for NVIDIA graphics cards takes place in the US. Apart from that, this source offers a good insight into the further manufacturing processes. The cited source primarily uses SEC reports as a data basis. Accordingly, wafers are produced by TSMC in Taiwan and Samsung in South Korea. Hon Hai Precision Industry Co., Ltd. from Taiwan, Wistron Corporation from Taiwan, and Fabrinet from the British Cayman Islands handle assembly. CoWoS in Taiwan is mentioned for packaging.

It should be noted that the composition of suppliers or contract partners can constantly change, but our conclusion retains a certain degree of validity.

Customs duties between the US and the EU have no customs relevance for the NVIDIA graphics cards in our gaming PCs according to this supply chain analysis—despite NVIDIA being a US company. For European gamers, trade agreements between Asian countries and the EU remain more significant.

Furthermore, efforts are resuming to build GPU production facilities in Europe and expand AI capabilities. Concerns about gaming hardware supply chains are likely to decrease rather than increase in the coming years, though the current dependence on Asia should not be underestimated. Building such production facilities typically takes years.

Academic Focus on Supply Chain Resilience

In 2025, the book *Management of Risk, Sustainability, and AI in Procurement* was published, and five out of six surveyed experts therein reported bottlenecks in chipsets or semiconductors (Ertl et al., 2025). The topic is thus well-known and under discussion among European business leaders and at universities.

Unfortunately, the most important point mentioned is difficult to implement in the gaming hardware sector. Numerous suppliers refuse to disclose their supply chains.

However, two other interesting points are addressed in the book. The dependence on Taiwan for chip manufacturing is criticized by many experts, and local production alone is not seen as a solution. The most important approach alongside transparency is thus global diversification in the procurement of gaming components. As outlined in the previous section, European efforts are moving in this direction.

Conclusion

Gaming PCs, due to their complexity, rely on globally networked supply chains. Therefore, supply chain resilience will always be significant. However, the suppliers of our components are themselves so internationally positioned that only numerous multinational incidents can have truly severe impacts. Customs threats from a single country should thus not be overrated and do not necessarily make PC parts more expensive. Moreover, Taiwanese manufacturers are also building production capacities in other countries. For the supply chains of PC components, the origin of the physical product matters more than the brand's origin.

Sources

Ertl, C., Paetsch, C., & Floerecke, S. (2025). Dynamic Risk Management – Agile and Resilient Supply Chains in Times of Global Disruptions. In W. Wellbrock & D. Ludin (Eds.), *Management of Risk, Sustainability, and AI in Procurement* (pp. 49–71). Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-47228-3_3