We've seen plenty of gaming events affected by the COVID-19 coronavirus, with the cancellation of E3 2020 and SXSW, and GDC being postponed. The recent upgrading of the virus to a pandemic indicates that the World Health Organisation believes more needs to be done to stop the spread of the virus too, so we can expect more events to be cancelled. The question for us PC gamers though, is could this have an impact on the PCs, CPUs, graphics cards, and other components that go into our machines? I reached out to the companies that make those components for some answers.

Bear in mind that while COVID-19 may have originated in the Hubei province, it quickly lead to a major shutdown of many of the provinces of China. Take a look at the latest figures from the World Health Organisation's website though, and the situation in China appears to be coming under control, with the number of new cases falling to double-digit figures. Quarantine and social distancing appears to be working. So while manufacturing was affected for a couple of weeks, everyone I've spoken to has said the factories are now coming back online, although the extent to which they are, and in which areas, means that not every manufacturer is affected in the same way.

In a recent conference call, Intel's CFO, George Davis outlined how the company has been dealing with the impact of the coronavirus. Intel has a number of manufacturing plants in China, including its NAND manufacturing plant (Fab 68), which is in Dalian (Liaoning). It has a test and packaging facility in Chengdu (Sichuan), and design centers in both Shanghai and in Beijing, along with corporate groups in Beijing.

"What we've seen, being in areas that weren't the hardest hit initially, we've been able throughout this period, with some modest disruption as you would expect, to maintain relatively normal operations in China," Davis stated.