High end PSUs not available, what's going on ?

[Cifer]

Hi,

Covid-19 has caused the manufacturing and shipping of PSUs to slow down drastically, leading to shortages in many regions, including mine.
The thing is, after some time many units got restocked in both North America and Europe, but the shortages are persisting in my region, at least when it comes to high end units ;


I have been trying to buy a high end unit (at a decent price) for quite a while (it's been a few months now), but to this day, nothing shows up in the local market, which makes me question whether or not I should keep waiting for such units to come back ;

A local renowned shop that used to sell some really good/decent power supplies before Covid-19 (e.g. Corsair RMx, TXM, RM, EVGA Supernova G2, CM MWE Gold) went through a long period during which they didn't have anything in stock (both high end and low end), so I waited.
But then, at one point, they restocked large amounts of PSUs from Corsair/EVGA/CM, but nothing high-end/midrange, only low-end stuff : Corsair VS + CV, EVGA BQ, CM MWE Bronze V2 ;
As these units kept selling, they kept restocking them over and over again, while high-end PSUs never show up in their listing.

This has me questioning whether they will restock high end units any time soon ;
I gave the shop a call and asked the man on the phone whether they are planning to bring such units, but he had no clear answer to give ;
Since they seem to be getting stuff from Corsair regularly, I proposed to pay for an RMx unit in advance (full price), hoping that they would include one in their frequent orders (?) from Corsair, but he said that it wouldn't be possible since "it could take a very long time" before such unit would become available.

He (unsurprisingly) did not give much details, which leads me to wonder why such units are unavailable :
- Is it because they do not want to restock them?
- Is it because Corsair/EVGA/CM reserve their high-end units for the european and north-american markets ?

Please note that I am not judging either party, manufacturers are free to reserve their most popular units for markets with high demand, and retailers are free to sell whatever (non-hazardous) units they want to sell ;

I'm just trying to understand what's going on : since Covid-19 probably isn't going anywhere anytime soon, I might have to wait for several months before anything decently priced shows up ;
Other shops sell stuff like ROG Thor 850-1200, AX1600i, HX1000i, HX1200i, EVGA G2 1000... , but that stuff is well above my budget and largely overkill for my build (I was aiming for something like an RM650x) ;

The best unit I could find that I technically can afford is the TX650M, but I feel like it's too expensive for what it is ($195) ;
Other than the high end units, I have found the CM MWE Gold 750W for $162, again crazy expensive for what it is ;

Do you guys have any idea of what is actually happening behind the scenes ? Whether it is manufacturers that withhold their high-end units, or the retailers who actually do not want to restock high-end units?

Sorry for the long read by the way...

Have a nice day

[Ankerson]

Well there is also a rush in buying too so that has something to do with it.

 

Short supply and increased demand...

[Sat1600]

5 minutes ago, Cifer said:

Hi,

Covid-19 has caused the manufacturing and shipping of PSUs to slow down drastically, leading to shortages in many regions, including mine.
The thing is, after some time many units got restocked in both North America and Europe, but the shortages are persisting in my region, at least when it comes to high end units ;


I have been trying to buy a high end unit (at a decent price) for quite a while (it's been a few months now), but to this day, nothing shows up in the local market, which makes me question whether or not I should keep waiting for such units to come back ;

A local renowned shop that used to sell some really good/decent power supplies before Covid-19 (e.g. Corsair RMx, TXM, RM, EVGA Supernova G2, CM MWE Gold) went through a long period during which they didn't have anything in stock (both high end and low end), so I waited.
But then, at one point, they restocked large amounts of PSUs from Corsair/EVGA/CM, but nothing high-end/midrange, only low-end stuff : Corsair VS + CV, EVGA BQ, CM MWE Bronze V2 ;
As these units kept selling, they kept restocking them over and over again, while high-end PSUs never show up in their listing.

This has me questioning whether they will restock high end units any time soon ;
I gave the shop a call and asked the man on the phone whether they are planning to bring such units, but he had no clear answer to give ;
Since they seem to be getting stuff from Corsair regularly, I proposed to pay for an RMx unit in advance (full price), hoping that they would include one in their frequent orders (?) from Corsair, but he said that it wouldn't be possible since "it could take a very long time" before such unit would become available.

He (unsurprisingly) did not give much details, which leads me to wonder why such units are unavailable :
- Is it because they do not want to restock them?
- Is it because Corsair/EVGA/CM reserve their high-end units for the european and north-american markets ?

Please note that I am not judging either party, manufacturers are free to reserve their most popular units for markets with high demand, and retailers are free to sell whatever (non-hazardous) units they want to sell ;

I'm just trying to understand what's going on : since Covid-19 probably isn't going anywhere anytime soon, I might have to wait for several months before anything decently priced shows up ;
Other shops sell stuff like ROG Thor 850-1200, AX1600i, HX1000i, HX1200i, EVGA G2 1000... , but that stuff is well above my budget and largely overkill for my build (I was aiming for something like an RM650x) ;

The best unit I could find that I technically can afford is the TX650M, but I feel like it's too expensive for what it is ($195) ;
Other than the high end units, I have found the CM MWE Gold 750W for $162, again crazy expensive for what it is ;

Do you guys have any idea of what is actually happening behind the scenes ? Whether it is manufacturers that withhold their high-end units, or the retailers who actually do not want to restock high-end units?

Sorry for the long read by the way...

Have a nice day

Where are you located 

[HumdrumPenguin]

PSUs are in short supply due to less flights taking off, not to mention that with the new power hungry GPUs coming out soon, people with weak PSUs are upgrading that as well.

[Chris Pratt]

Plants in Asia were shutdown for lunar new year (normal), and just as they were starting to ramp back up, Covid-19 hit, shutting them down again. That means for a period of a few months, retailers were operating off of stock that was already available without being resupplied.

 

COVID-19 also grounded most commercial air travel, which is used heavily for delivery of goods from overseas. What freight was left available skyrocketed in price, especially for things as heavy as PSUs. As a result, they had to start shipping them by boat instead, but PSUs are also bulky, and the majority of ship freight was being reserved for PPE. That means vastly less overall PSUs are being shipped, and they take longer to arrive. The cost both from unmoved stock and increased freight costs are of course passed on the the consumer, which along with increased demand caused prices on PSUs to skyrocket.

 

If all that wasn't bad enough, Covid-19 also caused a vast number of people to start working from home, which required many people to get PCs or new better PCs to handle their work. Additionally, lots of people just had more time on their hands (no place to go, nothing to do), and especially in the U.S., virtually every American got a check for $1200, perfect for building a new PC. All of this led to highly increased demand. Retailers have reported computer sales exceeding even the holiday season, which is normally the busiest time of the year for computer components. That further complicated the supply situation, as retailers were running at non-busy season stock levels, not prepared for this onslaught.

 

Sum it all up, and it's created a situation where things still have yet to normalize, despite things improving on the freight front. Things likely won't normalize for a while, as demand still has not slowed, and we're heading into the holiday season where it should continue to remain strong. Couple that with people now trying to get new PSUs for these 30-series cards, and it's just one hit after another.

 

Long story short, prices have actually returned to a somewhat reasonable, if still inflated level. They're not going to get any better any time soon. You're either going to be waiting a long while, or you just have to bite the bullet and get one.

[Cifer]

1 hour ago, Ankerson said:

Well there is also a rush in buying too so that has something to do with it.

 

Short supply and increased demand...

Yeah probably, which leads me to believe that the low-end stuff sells out way more slowly than the high-end units, otherwise the local retailers wouldn't be able to restock them that easily ;

 

1 hour ago, Sat1600 said:

Where are you located 

Morocco ;
 

1 hour ago, HumdrumPenguin said:

PSUs are in short supply due to less flights taking off, not to mention that with the new power hungry GPUs coming out soon, people with weak PSUs are upgrading that as well.

 

23 minutes ago, Chris Pratt said:

[...]

Yep, shipping is definitely more difficult/expensive, but that still doesn't explain why retailers easily restock the low-end units while high-end stuff never shows up ;
The high-end units are probably reserved by manufacturers to fulfill the high demand elsewhere ;
For now I'll remain patient, I've been waiting for like 6 months, now that AMD and Nvidia are launching new products I might just wait a few more months to get the new stuff ^^

Thank you all for your input, much appreciated !

[Guest]

8 minutes ago, Cifer said:

Morocco

Morocco is difficult to begin with.  

 

Containers that go into EU tend to stay in EU.   You would need a distributor that ships entire containers into or near Morocco, but Morocco has no major shipping ports (Canary Islands?  Dakar?).  Does Morocco have any distributors large enough to support entire container loads from a single supplier?

 

Egypt has a similar problem.  They have to bring product in from the EU because there is no large local ports and no distributors large enough to take entire containers from each manufacturer.

  

[RAM555789]

11 minutes ago, Cifer said:

The high-end units are probably reserved by manufacturers to fulfill the high demand elsewhere

We never went out of stock in the U.S. with higher end PSU's at local stores like microcenter, however prices did go like $20-30 minimum above MSRP.

[Guest]

1 hour ago, RAM555789 said:

We never went out of stock in the U.S. with higher end PSU's at local stores like microcenter, however prices did go like $20-30 minimum above MSRP.

That's not true.

 

[Cifer]

1 hour ago, jonnyGURU said:

Morocco is difficult to begin with.  

 

Containers that go into EU tend to stay in EU.   You would need a distributor that ships entire containers into or near Morocco, but Morocco has no major shipping ports (Canary Islands?  Dakar?).  Does Morocco have any distributors large enough to support entire container loads from a single supplier?

 

Egypt has a similar problem.  They have to bring product in from the EU because there is no large local ports and no distributors large enough to take entire containers from each manufacturer.

  

The real issue is probably what you mentioned : the lack of large enough distributors ;
(Tanger-Med is a pretty big cargo port, shipping port capacity shouldn't be a problem)

From what I understand, because of the low demand in DIY parts (in comparison to Europe and North-America), retailers don't bring in entire containers, they get their merchandise from European distributors (for example, when I bought from the above-mentioned retailer a CM case, the packaging said "Cooler Master Europe");

In addition to that, many shops located in the north of Morocco import their merchandise from Spain through Melilla and Ceuta, they don't deal with large volumes ;

Do you know of any Moroccan retailer that has tried to get containers shipped directly from you (Corsair) ?

EDIT : Since Corsair does not directly deal with Moroccan retailers, I guess you (Corsair) have nothing to do with high end units not being available ; that's either a distributor or retailer thing ; Thanks for the input by the way !

[Chris Pratt]

2 hours ago, Cifer said:

Yep, shipping is definitely more difficult/expensive, but that still doesn't explain why retailers easily restock the low-end units while high-end stuff never shows up

Sure it does. They're focused on restocking what sells. As a retailer, if you can only get 10 PSUs, you're not going to opt for 1500W Platinum models, because most people don't want to spend $200+ on a PSU. Meanwhile $50-$100 models will fly off the shelf before you can get them out of the box. Retailers only stock specialty items (which high quality top tier PSUs are) when stock levels are good on everything else.

[artuc]

@Cifer, can you not use a freight forwarding service or a retailer that will ship to Morocco and buy from europe ?

 

 

[Cifer]

5 minutes ago, artuc said:

@Cifer, can you use a freight forwarding service and buy from europe ?

 

Technically, yes ;
Practically, no : too expensive, no warantee, too much delay...

This option is definitely viable for very rare non replaceable items, but here it wouldn't be advantageous ;

Thanks for the idea anyway !

[Guest]

15 hours ago, Cifer said:

Do you know of any Moroccan retailer that has tried to get containers shipped directly from you (Corsair) ?

EDIT : Since Corsair does not directly deal with Moroccan retailers, I guess you (Corsair) have nothing to do with high end units not being available ; that's either a distributor or retailer thing ; Thanks for the input by the way !

Exactly zero.  The two biggest importers "close" to you are in Turkey and ALLLLLLL the way down in South Africa.  Otherwise, nada.

 

They're the only ones bringing in entire containers.  Except for EU companies like LDLC, Mindfactory, etc. of course.

 

[tkitch]

17 hours ago, RAM555789 said:

We never went out of stock in the U.S. with higher end PSU's at local stores like microcenter, however prices did go like $20-30 minimum above MSRP.

you apparently never walked into Microcenter and saw a whole 4 PSUs in the entire section that should be loaded.  

 

Cuz that absolutely happened.

[Ankerson]

16 hours ago, jonnyGURU said:

That's not true.

 

 

YUP, even Corsair ran out of what I was looking for (HXI 850), had to do the notify thing to get it once it came back in stock.

 

And they are out of HX 750, 850, 1000, and 1200 NOW.

 

And HXI 850, 1000, and 1200 NOW... HXI 750 is in stock currently...

 

And all of the AX and AXI's currently....

 

And all of the RMI's are out of stock....

 

RMX 550 and 750 are in stock, the rest are out of stock....

 

 

So only the HXI 750, RMX 550 and RMX 750 are in stock right this min...

 

 

This is all current as of today...