Micro Center sells GPUs at MSRP if you buy a complete system

[Jito463]

3 hours ago, JediFragger said:

 

[SpaceGhostC2C]

I guess it would be more accurate to say "Micro Center sells GPUs at discount under conditions XYZ". That the cards will be used for gaming is not necessary nor sufficient to benefit from the discount.

[MageTank]

This seems like a catch 22 for Micro Center. If you price GPU's at MSRP, you cannot stop miners from buying them. Even with a 1 per household rule, they put out ads on Craigslist in my area, paying people $20 to buy GPU's from the local store. If you price the GPU absurdly high to retain stock, and force people to bundle (effectively killing ROI for miners), people still hate you because they feel they should be able to get the GPU at MSRP whenever they feel like it. 

 

If anyone knows of a concrete solution that would allow GPU's to be supplied strictly to gamers, without miners being able to take advantage of it, I am all ears. Personally, I think they should keep the same bundle idea, but expand it to other components. Perhaps allow people to get MSRP pricing if they buy a monitor, or if they've purchased a prebuilt system from the store, or any individual parts within the past few months, but have an inferior GPU in said system than the one they are trying to purchase, allow them to take advantage of the MSRP pricing. I also wouldn't mind a GPU trade-in program that allowed people to trade in their current GPU for an in-store gift card and a voucher that allowed them to get a GPU at MSRP, limit 1 voucher per customer.

 

 Sadly, the "fair" way is to remove limits, price at MSRP, and let capitalism do it's thing. Just be prepared to camp the stores alongside the miners, and pray they've yet to buy in bulk. 

[Drak3]

5 minutes ago, MageTank said:

If anyone knows of a concrete solution that would allow GPU's to be supplied strictly to gamers, without miners being able to take advantage of it, I am all ears.

With or without a Zero Day and Zero Dawn?

 

Though, cheap, modular FPGA cards might help.

[billstelling]

1 hour ago, MageTank said:

This seems like a catch 22 for Micro Center. If you price GPU's at MSRP, you cannot stop miners from buying them. Even with a 1 per household rule, they put out ads on Craigslist in my area, paying people $20 to buy GPU's from the local store. If you price the GPU absurdly high to retain stock, and force people to bundle (effectively killing ROI for miners), people still hate you because they feel they should be able to get the GPU at MSRP whenever they feel like it. 

 

If anyone knows of a concrete solution that would allow GPU's to be supplied strictly to gamers, without miners being able to take advantage of it, I am all ears. Personally, I think they should keep the same bundle idea, but expand it to other components. Perhaps allow people to get MSRP pricing if they buy a monitor, or if they've purchased a prebuilt system from the store, or any individual parts within the past few months, but have an inferior GPU in said system than the one they are trying to purchase, allow them to take advantage of the MSRP pricing. I also wouldn't mind a GPU trade-in program that allowed people to trade in their current GPU for an in-store gift card and a voucher that allowed them to get a GPU at MSRP, limit 1 voucher per customer.

 

 Sadly, the "fair" way is to remove limits, price at MSRP, and let capitalism do it's thing. Just be prepared to camp the stores alongside the miners, and pray they've yet to buy in bulk. 

Shipped only.. Hard to get by an address. Yeah it could still be abused, just not as easily. You can buy them at the MSRP but only if shipped to your home. You would not be able to do cash and carry on certain cards for now until the crisis passes, unless you wanted to pay the crypto markup.

I put in my email with nvidia and I'm waiting for for things to get back in stock. I would rather wait a bit than get caught up during a price fixing war..

[MageTank]

24 minutes ago, billstelling said:

Shipped only.. Hard to get by an address. Yeah it could still be abused, just not as easily. You can buy them at the MSRP but only if shipped to your home. You would not be able to do cash and carry on certain cards for now until the crisis passes, unless you wanted to pay the crypto markup.

I put in my email with nvidia and I'm waiting for for things to get back in stock. I would rather wait a bit than get caught up during a price fixing war..

I've thought of that as well, but then it damages the people that build their rigs in-store as well if you make the GPU's ship only. Micro Center makes most of their sales due to in-store only bundle deals, such as their  cheap CPU's and combo discounts. When most of your business is in-store, you have to incentivize people to keep coming back. I understand this specific issue might cause the exact opposite to happen, but it's hard to solve this problem in a way where everyone benefits mutually. 

 

Another idea that crossed my mine was to use the Micro Center Insider Account for all GPU purchases, which would work online AND in-store, and change the policy to where people have to provide their MCIA number in order to complete the purchase. That way, they would be able to keep track of the limitations, and could potentially flag repeat buyers at the checkout. Problem with that is, it would require more work on their backend to make the system work in such a way, and you would also be putting more pressure on the employees to verify their insider accounts, slowing down the checkout process considerably. 

 

Hopefully a better solution comes to fruition, and both the store and their customers can be satisfied with whatever solution they can come up with. The current solution (if we can call it that) will definitely hold miners back, I just fear it's holding more gamers/enthusiasts back as well. 

[Rain7]

They need to create a new position with the sole purpose of visiting each customers' house twice a day at any given time to check if they're using the card as intended.

 

Customers will sign a written agreement allowing employees of Micro Center to enter their property without permission. Micro Center reserves the right to use any method necessary to gain access, of which can range from simply picking the lock to breaking the door or smashing the windows in the unfortunate event that a customer be unwilling to cooperate or should they become unavailable.

 

Customers can, however, opt for the deluxe package that requires employees of Micro Center to send a text message or tweet informing the customer of their impending arrival. Upon said arrival, yes or no is still non negotiable and employees of Micro Center may legally escalate the situation into a physical altercation should the customer refuse entry.

 

Micro Center should also be immediately notified of any relocation to reschedule visitation accordingly. Failure to do so will require the scheduled employee to book a flight and charge the customer upon arrival.

 

Offenders caught will have their gpu destroyed in front of them and be charged with the employee's gas money.

[MoonSpot]

16 minutes ago, MageTank said:

...

Another idea that crossed my mine was to use the Micro Center Insider Account for all GPU purchases, which would work online AND in-store, and change the policy to where people have to provide their MCIA number in order to complete the purchase. That way, they would be able to keep track of the limitations, and could potentially flag repeat buyers at the checkout. Problem with that is, it would require more work on their backend to make the system work in such a way, and you would also be putting more pressure on the employees to verify their insider accounts, slowing down the checkout process considerably.

...

I don't think that pans out.  As you've noted there's a bureaucratic price to pay in tracking via MCIA, linking to user accounts and sniffing through purchase histories each and every time a GPU is purchased.  Not only is it hoops to jump through which bare additional costs, it could rub non-MCIA people the wrong way and impress negatively on them.  Those people being potential new customers.

Another problem is doing right by the people who build PCs for family, friends or even as a small (less than minimum wage) business/hobby.  They'd clearly buy more GPUs than makes sense for an individual, though it would be a rather strange to see them grabbing anything in the class of vega56/64 & 1070/1080(ti) to give away.

[Rune]

4 hours ago, Rain7 said:

They need to create a new position with the sole purpose of visiting each customers' house twice a day at any given time to check if they're using the card as intended.

You got me, this one made me laugh.

[Derangel]

13 hours ago, Misanthrope said:

I think we already have a story of a Microcenter not respecting that so yeah, fuck em. Fuck all of this industry just don't buy new GPUs and don't buy new games that would require new gpus. Chances are most of you have over 80% of your steam library with 0 hours anyway just play those and let everyone in the industry fucking rot.

Why? It's not GPU manufacturers or game developers fault that this happened. AMD and Nvidia have no control over memory shortages or the price of cryptocurrency. People just need to chill the fuck out and wait.

 

5 hours ago, MageTank said:

I've thought of that as well, but then it damages the people that build their rigs in-store as well if you make the GPU's ship only. Micro Center makes most of their sales due to in-store only bundle deals, such as their  cheap CPU's and combo discounts. When most of your business is in-store, you have to incentivize people to keep coming back. I understand this specific issue might cause the exact opposite to happen, but it's hard to solve this problem in a way where everyone benefits mutually. 

 

Another idea that crossed my mine was to use the Micro Center Insider Account for all GPU purchases, which would work online AND in-store, and change the policy to where people have to provide their MCIA number in order to complete the purchase. That way, they would be able to keep track of the limitations, and could potentially flag repeat buyers at the checkout. Problem with that is, it would require more work on their backend to make the system work in such a way, and you would also be putting more pressure on the employees to verify their insider accounts, slowing down the checkout process considerably. 

 

Hopefully a better solution comes to fruition, and both the store and their customers can be satisfied with whatever solution they can come up with. The current solution (if we can call it that) will definitely hold miners back, I just fear it's holding more gamers/enthusiasts back as well. 

There is no way that would be both fair and easy to control. Prices will eventually come down and stock will eventually return to normal. Bitcoin price is dropping every day and as it goes lower less people are going to be getting into mining and snapping up cards. Though, there is another problem that has no end in sight: Memory shortages. That is another cause of the GPU stock issues.

[SpaceGhostC2C]

7 hours ago, MageTank said:

 Sadly, the "fair" way is to remove limits, price at MSRP, and let capitalism do it's thing. Just be prepared to camp the stores alongside the miners, and pray they've yet to buy in bulk. 

If you fix prices at original MSRP you are not letting capitalism do its thing, though.

 

But maybe that's the true solution: to let it do its thing. I know we all love promises of swift, effective solutions, but most of the times true solutions require patience. In this case, the patient, market-based solution is: forget about catering to gamers. Don't look for solutions for gamers; follow the money and focus on your customers, the miners. Market forces are based on prices acting as signals, and the signal right now is to produce high-hash rate, power-efficient GPUs. So, let companies compete for that miner money by releasing better and better GPUs, where "better" means better mining cards. Gaming performance will improve as well, of course. Competition for the miners market will move miners away from current-gen GPUs, and gradually restore performance/$ (even if in the form of high performance for high $). So, over time, more and more gaming performance will be affordable for average consumers. As long as mining exists, we'll have to accept that gaming is not a high-end GPU activity, unless you have money to burn. For all intents and purposes, gaming is a low-/mid-tier GPU activity, the same way it is a low-level CPU (yes, mainstream i7s are "low-level" when compared to server multithreaded, multi-K$ monsters). Which makes sense, since it's just leisure, not business. So, the sooner the whole GPU stack moves upward, the better for everyone.

But for that, the signal has to travel all the way from consumer to R&D: get rid of ancient MSRPs, hike up the prices at the GPU manufacturer level, giving the correct incentives to design and launch ever faster products ASAP. We don't need top cards to come down in price, we just need the cards we can reasonably afford / justify to ourselves spending on to be good enough for gaming. We may have got used in the past to $6,000 Quadros being not better than $700-1,000 GTXs. Well, maybe it's time for the "pro" cards to also be much better at gaming (cfr. Titan V).

 

Bottom line: maybe the best news for gamers would be for Nvidia and AMD to announce large MSRP increases, and new deals with partners down the line so that they get most of the increase, as opposed to board partners and retailers.

After all, capitalism is not about trusting others' good will or altruistic behavior to help you: it's about trusting others' greed to help you achieve your own goals.

[MoonSpot]

31 minutes ago, SpaceGhostC2C said:

If you fix prices at original MSRP you are not letting capitalism do its thing, though.

 

But maybe that's the true solution: to let it do its thing. I know we all love promises of swift, effective solutions, but most of the times true solutions require patience. In this case, the patient, market-based solution is: forget about catering to gamers. Don't look for solutions for gamers; follow the money and focus on your customers, the miners. Market forces are based on prices acting as signals, and the signal right now is to produce high-hash rate, power-efficient GPUs. So, let companies compete for that miner money by releasing better and better GPUs, where "better" means better mining cards. Gaming performance will improve as well, of course. Competition for the miners market will move miners away from current-gen GPUs, and gradually restore performance/$ (even if in the form of high performance for high $). So, over time, more and more gaming performance will be affordable for average consumers. As long as mining exists, we'll have to accept that gaming is not a high-end GPU activity, unless you have money to burn. For all intents and purposes, gaming is a low-/mid-tier GPU activity, the same way it is a low-level CPU (yes, mainstream i7s are "low-level" when compared to server multithreaded, multi-K$ monsters). Which makes sense, since it's just leisure, not business. So, the sooner the whole GPU stack moves upward, the better for everyone.

But for that, the signal has to travel all the way from consumer to R&D: get rid of ancient MSRPs, hike up the prices at the GPU manufacturer level, giving the correct incentives to design and launch ever faster products ASAP. We don't need top cards to come down in price, we just need the cards we can reasonably afford / justify to ourselves spending on to be good enough for gaming. We may have got used in the past to $6,000 Quadros being not better than $700-1,000 GTXs. Well, maybe it's time for the "pro" cards to also be much better at gaming (cfr. Titan V).

 

Bottom line: maybe the best news for gamers would be for Nvidia and AMD to announce large MSRP increases, and new deals with partners down the line so that they get most of the increase, as opposed to board partners and retailers.

After all, capitalism is not about trusting others' good will or altruistic behavior to help you: it's about trusting others' greed to help you achieve your own goals.

 

On just the business side of things I think you're taking too simplistic a view there.   The laissez-faire approach has never worked, and its not going to suddenly work now.  There are markets, jobs, careers, stores and businesses that need the gaming market working properly.  Its not just about GPUs and gamers, but also about even bothering to make PC games or port games to PC period.  This is not healthy and its not going to go well without some effort.  Afterall what what does go well for people who only sit on their ass thinking happy thoughts?

 

I doubt micro-centre is doing this (or thought of do it) for their customers.  More like they noticed that they need their customers tomorrow and want to make some strides to enable that.

[Rune]

11 minutes ago, MoonSpot said:

I doubt micro-centre is doing this (or thought of do it) for their customers.  More like they noticed that they need their customers tomorrow and what to make some strides to enable that.

I'd say you're wrong, but eh. It probably accomplishes the same thing in the end in this case.

[MoonSpot]

1 minute ago, Rune said:

I'd say you're wrong, but eh. It probably accomplishes the same thing in the end in this case.

ah.. probably.  shit if I'm not wrong, I'm usually not far from it most of the time.  I just doubt the benevolence of any company by default.

[SpaceGhostC2C]

7 minutes ago, MoonSpot said:

 

On just the business side of things I think you're taking too simplistic a view there.   The laissez-faire approach has never worked, and its not going to suddenly work now. 

That statement would require some more precision. As a blanket statement about the history of humanity it is hardly accurate.

7 minutes ago, MoonSpot said:

There are markets, jobs, careers, stores and businesses that need the gaming market working properly. 

That is, indeed, the whole point of my post: to have a gaming market working properly. Price caps lead to rationing, the opposite of a properly working market, as it does in most other markets.

 

7 minutes ago, MoonSpot said:

Its not just about GPUs and gamers, but also about even bothering to make PC games or port games to PC period. 

I don't see how that's going to be an issue in the scenario I described. I also think that talks about "the collapse of PC gaming" are extremely hyperbolic. Building a gaming PC is perfectly possible, and the same money gets you a substantially faster gaming than 5 years ago. People focus too much in the high part of the stack, and project their "need to upgrade my 980ti to 1080ti" into a dramatic shake up of PC gaming as a whole.

 

7 minutes ago, MoonSpot said:

This is not healthy and its not going to go well without some effort. 

Exactly, it's not going well, hence my idea of steering it in a different direction. 

[MoonSpot]

10 minutes ago, SpaceGhostC2C said:

That statement would require some more precision. As a blanket statement about the history of humanity it is hardly accurate.

That is, indeed, the whole point of my post: to have a gaming market working properly. Price caps lead to rationing, the opposite of a properly working market, as it does in most other markets.

 

I don't see how that's going to be an issue in the scenario I described. I also think that talks about "the collapse of PC gaming" are extremely hyperbolic. Building a gaming PC is perfectly possible, and the same money gets you a substantially faster gaming than 5 years ago. People focus too much in the high part of the stack, and project their "need to upgrade my 980ti to 1080ti" into a dramatic shake up of PC gaming as a whole.

 

Exactly, it's not going well, hence my idea of steering it in a different direction. 

Sorry I didn't put more effort into the other post, you deserved more(I'm sick and tired, literally not a euphemism for the GPU topic.  though that is also true).

I did hyperbole PC gaming, that wasn't quite my intent.  Think more along the lines of a hypothetical Witcher 4.  We're in a situation where JQ Public really hasn't been able to get a good GPU for 2 years now unless they've been obsessed with searching for sales.  So if you're going to sell a game in the coming years, what bar should the devs aim for.  A pretty low one by the looks of it.  rx470/80s & 570/80s didn't really get into peoples hands, and now 1060s and 1070s are out now to boot.

Not the end of the world my previous post made, just a crap world that could have been better.

*Note: view is from a Canadian where tech prices have been garbage for...  -.-; always?

 

"High part of the stack", I think we may disagree with what is high.  I do think its fair to say that most people buying a graphics card will try to get the best one they can responsibly afford and justify.  And thats whats been perverted by these prices.  People who would say, "$220USD on a 480 I'm cool with" probably won't feel the same about a $350USD 480 let alone the $600USD+ 580s now.

So again; not the end of PC gaming, but there are going to be consequences.  It's not like this has only been a thing for a couple of weeks.

 

As for moving product stack up in a big way and R&D from your original post; I don't know how to approach any of that.  It strikes me as largely wishful and whimsical.  Performance and particularly perf/$ increases of the order required/desired, doesn't just happen.  Sorta like finding another planet to live on because we messed this one up, doesn't just happen.  Not saying your claim was that idiotic, just that I don't know what to say to either beyond a "wait, what?".

[Satisfoxy]

I don't know which Microcenter people are complaining about high prices is, but the one near me is pretty average and NOTHING beats their return policy.

[Paranoid Kami]

Just buy a used GPU until the prices are normal again.

[Misanthrope]

19 hours ago, Derangel said:

Why? It's not GPU manufacturers or game developers fault that this happened. AMD and Nvidia have no control over memory shortages or the price of cryptocurrency. People just need to chill the fuck out and wait.

They're the only ones that can do anything about it: retailers won't listen to consumer they're getting rich. Youtubers and influencers well, they're mostly self-serving at worst and spectators at best so it's time to stop even caring about them.

 

No the only people that stand to lose anything are game devs and they're the only ones that can actually put pressure on the hardware manufacturers and retailers to basically ban bulk sales at all levels and make efforts to deliver only to gamers.

 

This might mitigate miners at best but it's better than the current solution of "Fuck you, don't game" that everybody offers.

[Sauron]

On 1/27/2018 at 3:45 PM, MageTank said:

This seems like a catch 22 for Micro Center. If you price GPU's at MSRP, you cannot stop miners from buying them. Even with a 1 per household rule, they put out ads on Craigslist in my area, paying people $20 to buy GPU's from the local store. If you price the GPU absurdly high to retain stock, and force people to bundle (effectively killing ROI for miners), people still hate you because they feel they should be able to get the GPU at MSRP whenever they feel like it. 

 

If anyone knows of a concrete solution that would allow GPU's to be supplied strictly to gamers, without miners being able to take advantage of it, I am all ears. Personally, I think they should keep the same bundle idea, but expand it to other components. Perhaps allow people to get MSRP pricing if they buy a monitor, or if they've purchased a prebuilt system from the store, or any individual parts within the past few months, but have an inferior GPU in said system than the one they are trying to purchase, allow them to take advantage of the MSRP pricing. I also wouldn't mind a GPU trade-in program that allowed people to trade in their current GPU for an in-store gift card and a voucher that allowed them to get a GPU at MSRP, limit 1 voucher per customer.

 

 Sadly, the "fair" way is to remove limits, price at MSRP, and let capitalism do it's thing. Just be prepared to camp the stores alongside the miners, and pray they've yet to buy in bulk. 

The only way to lock miners out (and I'm not saying we should do this) would be to gimp blockchain related workloads in the drivers, a bit like quadros are basically geforce cards with professional oriented drivers, then start selling purpose built mining cards. The bundle is a good idea to offer selective discounts, microcenter can't (and probably shouldn't) demand to know what you'll do with the card before selling it to you just to provide a "gamer" discount. Not to mention that would just open the doors for scalpers buying the cards at MSRP only to resell them at twice the price.

 

My solution is to just buy used if you can't afford new. There are plenty of last gen cards that will still perform just fine.

[aezakmi]

give me a 1080ti and the cheapest athlon cpu you have, 2gb ram and a 200w psu

 

will it run crysis?

[miagisan]

On 1/26/2018 at 11:24 PM, SC2Mitch said:

"hey guys come buy a overpriced computer parts and prove that it's for gaming and we'll still over price the stuff you buy" sounds great to me

Umm have you ever been to microcenter? They have fantastic cpu/mobo prices, and they sell open box items for a nice discount. 

 

Me thinks you have no idea what you are protesting about. 

[MilitantCro]

Or you can just live in the EU and pay 280e for a gtx 1060 (347$) and not have to fear miners.

[Derangel]

1 hour ago, Misanthrope said:

They're the only ones that can do anything about it: retailers won't listen to consumer they're getting rich. Youtubers and influencers well, they're mostly self-serving at worst and spectators at best so it's time to stop even caring about them.

 

No the only people that stand to lose anything are game devs and they're the only ones that can actually put pressure on the hardware manufacturers and retailers to basically ban bulk sales at all levels and make efforts to deliver only to gamers.

 

This might mitigate miners at best but it's better than the current solution of "Fuck you, don't game" that everybody offers.

They can't ban bulk sales. The most they can do is ask and asking is useless. No one is going to listen or care, especially not retailers. They can't threaten to cut retailers out because they need the retailers more than the retailers need them and retailers know it, especially the big retailers. There is nothing Nvidia, AMD, or AIBs can do. Nvidia and AMD can't really boost production. Well, they could but it would be stupid to do so. Not only would it likely require paying millions more than they are now but the lead time for that stuff is measured in terms of months. Even if AMD and Nvidia told their suppliers to increase chip production (assuming they can both get a hold of enough memory to supply their cards) we wouldn't see the results until mid to late Spring. What if the demand has died down by then? AMD and Nvidia would flood AIBs and retail channels with cards that they couldn't sell, wasting those millions they invested to increase production.

[Hiitchy]

I know where I live, they've slowly been getting back stock of 1080's and 1080ti's only to see them come off the shelves. The only suggestions and changes that were made is that you can't buy GPUs online or call to reserve anymore, you're limited to two GPUs per person at any given time, and they've also stated that any cards that are DOA from mining can't be returned to the store for any exchange as they're final sale, and that the RMA process which they usually did for you, would have to be done on your own dime. Though I don't know their process for confirming it was a mining card. 

 

The one thing I discussed with the manager of the store I've gone to is to literally remove stock listing for all the GPU's online and if someone calls to check stock, don't allow it over the phone unless it's for an item that isn't a high end GPU. Though that shouldn't be needed, it might level out the field even more.