Completely Unique CPU Post

Brandon Shinobu · April 11, 2021

Hello! I'm new here.

Also, I fully realize this kind of post is anything but unique, don't worry. I'm not that oblivious to the world, heh.

Long-time fan of LTT, but I've never actually... interacted here before. I also apologize in advance, I'm a little bit of a windbag, but I'll try to keep the windbagging ~~to a minimum~~ as entertaining as possible. [Edit: I did badly at the minimum part]

Like many of you, I like to build my computers. I've done it for my last two, and my most recent build is still chugging on an i7-3820 on a DX79TO. I do mean chugging. In fact my computer is nearing 11 years old, aside from a friend's hand-me-down GTX 1070. I've been saving to put together a new computer for the last five years, but life and finance "stuff" has always stopped me, leaving me with a system that crashes more often than I sneeze and an obsessive data backup fetish. It's so old one of the case fan blades literally fell out of its frame the last time I opened the computer.

But now I'm doing it! I'm finally amassing the parts for my new computer! I've saved my pennies, and I have (most of) the money I need set aside to build a really nice system!

...IF I could get any of the major components at MSRP. The problem is, after saving for 5+ years, Covid and the chip shortage happened right around the time I actually managed to save enough. Yay timing.

Before you ask, yeah, I've considered getting cheaper parts and saving up (again) to replace them down the road, but I'm not really in a position to do that. In fact, I don't expect to be able to do anything like this again for a while (which is kind of what led to my current system being so old). As you can probably imagine, I'm also not really in a position to just wait out the chip shortage. While it'd be lovely if my current system kept running, it's definitely on its last legs.

This is my dream-machine build. For me, "dream-machine" means Blender rendering, lots of photoshop, and some gaming. I might even start to pick up Unity. Basically I'm trying to build a machine that will sniff at anything I can throw at it, processing or storage-wise, for a few good years to come. So, the primary components of my build are a Ryzen 9 5950x, an RTX 3090, lots of RAM and lots of NVMe storage. No, I did not make this easy on myself.

As everyone knows, Ryzen 9 5950x's are sold out. You can only find them on Amazon through sellers going over MSRP, and I have been watching as much as work schedule allows for months. I don't want to pay over MSRP, and everyone says I shouldn't, but I don't see any other choice. I somehow keep missing the Verified Gamer drops that LTT does and just hear about them after the fact. Frankly, I'm not even sure how to participate.

The one plus side to buying it through Amazon instead of Ebay or something is that you can get a 3-4 year protection plan on the component, which is important to me should the component fail, or the very real possibility that the return period will expire before I can get the remaining parts to build the darn thing just to find out it's DOA.

I know my position is not unique. Half or more of the reason I'm in this position is because so many others are also. But seriously, is there any place that has a 'queue' system like EVGA has for their 3000 series sales? I'd be content to wait for a 5950x if only there were a guaranteed opportunity to get one that didn't leave me devoid of a manufacturer warranty. Or if I'm really just thick-skulled and missing something obvious on participating in the Verified Gamer program, is there some sort of link or watch list I'm supposed to sign up for? Is it available to people in the USA?

Thanks all in advance for any advice. And don't worry, I fully understand if the honest answer is, "Not much that can be done." To be honest, I expect that's the answer, which begs the question of why I'm posting this, but I've spent this much time typing it, I may as well click submit.

Haraikomono · April 11, 2021

hats off for saving that long for a system, shows true dedication.

Sorry, as you already wrote theres not much to be done.

even if you were to build a system rn, you would need a huge budget, or decide on a prebuilt by one of the major vendors (which is really frustrating)

Brandon Shinobu · April 11, 2021

I'm definitely with you on that one. I'd actually looked into the possibility of getting a pre-built for parts, but I honestly don't trust the shipping of built computers. I happen to work in tech support, and I just hear too many stories of shipped computers getting bungled. That and it'd leave me without any kind of warranty on the parts, which I'd really like to avoid. Not to mention it'd just make things even more expensive.

Originally I thought I was posting for help. As I look back at it, it was probably more for catharsis. I've been getting more frustrated over the last few months waiting for parts to become available like many other people. I just have an unpleasant reminder each time something crashes while I'm working on a project or playing with friends.