News Scalpers Strike Again, Ryzen 5000 Processors Impossible to Find In stock

[Wolfshadw]

And again, let's tone down the rhetoric. There are forum policies in place the forbid the type of discussions where this conversation is leading. Rein it in, people, or we'll shut it down.

Wolfshadw
Moderator

 

[TheBeastInside]

And again, let's tone down the rhetoric. There are forum policies in place the forbid the type of discussions where this conversation is leading. Rein it in, people, or we'll shut it down.

Wolfshadw
Moderator

Gotcha.
Sorry.

 

[nofanneeded]

Then that would make it retail, correct?

Then it would make it more available 😛

 

[Robt111]

Just checked my local Microcenter store, they still have a small number in stock. In store purchase only.

 

[King_V]

Scalpers don't cause shortages. The reason you can't buy an AMD chip is not because of scalpers. In fact, you only have an option to buy any chips at all because of scalpers. For the economically challenged, let me explain: A shortage is what happens when the price of something is much lower than would would be required for the demand curve to be in equilibrium with the supply. The sad fact is that AMD is underselling their processors, leaving money on the table for scalpers to collect. It's bad business, for sure, but if the scalpers weren't there then nobody would be selling these chips at all. As it is, the few among us who happen to value the AMD chips more than they value $1500 are at least able to purchase one. Without the scalpers, all the chips would be sold out, period. Nobody would be able to sit around and weigh the costs and benefits.

Now, the bad thing about scalpers is that AMD doesn't get that money. IF AMD was getting that money - if they had, for instance, properly priced their CPU's to maintain equilibrium between supply and demand - they'd be flush with a lot more cash. That extra cash could help them outbid their competitors at TSMC, so that even more processors might be produced and available in the future - bringing their costs back down. Meanwhile, there would be no profit in scalping, and therefore no scalpers to be angry at.

In other words: Blame AMD for overly aggressive pricing. Even a small bump could have helped alleviate this problem.

By this logic, Nvidia was overly aggressive, and priced their Ampere cards way too low. 🙄

 

[andrewkelb]

It sounds like people were at least able to get the cpus for several hours or longer before most places sold out, a lot better then what happened with nvidia gpus but still not great. It would be so nice if the AMD gpus were available a bit longer as well but I am guessing that won't be the case.

 

[bwana]

Imagine scalping food, water or air filters. Human nature has no limit on predatory behavior. Only collective action can stop this.

in this era of bots, the escalation will lead to ddns of websites that permit this behavior

 

[Arbie]

There is reliable info that a million of the new Ryzens are in the retail pipeline. Meaning - becoming much more available very soon. I'm taking that as maybe a week or ten days to see the effects.

That's consistent with other reports that thousands per country have already been delivered and sold. Of course they'll still be going in and out of stock for a while, but it shouldn't be "hard" to get one.

 

[Arbie]

You need to tone it down a bit. This is getting a little bit too "political".

Please remove the sig picture. It's a pain to skip over as I scroll through the posts. If everyone - or even a few more people - did that the forum would be unreadable.

 

[USAFRet]

Please remove the sig picture. It's a pain to skip over as I scroll through the posts. If everyone - or even a few more people - did that the forum would be unreadable.

You can disable showing sig pics.
From your account settings:

 

[nofanneeded]

Imagine scalping food, water or air filters. Human nature has no limit on predatory behavior. Only collective action can stop this.

in this era of bots, the escalation will lead to ddns of websites that permit this behavior

Humans have been scalping food and water since forever , that was the main reason of all wars in history to steal others resources then sell it back to the native people with double price ..

 

[cryoburner]

Also , I think AMD could sell them in trays without boxes to speed things up ...

Creating finished processors from a silicon wafer is a process that takes months. I doubt the seconds it takes to stuff a completed CPU into retail packaging makes much of a difference to the supply chain.

Maybe shipping them to retailers could be a little more efficient, but then what? Does Newegg just toss the bare processor into an oversized box with a few air-pillows? I don't really see much to gain from selling them in tray form at retail.

The sad fact is that AMD is underselling their processors, leaving money on the table for scalpers to collect. It's bad business, for sure, but if the scalpers weren't there then nobody would be selling these chips at all.
...
Now, the bad thing about scalpers is that AMD doesn't get that money. IF AMD was getting that money - if they had, for instance, properly priced their CPU's to maintain equilibrium between supply and demand - they'd be flush with a lot more cash.
...
In other words: Blame AMD for overly aggressive pricing. Even a small bump could have helped alleviate this problem.

I really don't think these processors are "over-aggressively priced". They may perform better than their Intel counterparts featuring similar core counts, but they are also priced higher. And unlike prior Ryzen launches, AMD didn't make the more value-oriented versions of each processor available at launch, though those will undoubtedly be coming later. Had AMD priced them any higher, reviews would have likely been less positive and demand, in turn, would have been lower.

And who's to say there's actually a shortage? Unlike the RTX 30 launch, where the cards sold out in seconds and haven't really been available for a number of weeks since, with manufacturers suggesting it could months before supply stabilizes, these CPUs took longer to sell out, and fresh stock may very well reach retailers soon to keep up with demand. All we have to go on so far is day 1 sales by early adopters waiting on the hardware and willing to pay a premium for it, and those don't likely reflect long-term demand.

 

[DSzymborski]

Imagine scalping food, water or air filters. Human nature has no limit on predatory behavior. Only collective action can stop this.

in this era of bots, the escalation will lead to ddns of websites that permit this behavior

 

[nofanneeded]

Maybe shipping them to retailers could be a little more efficient, but then what? Does Newegg just toss the bare processor into an oversized box with a few air-pillows? I don't really see much to gain from selling them in tray form at retail.

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2-XdegVzePw

 

[USAFRet]

"tray" is good for mass builders.
If I'm putting together 1000 systems, I don't need 1000 copies of the user manual and warranty paperwork. Nor the fancy box.

 

[nofanneeded]

"tray" is good for mass builders.
If I'm putting together 1000 systems, I don't need 1000 copies of the user manual and warranty paperwork. Nor the fancy box.

Many retailers are mass builders as well , They are the ones who sell OEM tray CPUs , SSD (like the Samsung OEM nvme SSD . all what is different is the warranty .

 

[Liquidrider]

I guess I should consider my self lucky. I picked up a 5950X relatively easy on best buy. I thought it was going to be sold out.

 

[2Be_or_Not2Be]

I tried to buy a 5900X from AMD (they use a 3rd party). I got one into the cart, but it wouldn't let me complete the purchase. The shop kept crashing, and then when it was back up, it kept redirecting me to other processors. Evidently they must have went out of stock. However, it was really annoying that while I was allowed to add one, it didn't become "reserved" for me at that point. They knew how to take a reservation, they just don't know how to keep the reservation - just like the Seinfeld episode. 🙄

So major marks against that lousy 3rd party shop used by AMD!

 

[Wolfshadw]

it was really annoying that while I was allowed to add one, it didn't become "reserved" for me at that point.

But if you put it in your cart and don't check out for three days (weeks/months), just how long is a site supposed to keep it on reserve? More than likely, what happened was there was one CPU left in their database of available stock. The database doesn't get updated until someone clicks. "Confirm Payment" and it gets a reply back stating "Payment Approved". Until that happens, any number of people can add it to their cart, but only the first person to have their payment approved will actually get it.

The site you went to (and likely all others like it) probably had thousands of people adding the CPU to their cart within the first 30 seconds of it being available. If the store only had 25 of these processors and you were the 26th fastest to get your payment info in, you were out of luck and there's just no way around that.

-Wolf sends

 

[2Be_or_Not2Be]

But if you put it in your cart and don't check out for three days (weeks/months), just how long is a site supposed to keep it on reserve? More than likely, what happened was there was one CPU left in their database of available stock. The database doesn't get updated until someone clicks. "Confirm Payment" and it gets a reply back stating "Payment Approved". Until that happens, any number of people can add it to their cart, but only the first person to have their payment approved will actually get it.

The site you went to (and likely all others like it) probably had thousands of people adding the CPU to their cart within the first 30 seconds of it being available. If the store only had 25 of these processors and you were the 26th fastest to get your payment info in, you were out of luck and there's just no way around that.

-Wolf sends

Sure, I agree - it's a limited amount of stock & only a few of the potential buyers will actual get one. However, if I didn't buy it right then & left it in the cart for 3 days, then I have no problem with them taking it out & putting it back into "general stock" again. However, I do not agree on how this 3rd party did their stock system. Especially is it irritating that they had multiple crashes even as I was trying to complete the purchase. Bots going through a back-end API didn't have that same problem.

So here's my solution:

Put all incoming purchase requests into a queue, and then subtract each one from available stock (limit of one each). For the initial launch, you only get a set amount of minutes to complete the transaction, like howTicketmaster (remember back when you bought tickets for live events?) shows you a timer for completing your purchase for a specific seat. When the last stock is allocated, all incoming requests are not allowed to add it to their cart. Instead, the potential buyer can be asked if they wish to be added to a later-fulfillment queue. Given that they sold out of everything in seconds, this would have been a fast transition to a later-fulfillment queue. Anyone who doesn't complete their purchase by the countdown, their CPU is put back into stock & thus fulfills the first in the later-fulfillment queue.

I've been involved a bit with handling large crowd for purchases, and it's definitely doable. So especially with vendors selling brand new tech products, I can't imagine why they haven't come up with a better system for handling these large launches.

 

[Wolfshadw]

Sure, I agree - it's a limited amount of stock & only a few of the potential buyers will actual get one. However, if I didn't buy it right then & left it in the cart for 3 days, then I have no problem with them taking it out & putting it back into "general stock" again. However, I do not agree on how this 3rd party did their stock system. Especially is it irritating that they had multiple crashes even as I was trying to complete the purchase. Bots going through a back-end API didn't have that same problem.

So here's my solution:

Put all incoming purchase requests into a queue, and then subtract each one from available stock (limit of one each). For the initial launch, you only get a set amount of minutes to complete the transaction, like howTicketmaster (remember back when you bought tickets for live events?) shows you a timer for completing your purchase for a specific seat. When the last stock is allocated, all incoming requests are not allowed to add it to their cart. Instead, the potential buyer can be asked if they wish to be added to a later-fulfillment queue. Given that they sold out of everything in seconds, this would have been a fast transition to a later-fulfillment queue. Anyone who doesn't complete their purchase by the countdown, their CPU is put back into stock & thus fulfills the first in the later-fulfillment queue.

I've been involved a bit with handling large crowd for purchases, and it's definitely doable. So especially with vendors selling brand new tech products, I can't imagine why they haven't come up with a better system for handling these large launches.

I get where you're coming from, but that still won't work. By the time someone realizes they're in a queue that may or may not work in their favor, they've moved on to somewhere else (in another browser tab). Remember, we're talking about thousands of people. Just how long do you think people will wait around on the off-chance they MIGHT get a chance at buying one? Some have the discipline to wait, sure, but most do not. They're off searching other web sites while the queue shrinks to their number. Heaven forbid they get passed over because they were looking at another site! And what do you do if there's an Internet interruption? I waited patiently. I did my due diligence. There was a glitch in the server and I lost connection for a minute. Now I'm last in line...

How do you reconcile that?

Point being, there's really nothing that an online reseller can do that someone could not take advantage of, so they keep it as first come, first serve (fair or not).

-Wolf sends

 

[USAFRet]

So here's my solution:

Bot functionality will evolve to defeat whatever roadblocks are put in place.

Given the potential money/profit involved, it will evolve even on the morning of the release.

 

[Tanquen]

They just don't care. They know people really want them they know how few they have but they just let the bots take them in a few minutes.

They could do something like make sure you have a long standing account and call your cell to verify and or hold a fee until you show it installed with the matching serial number to get the fee back and you have 5 days after receiving it to install it or they keep the fee. Something, anything.

 

[Homer J.]

Oh noes, Team Red is also affected by scalpers, how can that be??? Was it not only evil team green and they did it on purpose.
You know what I despise most in life are double standards and fanboys. The world would be a much better place if all the fanboys of any kind would just take their lower lip, pull it over their heads and swallow.

 

[PCWarrior]

So according to the fanboys the problem is not AMD’s inability to satisfy demand but the aggressive pricing and that AMD should have priced their cpus higher. Haha. So I guess Nvidia and Intel were right all along for pricing their products higher. Wasn’t it the same people calling them greedy? The hypocrisy and double standard of AMD fanboys is fascinating.