Maingear and Sood Defending a Defenseless Position on Selling Crypto Boxes?

FrgMstr

FrgMstr

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Maingear sent out a press release yesterday heralding its new mining boxes that contain up to six GPUs. Our news post did get some reaction. Raul Sood, the CEO of yet another cryptocurrency (Unikrn), and the crypto being hawked along with Maingear's crypto box, took issue with our news item, sending me to PCGamer, which regurgitated the press release without a thought, as many corporate websites do, especially when those companies have spent 10s of thousands of dollars advertising with them. Of course the glowing story, surely timed to be published alongside the press release heralds why this will have no impact on video cards for gamers.


"[We're not using] off the shelf gaming GPUs. Basically, headless cards made for mining."

Santos tell us that Maingear will not be buying graphics cards used for gaming to use in its miner as not to disrupt the market.

Well that sounds great and all on the surface, but every one of those GPUs represents a GPU that could have been used to build a video card for gamers. There is no changing that fact. Not everyone is buying the narrative that PCGamer is pushing.

We did make sure to let Rahul Sood know what we thought of him pointing to PCGamer's article to defend his own cryptocurrency venture.

Remember folks, as we have always suggested, vote with your wallet. And don't for one second think that all six of those headless video cards above contain GPUs that could not have been used to make video cards for gamers. If anything, it points to a less expensive manufactured card that is contributing to shortage of video cards for gamers. And this is all being pushed out by Maingear and Rahul Sood, who made their fortunes on the backs of gamers. Your community's back.

Just before publishing this news item, Rahul Sood dug in a bit deeper, suggesting, even during this GPU shortage, that video gamers could not buy all the GPUs, and that the GPUs being used were from the "gray market."

Vote with your wallet.
 
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Used to work for Maingear, wouldn't give them a single dollar, especially for some shady crypto scheme let alone the effect on the graphics card market this inherently has.
 
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Exactly. And all those "Wait until the spring to get a new videocard" articles that are popping up are getting annoying now. Like the miners aren't going to be all over those too.
 
I don't see any reason to blame anyone for the price issue with video cards. Sure I would love to upgrade for my Rift. But my desires are no more valid than some miner or some guy that like to do "builds" to show off. There is a demand and people are <very> willing to pay.

I guess I will vote with my wallet, in so far as I can't afford (or can justify) spending $500-$600 on a video card that should be closer to $300. But it's not so much that I'm "not voting" by choice. I don't have a choice.

Perhaps someone will see an opportunity to make video cards that are specific to gaming. But when you can sell the exact same card for $500 all day long, why in the world TRY to sell one for $300?
 
I've passed on purchasing 3 pc games in 2017 alone because I couldn't get an upgraded video card at a decent price. My current card can't even do 1080P ultra with today's games. And before anybody bitches yes graphics are important to me, if not I'd go console. Fuck this mining bullshit...
 
westrock2000 said:
I don't see any reason to blame anyone for the price issue with video cards. Sure I would love to upgrade for my Rift. But my desires are no more valid than some miner or some guy that like to do "builds" to show off. There is a demand and people are <very> willing to pay.

I guess I will vote with my wallet, in so far as I can't afford (or can justify) spending $500-$600 on a video card that should be closer to $300. But it's not so much that I'm "not voting" by choice. I don't have a choice.

Perhaps someone will see an opportunity to make video cards that are specific to gaming. But when you can sell the exact same card for $500 all day long, why in the world TRY to sell one for $300?
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The same things that make a video card great for number crunching of polygons are the same things that make them great for A.I., crypto, etc. That will never change.

What you need to do to score a video card is to wake up early in the morning. Go to Amazon and do a search for the video card that you want to buy at retail price. Change the seller to Amazon only in the list of sellers on the left side of the page. If Amazon is about to get a shipment in soon they will allow preordering of the video card to take place and give a rough estimate of the expected ship date. Buy the card and you won't be charged until it ships. Also you can call Amazon's customer service and ask them if there is a shipment incoming.

I saw GTX 1060 6GB cards, GTX 1050Ti, and GTX 1050 cards for retail on their website this morning ~ 5 AM.
 
Dude, Kyle, I understand that the situation with the lack of video cards is frustrating and annoying, but you need to keep your temper in check a bit more. It is not worth it to get this upset about it. It is a good practice for patience to just wait this shortage out.
 
westrock2000 said:
I don't see any reason to blame anyone for the price issue with video cards. Sure I would love to upgrade for my Rift. But my desires are no more valid than some miner or some guy that like to do "builds" to show off. There is a demand and people are <very> willing to pay.

I guess I will vote with my wallet, in so far as I can't afford (or can justify) spending $500-$600 on a video card that should be closer to $300. But it's not so much that I'm "not voting" by choice. I don't have a choice.

Perhaps someone will see an opportunity to make video cards that are specific to gaming. But when you can sell the exact same card for $500 all day long, why in the world TRY to sell one for $300?
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I pretty much agree... I can't see how one could govern the price for gamers vs others or even figure out a way to incentivise one over the other... Maybe offer a bundle pack... $300 video card + $300 steam card for $600. Though as you said most companies would rather just sell the card for double the price, assuming any backlash would cost less than the $300 premium.

I do believe gamers and Hardocpers have every right (and should) to call out the BS these companies use to try and pull the wool. Common sense would tell me Kyle is most likely right those chips could be used in "gamer" cards unless the chips are specifically designed for mining (they used to exist I believe). Again at the end of the day though supply and demand will set the price no matter what the cards are used for.
 
dgingeri said:
Dude, Kyle, I understand that the situation with the lack of video cards is frustrating and annoying, but you need to keep your temper in check a bit more. It is not worth it to get this upset about it. It is a good practice for patience to just wait this shortage out.
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over-your-head-gif-7.gif
 
It isn't just the fact that gamers can't get cards at a sane price, it's the systemic effects across the whole PC hardware industry. There is some major splash damage occurring.

That said, I'm a free market guy, and I believe said free market will eventually take care of things. If the crypto bubble doesn't pop (and I think it will) then eventually manufacturers will begin to ramp up production. But for now it sucks incredibly hard. I'm in an indefinite holding pattern on a new build.
 
I happen to agree with the non-issue crowd. Video cards (especially high end) are a luxury good which has a higher demand than supply. If people are buying them for crypto mining then the more power to them.

It's a BS excuse to say that the lack of properly priced video cards are affecting the pc upgrade market. It's a lot more likely that intel/amd hasn't come out with cpus that really are worth upgrading to combined with games that don't push the envelope. People can still run video games really well with 6 year old cpus. In the same time period they've probably updated their video cards twice on average. Unless they're trying to run some of the more demanding VR titles, an older video card can still play the majority of demanding fps games at a decent resolution (I only upgraded my old 770 that i was using until mid of last year when i tried to run elite dangerous in VR).

I don't believe there's some secret collusion with video card makers not supply enough of them. If anything, amd and nvidia do not come out with a fast enough product line in terms of enhancements. Nvidia seems to think founder's edition and starwars edition is actually something new to keep people interested in buying them. AMD seems to think that every 3 years they can come out with a new product and still be relevant.
 
Gigus Fire said:
I happen to agree with the non-issue crowd. Video cards (especially high end) are a luxury good which has a higher demand than supply. If people are buying them for crypto mining then the more power to them.

It's a BS excuse to say that the lack of properly priced video cards are affecting the pc upgrade market. It's a lot more likely that intel/amd hasn't come out with cpus that really are worth upgrading to combined with games that don't push the envelope. People can still run video games really well with 6 year old cpus. In the same time period they've probably updated their video cards twice on average. Unless they're trying to run some of the more demanding VR titles, an older video card can still play the majority of demanding fps games at a decent resolution (I only upgraded my old 770 that i was using until mid of last year when i tried to run elite dangerous in VR).

I don't believe there's some secret collusion with video card makers not supply enough of them. If anything, amd and nvidia do not come out with a fast enough product line in terms of enhancements. Nvidia seems to think founder's edition and starwars edition is actually something new to keep people interested in buying them. AMD seems to think that every 3 years they can come out with a new product and still be relevant.
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I don't think the individual user upgrade crowd is thinking big enough. There are plenty of OEMs out there now, even Dell and other "giants", with no stock and that means halting orders of motherboards and RAM and everything else involved with building a gaming or workstation computer and that means they're hurting not building/selling computers and the manufacturers making the other parts aren't selling anything either. Is it the end of days? Probably not, but it needs to be taken seriously because unless crypto just goes away overnight there's going to need to be adjustment across a lot of companies to account for the explosion of the gpu market.
 
Gigus Fire said:
It's a BS excuse to say that the lack of properly priced video cards are affecting the pc upgrade market.
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I completely disagree. The pricing of GPUs and RAM in particular are defiantly hurting the traditional DIY PC market. Indeed the pricing on DDR 4 quad channel RAM. I just looked up the price for the 64 GB in my sig rig. I paid $290 for it June 2016 on Amazon. That same kit used is going for $1700 USED on Amazon. This is market that's used to seeing prices depreciate over time, not sky rocket like this and it gives people pause. I wouldn't build something like my sig rig at this point and I'm not alone.
 
This is a straight up supply-and-demand issue. So those guys trying to blow smoke up our behinds about how that isn't true are themselves full of it. Hopefully supply gets ramped up in the near future. Until that happens, we gamers are pretty screwed. So are those who rely on us upgrading our systems, since buying a GPU is usually part of doing that, and no GPU often leads to no overall system upgrade.

As for those saying "be patient". How long are we supposed to be patient? Until Spring? Summer? Fall? Next year? Until the cryptocoin bubble bursts? That advice doesn't work without a reasonably solid end date to look towards.
 
Smashing Young Man said:
It isn't just the fact that gamers can't get cards at a sane price, it's the systemic effects across the whole PC hardware industry. There is some major splash damage occurring.

That said, I'm a free market guy, and I believe said free market will eventually take care of things. If the crypto bubble doesn't pop (and I think it will) then eventually manufacturers will begin to ramp up production. But for now it sucks incredibly hard. I'm in an indefinite holding pattern on a new build.
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Cogent and on point. Nice post.
 
More demand for GPUs should spur more production which should lower prices. Isn't this just a temporary shortage?
 
If some miner wants to pay that insane amount for a 6 card mining rig I cant blame Maingear or any other company for wanting to get some of that business. It is easy for us who have no stake in the game to complain but if you have hundreds of thousands or millions invested in your business this is a no brainer. As others pointed out every single one of us knows this bubble is going to pop, so however high prices rose will be conversely matched when they sink.
 
heatlesssun said:
I completely disagree. The pricing of GPUs and RAM in particular are defiantly hurting the traditional DIY PC market. Indeed the pricing on DDR 4 quad channel RAM. I just looked up the price for the 64 GB in my sig rig. I paid $290 for it June 2016 on Amazon. That same kit used is going for $1700 USED on Amazon. This is market that's used to seeing prices depreciate over time, not sky rocket like this and it gives people pause. I wouldn't build something like my sig rig at this point and I'm not alone.
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More than likely you're kit has been discontinued and is only available for exorbitant prices. 64gb ram is going for around 600-700$, which is a lot more than it used to be, but as far as i can recall, there was a shortage of ram starting near q1/q2 of last year.

I was able to snag a 1080 ti last year for about 664. Because of the pricing, i see on deal sites 1080 tis for as low as 699-700$ from last month which isn't too shabby. If you're looking at amazon 3rd party scalping prices, then you're not doing it right.
 
Hold on to your butts everyone.

This has happened before, I believe it will happen again.

Once enough miners start doing their thing, the mining networks that they are on will decrease the effectiveness of all hardware. Crypto prices will drop because that's what they do...and suddenly you're going to get a lot of people who spent $10 - 20k on hardware that makes them no money.

And then the market will flood with video cards, and the prices are going to drop so hard.
 
bugleyman said:
Well, I guess the numerous posts on this website where people have literally said "I'm not building a new PC because of this" are all lies, then. Good of you to clear that up. :rolleyes:
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I put together my own computers as well. I figure the amount of people that still do this is extremely small. Still when i do my pricing, i might wait for certain components to be worth getting in terms of price. I still see deals for memory at around 170$ for 16gb and video cards posted for around 700$ for a 1080 ti. None of these is so far out of line then where they were about 10 months ago.

If it's too expensive, then wait. But complaining that scalper prices on amazon is the reason you're not upgrading your PC at the moment is a fairly silly stance to take.
 
Gigus Fire said:
More than likely you're kit has been discontinued and is only available for exorbitant prices. 64gb ram is going for around 600-700$, which is a lot more than it used to be, but as far as i can recall, there was a shortage of ram starting near q1/q2 of last year.

I was able to snag a 1080 ti last year for about 664. Because of the pricing, i see on deal sites 1080 tis for as low as 699-700$ from last month which isn't too shabby. If you're looking at amazon 3rd party scalping prices, then you're not doing it right.
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Quad channel RAM goes for quite a bit more than dual channel though, about 1k$ is what 64 GB of that goes for new if you can find it. And sure you can get GPUs at near MSRP but you have to fight to do so. I got my 1080Tis at MSRP at launch back in March but the situation got progressively worse through the year.
 
panhead said:
More demand for GPUs should spur more production which should lower prices. Isn't this just a temporary shortage?
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Exactly as Smashing Young Man just stated above. The crypto market is so volatile that AMD and NVIDIA have not been producing inventories to supply that segment of the market. The price crashes on crypto, and instantly AMD and NVIDIA are left sitting on huge inventories of GPUs that they cannot sell. That is the sticking point. And I have yet to truly see that this is going to be addressed at the retail graphics card level. GPU companies are in fact selling bare GPUs to the larger mining companies that are building their own cards and writing their own drivers, but this does not address the huge portion of the mining market still buying retail video cards.
 
heatlesssun said:
Quad channel RAM goes for quite a bit more than dual channel though, about 1k$ is what 64 GB of that goes for new if you can find it. And sure you can get GPUs at near MSRP but you have to fight to do so. I got my 1080Tis at MSRP at launch back in March but the situation got progressively worse through the year.
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Maybe I'm wrong, but isn't quad or dual channel a function of the chipset and not the ram dimm?
If that's so, it really doesn't matter what kind of ram you put in the motherboard, as long as you fill up 4 slots in a quad capable motherboard. You're probably better off getting the same make/model as to not have issues, but you're paying extra for something that really isn't going to matter. The extra testing isn't really worth the difference in cost.
And i agree, since the supply isn't guaranteed, it's probably best to wait for volta in a few months and preorder.
 
Smashing Young Man said:
The innate volatility of cryptocurrency is probably leaving nVidia and AMD with no idea of which way to jump. Ramping up production now would be a huge risk.
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Aren't they screwed either way? A flood of used cards on the market for any reason (new tech or bubble bursted) will kill their sales for a long time to come. Hell, I'm stuck on a pokey GTX 780 right now and I can still play the Witcher 3 just fine. A 1080TI would probably last me forever (I find coding more interesting then gaming these days).
 
Gigus Fire said:
I put together my own computers as well. I figure the amount of people that still do this is extremely small. Still when i do my pricing, i might wait for certain components to be worth getting in terms of price. I still see deals for memory at around 170$ for 16gb and video cards posted for around 700$ for a 1080 ti. None of these is so far out of line then where they were about 10 months ago.

If it's too expensive, then wait. But complaining that scalper prices on amazon is the reason you're not upgrading your PC at the moment is a fairly silly stance to take.
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Here's the thing: It doesn't matter if it's "silly" if people are doing it, because it will still hurt the market.

The only real question is whether people are doing it in sufficient numbers to have a meaningful impact, which we do not yet know.
 
I am shocked that some of you guys are using "Free Market" .... "Luxury Items" ..... "Capitalism" as a defense for companies taking away what arguably is the heart and soul of any gaming computer, the GPU. Not only shocking and unreal but down right sad. This entire nightmare is not only unprecedented, it's splintering the PC enthusiast community as evident by some of the posts on this very thread.

I've been building gaming/workstation systems since the early 1990's. In fact it's how I make my living to this day. But I have never ever seen this type of disruption in the market. People CANNOT build a gaming PC ... this is in Kansas City, this is in Mountain View, California, Denver Co, NYC, Miami Florida ... the locations go on and on and on the world over. The GPU market no longer serves gamers primary, it serves the mining community. I've talked at length with the sales guys down at Microcenter and was told several times there is literally nothing they can do to stop miners from getting their cards as they come in. I was told they have 20 - 30 miners laying in wait to pounce on their cards for every 1 PC builder that comes in. How true is this? I'm pretty sure it's true. In fact the problem is so severe Microcenter had to price all of their video cards out of miners hands to protect gamer's. You cannot buy a 1080 Ti now at a Microcenter without spending $1,400 .... $1.500 hundred fucking dollars. Go look or call @ Microcenter.com right now if you have any doubts.

Miners caused this ... not PC gamers. I'm partly to blame, more on this below.

Not to kiss anyone's ass but when the founder of HardOCP made this post it reflected probably one of his core passions for the PC market/community as a whole. Which, was not only the right thing to do, it's his right. The over-all message was very clear. It's wrong and compounds the problem what Maingear and other companies are currently doing and or have planned in regards to mining.

I don't know about any of you but who do you want in your corner? What do you stand for?

This is not so much an attack on miners. I want Newegg and Microcenter and especially Miners themselves to make money. Full disclosure, I might be.... I might not be involved in 1,450 MH/s being mined 24/7 but even as an ( allegedly ) miner, more has to be done. It's easy for me to speak out because I'm in a great position but I still personally think any GPU whatsoever should be going back into the hands of gamers. This is a terrible time for any company to be involved in disrupting the market any further. I'm cool with miners but not when the market cannot support both parties.
 
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Gigus Fire said:
Maybe I'm wrong, but isn't quad or dual channel a function of the chipset and not the ram dimm?
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The RAM and MB both have to support it.

Gigus Fire said:
And i agree, since the supply isn't guaranteed, it's probably best to wait for volta in a few months and preorder.
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No doubt there are a lot waiting on Volta and what the MSRP pricing will look like. Demand will be through the roof.
 
More demand should spur more production but if you can sell that production at the higher price, companies will do it- or maybe better said that the sales channel will do it. If you want to reign in the sales channel cause you have sold everything you can make, simply starve it.
Also, the GPU makers are likely looking long term so the demand has to be there or they will not move. What is needed ideally is a renegade 3rd card maker that can do mining GPUs or gaming GPUs or both.
 
Smashing Young Man said:
It isn't just the fact that gamers can't get cards at a sane price, it's the systemic effects across the whole PC hardware industry. There is some major splash damage occurring.

That said, I'm a free market guy, and I believe said free market will eventually take care of things. If the crypto bubble doesn't pop (and I think it will) then eventually manufacturers will begin to ramp up production. But for now it sucks incredibly hard. I'm in an indefinite holding pattern on a new build.
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I agree with pretty much everything you said. That said, there is a problem with the notion of 'ramping up production'. There is no limit to the amount of GPUs that the crypto miners will pick up. As long as there is a positive ROI on their investment they will buy a theoretically infinite number of cards.

If the crypto bubble doesn't pop we'll be moving into an era where videos cards are 1.5x or more times MSRP, and it's going to hurt PC gaming in a big way.
 
Saying that these companies don't want to have a ton of inventory that it cannot sell if crypto takes a nose dive doesn't make sense to me. Everyone knows there has been a huge shortage for a long time so guess what price those cards at the old $300 price range and gamers will buy them all. So no I don't buy that.
 
SixFootDuo said:
I am shocked that some of you guys are using "Free Market" .... "Luxury Items" ..... "Capitalism" as a defense for companies taking away what arguably is the heart and soul of any gaming computer, the GPU. Not only shocking and unreal but down right sad. This entire nightmare is not only unprecedented, it's splintering the PC enthusiast community as evident by some of the posts on this very thread.
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You're not wrong, but neither are the people saying that this is just the market.

The market doesn't care about the community. It doesn't care about what happens to the PC industry over the long term. All the market cares about is maximizing (short-term) profit, period. Which I personally agree is a problem, but to a certain extent we are only reaping what we (as a society) have sewn.
 
When the crypto bubble inevitably bursts it's going to be great watching from the sidelines. All these companies that tried to hop in on the hype train will go under and be left with nothing. Same for the amateur miner that thought they could jump in and make a buck.

It sucks that I'll have to be patient and stick with my 1070 until the burst but I'm willing to wait it out if the payoff is all these greedy ass investors left with worthless digital 'currency'.

Crypto used to have a valid reason for existing but lost everything it stood for once wall street and the government got involved with it.
 
I wonder when the EU is going to fine AMD and Nvidia for anti-trust and market manipulation.
 
SixFootDuo said:
I am shocked that some of you guys are using "Free Market" .... "Luxury Items" ..... "Capitalism" as a defense for companies taking away what arguably is the heart and soul of any gaming computer, the GPU. Not only shocking and unreal but down right sad. This entire nightmare is not only unprecedented, it's splintering the PC enthusiast community as evident by some of the posts on this very thread.

I've been building gaming/workstation systems since the early 1990's. In fact it's how I make my living to this day. But I have never ever seen this type of disruption in the market. People CANNOT build a gaming PC ... this is in Kansas City, this is in Mountain View, California, Denver Co, NYC, Miami Florida ... the locations go on and on and on the world over. The GPU market no longer serves gamers primary, it serves the mining community. I've talked at length with the sales guys down at Microcenter and was told several times there is literally nothing they can do to stop miners from getting their cards as they come in. I was told they have 20 - 30 miners laying in wait to pounce on their cards for every 1 PC builder that comes in. How true is this? I'm pretty sure it's true. In fact the problem is so severe Microcenter had to price all of their video cards out of miners hands to protect gamer's. You cannot buy a 1080 Ti now at a Microcenter without spending $1,400 .... $1.500 hundred fucking dollars. Go look or call @ Microcenter.com right now if you have any doubts.

Miners caused this ... not PC gamers. I'm partly to blame, more on this below.

Not to kiss anyone's ass but when the founder of HardOCP made this post it reflected probably one of his core passions for the PC market/community as a whole. Which, was not only the right thing to do, it's his right. The over-all message was very clear. It's wrong and compounds the problem.

I don't know about any of you but who do you want in your corner? What do you stand for?

This is not so much an attack on miners. I want Newegg and Microcenter and especially Miners themselves to make money. Full disclosure, I might be.... I might not be involved in 1,450 MH/s being mined 24/7 but even as an ( allegedly ) miner, more has to be done. It's easy for me to speak out because I'm in a great position but I still personally think any GPU whatsoever should be going back into the hands of gamers. This is a terrible time for any company to be involved in disrupting the market any further. I'm cool with miners but not when the market cannot support both parties.
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I fully disagree with many aspects of this post.

High end GPUs are the definition of a luxury good. Explain how they're not?

Microcenter is scalping because of the high demand and the low supply. How does pricing them at 1400-1500 protect gamers? It does nothing but earn microcenter a quick buck for those who are willing to pay double the price for a luxury good.

If Microcenter wanted to protect gamers, like you are implying, they could just enforce a 1 item per person policy when it comes to GPUs.

Miners did cause a shortage of video cards because they bought up the extra supply. There's no denying that, but how is that somehow adverse to gamers?

There's no rolling back the clock on utilizing video cards for things other than games. CUDA came out and now the video card is basically a co-processor for specialized tasks. It's being used from a wide variety of things including crypto mining.

If this is a market issue, then some 3rd party graphics maker will come out of this mess and refuse to create drivers that can allow the video card to be used for something other than graphics. But the issue here is that the gaming market cap is pretty fixed. Even with the increase of prices, it's not like there's a very lucrative market that can limit themselves just to gamers.

Also, if you want a 1080 ti at MSRP prices, there's always the nvidia store: https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/geforce/products/10series/geforce-store/
Feel free to pick one up at 699. Screw microcenter, screw amazon, just do some decent shopping and you can find a decent price.

Also what i stand for is anything that suits me. I play video games but i don't consider myself part of the broader gaming community for things like this because when it comes down to it, it doesn't affect me and i don't think it affects the broader gaming community in general. It's just a temporary phase.
 
Buy low, sell high.

I should sell my 980ti and just wait for the market to crash.
 
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