Want an RTX 3080 or RTX 3090? You could always buy Corsair's new pre-built PC

midian182

midian182

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TL;DR: Purchasing a Ryzen 5000 processor or an RTX 3000-series graphics card right now is akin to getting an audience with the pope, but there is a way to grab the latest Nvidia GPUs and, eventually, the new AMD CPUs: buy a pre-built Corsair a7200 series PC.

Despite both companies’ best efforts, the RTX 3000 and Ryzen 5000 parts have been plagued by availability issues since launch, partly due to scalpers snapping them up in bulk and reselling the hardware on eBay for inflated prices.

The good news for those looking to upgrade their aging, potato-like PCs is that Corsair’s new Vengeance a7200 can be configured with a Ryzen 7 5800 X, Ryzen 9 5900X, or Intel’s Core i9-10850K along with an RTX 3090, RTX 3080, or RTX 3070.

Sadly, it seems even Corsair can’t secure a Ryzen 5000 processor at the moment. The only configurations currently available consist of Intel’s chip paired with an RTX 3080 or RTX 3090. The former comes with 32GB of DDR4 3200, a 1TB M.2 NVMe SSD + 2TB HDD, and Windows 10 Home, and is priced at $2,800. While the latter ups the memory to 64GB of DDR4 3200, has two 2TB M.2 NVMe SSDs, and Windows 10 Pro, pushing the price to a hefty $4,500.

Buyers also get a Z490 motherboard, a 4000D Airflow mid-tower case, and an H100i RGB Platinum all-in-one liquid cooler.

While it’s a shame that the Ryzen 5000 CPUs aren’t currently available, this is at least one, admittedly expensive, way to own an RTX 3080/3090 without putting money in the hands of scalpers.

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https://www.techspot.com/news/87595-want-rtx-3080-or-rtx-3090-you-could.html

 
You'd think people could just WAIT till the production is able to catch up to the demand and stores are in stock again?

What really sold out these cards on launch day wasn't the scalpers. It's the Social Media hype.

I bought the 3080 XC3, 3090FE and 3070FE just so I could make Youtube videos about them.

I seriously doubt anyone is playing games that absolutely demanded they upgrade.

I seriously doubt that the majority of buyers are so seriously dead set on getting Doom to 300FPS.

The combination of Social Media hype, Social Media braggadocio and Scalping did this.

Last time: it was cryptocurrency.
 
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Sure, we could always buy a Corsair 7200 series but tech enthusiasts don't buy those "brand-in-a-box" desktops. I think that the number of people who come to TechSpot who wouldn't be ashamed to buy a prebuilt PC is probably very low.

I know that there's now way that I'd do it. I've built every PC that I've ever owned (and some for others) and that goes back to 1988.

Prebuilts are for people who actually think that Best Buy and Wal-Mart are good places to buy computers. I kinda think that the people here are more Newegg, Canada Computers and/or Microcenter.
 
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Avro Arrow said:
Sure, we could always buy a Corsair 7200 series but tech enthusiasts don't buy those "brand-in-a-box" desktops. I think that the number of people who come to TechSpot who wouldn't be ashamed to buy a prebuilt PC is probably very low.

I know that there's now way that I'd do it. I've built every PC that I've ever owned (and some for others) and that goes back to 1988.

Prebuilts are for people who actually think that Best Buy and Wal-Mart are good places to buy computers. I kinda think that the people here are more Newegg, Canada Computers and/or Microcenter.
Click to expand...

You'll be surprise by the amount of people who wants to getting pc gaming but is intimidated OR don't want to do the research in speccing out a build. They'll just say my budget is $750 or $1000, what's a decent rig?
 
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nnguy2 said:
You'll be surprise by the amount of people who wants to getting pc gaming but is intimidated OR don't want to do the research in speccing out a build. They'll just say my budget is $750 or $1000, what's a decent rig?
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My post was about tech enthusiasts who are the most common group of people who come to TechSpot by far. Do you consider the people you just described as tech enthusiasts? I sure as hell don't. :laughing:
 
I have been getting emails for past month about Alienware pcs with rtx 3080s as low as $1800 but of course those come with 8 gigs or ram facepalm! Also max memory speed was 3200 mhz.

Also almost 2 months later I got an email about the rtx 3090 XC3 ultra at MSRP I am sorry I couldn't resist this one.
 
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Endymio said:
Scalpers buy the card, and resell it at a markup. Corsair buys the card, and resells it at a markup. Not seeing much difference there, to be honest.
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Well, if you are the type to buy a pre-built PC, you are paying Corsair to assemble and support the completed PC. If your business helps Corsair thrive, you are contributing towards them and their R&D budgets staying healthy. As a satisfied buyer of Corsair cooling solutions, keyboards, and mice over the years, I'm happy they are around.

Compare that to buying from a scalper, who you would in essence be supporting so he could scalp you again in the future. If he invests any of that money in his business, it will be towards more bots, more sophisticated bots, more ways to cheat anti-scalper mechanisms, etc.

It's a pretty real difference to me. Enough so that while for example I might be willing to pay an early adopter fee directly to AMD or Nvidia for a product legitimately in short supply, I am not willing to pay the exact same amount to a scalper who did nothing but buy faster.
 
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nnguy2 said:
Hey don't be a techno-elitist now lol
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Naw, I'm not a techno-elitist (although I did spend my teenage years in the 90s :p)

I just don't expect that this article is relevant to the overwhelming majority of us who will see it. People who buy "brand-in-a-box" desktops are usually lucky if they'd ever heard of Linus Tech Tips.

I'm not being an elitist, I'm just telling it like it is. Not every gamer is an enthusiast just like not every enthusiast is a gamer. There's a guy at my work who used to drone on and on about Intel and nVidia (and he did game A LOT). Then he met me and I cut his "arguments" to shreds (in my defence, he was 100% full of it).

I asked him what his PC config was. He shrugged and said "An Alienware".

I suddenly felt bad, like as if I just had beaten up a little kid. :laughing:
 
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Bulllee said:
Perfectly feasible that Crypto miners will exacerbate the shortage of these cards for many months to come.
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All the serious miners have already gone FPGA or ASIC. I don't think you need to worry overmuch about them snapping up all the GPUs.
 
QuantumPhysics said:
You'd think people could just WAIT till the production is able to catch up to the demand and stores are in stock again?
Click to expand...

Actually many usually cannot: A great deal of the economy for this kind of items revolves around people getting Christmas bonuses which are common practice for many places of work that pay them or other bonuses around this specific time of year.

Now people could try to manage their finances to not depend on the "Holiday season" but the way their debt is structured it's usually always in the negative so this is one if not the only time of year where discretionary spending is an option for people, otherwise its just trying to avoid accruing more ballooning debt throughout the year. This goes all the way back to toy sales then holiday vacation incentives and now big ticket electronics.
 
Just do what I did, walk in to microcenter and buy one. 🤷🏻‍♂️ 3080/5600x. Keep in mind a 3800xt to a 5600x with everything else being the same yielded me 4,000+ point jump in my overall firestrike score. Nice, right?
 
QuantumPhysics said:
You'd think people could just WAIT till the production is able to catch up to the demand and stores are in stock again?
Click to expand...
Yeah, personally I would rather wait to get a GPU from TMSC next year when they start producing Ampere parts, they have the 7nm process down and are likely to deliver better binned parts than Samsung and in much higher volume.
 
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