LETTERS
WE TACKLE TOUGH READER QUESTIONS ON...
> Newegg Shuffle
> Dream Machine 2077
> Subscription Issues
Shuffle Scalping
Hey Zak, Long time reader; great mag and excellent work on your part running it. Thank you for that.
I feel the need to vent here. Yesterday I “won” the chance to buy a GPU from the Newegg Shuffle. After getting the text, I immediately popped over to Newegg to see what I was eligible for. It was the Sapphire Nitro+ AMD 6700XT ($909), along with an ASRock B550 Steel Legend AMD Micro ATX motherboard ($155). My rig is eight years old and really showing its age with its i5 Haswell CPU. The GPU is a 1070 I upgraded to a few years ago.
In my excitement, I immediately purchased the combo for a grand total of $1,149, then I started wondering whether that price was fair. I did some digging and the stock 6700XT’s MSRP should be $479. I get the times that we are in and I see the Sapphire is an overclocked card, but really, Newegg? $909 and a $430 markup!? The RTX 3080’s MSRP is $100 less than that! I don’t even want a microATX board. A quick check on eBay shows the AMD 6700XT sells for around $900. The card and its motherboard are going right back to Newegg when they get here.
If Newegg is a retail seller and is holding this Shuffle event to “win” a chance to buy these extremely rare cards, it should sell the cards at the MSRP. Not gouge us for hundreds above the MSRP. To me, they are no better than the scalpers.
–Andrew Kilpatrick