German retail supplier allegedly rationing RTX 5070 GPUs — more powerful Nvidia graphics cards are completely out of stock

I've had shifts at a gaming/hobby store. We all know about the scalping that comes to Pokémon. Apparently recently (in the last couple years) some stores have been getting told "I know you want X amount but we can only spare Y for you" - but then the employee at the distributor has been selling the product themselves (as opposed to through the company), joining the scalping team.
Nowadays when I see products like GPUs being limited by the supplier, I wonder if the same thing is happening here.

Germany's e-tail market is easy to observe via Geizhals, incidentally it covers quite a bit of the EU and the UK (seems UK, Poland and others were shut down..).

I've been tracking RTX 5060-5080 availability for the last few weeks to look for hints of a surge and so far things look good, both in terms of pricing and availability.

I'd hazard it won't last, so I bought an extra RTX 5070ti for the family stock, since the only spare was down to a GTX 1080ti.

I didn't quite manage that on the RAM front, where I caught some early groundswell on my last 64GB of DDR5 kit, still far from the current white breakers, though.

To think that I could now trade the type of RAM kit I purchased for €150 in summer for an RTX 5070ti...

Except you really need both to run a gaming PC...

EWinter is coming!

News like this has me reflect a bit on how buying habits seem to differ between the US, Europe and Japan:

I've been buying and doing DIY computers since 45 years, starting with BYTE magazine ads for reference and sourcing.

In the early days I even ordered from the US (e.g. My first 80386 board), because retail shops in Germany just didn't have them yet and unlike my dad I couldn't just afford to replace my DIY 80286 mainboard with a full new Compaq 386.

Computer mag ads and mail-order very naturally transitioned into Internet retail and since most of the time brick and mortar computer shops just didn't have the specialty or novel parts I wanted anyway (or charged outrageous prices), I completely lost track of them, moving from Berlin into rural suburbia 600km away, didn't help.

With notebooks, monitors and perhaps keyboards, some physical interaction is probably beneficial, but those were very rare purchases for most of that time: my keyboards last forever, monitors mostly get moved around and with notebooks I'm ruthlessly taking advantage of EU Internet retail legislation, which mandates a minimum free return windows of 14 days, often voluntarily augmented to 30 days around the holiday season.

There are several large and well known e-tailers in Germany and Geizhals, a very good price/availability comparison site with excellent filtering capabilities, keeps things as transparent as the ads in c't did, the German equivalent of BYTE for the longst of time and owner of that site.

It also seems to ensure pretty level pricing, I switch shops mostly on availability, speed of delivery, or known issues with service. And it's so much better than Amazon, when it comes to showing search results instead of "suggestions", while within those results Amazon rarely comes out best.

But there is no equivalent to NewEgg (which gets quoted as a US e-tail reference), and no physical computer retail like Best Buy or MicroCenter that I am aware of: I simply don't know where I could pick up a GPU in a line up of alternatives at a close to online price in a physical retail store these days, even fully pre-built PCs or notebooks, some of which were even sold at Aldi for a decade or two, have completely disappeared.

Long story short, as far as I can tell German PC hardware is pretty near a complete Internet multiverse under the direction of Geizhals, which has resulted in relatively good price levels, considering the weight of retail taxes in Europe.

Too bad it seems to be shrinking in scope of late, rather than becoming more international...

So no mystical electronic shopping city district like in Hong Kong, Tokyo or some place in Taiwan, certainly no factory outlets, and no mega-retailers left, that I can think of: what's the story where you live?

abufrejoval said:

News like this has me reflect a bit on how buying habits seem to differ between the US, Europe and Japan:

I've been buying and doing DIY computers since 45 years, starting with BYTE magazine ads for reference and sourcing.

In the early days I even ordered from the US (e.g. My first 80386 board), because retail shops in Germany just didn't have them yet and unlike my dad I couldn't just afford to replace my DIY 80286 mainboard with a full new Compaq 386.

Computer mag ads and mail-order very naturally transitioned into Internet retail and since most of the time brick and mortar computer shops just didn't have the specialty or novel parts I wanted anyway (or charged outrageous prices), I completely lost track of them, moving from Berlin into rural suburbia 600km away, didn't help.

With notebooks, monitors and perhaps keyboards, some physical interaction is probably beneficial, but those were very rare purchases for most of that time: my keyboards last forever, monitors mostly get moved around and with notebooks I'm ruthlessly taking advantage of EU Internet retail legislation, which mandates a minimum free return windows of 14 days, often voluntarily augmented to 30 days around the holiday season.

There are several large and well known e-tailers in Germany and Geizhals, a very good price/availability comparison site with excellent filtering capabilities, keeps things as transparent as the ads in c't did, the German equivalent of BYTE for the longst of time and owner of that site.

It also seems to ensure pretty level pricing, I switch shops mostly on availability, speed of delivery, or known issues with service. And it's so much better than Amazon, when it comes to showing search results instead of "suggestions", while within those results Amazon rarely comes out best.

But there is no equivalent to NewEgg (which gets quoted as a US e-tail reference), and no physical computer retail like Best Buy or MicroCenter that I am aware of: I simply don't know where I could pick up a GPU in a line up of alternatives at a close to online price in a physical retail store these days, even fully pre-built PCs or notebooks, some of which were even sold at Aldi for a decade or two, have completely disappeared.

Long story short, as far as I can tell German PC hardware is pretty near a complete Internet multiverse under the direction of Geizhals, which has resulted in relatively good price levels, considering the weight of retail taxes in Europe.

Too bad it seems to be shrinking in scope of late, rather than becoming more international...

So no mystical electronic shopping city district like in Hong Kong, Tokyo or some place in Taiwan, certainly no factory outlets, and no mega-retailers left, that I can think of: what's the story where you live?

In the 80-90s, the U.S. Used to have computer shows in major cities where everything used to be stocked on tables for quick purchases. Like a bazaar. Did Europe have those? It was amazing! Soon after we had Fry's in California which stocked everything in a super store format, and after Microcenter, which survives. Microcenter offers great value for a physical location.

Gururu said:

In the 80-90s, the U.S. Used to have computer shows in major cities where everything used to be stocked on tables for quick purchases. Like a bazaar. Did Europe have those? It was amazing! Soon after we had Fry's in California which stocked everything in a super store format, and after Microcenter, which survives. Microcenter offers great value for a physical location.

Not that I remember, which may not mean much...

Right in front of the Berlin Technical University there was a huge flea market every week-end, which certainly wasn't IT exclusive, but might have had a corner for stuff like this.

But like most students I sure avoided the general area outside week days, we don't tend to have on-campus living and cherish our work-life balance;-)

And then the merchants there were reknown for their "creative sales techniques"... For a time there were some lovingly made stereos or VHS recorders, hand painted on carefully crafted wood, made somewhere in the new Wild East of Europe and put into nicely shrink wrapped otherwise original cartons...

Today these might fetch far higher prices for their artistry (it's a lot like hand-woven oriental carpets, after all), while even functioning VHS as such might be a hard sell...

We had some major electronic stores, which would even carry a huge selection of individual parts from resistors, diodes up to a full library of TTL chips: if you wanted to knock out a PDP-11/34 clone in full wire-wrap, it was all there, except prices would have been sky high.

They did also stock computer parts during a decade or two during my IT career, but they retained their pharmacy price levels, so I avoided them. Those electronics oriented stores have survived better than true computer stores, availability was much more important than item prices.

And we also used to have branded IT shops with quite a few retail outlets, but those never surived the scrutiny of Internet.

I guess one of the main reasons they failed was that items purchased in a shop, typically could not be returned for a full refund when they turned out not to be to your liking. Even if they were truly defective, they'd often just offer a repair, perhaps a coupon, but never a full return. With the type of money PC parts did cost in those early days, you didn't want your money tied down in a part you couldn't just use immediately.

Since there was no way to physically inspect parts purchased on the internet, the law for those was changed very quickly towards consumer protection: no return fees, including for shipping were allowed, everbody had to accept a return for any reason within 14 days, unless items were obviously damanged by the buyer.

Sure, immediate reward was gone, but next day delivery very typical. A far broader product range, much better legal protection, typically somewhat better prices, often even after shipping... It was hard to stay with brick and mortar, especially since downton parking in Europe can be a challenge or is charged by a garage operator asking for exact change (ok, mostly NFC these days).

However, Internet retail can require deep pockets when retailers can't get OEMs to share the burden and it makes it difficult both for shops and buyers to do mixed logistics purchases, e.g. Buy parts on the Internet for pickup at the shop, yet retain the return privileges. It broke the neck of many smaller shops, that tried to scale up via Internet and then couldn't manage the distinct processes and the insurance budgets of an Amazon.

It also had some interesting side effects e.g. When a year ago Nvidia and AMD GPUs came out piecemeal and at inflated prices, it was very easy for customers to order GPUs at those initial high-prices, only to return them within 14 days if prices went down quick enough.

I quite liked the fact that it kept shops from overcharging, some tried anyway, until I explained how PayPal treats shops with dissatisfied customers (lawyers are expensive here, too). And in my case it wasn't even about the price, I just found AMD's GPUs lacking in general and there was a lot of testing to go through.

I quite like the extreme confidence I can afford when purchasing PC parts in Germany. Pricing transparency is great, competition is a lot on who can deliver soonest or at all, and who hasn't messed up on returns (3rd party human reviews). Apart from immediately holding a box in your hand, brick and mortar seems all disadvantages, especially in the current weather.

Of course, I need to make sure that I test and bench the hell out of any more expensive parts within the return window to ensure they fit my use and suffer from no obvious snags or deficits, in a manner you can't do in a shop. Packing things back up and having to drive packets back (unless I happen to have another packet from the same shipping company) ensure some healthy nuisance for not abusing the system. I guess really bad offenders get black listed (per retailer), but most of the time I just like what I get.

Perhaps as a holdover from the old days when a PC was the price of a nice used Mercedes, I investigate carefully before I buy. Good thing that prices aren't quite back at those levels, yet.