3d ago

Retailers quietly slash prices of AMD's and Intel's latest EPYC and Xeon CPUs by up to 50% — inexplicable price drops left unexplained

www.tomshardware.com

5 comments

I have a potential explanation:
Ooops, the 'AI' bubble just popped.
Time to firesell all this shit!
- That or they are backdoored and someone found out.
  Could be unlikely, maybe my tinfoil hat is on too tight, but who knows.
  
  Hey at least you're keeping your neuralink skull implant safe from errant bluetooth connection attempts
  
  ^ my instant presumption. Also at this point if you don't have a tinfoil hat bolted onto your cranium, you haven't been following the news for the past two decades.
Flagship server CPUs from AMD and Intel are quite expensive: the 192-core EPYC 9965 costs $14,813, and the 128-core Xeon 6980P is priced at $12,460 (after Intel had already slashed its price from $17,800 in early January) when purchased in 1000-unit quantities by its direct customers.
However, ShopBLT is selling both processors with 35% and 53% discounts for $9,713 and $5,836, respectively.
ShopBLT is not alone, as Newegg offers Intel's Xeon 6980P for $6,190, a 50% reduction from Intel's recommended customer pricing (RCP).
Intel's Xeon 6 6900P-series CPUs are sold at even steeper discounts from their RCPs. The flagship 128-core Xeon 6980P is available for $5,166 (53% lower than RCP), the 96-core Xeon 6972P is priced at $4,789 (53% lower than RCP), whereas the Xeon 6960P can be purchased for $4,511 (53% off from the RCP). The previous-generation flagship — the 64-core Xeon 8592+ — is priced at 'affordable' $2,280, which is five times less than its list price.
Well, I only looked into the article to check out the prices, and I am stunned to find out that we're talking five-figure recommended CPU prices