The current price/performance king CPU

[trs96]

$199 / $179 mobo bundle

AMD Ryzen 5 3600X Matisse 3.8GHz 6-Core AM4 Boxed Processor - Wraith Spire Cooler Included - Micro Center

Get it now! Everyone deserves a powerful processor. Uncompromising features and smooth performance are finally the standard for every gamer and artist. Including models with advanced Radeon graphics built-in.

www.microcenter.com

Good deal. In store only. It's what they call a "loss leader" in the retail business. You get the customer in the door with a low price, minimal profit item. Once in the door, they then buy all the other stuff, mobo, PSU, ram, case etc. etc. That's where they make the money when selling a loss leader product. Just ask @Gigamaxx as MC has worked it's magic on him many times over the years.

A loss leader is a pricing strategy where a product is sold at a price below its market cost to stimulate other sales of more profitable goods or services.

One use of a loss leader is to draw customers into a store where they are likely to buy other goods. The vendor expects that the typical customer will purchase other items at the same time as the loss leader and that the profit made on these items will be such that an overall profit is generated for the vendor.

"Loss lead" is an item offered for sale at a reduced price that is intended to "lead" to the subsequent sale of other services or items. The loss leader is offered at a price below its minimum profit margin—not necessarily below cost.

Wikipedia

 

[Gigamaxx]

Good deal. In store only. It's what they call a "loss leader" in the retail business. You get the customer in the door with a low price, minimal profit item. Once in the door, they then buy all the other stuff, mobo, PSU, ram, case etc. etc. That's where they make the money from when selling a loss leader product. Just ask @Gigamaxx as MC has worked it's magic on him many times over the years.


Wikipedia

Absolutely, they have me locked in. The great thing is they have so many items in stock. It is also one of the cleanest stores I’ve been in. I’ve camped out a few times for AMD graphics card launches. Will do the same for Big Navi. Maybe even the new 5800x or 5900x CPU.

 

[pastrychef]

I picked up an i9-9900K a few weeks ago from Micro Center for $340. I thought that was a heckuva deal...

 

[scottkendall]

Good deal. In store only. It's what they call a "loss leader" in the retail business.

I miss the old days of walking into Fry's and everything seemed like a loss leader deal! Now you walk in and you're lucky to find anything on the shelf. When Fry's was fully stocked I would shop there over Newegg or Amazon even if I paid a little more.

 

[Gigamaxx]

I miss the old days of walking into Fry's and everything seemed like a loss leader deal! Now you walk in and you're lucky to find anything on the shelf. When Fry's was fully stocked I would shop there over Newegg or Amazon even if I paid a little more.

My local Frys was in the middle of renegotiating with vendors when the COVID hit. Now they have a clean store arraignment but very little stock.
I felt bad a few months ago I bought their last SSD, a Philips 120 GB for $20. Went back a week later and they still didn’t have any.

 

[scottkendall]

My local Frys was in the middle of renegotiating with vendors when the COVID hit. Now they have a clean store arraignment but very little stock.
I felt bad a few months ago I bought their last SSD, a Philips 120 GB for $20. Went back a week later and they still didn’t have any.

As far as I know the entire company was in renegotiations. What I read is they previously purahced everything like frys owned the merchandise. They were trying to change to a consignment format but venders were not getting on board.

 

[meowmers]

I picked up an i9-9900K a few weeks ago from Micro Center for $340. I thought that was a heckuva deal...

Would it be silly if I were to go for a discounted Coffee Lake build with an older Nvidia GPU running High Sierra?

 

[pastrychef]

Would it be silly if I were to go for a discounted Coffee Lake build with an older Nvidia GPU running High Sierra?

I see no problems with going for Coffee Lake. They run macOS fine.

I would not go out to buy any Nvidia video card if running macOS is your goal. If you already own an Nvidia card, I guess you can run High Sierra... But even back then the Nvidia web drivers were quite buggy.

 

[meowmers]

I see no problems with going for Coffee Lake. They run macOS fine.

I would not go out to buy any Nvidia video card if running macOS is your goal. If you already own an Nvidia card, I guess you can run High Sierra... But even back then the Nvidia web drivers were quite buggy.

I was thinking of leveraging on the Nvidia 1080 cards that were going to be sold at a cheaper price point when everyone zooms for the RTX 3000s.

I know the Ryzens are great but have no experience with AMD GPUs and haven't heard many great things about the heat and noise frankly, where can I refresh this view?

 

[pastrychef]

I was thinking of leveraging on the Nvidia 1080 cards that were going to be sold at a cheaper price point when everyone zooms for the RTX 3000s.

I know the Ryzens are great but have no experience with AMD GPUs and haven't heard many great things about the heat and noise frankly, where can I refresh this view?

Personally, I would not even consider an Nvidia GPU now. At least not for use with macOS.

Just search around for some reviews on AMD Navi cards like the RX 5700 XT. While the Vega 56/64 cards can run quite hot, the GPUs released by AMD since then have improved massively in heat and power consumption. My Radeon VII runs much cooler than my Vega 56 while consuming less power and I've never heard the card even when I'm playing games.