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Binned CPUs? Any interest?

Chilly

Chilly

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I've been tinkering with the idea of setting up a storefront to sell binned CPUs for the past few months. In addition to binning chips, I was thinking of maybe selling "bundles" of CPU+MB+RAM which have been "binned" and tested together for high clocks and stability. The idea being to give "curated" experience.

Anything else along these lines that anyone might wanna see, but availability lacking in Canada?

I'm wondering if there would actually be any interest from people here in Canada, or if I'd just be wasting my time and money.
 
I personally think it's silly buying binned cpus. But for those that do silicon lottery already exists. To be fair it's quite a premium price for Canadians. Seems to me most people get decent chips even without binning. My 6700k does 4.8 @ 1.4 my previous 2600k did 4.6
 
I, too, question the marketability of binning CPU's. I cannot see the market being very large for people who want a guaranteed overclock and are willing to pay (what I assume would be) a large cost margin that you would require to operate effectively.

Now, if your operating costs margin was small enough, sure, there would be interest in getting a 5.2ghz chip for $20. Even then, how large is this market? IMO you really need to do an effective market analysis for this business venture, and I dont think HWC, or even the common canadian websites like RFD, will be big enough to get an accurate return.

Sorry Chilly. I'm not trying to be debbie-downer. Just dont want to see you outlay a lot of cash on a gamble and get stuck holding the chips (no pun intended).
 
Chilly said:
I've been tinkering with the idea of setting up a storefront to sell binned CPUs for the past few months. In addition to binning chips, I was thinking of maybe selling "bundles" of CPU+MB+RAM which have been "binned" and tested together for high clocks and stability. The idea being to give "curated" experience.

Anything else along these lines that anyone might wanna see, but availability lacking in Canada?

I'm wondering if there would actually be any interest from people here in Canada, or if I'd just be wasting my time and money.
Click to expand...

Its not really effective. Back in the X58 days of the 920 D0 chips NCIX was actually creating a special SKU for it and people would buy them. But the only people who was are those looking to push the limits of their CPUs.

We have shifted and while people still do this a enthisiast is more likely to try and push their FPS or GPUs to its max limits.
 
I have to agree with the other comments. The majority of PC buyers, even those buying for gaming, if you believe the Steam hardware config information, are still running fairly modest systems. I think outside of people overclocking for its own sake and the fun of it, the number of people even in the gaming community who try to squeeze every ounce out of CPU is small. HWC would even be a skewed sample because a lot of us are in that small minority. Even me for example: pretty decent system and I have only really played with the auto overclock on my 4790K.

I think you would have to sell the binned chips at such a markup for the small number of people who would be interested, or even understand what binning is for that matter, that it would be a challenge to sell and run a business.

Aside from the NCIX mention from the older days, is there anyone officially doing this now as a business? Successfully? Or even in those cases it is just a side thing to their main money sales?
 
xentr_thread_starter
This would be a side business for fun, mostly just looking to cover costs and provide a service to people, not make a living out of it (I enjoy my day job), as such margin needs not be high. One person buying $10,000 in chips just to find a good chip is out of reach for most people (well, pretty much everyone), but paying a $100 premium over msrp to get a known good chip - that might be worth it to some.

Teenage me would of never paid for this sort of a service, true, but today me would (and I have). Your right though, there might not be enough interest for it in Canada.

Worst case scenario, I had some fun (minus all the pain of accounting, taxes, etc), learned something maybe, chips get sold in a fire sale, lose some money (which I would of otherwise just spent on tuning/upgrading my car), go to the the pub around the corner and have some beers. :haha:
 
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I'm all for taking chances on new ventures, but I think the piece that will sink you here is all the CPU's that are NOT winners in the silicone lottery. Do you sell those at below retail? Because, as a consumer, I'm definitely not spending retail on the lowest tier of overclocking capability when I could buy off the shelf and take the gamble that I might get lucky. And if you ARE selling bottom tier over-clockers for a discount, I don't think you'd cover the cost differential with the premium chips unless you're charging way more than people are willing to spend.
 
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Caldezar said:
I'm all for taking chances on new ventures, but I think the piece that will sink you here is all the CPU's that are NOT winners in the silicone lottery. Do you sell those at below retail?
Click to expand...

Yes, simply yes, duds would get sold off at a decent discount to those who can't care about overclocking much.

Caldezar said:
And if you ARE selling bottom tier over-clockers for a discount, I don't think you'd cover the cost differential with the premium chips unless you're charging way more than people are willing to spend.
Click to expand...

Taking 8700K as an example, the duds wouldn't be discounted below an 8700 nonK retail, so there a solid floor to pricing. Additionally - nonK's can't make use of all core turbo boost "MCE", so even a dud 8700K at 4.7GHz "MCE" all-core turbo will beat the pants off 8700 nonK with 4.6GHz single-core turbo, 4.3GHz all-core turbo. As such pricing should be fine at just a notch below retail for duds.

Plus there's the value-add of delidding, which all binned CPUs would be, and available at an added cost for the duds - worth it just for lower temps for some folks.
 
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Caldezar said:
I'm all for taking chances on new ventures, but I think the piece that will sink you here is all the CPU's that are NOT winners in the silicone lottery. Do you sell those at below retail? Because, as a consumer, I'm definitely not spending retail on the lowest tier of overclocking capability when I could buy off the shelf and take the gamble that I might get lucky. And if you ARE selling bottom tier over-clockers for a discount, I don't think you'd cover the cost differential with the premium chips unless you're charging way more than people are willing to spend.
Click to expand...

This is a well worded reason I was trying to apply on the margins. You'd have to sink costs on 'stock' chips, only to try to recoup that on 'binned' chips.
 
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