Micro Center is charging $10,000 for multiple GPU orders to thwart miners

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It's a shot in the dark, but at least it's something.

Crytpocurrency miners have turned the GPU market on its head, and while AMD and Nvidia do not seem to be doing a whole lot about it, Micro Center has decided to step in. The retailer is limiting orders of some graphics cards to two before jacking up the price.

Eteknix noticed the abnormal pricing on bulk GPU orders and made an interesting observation—Micro Center is known for offering lower prices than most of the competition, usually for in-store deals. For example, Intel's Core i7-7700K processor can be bought for $300 in a Micro Center store, versus around $340 online from vendors like Newegg.

Micro Center seems to be adopting this new price policy across the board and not just for Radeon RX 580 cards. This Asus GeForce GTX 1070 OC card costs $440 for one and $470 for a second card, and then skyrockets to $10,000 for subsequent quantities.

What Micro Center is doing probably will not influence the market all that much. It is also not clear if customers can sidestep the restriction by placing separate orders, or if Micro Center is monitoring shipping addresses. Either way, it's nice to see a retailer doing something—anything—to combat the situation.

Paul Lilly
Paul Lilly

Paul has been playing PC games and raking his knuckles on computer hardware since the Commodore 64. He does not have any tattoos, but thinks it would be cool to get one that reads LOAD"*",8,1. In his off time, he rides motorcycles and wrestles alligators (only one of those is true).