Mr.Talha Posted October 26, 2021 Posted October 26, 2021 Micro Center has partnered up with Asus to provide a new PC Builder Tool that gives novice PC builders an easy way to assemble the parts for a new gaming PC by doing most of the part selection for you. More importantly, it's a way to guarantee getting an RTX 30-series graphics card, one of the best graphics cards, though at a rather high price. Think of it as another form of bundling, similar to the Newegg Shuffle, but without the lottery aspect. You have the option of choosing one of three tiers: Value, Performance, and Ultimate. There are options for either Intel or AMD platforms on each tier. However, each system comes configured as a barebones system, meaning it's missing the CPU, Storage, RAM, and even the OS. You will have to add those system components separately, which quickly bumps up the price. You can also have Micro Center build the system out for you for $200, if you select all the extra components and OS, or you can do it yourself. Effectively, what Asus and Micro Center are shipping to you is a DIY barebones kit, or potentially a complete system. What's interesting about this idea is that you can choose the major system components yourself, from a limited selection. The included parts naturally all come from Asus, but you can pick the CPU, RAM, and storage. But on the downside, these options aren't selected for you by default, and you have to pay full price for the OS. That's something the best prebuild desktops and DIY kits like NZXT's BLD kits already do. It'll be interesting to see how this strategy plays out. Micro Center does have a different build tool that allows a far greater selection of components, but that may not guarantee you a graphics card. We suspect this is a way to get new GPUs into the hands of DIY PC gamers who are trying to put together a new system. But that could mean fewer standalone GPUs for sale, which could make it even harder to grab a GPU on its own from Micro Center if some of the company's graphics card allocation gets prioritized toward Asus' barebones systems — or at least, most of the Asus graphics card allocation. Graphics Card Pricing Strategy With how serious the graphics shortage has become, and the rather horrible GPU prices for cards being sold online, we priced out each build to see if Micro Center is giving you a price that's close to MSRP on the graphics card. Spoiler alert: It's absolutely not. The barebones systems are by no means cheap and start at $979 for the AMD Value kit, and $999 for the Intel version. Each build comes with Asus-themed components, so the Value build for example includes an Asus Nvidia GeForce RTX 3060 Ti Dual V2 graphics card, TUF Gaming 650W Bronze PSU, and an Asus TUF GT301 tempered glass ATX chassis. You also get either a Z590-A Prime motherboard for Intel builds (starting at $1,000) or a B550-F ROG Strix Gaming motherboard for AMD (starting at $980).
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