What happened to the Intel Xeons and other HEDT CPU's from Intel?

C0v3rt_X

Discussion title says it all. What happened? I am looking to build a high end workstation and we don't want AMD and we budgeted for Intel. I remember back in the day I saw the sales of many Xeon SKU's and other HEDT CPU's. Please advise. It would be great to know when Microcenter will restock on these. All I am seeing from Intel is consumer based CPU's presently on the MC website.

Side note - Please do not take this discussion the wrong way but Microcenter seems to favor AMD for high end CPU's as I looked at the Threadripper lineup they are selling.

TSTonyV

We haven't carried the individual Xeon CPUs for a while. I don't know the reasons why that's the case unfortunately, beyond it being a business decisions related to factors I'm not privy to. We don't currently have any information on if or when we may have them again. 

PowerSpec_MichaelB

C0v3rt_X said:

Discussion title says it all. What happened? I am looking to build a high end workstation and we don't want AMD and we budgeted for Intel. I remember back in the day I saw the sales of many Xeon SKU's and other HEDT CPU's. Please advise. It would be great to know when Microcenter will restock on these. All I am seeing from Intel is consumer based CPU's presently on the MC website.

Side note - Please do not take this discussion the wrong way but Microcenter seems to favor AMD for high end CPU's as I looked at the Threadripper lineup they are selling.

What I am about to say is not the opinion of Micro Center, but just my personal opinion.

I think it has less to do with favoring AMD, and more to do with the fact that Intel's HEDT supply was lacking. I tried to get my hands on a 10980XE to do some heavy overclocking but was unable to source one for the longest time. Even now, you cannot find them at their MSRP. They are being sold by third party sellers on most websites for a massive markup, almost 3x the price based on what I can see now. Checking our competitors websites, I can't find the 10940X or 10920X either. It's unlikely that this was due to poor yields as Intel has refined 14nm for the last several years and these processors were based on the same ones from the 7980XE and 9980XE. Couple this with the fact that the 10980XE is less than a year old, it would imply that the demand is exceeding the manufacturing rate. This is just my guess on the situation though, so I wouldn't take that as the absolute truth.

I will say that while I understand your hesitation to go with AMD, given their reputation in the HEDT market is not as renowned as Intel's, I've had the chance to get my hands on the 3990X and found it to be an absolute monster for production workloads. If the 3960X scales anywhere near as well as the 3990X did, I doubt you'd be disappointed unless you are using optimized AVX workloads.

C0v3rt_X

TSTonyV said:

We haven't carried the individual Xeon CPUs for a while. I don't know the reasons why that's the case unfortunately, beyond it being a business decisions related to factors I'm not privy to. We don't currently have any information on if or when we may have them again. 

Thank you for your input. I speculate that maybe Microcenter is not receiving enough customers for these CPU's. I remember back in the day when MC opened a store a my location (Parkville), I use to see lots of Xeons and the 5960X. Yeah its been that long. I think this was a corporate decision honestly and I am not really sad about it as there is more PC enthusiasts out there including myself hence there is more consumer based CPU's from Intel. Granted 8 cores is plenty for today's workloads.

C0v3rt_X

TSMichaelB said:

C0v3rt_X said:

Discussion title says it all. What happened? I am looking to build a high end workstation and we don't want AMD and we budgeted for Intel. I remember back in the day I saw the sales of many Xeon SKU's and other HEDT CPU's. Please advise. It would be great to know when Microcenter will restock on these. All I am seeing from Intel is consumer based CPU's presently on the MC website.

Side note - Please do not take this discussion the wrong way but Microcenter seems to favor AMD for high end CPU's as I looked at the Threadripper lineup they are selling.

What I am about to say is not the opinion of Micro Center, but just my personal opinion.

I think it has less to do with favoring AMD, and more to do with the fact that Intel's HEDT supply was lacking. I tried to get my hands on a 10980XE to do some heavy overclocking but was unable to source one for the longest time. Even now, you cannot find them at their MSRP. They are being sold by third party sellers on most websites for a massive markup, almost 3x the price based on what I can see now. Checking our competitors websites, I can't find the 10940X or 10920X either. It's unlikely that this was due to poor yields as Intel has refined 14nm for the last several years and these processors were based on the same ones from the 7980XE and 9980XE. Couple this with the fact that the 10980XE is less than a year old, it would imply that the demand is exceeding the manufacturing rate. This is just my guess on the situation though, so I wouldn't take that as the absolute truth.

I will say that while I understand your hesitation to go with AMD, given their reputation in the HEDT market is not as renowned as Intel's, I've had the chance to get my hands on the 3990X and found it to be an absolute monster for production workloads. If the 3960X scales anywhere near as well as the 3990X did, I doubt you'd be disappointed unless you are using optimized AVX workloads.

Appreciate your input. As I mentioned to TSTony, I think this is a corporate decision since maybe they noticed there was not much sales for the Xeons and other X series CPU's. My last purchase of a HEDT chip was the 5930K  and a Xeon model which I cannot remember the model name. I see that there is a slow deployment of the new 10th gen Intel CPU's. Unfortunately, I had to order mines online rush shipped because my system was down. I have a Z490-I and i7-10700K. Funny thing is, that CPU went out of stock quickly and was not restocked for a week. Ideally, I wanted the 10900K so that I can be future proofed but I settled with 8 cores. I have not seen the K SKU's hit the shelves yet. You can say that AMD is having its fame at MC LOL! But there is healthy competition so that will benefit us all. I really wonder how the 9900K sales are going. I still see 10+ in stock.