I mention this when L1 team was streaming yesterday and they asked for a links and more information.
It was said the L1 team was having issues with upgrading and replacing graphics or even getting hold of cards and the ones in stock are way over price - one of the team is still using a AMD 290x!!!
To date, there is now more than two/three companies in the USA doing this and there one company in the UK and one or two in mainland EU doing this.
The premise is you lease the GPU from the company and you can replace and upgrade at any time - but this will reset your contract.
Most of the cards start at GTX1060 or AMD 550 - they tend not to go lower.
It is a 12-month contract and you make 12 payments of equal parts but if you want to buy/keep the card you make a 13 payment and thus you do not need to send it back or renew the contract etc.
Most of these companies will send you a box new one - not sure what they do with returned one or if someone uses one for mining etc - but if you ask for more than two, my thinking is that questions will be asked…maybe unless they sitting on 100s if not 1,000 in the warehouse!?
So could this be a way around issues with supply and prices?
Each company has different prices/availability/rules/penalties and me posting links is not an endorsement of said companies and that for L1 team to have a look.
After a google search, I found these: - but it up to you to do research and read the small print etc
Sounds like it could be good if you really need a card and can’t pay for one outright but personally I always have reservations about leasing things and would rather wait and buy it myself. Quickly looking at the UK site you can lease a 1080 for 12 months at around the same price as MSRP with the 18 month contract to buy it at around £340 more than you can currently buy the same card right now.
In my opinion using a service like this to lease a card every year isn’t very smart as you’d be paying MSRP for a new one when the card can easily last three years+ and in that case it would be a better idea to just buy one new and sell the old one every year.
because of the depredation. Toyota’s have good depredation so they have low Leases, as do honda’s. Fiat’s have very severe depredation b/c they are super unreliable, so they have super high lease payments.
This is what I was looking at. The idea looks good on paper (from a business side) but I see some problems.
There’s a 38% markup? if i’m using the right terminology.
The MSI GEFORCE GTX 1080 GAMING X 8G has a total cost over 12 months of 1043.88, you add on another 86.99 to keep the card, totalling 1130.87
To buy one of those cards outright costs 699.99 (ebuyer). Your paying 430.88 more.
You would be better off buying the card on your credit card and paying it off on your card in instalments, its cheaper even with credit card interest.
That means the only reason you would use this option is to either:
a. upgrade cards early and often, which is quite frankly insane and a very poor financial decision.
b. cant afford it and are bad enough with money you cant get a credit card either, in which case you should in no way be paying almost ÂŁ90 a month on a luxury like a high end graphics card.
I sometimes wonder if these “rental” services exist to pray on people who are bad with money.
The timing with the UK one (ships 1-5 days) suggests to me as well that they just go out and buy the cards in small numbers when required and rebox and ship.
Is there any value here?
Are the US services actually offering any value? Or are they just more like these rent stuff out to poor people companies?
So basically, as with cars, the better the manufacturer the lower the lease cost?
Also, wouldn’t the horribly unreliable card manufacturers try to get some sort of program going to get them more skin in the game? Like maybe longer lease times and such. In that way it would be a lower lease cost per month. Surely they wouldn’t pass up on an opportunity to make some cash.
Overall, the idea of renting GPU’s seems pretty cool. Until I get cheated on by getting a bad card because the previous owner was reckless with it.
It’s probably akin to why people lease cars. I don’t know how it is in other parts of the world, but at least in the more populated areas of my region there’s a pretty solid percentage of the population that continuously lease cars. From what I understand they like leasing because they “get a new car every few years”. I don’t really understand it because they are essentially having a perpetual car loan, but never actually own the car at the end.
Like you said, in terms of money it doesn’t make much sense since it is so expensive, but there are quite a few people that must always have the new and shiny products.
Hell, you could even compare it to the people that get the latest iPhone or Nexus device when they come out every few months.
Look at it this way…how much are shops charging you to buy one and that’s if there any stock around? I know GPU prices are way out of whack but that price sounds reasonable vs what some shops are charging
I been looking at this and each company will RMA the card at no cost, most companies will send you a new card before you RMA your current card - if they give a bad service would you think they stay in business etc? They just end up with people not paying their bills etc
I mean I was a lucky fuck to get a 580 when they came out and before all the miners went and REEEE’d their way to eating them all up. I didn’t get the sapphire one I really wanted, but I’ve been more than happy with the gigabyte one that I have. I will admit that the prices are retarded. Its the reason I hate bitcoin / crypto. I don’t have a reason to be angry at all since I have one, but I’m pissed that A: people can’t build a fucking decent machine right now unless they buy cards straight from china or japan, and B: I’m going to have this 580 for 6 years probably till it dies. And I guess B isn’t horrible, it’ll just be really really annoying eventually.
…what should I have done (this happened to me a few weeks before Christmas) - had a GTX580 and GTX680 break in 2 days and I needed a GPU, my back up GTX385 was just running windows and not much else?
I had the money saved because that afternoon I was going to buy motherboard, RAM and CPU but now that money went to buy a new GPU
So what was I meant to do if I spent the money on the PC parts, then both GPU broke, and the parts would not work because I have not got a working GPU or do I wait another 6 months to 12 months (in truth I had to save like 2 years) to save up for a GPU and have no PC in the meantime or had no money saved in the first place?
I was happy I had the money for the new GPU and the prices were not so silly as today but there are people out there that not have X amount of money or work part-time (like me) so saving hard to just go out and buy a new GPU at current prices…that if you can find one.
So leasing a GPU could have been my way out of issues and have a working PC
You should have a find of money for things like breakages and emergencies. A lot of people don’t which isn’t good. (Tip, if you don’t, you probably shouldn’t play games until you can afford an emergency fund and spending cash.)
In either case, you could have got it on your credit card. As mentioned it’s cheaper even with paying the interest.