Friday, July 7th 2023
EVGA Withdraws from the Motherboard Market?
In what could be the beginning of the end for EVGA after its spectacular withdrawal from the graphics card market that it held leadership position in; the company is reportedly winding down its desktop motherboard business, too. Korean overclocker Safedisc, writing on Coolenjoy tech forums, stated that the company's entire 170-strong workforce in its Taiwan office involved in the motherboard business, have resigned, including KINGPIN. EVGA could withdraw from the motherboard business just like it did with graphics cards—by halting sales and recalling products from the channel, and retaining them to serve as warranty stock in case existing customers claim RMA or warranty service. We have reached out to EVGA for comments.
Update 07:45 UTC: We've heard from workers at EVGA Spain "it's just another day at the office". So maybe it was only Kingpin/the OC team in TW that has resigned, or the whole story is completely untrue.
Update 16:41 UTC: We just received the following statement from EVGA:
Sources:
Safedisc (Coolenjoy forums), Wccftech
Update 07:45 UTC: We've heard from workers at EVGA Spain "it's just another day at the office". So maybe it was only Kingpin/the OC team in TW that has resigned, or the whole story is completely untrue.
Update 16:41 UTC: We just received the following statement from EVGA:
We saw those message and they are rumors.
Our Taiwan office is still operating and Kingpin is still with EVGA.
EVGA is still doing business and supporting its customers.
Thanks for reaching out
96 Comments on EVGA Withdraws from the Motherboard Market?
poor marketing & lack of distribution
The company that survives and keeps surprises me about that, is Biostar. Most times late to the party with graphics cards and motherboards, but there, keeps fighting all the big companies. Premium died when Nvidia decided to make a gazillion of GPU models. I mean the period when we had for example GTX 1660($219), GTX 1660 Super($229), GTX 1660 Ti($279). I believe that's when Nvidia's AIBs started having a problem.
Let's take for example the RTX 3000 series. If you had an RTX 3060($329) and then jumping directly to RTX 3070($499), companies like EVGA had plenty of room to play ball with better models and make some nice profits. But with RTX 3060 Ti($399) in the middle, why buy a higher priced EVGA RTX 3060 instead of giving a little more and going for the cheapest RTX 3060 Ti? In the end these dense fragmentation of the market, helped big companies that could sell a gazillion of standard models at MSRP and Nvidia who could now make better profits from it's GPUs.
I simply went with a PNY 4070 Ti XLR8 because it has the best cooler out of all 4070 Ti's.
Dark Kinping was the best board on Z690 while Anus made a defective Apex, Msi have underperforming Unify-X, Asrock with laughably bad and overpriced Aqua OC
Only Gigabyte Tachyon was comparable Biostar has an opportunity to hire EVGA employees and finally make good motherboards again
Next is the PSU's.
So, consumers better buy a ''cheap'' big model rather than a premium mid one.
If you want to pay ASUS tax, be my guest.
If other partners aren't publicly complaining, that doesn't matter they aren't complaining (or worried) at all. The difference is Asus, Gigabyte, MSI are much, much larger than their GPU businesses. That can cushion them for a while.
Just taking your case, to post my case which is similar.
I didn't pay the Asus tax and went for Palit 4080.
PNY is fine. Even my father had a PNY Quadro back then.
On topic, evga didn't produce motherboards for the masses anyway. Their MBs have been good, expensive but targeted a specific group of users.
You were loved.
As for GPU prices, remember that EVGA said cards like the 3050, 3060, and 3070 were all profitable to sell. It was ONLY the 3080 and 3090 which supposedly he couldnt make money on. They blamed nvidia for this, with nvidia setting MSRP and such, and not allowing them to go above a certain level (we're just gonna ignore how these cards all sold well over MSRP for YEARS during lockdown, including on vendor websites? K ). If there was no money in it, then asus/gigabyte/MSI wouldnt be rushing out 9 different models of these cards. Why would you make multiple SKUs, each with different board designs, coolers, ece if you were not making money on them? Something doesnt add up, and never did.
Of course, it seems like there was bad blood between EVGA and Nvidia, and EVGA had been dropping the ball lately, with multiple product recalls, QC failures, and the infamous exploding 3080/3090 fiasco, where 99% of failed cards were EVGA cards. They also WAY overstocked on GPUs, twice, for both the 1000 and 2000 series, and it seems they were doing it again with the 3000s. Corporate mismanagement seems to have been prevalent, eating whatever margins were left. EVGA's claims never quite added up. If they lost money on 3080/ti/3090/ti tier cards, how were cards like the 3060 profitable (as they claimed them to be)? Given the price of these cards, short of paying 10x as much for one 3090 die or 7x for a 3080 die VS a 3060, there doesnt seem to be a way to make that math work. Furthermore, if the 3080 isnt profitable, why on EARTH did EVGA make 5 different models, each with their own PCB, BIOS, and cooler design? That's a lot of money to blow on a GPU that doesnt make you money. Just make 1, call it a day, and cut losses via manufacturing volume. Or just drop from the nvidia partner program, and only make 3050/60/70 tier cards that are profitable, and add a few high selling AMD models as well.
But I think I get it now. AMD is basically a saint, dying to give us cheaper products, but it is basically forced to sell for more by Nvidia. And it just happens they suffer the same on the CPU front. A true martyr. I think it adds up rather well if factor in 3080 and 3090 are not volume cards. It's harder to recoup the upfront cost on these.
To me, that screams either "poor business decisions" or "misplaced corporate pride".
I am not replying. You win. The end.
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Can they make a comeback. Maybe, but pretty much bleeding all the talent.
The way I see it, this means that there are fewer options on the market for the consumer and if things keep going this route we'll be down to fewer and fewer companies that manufacture these products and what happens then? I guess we can look at companies such as Intel (when they dominated the market and advancements in their field stagnated for years and prices were jacked for top-tier products) or maybe Nvidia (they dominate the dGPU market and it feels like another Intel situation waiting to happen). Less competition on the market isn't good for the consumer. If AMD hadn't been able to come back with their Zen lineup, where would have we all been with Intel still stomping all over with their tick-tock stepping stones and quad cores? Still there with their tick-tock model and quad cores....