~~~~~IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT - Regarding Intel Sandybridge CPU/Motherboards (1000's IN STOCK)!!~~~~~

[Gibbo]

I don't get the bit in Bold. Surely it is better to sell the goods rather than try to keep them as 'in stock'. People will just shop elsewhere if they can get it cheaper.

Nope because were also a system integrator.

Our system business accounts for 25% of our overall business and is far higher margin than that of selling components.

So basically we'd rather have the ability to sell systems at 25% margin than say a CPU at 5-10% margin.

Then there is supply and demand, if we have 100 CPU's and we can't get more for 30 days, we will set our price to a point where those CPU's still sell out but we make higher margin. Yes we could keep price low, but we could risk selling out in as short as week, then due to selling out of CPU we loose motherboard, memory and possibly other attachment sales until the CPU is restocked. Wheras when we have stock, even if our price is high our stock will still sell out but we will have attachment sales too.

Basically we could go ultra competitive, sell all our stock, but then have no stock for a week or two resulting in many lost sales, wheras we could just increase price slightly, like 3-4% make our stock last, still sell it all but make the extra profit.

Its a business and there is a saying, if you can sell all your stock at 15%, then why sell it at 5%, thats just business sense.

What OcUK does do is add extra value, like say a games voucher such as Lost Planet 2, customers know we have stock and know they will get it next day, they also know we have the UK's largest forum full of instant support should it be required and they also know our customer service wheras not perfect but is very good.

This is an honest answer, some of you may not like it, some of you may understand the business ethics behind it but I could just try to pull the wool over your eyes but this is the honest answer.

When I can get myself another 2000-3000 units our pricing will be very competitive just like it is on other CPU's, look at our AMD for example and other Intel lines.

 

[Gibbo]

Oh I don't argue that your overclocked bundles are clearly far better than said competitor who I find suprising have such a loyal fan base over there really who seem to defend their owners like they are some gods.

I just think that when a big cpu release like this comes out, everyone is looking to do a full mobo/cpu/ram upgrade and likely heat sink. Seems like a golden opertunity to put some bundles up which give a discount on this process. You'd make a killing I would have thought if your bundle was cheaper than the competitor. Obviously further down the line the bundle probably isn't so useful as people start upgrading single parts again instead of whole systems.

You see I don't do bundles, but I agree we should maybe look at just some regular none OC bundles where we just put 2-3 items together as a recommendation and give a discount for buying them all at once.
Whilst still doing our awsome pre-configured OC bundles alongside.

I think the loyality comes down because its a small forum, everyone kind of knows each other on a personal level which is an OK thing and some might be scared by the size of this forum. Its good that people are loyal, but at the same time they do seem to get rather upset if someone has a genuine issue or complaint and it kinda goes into freefall.

The other issue though is were already making a killing as we can't get the stock in the doors quick enough, because you have to remember OcUK has a huge advantage and thats these forums, the info and helpfulness available here is second to none.

 

[Gibbo]

Well if you run out of stock you can always jig the bundles about to change ram/heatsinks etc. Though if the stock issue is on the cpu that wouldn't be so easy.

Still I think it's a great idea and well worth looking into because you know anyone buying a SB has to be buying ram and a mobo at least and likely a heat sink and thermal paste. If they arn't buying it all from you then you are loosing sales no matter what as someone else got that sale. It's not like someone upgrading an i5 where you don't know if they bought a mobo elsewhere, you know they have if its sb .

We've done well though, as people buying the CPU's have all purchased a motherboard alongside. And over 60% have purchased memory which is better than we expected as older DDR3 is compatible, just run it sub 1.60v.

Though we have been quick to act by testing our memory and updating descriptions to say sandybridge compatible and updating the working voltage range so customers can easily what DDR3 is compatible.

 

[Gibbo]

It seemed to me like alota people upgrading were coming off DDR2. I'm quite suprised by that, either that or 40% of people went else where. I do feel the ram could probably be expanding on ocuk. I quite like mushkin personally and defo looking forward to you increasing the 1.5v range as I've got to buy new ram I see no reason not to get it really unless its quite highly priced. Looking for 8gb ~ £110, which might be optimistic on 1.5v ram.

I'm also looking for a new case but I just can't find one that is tickling my fancy. I used to love a Lian-li case you used to stock with a blue ring on the front. Very minimalistic and quite big, around £150 but im guessing its EOL now? Or did you cut back on lian-li?



I agree with this statement. While I've had my qualms and dislikes in the past, it is still the shop I almost always come back to.



===============

On a complete side note gibbo, my pc is acting up bad atm. Can't play games and i've now got it down to three posibilities:

Mobo
PSU
GPU

Now if its the mobo i'll just upgrade sandy bridge anyway but the PSU and GPU were both bought from ocuk. I think im 80% sure it is the PSU but I can't be 100%, how much would ocuk charge me to test it if you tested it and it turned out it wasn't the problem? Its a Seasonic M12 600w, cost me £120 when I bought it from you lot. Which is a bit irritating that it appears to be dieing. Also the M12 is EOL I believe so what might I expect in the RMA if that was the case? It's about 4 years old now so I'm not sure if my warrenty is actually still with ocuk or if I have to ship it off to seasonic. I'd rather it went to you guys.

Also my GPU is BFG, which I beleive no longer do their warranties and i'm guessing OCUK have no obligations for that either do they? If my gpu has died I think I will not be able to upgrade to sandy bridge for a few more months as that will be another £250~300 extra to replace. I don't really do cheap unfortunately. Though I'm pretty sure i'll end up being caught up in some "this week only" and end up spending another £900 on what was only meant to be a gpu.

Such a shame about BFG, they were an incredibly good company and I bought them for that reason because my GPU's always die and I always need the warranty and now its not there I don't think

You have to remember our customer base, we have customers that upgrade every month, haha, so many already had DDR3.

Regarding BFG warranties, I am unsure, I heard a rumour KFA2 were looking after BFG warranties, so maybe drop KFA an email asking them regarding it, you never know you could get lucky.

Regarding Seasonic warranty, it will be with the manufacturer as its after 3yrs, but you can also try contacting our returns as you might find they have something in place as Seasonic still have a UK distributor who should handle it, so try ourselves as our returns department may already have an arrangement or something in place. But saying that Seasonic rarely fail, we only stopped selling them as they were hugely overpriced.

 

[Gibbo]

It is impossible to plan anything even for the next day when you keep increasing the prices like that and very annoying too to be honest. Fair enough you want to sell systems with better profits but there are a lot of people here ( including myself ) who'd like to build their own systems and not pay extra.We are your customers too.I spent £500 last month and was planning to buy cpu+MB+cooler today which is another £350-400
but I won't and even if you drop the price of cpu £10 tomorrow , I'll lose the vat deal and nothing really will change.

What I see here is you take your customers for granted.You probably think we'll pay anything just to have something a week earlier.You're wrong.

Another thing , who really cares about lost planet 2 game here ? At least give a decent game.I'd much rather not have it and pay 10 quid less.Also , I am a new customer but already one of the two deliveries I got was 4 days late.Too much for next day eh ? And please don't try to sell the forums , we don't need to buy anything to use it and what makes this forum big is the type of customers you have little respect for.Not those who buy the ready systems and pay silly amounts.

Of course it is a business and of course you are trying to make money but I think some of your strategies are wrong and too greedy.But I understand , you are doing very well these days to care about customers with less profit margins.

Prices change, that is never going to change, but they also go down not just up. For instance GTX 580's have dropped today, I remember one of the Asus P67 boards dropping, along with several memory lines. Its unfortunate that all the items your looking at may have change in the wrong direction for you but that can't be helped and the I5 2300 chips dropped. The prices change that just how it is, our competitors also been moving prices today as well on these CPUs, also upwards. Sometimes you get lucky, sometimes not so lucky but to say it effects your planning, well were talking minimal price changes here, maybe £20 maximum on a shopping basket of £500-£1000 worth of kit. Thats a less than 2% change.

How can our strategies be too greedy when some prices drop as well, the fact we've given a vat back offer now for a week, we do a lot to bring customers great deals.

If we were greedy then why did we sell MSI 5850 for £125 delivered, some £30-£50 cheaper than competitors, we could have just put them on the site at £150 and left them to sell making a fortune, but we decide to pretty much give them away.

Were not greedy, but were also not a charity, we are a business and wheras we aim to be competitive we don't aim to be the cheapest on everything.

Fact is were never gonna be able to make every customer happy or have the best deal on everything.

Many people care about the LP2 game, if they did not Intel would not have put the money into buying thousands of them to promote with CPU's and those who don't want the game, well they sell them and get money for them. So a lot of our customers like the game vouchers even if they don't actually want the game.

You've had bad luck with deliveries, but the whole UK delivery network until very recently has been recovering from the extreme weather that effected the whole country, shut down airports and caused couriers to get major backlogs. On a whole even during this period we were having a 90% sucess rate on next day delivery, now the weather is reasonably normal thats sucess rate is far higher.

Hold on your saying the OcUK forums are so big and its full of people we have no respect for? Sorry your a million miles of the mark, I've met 100's of guys from these forums, bought them a pint, been out on meets, is that really the actions of a person who has no respect for the people on the forum?

Also if I don't respect our forum members, then explain the free shipping for forum members, explain why we go out of our way to answer questions and tell me why in my free time at 23:36 at night I am debating this with you? Yet according to you I don't respect the forum members, all I can say you are wrong!

 

[Gibbo]

well i am looking to buy now but i,m not going to pay £341.98 when 4hrs ago its was £30 cheaper thats the price i should have paid with the ram not without,so i will wait a few days till the prices settle.

i also think bundles that are not overclocked is a good idea,especially as this is new and you state that if you update the bios the oc and warrantry is void,which to me seems harsh as there will be updates for bios to correct the problems ppl have with the new bios.thatis the reason i didn,t go for your oc bundle today when i read it.

Hi there

£30 cheaper?
The CPU changed by approx £5-£8.
What else changed to cause this difference with what you were ordering?

 

[Gibbo]

KFA2 you say? Cheers for the heads up. That may well save me a lot of money, I would guarantee my purchase of a sandy bridge from ocuk as a way of saying thankyou if this is true.

It's true I bought it because I thought it would never fail, but apparently not the case. I'm hoping later this week to have more time on my hands and actually get this sorted out. Hopefuly in time to see some good deals on sandy bridge, though I'll be purchasing 2600k and I'm thinking you probably won't be doing any deals on that as the 2500k is so much more popular. Though It might help you shift some of them instead of 2500k's.

Gonna say we'd be more likely to do a deal on the slower seller, hence the 2600k.

 

[Gibbo]

The strategy is spot on, its nothing to do with greed. Its not a race to be cheapest. Its about selling as much stock as you can for the highest price people will pay.

Do you realise how much the mark up is for a coke at any fast food outlet?


For those that don't know its over 1000%

I know here we are making mostly single digit margin figures and where were lucky maybe as high as 15%. People whinge and cry, though we all go and happily spend 60p on a can coke, that must be at what, 500% margin at a wild guess?

Its crazy, same goes for car parts, margins are around 40-100% then add in the £50-£150 per hour labour charges.

The PC industry is a very low margin sector.

 

[Gibbo]

What about the people who dont want the 2600k because of the high price ?

Then do as many others are, buy the 2500k or save up.

 

[Gibbo]

so are you going to do a bundle for Board and 2500k or just a bundle for the board and 2600k ?

I said earlier in this thread I shall look at a P8P67 and 2500k bundle and put it live tomorrow, its nearly midnight and I am not about to start working now, but promise to sort something first thing in the morning, because I do respect all the members here even though some seem to think otherwise.

 

[Gibbo]

Asus P8P67 PRO Intel P67 (Socket LGA1155) USB3.0 8CH Sound DDR3 ATX Motherboard
Model Number: P8P67 PRO
£138.95 inc. VAT
(£115.79 ex. VAT)

(4 In Stock)

your price is £149.99 inc VAT
£124.99 ex VAT

so your £11.04 more add that to the increased price of the cpu its nealy the price of ram.

Ah sorry I thought you meant prices here had changed £30 today as I knew all that had changed was CPU gone up and motherboards have not changed apart from one going down slightly.

Shall see if we can sort a decent bundle deal tomorrow on P8P67 and 2500k and shall put some memory options as a drop down but not as a default option as we understand many customers only need board and cpu.

 

[Gibbo]

Come now we are not so naive , of course some prices drop but not the popular items.They go up even if you are already selling them with high profit margins.Maybe you'll lose a little to create the illusion of fairness but you'll make more from others.

Anyway , I said what I wanted to say and not going to argue about it any longer.You said it yourself , you want less people to buy your cpus so you'll have enough for systems where you can make more profit.Thats one strategy I can tell working %100. Well done.

How far off the mark are you and where does your logic come from? Prices drop but not on popular items? Logic would say its the popular items that will move in price the most because its those that are re-purchased frequently and as such the cost of stock changes whenever new stock lands.

Also if you read my post you will read that we recieved a shipment from another distributor at higher cost due to that distributor selling their stock based on a 1.54 exchange rate and our previous stock been sold to us at a 1.57 rate, that is a good £2-4 price move on these CPU's which is roughly by how much they moved in price.

Prices change, fact, if you don't like it fair enough but were not holding a gun to your head and forcing you to buy either, its a free world you can buy from here or anywhere else.

 

[Gibbo]

Hi there

Anyway I promised you guys two bundles first thing, I've hit your price targets making us the cheapest in the UK, check them out:-



OcUK Motherboard Bundle - Intel Core i5 2500K & Asus P8P67 Intel P67 Mainboard @ £299.98 inc VAT

Our motherboard bundles are designed using all compatible components to prevent you our customers the confusion of working out what workds together.

The main specifications of this bundle are: -
- Intel Core i5-2500K 3.30GHz (Sandybridge) Socket LGA1155 Processor
- Asus P8P67 Intel P67 (Socket 1155) DDR3 Motherboard - (Sandybridge)


Every bundle comes with a processor and heatsink/fan, all is designed to work together in harmony, all you need to do is the simple process of inserting the CPU, fitting the cooler and installing your chosen memory.


Technical Specification of components:-

Processor:-
- No. of Cores 4
- Supports Virtualisation Yes (VT-x)
- Intel Core i5-2500K 3.30GHz (Sandybridge) Socket LGA1155 Processor
- Architecture Features 32nm
- Cache 6Mb
- Clockspeed 3.30Ghz (3.70GHz with TURBO)
- Manufacturer Intel
- Intel reference cooler
- Unlocked Multiplier


Motherboard: Asus P8P67 Intel P67 Mainboard

Key specification:
- ATX Form Factor
- LGA1155 socket for Intel® 2nd Generation Core™ i7/ Core™ i5/ Core™ i3 Processors
- Intel® P67 Express Chipset
- PCI-E x 16 Single x16 or x8x8x4
- Supports ATI® Quad-GPU CrossFireX™ Technology
- 4 x DDR3, up to 32.0GB
- 8-CH HD audio
- Gigabit LAN controller
- 2 x USB 3.0 ports at back panel (blue)
- 2 x USB 3.0 ports at mid-board for front panel support
- 12 x USB 2.0 ports (6 ports at mid-board, 6 ports at back panel)
- 2 x SATA 6.0 Gb/s ports (grey)
- 2 x SATA 6.0 Gb/s ports (navy blue)
- 4 x SATA 3.0 Gb/s ports (blue)
- Bluetooth v2.1 + EDR
- 2 x IEEE 1394a ports

In The Box:
- 1 x 2-port USB and eSATA module
- 2 x Serial ATA 6.0Gb/s cables
- 2 x Serial ATA 3.0Gb/s cables
- 2 in 1 Q-connector
- User's manual
- Warranty: 3 Year


See related products for Sandybridge compatible memory and coolers.


Only £299.98 inc VAT.

ORDER NOW











OcUK Motherboard Bundle - Intel Core i7 2600K & Asus P8P67 Pro Intel P67 Mainboard @ £399.98 inc VAT

Our motherboard bundles are designed using all compatible components to prevent you our customers the confusion of working out what workds together.

The main specifications of this bundle are: -
- Intel Core i5-2500K 3.30GHz (Sandybridge) Socket LGA1155 Processor
- Asus P8P67 Intel P67 (Socket 1155) DDR3 Motherboard - (Sandybridge)


Every bundle comes with a processor and heatsink/fan, all is designed to work together in harmony, all you need to do is the simple process of inserting the CPU, fitting the cooler and installing your chosen memory.


Technical Specification of components:-

Processor:-
- No. of Cores 4 (8 with hyperthreading)
- Supports Virtualisation Yes (VT-x)
- Intel Core i7-2600K 3.40GHz (Sandybridge) Socket LGA1155 Processor
- Architecture Features 32nm
- Cache 8Mb
- Clockspeed 3.40Ghz (3.80GHz with TURBO)
- Manufacturer Intel
- Intel reference cooler
- Unlocked Multiplier


Motherboard: Asus P8P67 Pro Intel P67 Mainboard

Key specification:
- ATX Form Factor
- LGA1155 socket for Intel® 2nd Generation Core™ i7/ Core™ i5/ Core™ i3 Processors
- Intel® P67 Express Chipset
- PCI-E x 16 single x16 or x8x8x4
- Supports NVIDIA® Quad-GPU SLI™ Technology
- Supports ATI® Quad-GPU CrossFireX™ Technology
- 4 x DDR3, up to 32.0GB
- 8-CH HD audio
- Gigabit LAN controller
- 2 x USB 3.0 ports at back panel (blue)
- 2 x USB 3.0 ports at mid-board for front panel support
- 12 x USB 2.0 ports (6 ports at mid-board, 6 ports at back panel)
- 2 x SATA 6.0 Gb/s ports (grey)
- 2 x SATA 6.0 Gb/s ports (navy blue)
- 4 x SATA 3.0 Gb/s ports (blue)
- Bluetooth v2.1 + EDR
- 2 x IEEE 1394a ports

In The Box:
- 4 x Serial ATA 6.0Gb/s cables
- 2 x Serial ATA 3.0Gb/s cables
- 1 x ASUS SLI bridge connector
- 1 x ASUS USB 3.0 Bracket
- ASUS Q-Shield
- 2 in 1 Q-connector
- User's manual
- Warranty: 3 Year


See related products for Sandybridge compatible memory and coolers.


Only £399.98 inc VAT.

ORDER NOW






Is this the actions of someone who has no respect for their forum members?