I'm just wondering, where do resellers like newegg, or Ncix, or tigerdirect get their supplies of cpu's, hdd's, video cards, memory from?
I doubt they go to the source like Intel or Asus, i believe they deal with a middle man, who is this middle man "Supplier" ?

Does anyone know?

I couldn't answer that for certain, but the computer shops over here in Australia (that being online and physical stores) usually deal with various wholesalers. The wholesalers buy all their kit directly from ASUS, Intel etc. An example of one the wholesalers here would be AKA Technology.

Yes, "distributors" or wholesalers are the next step up the chain.

Unless your talking quanties in the thousands, then for a dozen or so you have your pick of dealers to choose from...

That's pretty standard. The price list on AMD/Intel's website is for quantities of 1000.

thanks for the info guys,
so i guess depends on how much they sell, if they can purchase 1000 a month or more they can deal with Intel or ATI etc... directly.

I wonder why it is so hard to find out who their wholesalers/distributors are. I guess they like to keep the real price of their parts a secret or something.

What do you mean it's hard to find the distributors? From what I've seen, manufacturers normally have a list on their web site.

Sorry i meant the prices that they pay from the distributors..

for example if XYZ costs $1,000 on newegg, what did it really cost from the distributor? was the part XYZ only 600 dollars? and newegg is making 400 profit? that is hard to come by.

They don't increase the price that much. It's usually in the range of 10 -> 15% over the wholesale price. For instance, if a computer store goes and buys say 50 ASUS Geforce 7600 GS video cards from a wholesaler for $100 each, they're only going to end up charging $110 -> $115. So if a huge online store like Newegg can deal directly with ASUS for those video cards rather than buying from a wholesaler they'll be making a larger profit.

Dewd, Rich, Im really disapointed in you guys. Deliberately misleading this individual with those answers. Lies, all lies I tell you!

To the OP. The etailers atually get their products from the benificent hardware fairy. Who was immaculately conceived by the virtuously virginal AMD.

A - you'll learn a lot more about this subject, and more quickly, by selling a few items yourself on eBay than you ever will here in the CPU forum.

Usually major sellers like Newegg gets the product directly from the factory or major wholesalers. Distributors like that usually gets higher profit with large numbers of orders as company give some sort of discounts. And not to mention if the sellers are the company's featured/merchant seller of their product. Small sellers like Ebay power sellers more likely get some from small time wholesalers.

I can offer some clerification for you. To be brief, I owned a computer company for a short while, but in the mean time i build the rig in my sig. The way it works is you get a distributers license of your city, then you search the net for distibutors. At this point you need to call them up, and set up an account. Blind drop shipping is a big feature, this allows you to have orders sent directly to the distributor and have it sent to the customer from there. You do no work.

Anyway, the savings varies from distibuter to distributer, it even varies on the item. For high volume items the savings isnt much, however for low volume things, the stuff online sites like to make money on, you save quite a bit.

When I bought the x800xt years ago, it was 358.00 USD, compared to over 400.00 retail. Over my entire build i saved around 200.00USD.

If you are able to buy large volumes like dell you really start saving money. Buying direct from the factory will save alot, not necessarily because the items are alot less, but other costs like transportation and overhead is added to the end user. However the advantage of a distributor is that you can buy a wide variety of items from alot of manufacturers from them. Newegg's prices are pretty close to distributors, so my guess is that they deal direct from the factories, allowing them to sell around 5-10% less than other places, or the same as other places with 5-10% more profit.

I know i havent said much more than anybody else, but I can state definitively that its easier than you think to "set-up" a business and get a bit of a discount on your computer stuff by getting in bed with a distributor.

Good luck, sleep time.

Back when I was still building systems for clients, I got my parts from a national distributor called ASI. They had a local branch here in Denver which was nice because I could drive over and pick stuff up at will-call rather than pay shipping (for 15 builds at a time, that's a nice savings).

A couple of the larger distributors (at least in the US) are Tech Data and Ingram-Micro. I would guess that newegg gets a majority of their stock from these companies but like other posters said, they may be able to buy some stock direct from manufacturers. Typically the supply chain goes from manufacturer to distributor to reseller to end user.

All I needed to get an account with the distributors I used was a Colorado Sales Tax License and a registered trade name. Your experience may vary depending on locale.

A few zillion years ago when the world was blessed with the Captain Robert April Computer Shop, I bought most of my stuff from Ingram. It was no deal, let me assure you. I paid the catalogue prices and was lucky to make a 10% markup. I regularly had mail-order retail companies beat Ingram's pricing by a fair chunk so I ended up buying a lot from them. There is no way that those mail-orders were buying from Ingram AND paying the same pricing I was. I never was able to find out where that stuff came from. I always suspected that:

1) Ingram sold at different prices for different volume levels.
2) The mail-order products came directly from Asia in 40 FCLs quantities.
3) The stuff fell off the back of a truck somewhere.

Guys We have a new contender for poster (no life loser) of the year!
This guy is averaging 51 posts per day!!! GET A LIFE!!I say we try and get this POS banned. She NEVER has anything positive to contribute!! :x :x :x