Online technology retailer Newegg held a short CPU and GPU raffle yesterday. The lucky "winners" were offered a small chance to purchase some of today's most in-demand technology, including AMD Ryzen 5000 CPUs and Nvidia RTX 3080 graphics cards, at full price (and more). [People queued up for a chance to buy the latest CPUs and GPUs, at least one of which is bundled with other products they don't necessarily want or need. But it's better than the bots running amok, buying up what little inventory is available, and the out-of-stock icons staring endlessly at us hopeful builders.

The "Newegg Shuffle" event only lasted a brief moment, but Reddit user u/LordNazo took some photos for posterity.

[14] [15] Various combos of graphics cards (AMD Ryzen 7 5800X, Ryzen 5 5600X, or Asus ROG STRIX RTX 3080 Gaming) with motherboard (either an AM4 board compatible with the CPU, or an Intel Z490 compatible with the GPU) The desired shopper had to choose from a selection of products.

Shortly thereafter, a random drawing was held among the applicants and an email was sent out notifying the "winners," as Newegg put it.

Newegg's reaction to the event was not particularly positive either: a Reddit thread on r/buildapcsales was filled with users complaining about the "prizes," mostly due to the fact that these were combos rather than single items, and the fact that such due to the fact that these are needed. Perhaps the last one is symptomatic of a larger problem in the technology industry today, and therefore beyond Newegg's control.

Comments at the top of the thread likened the system to a loot box:

while others were overcome with despair:

Some hoped for relief from the PC parts shortage in 2021, but it is clear that we are not out of the woods yet. Nvidia speculates that inventory will not return to normal until May, according to recent comments by its CFO, Collette Kress, and AMD has revealed little about inventory replenishment for the Ryzen 5000 and Radeon RX 6000.