partners and distributors are forcing retailers and etailers to take PSUs and motherboards if they want to get GPUs, frequently very shitty mobos+PSUs that have been stuck in inventory for a long time and they've been having trouble moving. Like, large quantities, 50 A320 motherboards for one GPU type quantities.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZxGtMHXWpMw&t=300s

This is one of the reasons that Newegg is doing the Shuffle with those terrible deals - they are passing some of the junk they've been forced to buy along. So now you get a 3 year old watercooling-only mobo and a grenade-tier PSU with your GPU.

This applies to brick and mortar stores too, it's not just about keeping PC builders happy, but if they let one guy walk in and buy every GPU they've got, then they don't get the person coming in to build a PC and buying a motherboard, memory, etc, and they need to move those products because distributors are making them buy them to get GPUs.

The behavior of the AIB partners and distributors is really, really predatory here, they are definitely taking advantage of being the ones in control of a highly desirable commodity.