Currently on the UK site, the 7840u main board costs £250 more than the 7640u. As a DIY laptop, the 7840u costs £320 more than the 7640u.
This seems counterintuitive — given two DIY models which (I assume) have identical hardware apart from the main boards, I would expect the price delta to be equal or less when buying a laptop as against buying just the main board.
Does anyone know what’s going on here? It’s a slight disincentive to buying a DIY Ryzen laptop, as it seems like paying over the odds…
At the very least, the DIY 7840u gets a 61w battery whereas the DIY 7640u gets a 55w battery. That doesn’t cover the entirety but at the very least is one difference.
It’s very common practice to make the premium model comparatively more expensive, partly because you’re targeting rich people who want to get the best of the best without looking at the cost, partly because you probably sell less of these, so the relative cost of warehouse keeping and product management and so on is higher. Both of these probably matter less with essentially “spare parts”. The same premium mark-up also happened with the Intel models.
Thanks @TrollingJoker and @Jonathan_Haas for your replies. I was clearly wrong in my assumption that the hardware is the same across both models! I can understand that the higher wattage battery and commercial considerations that @Jonathan_Haas mentions may well account for the difference in price. All seems more reasonable now…
@obomoboe in Linus’ video about framework, he details that the DIY versions actually have parts removed in production to make the models from complete laptop assemblies. Not sure if this has changed, and I’ll try to link the vid evidence, as this could also be a factor.
This seems strange given that this cost seems to only apply to the DIY editions even while DIY are disassembled prebuilts can this cost £70? Or £130 for the 1360 to 1370 on Intel?
Thanks for your reply but I don’t feel that answer actually answers the question of why the same mainboards appears to cost ~20% more when purchased as part of a laptop the vs marketplace. That answer focused on why the higher end options cost (disproportionate to their performance) more, IIRC FW stated margins are intentionally greater on the higher end SKUs to allow lower margins for the low end to be more affordable.
Like the OP I would have expected the cost would be lower buying it as part of a laptop. I think there is likely a reason why it is presenting this way, it could even be as a benefit to existing customers upgrading as they are likely the majority of those buying the boards alone.
like @TrollingJoker said earlier, when you buy the DIY laptop, going from the 7640u to the 7840u also comes with the bigger battery - which retails for $70. When you buy just the mainboard, there is no additional battery upgrade along side it.
As the 7640u does still come with a battery that is retailing at £60/£50 the value add should probably be considered at £10 or £20 unless they are sending out 55Wh batteries with each 61Wh battery
Board alone price difference £250, additional cost of larger battery £20 leaving a difference of £50 (£320 - (£250+£20) when purchased as DIY vs parts. Maybe shipping cost difference IDK but I do feel the ideas we have here don’t explain the difference.
I noticed this is the same with the Intel SKUs @obomoboe could be worth changing the title to reflect this?
Edit: Intel 1340 to 1360 is the same pricing as the Ryzen 7640 to 7840 including the battery upgrade, £50 more as part of a laptop. The next tier up 1360 to 1370 cost an additional £60.
Foreground image is laptop configuration background image is marketplace boards.
