Is there a reason NOT to direct buy from AMD? I mean why even bother with retailers?
If you are looking for an AMD CPU, then buying direct from them seems to be the easiest. Unfortunately, they haven't ever restocked their video cards on their site since the initial launch day that I am aware of. I've been using stock trackers like Octo plugin, NowInStock via telegram,
several youtube live trackers like this one, and a few discord trackers. None of them have ever shown the GPUs ever coming back in stock from AMD direct. Prefer to buy that way as they seem easiest to me like I said. I did get a 6800 from them on launch day though for my wife's computer.
The 3090 I bought I got locally from someone selling it for an actual deal somehow. I have several people asking me to help them get some video card upgrades and I literally seem unable to do so from any retailer at this point. I can buy CPUs, Xboxes, and PS5's every time those drop for the past few months but no GPUs. Unfortunately there isn't many retailers listing or getting a steady supply of GPUs either. Its Amazon, Bestbuy,. and Newegg for the most part. Amazon has zero bot protection so unless you are using a bot then you aren't getting one from there. Newegg has their shuffle thing and I haven't been lucky there. Bestbuy has the regional location drop buys, but again I haven't been able to buy any GPU from them yet. Consoles from Bestbuy I can get, just not GPUs. As for alternatives, I've been in the EVGA notify queue list for months now without a single notification response. I also don't live near a microcenter anymore. I did "try" to camp out a microcenter over the holidays when I was visiting family members for Xmas. I basically got there at 2am and was like 8th in line I think. Problem was, 30 minutes before they opened the other 7 people let all their buddies "cut" in line with them. So I went from 8th to like 50th. Obviously I didn't get anything. It seemed to be what they do every day as they were doing this daily to resell cards and CPUs.
So for CPUs, basically AMD direct has been the best bet so far at least. I've been able to buy 5800x, 5600x, and 5950x from them so far easily enough.