Aquarius and Nemifist agreed to cooperate in the release of PCs for gamers

Aquarius and Nemifist have agreed to cooperate in the production of high-performance PCs for gamers and corporate users. Aquarius will provide its facilities, and the companies will jointly optimize the procurement of components. Experts note that high costs for components and maintaining inventories seriously put pressure on the margins of such products. In addition, manufacturers will have to compete with distributors who are also developing their lines of gaming PCs, and owners of gaming clubs often prefer to order equipment from them.

Aquarius told Kommersant that the company has entered into a partnership agreement with gaming PC manufacturer Nemifist. As part of the cooperation, both companies will produce computers at the production facilities of Aquarius, Nemifist will provide its own technologies. Nemifist clarified that they expect to increase production by an order of magnitude as a result, including through “optimization of purchasing procedures.” In addition to gaming computers, companies want to produce PCs for business (workstations and graphics stations).

Aquarius noted that they produced a total of about 2 million PCs (excluding laptops and servers; the company did not disclose data for 2023). Nemifist’s own production, the company says, is located in Moscow, “operates in a boutique format and produces more than 100 computers per month, depending on the volume of demand.”

Aquarius produces PCs and laptops for the consumer and corporate sectors, as well as servers. Russian distributors 3Logic (Raskat brand), OCS (Nerpa) also have lines that combine office and gaming computers, and some retailers also sell PCs for gaming under their own brand (DNS – Ardor Gaming). Nemifist produces gaming PCs both in a standard form factor and integrated into a table, the price of the latter starts from 330 thousand rubles. HyperPC also produces non-standard computers for gaming in the Russian Federation: it, in particular, sells “gaming stations” (a chair with a computer and panoramic monitors) at a price of 1.5 million rubles. HyperPC did not answer “Kommersant”.

Gaming PCs are often more difficult to design than computers for home and office; they use expensive components, electronics manufacturer Fplus explained to Kommersant: “Gaming PCs are produced in relatively small quantities and are not sold so often and not in such large volumes. At the same time, inventory storage costs may increase, and the risks specific to this segment must be compensated for by higher margins.” But this does not mean that everyone earns a lot on gaming PCs – “often such risks are realized,” the company clarifies.

The specifics of the assembly line for office and gaming PCs are the same, says Pavel Frolov, founder and producer of Robbo (manufacturer of educational robotics). “The exception is when the water cooling installation (used in some high-end PCs.— “Kommersant”) requires the organization of an additional site for assembly,” he adds. If “computers in a table” are assembled at Aquarius’ facilities, the expert clarifies, the lines will have to be modified.

According to Langame, by the end of 2023, there were 2.7 thousand cyber clubs operating in the Russian Federation, which used 73 thousand personal computers. Over the year, the number of computers increased by 13 thousand, the average lifespan of one PC was three to four years.

Large computer clubs, according to Dmitry Lukin, founder of the Langame e-sports club network, usually order assembly from specialized divisions of distributors: “Small clubs that strive to reduce costs as much as possible do it themselves. Serious gaming machines are not purchased in mass market stores, with the exception of fairly rare discount promotions.” At the same time, cyber clubs, according to him, are now not interested in gaming stations in atypical form factors, for example, integrated into a table: “We tried to implement them in the F5 E-Sports Center network, but they did not impress clients – there was no serious increase in traffic “

Yuri Litvinenko