Amazon sells a legacy MSI CPU air cooler for $5,340 — the Core Frozr L launched in 2016 with a $50 MSRP

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Are you willing to spend a fortune on old PC hardware?

MSI Core Frozr L
(Image credit: MSI / Amazon)

MSI is returning to the air-cooling space with the MAG Core Frozr AA13, after a nearly 10-year break from its last release. However, it doesn’t mean that its old air cooler lineup has already disappeared — in fact, Amazon is still selling the MSI Core Frozr L for $5,340.25.

The Core Frozr L launched in 2016. Not only is it available, but you also have to pay a premium to get your hands on it. It’s currently priced at $5,340.25 on the online marketplace, a far cry from its $49.99 MSRP at launch. Even if you account for inflation, the cooler should only be priced at just $66.71.

The latest chips compatible with this air cooler are the 6th to 9th generation Intel Core processors and the AMD Ryzen 5000-series CPUs. While the newest Intel CPUs may no longer be compatible with this cooler, you can still make it work with AMD processors, such as the Ryzen 5 5500X3D, which was launched just last month.

We wouldn’t recommend that, though, as we’re unsure how capable it is when it comes to the latest from Team Red, although the listing says it can dissipate up to 200W of heat from the CPU. At more than $5,000, that makes it more expensive than a decent gaming rig capable of playing games at 4K.

MSI Core Frozr L Amazon listing

(Image credit: Tom's Hardware)

We’re not exactly sure why this listing is still available, especially at the price it’s advertised for. It’s also unlikely to be from a scammer, as it’s sold by and ships directly from Amazon. Perhaps Amazon has forgotten to revise the CPU cooler's pricing. Maybe it costs so much because it’s expected to be displayed in a collector's house. The Core Frozr L is far from being a piece of computer history, though.

Still, it would be interesting to see how a nearly 10-year-old cooler design performs compared to a modern gaming CPU, such as the Ryzen 7 9800X3D. If you have the cash, this is your chance to find out and acquire an antique PC component at the same time. We’ve already seen plenty of PC parts going for a crazy sum, like the Asus ROG Astral RTX 5090 Gold Edition, which costs nearly half a million dollars — let’s not give MSI any ideas.

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Jowi Morales
Jowi Morales
Contributing Writer

Jowi Morales is a tech enthusiast with years of experience working in the industry. He’s been writing with several tech publications since 2021, where he’s been interested in tech hardware and consumer electronics.

7 Comments Comment from the forums
  • Dementoss
    Ridiculous high prices, are often used by Amazon Marketplace sellers, to stop their last item selling before new stock arrives, to avoid Amazon's high relisting fees.
    Reply
  • bit_user
    This is not news. It's simply a runaway pricing algorithm.

    Those kinds of prices seem a lot more rare, these days, but I will occasionally see some product that's gone out of production experience a substantial price spike. Algorithmic pricing first hit the scene more than a decade ago.

    It's too bad Amazon doesn't let you search for what prices they actually sold at, the way ebay does. Because, if nobody is buying the cooler at this price, then it doesn't represent a fair market value.

    There's an interesting foot note that, if an item does sell for a grossly inflated price, it could actually be some kind of money laundering scheme. I assume law enforcement is probably on the lookout for such suspicious sales and some bot would notice if a buyer or seller had a large volume of them.
    Reply
  • Alvar "Miles" Udell
    They'll also do that so they can cut the price to the regular price and advertise it as something like an 80% price cut, but even for the Amazon Resale listing price I'd grab an AIO before I'd grab that.
    Reply
  • COLGeek
    Surely a typo/mistake.
    Reply
  • bit_user
    COLGeek said:
    Surely a typo/mistake.
    Could also be algorithmic pricing, though.

    Try searching on amazon for some random, unremarkable video card, sometime. Then, switch the order of the results to "Price: highest first". I just did that with the RX 550, which launched in 2018 with a MSRP of $79.

    Here, I found one listed for $1,020.45!
    https://www.amazon.com/Graphics-CardsFanless-Cooling-Motherboard-Computer/dp/B0CWKPFL9P/
    That's the most extreme example, but there are like a dozen models listed for over $500. It makes no actual sense to price a RX 550 that high. It's an old card that's not particularly in demand. Even during the crypto boom, you still probably wouldn't have seen them selling for that much!

    Here's one resource that delves into a little depth on the algorithms Amazon uses.
    https://medium.com/codex/algorithmic-pricing-part-i-the-risks-and-opportunities-d7ae8a9e9484
    They also mention Amazon's API, and here's where I think some of the most egregious examples might occur. I suspect these are the result of 3rd party plugins, but it's not something I have any direct knowledge about. When it comes to items sold by Amazon, itself, they typically do not have runaway issues like I tend to see with marketplace sellers. I guess that's what makes this cooler a somewhat unique example.
    Reply
  • commandobunnysuit
    Very possible, when I worked for a bleeding edge semiconductor company. Occasionally another group would reach out across the company for obsolete parts to assemble a PC to look at issues that would come up many years in the past to get a better understanding of when the silicon changed... If it was a critical issue, I could see the company spending that kind of money to replicate a problem. Might just be a hopeful person waiting for a desperate company to pay for a part that can't be found.
    Reply
  • bit_user
    commandobunnysuit said:
    ... I could see the company spending that kind of money to replicate a problem. Might just be a hopeful person waiting for a desperate company to pay for a part that can't be found.
    To the extent this pricing behavior is defensible, I think the algorithms are trying to exploit the rapid appreciation in value that can happen when demand for something suddenly surges, or other situations where someone has some kind of need to build a machine to some exact spec.

    However, what's a little weird about this case is it's no a marketplace seller, but actually sold by Amazon. I can't remember another time I've seen such a wild price from Amazon, themselves. So, either Amazon made a change to their pricing algorithms (which I suppose happens quite a lot) and this listing just stumbled into a corner case, or it's as @COLGeek says and is due to some sort of operator error.

    I checked the camelcamel listing for it, but it shows the current price at $23.70 and lists the product as out-of-stock (Amazon claims to have 20 in stock). At no scale does the price history show wild gyrations, either.
    https://camelcamelcamel.com/product/B01N0XT71U/
    Reply