RTX 3060 card prices - jacked up because of the shortage?

[oi you]

Hi, 

 

A bit about me: I'm new to pc building, or just the inner workings of computers in general, I use them but never quite figured them out. When my pc started dying, I decided to start working to build my first pc. I have a decent budget, and was looking for something mid-high end. After asking around, a couple of my friends recommended the RTX 3060 series to me. Shopping around a bit, I thought the price of the RTX 3060 Ventus was within my budget, although it was roughly priced at ~$1000. I figured it was probably the standard price but I could not find any in stock either way.

 

However, when I went to Nvidia's site itself for the item, it showed that it was supposed to be sold at $329.99 (although also out of stock). Is the $600+ price gap purely from the demand? Just being curious, I would probably still buy it either way but if it is indeed overpriced as of now, happy to take recommendations for a similar substitute.

 

Also, what is the procedure to buy these since the vendors have all seem to have put some sort of restriction on it and it seems like they don't even take pre-orders either.

[GodOfROG]

Welcome to 2021 - i paid 1100USD for 1 3070 FROM a major retailer - this was them and not a scalper.

 

 1 buy used - 2. shop for a deal 3. wait it out.

 

I also see 2080 supers for about 1k new too.

[bmx6454]

450-600$ is roughly the msrp(if you can find one). there are a couple ways to get one for msrp. first thing, definitely make sure to sign up for the newegg shuffle daily, you may get one that way eventually. microcenter and bestbuy do in person events, if you have the time/patience, you could probably obtain one that way during a scheduled irl drop. zotac almost always has cards in stock, but they charge scalper prices(sometimes even more$), hence why they always have stock. it's going to be tough either way, but with some effort/luck, you can get one for much less than 1000$.

[transgxrl_j4yde]

This the problem that I've been having with my build. Luckily I have a decent GTX 970 SSC that I bought from my roommate not too long ago. It still runs most of the games that I want to play while I wait out the silicon shortage. Although, I don't plan on upgrading to a 3060, and I plan on going with a GTX 1660 Super, there is still a $300 price difference from the MSRP with that card also in this current market.

Buying used is a decent option but it can also be slightly risky. While eBay does have buyer's protection from bad products being sold, it can still cost a lot of time to send parts back and forth. That being said, I did buy a used AMD 3600x from there a few weeks ago and it performs flawlessly as it seems that more people are selling legit products these days.

 

I've been watching Tech new sites for the last few weeks and everyone is predicting that the shortage will start to pick back up between Q2 next year and 2023.

[ADarkBard]

3 hours ago, oi you said:

Hi, 

 

A bit about me: I'm new to pc building, or just the inner workings of computers in general, I use them but never quite figured them out. When my pc started dying, I decided to start working to build my first pc. I have a decent budget, and was looking for something mid-high end. After asking around, a couple of my friends recommended the RTX 3060 series to me. Shopping around a bit, I thought the price of the RTX 3060 Ventus was within my budget, although it was roughly priced at ~$1000. I figured it was probably the standard price but I could not find any in stock either way.

 

However, when I went to Nvidia's site itself for the item, it showed that it was supposed to be sold at $329.99 (although also out of stock). Is the $600+ price gap purely from the demand? Just being curious, I would probably still buy it either way but if it is indeed overpriced as of now, happy to take recommendations for a similar substitute.

 

Also, what is the procedure to buy these since the vendors have all seem to have put some sort of restriction on it and it seems like they don't even take pre-orders either.

The problem standing between you and a graphics card at MSRP are scalpers and bots. Even when you know of a drop good luck getting the card in your cart and paid for before a bit of code swipes it out from under you. Truth be told I don't see this going away even as supply increases, the scalpers will still get to the cards first. Not to mention now that Nvidia and AMD know people will pay double MSRP they won't be so quick to find that lowest number any more.

[Alcarin]

4 hours ago, oi you said:

Hi, 

 

A bit about me: I'm new to pc building, or just the inner workings of computers in general, I use them but never quite figured them out. When my pc started dying, I decided to start working to build my first pc. I have a decent budget, and was looking for something mid-high end. After asking around, a couple of my friends recommended the RTX 3060 series to me. Shopping around a bit, I thought the price of the RTX 3060 Ventus was within my budget, although it was roughly priced at ~$1000. I figured it was probably the standard price but I could not find any in stock either way.

 

However, when I went to Nvidia's site itself for the item, it showed that it was supposed to be sold at $329.99 (although also out of stock). Is the $600+ price gap purely from the demand? Just being curious, I would probably still buy it either way but if it is indeed overpriced as of now, happy to take recommendations for a similar substitute.

 

Also, what is the procedure to buy these since the vendors have all seem to have put some sort of restriction on it and it seems like they don't even take pre-orders either.

The current market condition is due in part to the chip shortage, as well as the current cryptocurrency craze. It's extremely profitable to mine on RTX 3000 series cards, and it's even lucrative enough to mine on just about any decent mid-high end GPU since Pascal and Polaris. 

 

This insane market scenario is expected to continue through 2022 and possibly into 2023 to an extent, though I wouldn't be surprised if it continues beyond that to a point. Graphics cards require very large chips and a lot of memory and power delivery IC's, so they are vulnerable to production issues and shortages like now. 

 

My recommendation is to join some stock alert Discord servers and monitor your notifications. You must react very quickly if something catches your eye. Have your payment info already set in advance on the retail sites you prefer. As far as servers go, I joined iFixit, StockRadar, and StockDrops. There's others but those 3 are among the most reliable and consistent. 

 

Persistence and patience are key. Good hunting.