'I was hopeful': one lucky shopper ordered an RTX 4070 Super from Amazon for $40 and it wasn't just a rock in a box
What a lucky so-and-so.
If you've just bought yourself an RTX 4070 Super for approaching $600, look away now, as one Reddit user has managed to snag one for themselves for a little over 50 Canadian dollars, including shipping (which is around $40 in US money).
Originally posted on October 20, to the PCMR subreddit, user Vincenz_OB announced they had purchased the popular graphics card for $48.94 from Amazon.
This was met with disbelief, with one user saying: "On Amazon - a good deal on a Graphics Card is also known as a rock inside a nice box."
The reason many thought Vincenz would get a 'rock in a box' is because Amazon, being a huge multinational corporation, is believed to often check its returns through weight and seals on the box. Though less common now, there was a problem with the wrong Ryzen chips being sent to customers back in 2017. If you are clever and lucky enough, you could essentially tape up something heavy and send it back—play the odds that a firm dealing with a million packages a day wouldn't notice.
After just a single day (thanks Prime next-day shipping), the 4070 Super had arrived at Vincenz_OB's address, much to the disbelief of many a commenter.
I reached out to the original poster who told us: "With it being sold and shipped by Amazon, I was hopeful" but that they also tried to not "get too excited until it was delivered and unboxed".
This story was updated on October 25, to include the order confirmation sent to me by the original poster. As you can see from the screenshot above, they benefited from the exchange rate to Canadian dollars, making a $48 purchase go down to just over $40.
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I asked if they have had the chance to actually plug it in and try it out, to which they said "I tested it and ran a few games last and everything is running great. Couldn't be happier with the performance." In a comment to me, they praised how it handles ray tracing in the games they've tested specifically, and said it clearly outperforms their 3060.
Generally, it's not worth this kind of risk when buying second-hand or from a site you don't trust but, as long as you document the opening process and can verify what you have received, this is relatively low risk to do on Amazon. I'll be using the service quite a bit to check over the best Black Friday gaming PC deals as the big day draws near, though I don't expect to find anything this exciting.
Unfortunately for me, who just last week purchased the exact same card, the original poster managed to grab the very last one in stock.
Best CPU for gaming: Top chips from Intel and AMD.
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Best graphics card: Your perfect pixel-pusher awaits.
Best SSD for gaming: Get into the game first.
James is a more recent PC gaming convert, often admiring graphics cards, cases, and motherboards from afar. It was not until 2019, after just finishing a degree in law and media, that they decided to throw out the last few years of education, build their PC, and start writing about gaming instead. In that time, he has covered the latest doodads, contraptions, and gismos, and loved every second of it. Hey, it’s better than writing case briefs.