Figuring out how to buy an Nvidia RTX 3080 is a bit of a nightmare right now. Though admittedly not as tricksome as trying to bag yourself one of the red team's Big Navi GPUs however. The hows and wherefores of buying an AMD RX 6800 XT are even more of a struggle. The demand for all of the green team's next-gen Ampere GPUs has been so high that it has far out-stripped supply.
Find RTX 3080s in the US:
Nvidia.com
Amazon
Walmart
Best Buy
Newegg
B&H
Find RTX 3080s in the UK:
Overclockers
Scan
Ebuyer
Find RTX 3080s in Australia:
Mwave
Scorptec
PLE Computers
Computer Alliance
And so, months after launch, it's still all but impossible to buy a standalone card in either RTX 3070, RTX 3080, or RTX 3090 trim. Even with Cyber Monday now here, there's no widely available restock—unless you're looking for a whole new pre-built PC. Nvidia has even apologized after certain automated systems bought up all available cards. It was the bots. Damn them bots. We knew the robots would be coming for us eventually, and this is surely the beginning. And with Cyberpunk 2077 out soon, the GPU shortage truly stings.
But not all hope is lost.
But yes, it's not a problem exclusive to Nvidia, with AMD's RX 6800 XT and RX 6800 GPU launches delivering an arguably worse experience for the serious graphics card hunter. These barely even seemed to appear before they were gone again—no doubt exacerbated by all the miffed Nvidia fans, trying to move to the red team. And we have yet to spot any of the third-party cards for AMD's new GPUs, either.
GPUs aren't the only component affected. AMD's new Ryzen 5000 CPUs are still conspicuous by their absence from retail, it's practically impossible to bag a new PSU, and the best SSDs and RAM are the only components we can rely on to actually be in stock anywhere. Oh, and GTX 1050 Tis. You seem to be able to pay over the odds for those if you really want. Please don't.
So yes, this is a terrible time to try and buy a graphics card, but most especially if you're trying to buy a brand new, next-gen GPU like the RTX 3080. That doesn't mean it's impossible, however: you just might have to be a bit creative, or y'know, buy a whole PC.
Whatever it takes
How to bag an RTX 30-series graphics card before Christmas
Realistically, the only way you're going to get your hands on some Nvidia Ampere gaming power this side of the new year is by buying a pre-built gaming PC. Spending a couple of thousand dollars on a new system might seem like overkill, but at some point the upgrade dance will run its course and you'll find you're hitting more expensive bottlenecks.
You lack a decent SSD, for example, but your current setup doesn't support the latest drives, or your CPU is holding back your GPU and now you need a whole new chip and motherboard.
At some point you'll need to start a new build from scratch and, these days, whether you build it yourself or get a system builder to do it for you barely makes a difference in overall price, only in your choice of parts. But even that has gone by the wayside as there are now fewer GPU options than the great crypto mining wars of 2017.
The Alienware Aurora R11, and Ryzen-based R10 for that matter, are our picks for the best gaming PC right now, and the Intel-based version at least has already been updated to include the latest Nvidia graphics cards. And, what's more, there's an actual, honest-to-goodness Cyber Monday gaming PC deal on the RTX 3080 and RTX 3070 Auroras too.
It might only be $50 off, but it's a discount on a shipping Ampere machine, one of the only reasonably priced and assured ways to get an RTX 3000 series card right now. And if you mess around with the configurator you can squeeze the price down a touch.
We've checked out the delivery times for a couple of different locations in the US and we're seeing Dell being able to drop an RTX 3080-powered gaming PC to our doors within two weeks. In some places on the West Coast you can get it delivered on December 3. That's next week.
You could have an RTX 3080-powered Alienware Aurora machine next week, assuming your budget can handle the weight.
There is a $50 discount on this ABS Gladiator RTX 3070 system over at Newegg right now. We've gone all the way through checkout and we can get the system shipped to our New York office by December 8. This year. Ampere for Christmas right there.
It's an interesting system, in that it's sporting a last-gen Intel Core i7 9700F CPU, but that's still a very capable eight-core processor, and great for gaming. With the RTX 3070 delivering RTX 2080 Ti-level gaming performance it's a quality rig.
But Alienware isn't the only system builder offering RTX 3080 or RTX 3070-based gaming PCs, as iBuyPower has also got a bunch of Ampere rigs, at lower prices, that it promises will also be in your hands ahead of Christmas.
Origin PC is also in the race to get you a new Nvidia GPU before Christmas, but it's not going to be an RTX 3080. OriginPC is estimating that it will be around 29 to 31 business days right now before it can ship you an RTX 3080 machine, but only 6 to 8 days for either an RTX 3070, or the RTX 3090 big boi.
There was a time earlier this week when you could have bagged a Corsair RTX 30-series machine this side of the new year, but unfortunately the Corsair Vengeance i7200, which ships with an RTX 3080 inside it, seems to be out of stock for now. Looks like even Corsair has run out of Ampere GPUs.
But the Vengeance i7200 is a super powerful machine, but then it's also super expensive. Inside is the 10-core, 20-thread Core i9 10850K, 32GB of 3,200MHz RAM (of course there is, it's Corsair), a 1TB NVMe SSD, a 2TB HDD, and that all-important RTX 3080.
Maingear is offering a healthy $300 discount on its RTX 3070-powered VYBE Gaming PCs as a Cyber Monday offer at the moment, though isn't able to guarantee that you'll be getting the system by Christmas I'm afraid.
Just the card, please
How to buy an RTX 3080, RTX 3090, or RTX 3070 as an upgrade
Cyber Monday 2020 deals: the place to go for the all the best Cyber Monday bargains.
If you're only looking to upgrade your current PC, and don't want, or can't afford, to take the plunge on a whole new machine it's tempting to say you're almost entirely out of luck. We've spoken to Nvidia representatives who assure us that stock is regularly going out to the retailers and that all it takes is a little persistence to track an Ampere card down.
I think they might be right, were it not for the fact that there are a whole load of pre-orders still waiting to be fulfilled and that a whole load of stock will be going their way instead of suddenly appearing on the various retailer sites waiting to be snapped up.
The Nvidia store is a good place to start if you want a one-stop-shop to check on availability. But if you're after Founders Edition cards, we've got some bad news, as it's stopped selling them direct, so you'll have to take a trip to Best Buy anyway. But they're all sold out, so that barely matters today.
- Nvidia Store - Eventually Founders Edition and retailer links
- Amazon - Third-party overclocked cards
- Walmart - Third-party and overclocked cards
- B&H Photo - Third-party and overclocked cards
- Best Buy - Founders Edition, third-party, and overclocked cards
- Newegg - Third-party and overclocked cards
Still, keeping an eye out at these retailers for third-party versions of Nvidia's finest ever graphics cards may still yield reward. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but sometime. Probably after Christmas and well into the new year, sadly.
