Nvidia RTX 3050 desktop GPU goes out of stock within few hours after launch, ludicrous markup as high as US$600 for some AiB variants
The new entry-level Nvidia GeForce RTX 3050 became available yesterday and has unsurprisingly become impossible to purchase just within few hours of launch. Once again stock issues have resulted in a large disparity in pricing compared to Nvidia's US$250 MSRP for the card.
Nvidia's add-in board (AiB) partners, such as Gigabyte, MSI, EVGA, et.al., generally price their offerings higher since they add a few niceties in terms of cooling, acoustics, overclocking, and other perks. However, none of the cards from Nvidia's partners currently seem to be available at major retailers.
Cowcotland put out direct purchase links of French e-tailers stocking MSI, Asus, Inno3D, and Gigabyte RTX 3050 cards retailing at €279, and every store has now put an "out of stock" notice. Some users have also reported that retailers are selling the RTX 3050 for a significant markup that ranges anywhere between €389 and €539!
There's not much luck with Newegg either, which apparently received quite a large initial stock of the RTX 3050. Newegg has RTX 3050 cards from EVGA, Zotac, Asus, MSI, and Gigabyte, but they have been locked under the store's shuffle program. This means you will have to count your blessings for Newegg to randomly select your ticket and allow the sale. The pricing of the RTX 3050 at Newegg seems to range from US$250 for an Asus Phoenix RTX 3050 single fan or a Zotac RTX 3050 Twin Edge to US$490 for an Asus ROG Strix RTX 3050 with a triple-fan cooler.
Best Buy only offers two RTX 3050 variants at the moment — the Gigabyte RTX 3050 Eagle OC for US$350 and the Gigabyte RTX 3050 Gaming OC with a triple-fan setup for US$380. Needless to say, both are out of stock.
Just like the early days of the original Ampere launch, we are finding cards being sold for ridiculous prices on sites like eBay. For example, there's a Palit StormX RTX 3050 listing that is currently going for US$569, which is indubitably a high markup for an entry-level GPU — one that Nvidia markets as a viable upgrade from the GTX 1050 and GTX 1650. Tom's Hardware even reports that there's a Palit StormX 3050 on eBay for a cool US$2,026, but that listing seems to have been taken down now.
We are not sure when the situation will improve but given that the RTX 3050 targets the entry-level, we suggest not getting your hopes too high as there will be considerable demand in this price segment. Looks like even in 2022, the only viable options to get the latest GPUs from either Nvidia or AMD remain opting for gaming laptops or taking the console route.
