A massive restock of Nvidia RTX 30-series GPUs is happening at Best Buy today
Get in line early Thursday, August 26, if you want a chance to pick up a shiny new GPU.
Update: This story was originally posted on August 25, 2021, and has been updated to reflect the graphics card restock today, August 26.
A major restock of Nvidia RTX 30-series graphics cards is happening at Best Buy stores across the US today, August 26, 2021. The drop will include highly sought-after graphics cards such as the RTX 3080 Ti, RTX 3080, and RTX 3090, so pay attention weary PC builders.
The GeForce graphics cards are limited to one per customer, notably not one per SKU, and only available at certain locations. That will hopefully ease a little of the mad dash to checkout that we've come to expect with online retail this past year. That said, I do suspect we'll see a few arriving at the break of dawn for a chance at a new GPU, so don't dawdle if you hope to be among them.
You can check out the full list of participating stores over on the Best Buy website (Update: after briefly redirecting to an error page on August 25, this page appears to once again be online). Or, if you prefer to live dangerously, you can go off a leaked stock list by location that has been released by Twitter account GPURestock.
Here are the Best Buy Stock Numbers & Store List for the Founders Edition 3000 Series In-Store RestockAbout 17,000 units totalOrder in the sheet is : 3090, 3080, 3070, 3060 Ti, 3080 Ti & 3070 Ti https://t.co/LMOQMjwI9b pic.twitter.com/w1PI7FtLNEAugust 24, 2021
According to this helpful spreadsheet, Best Buy will be getting in stock of the RTX 3090, RTX 3080 Ti, RTX 3080, RTX 3070 Ti, RTX 3070, and RTX 3060 Ti. Between 10–50 of each, depending on the location.
There will be no RTX 3060 12GB stock according to this information, though.
How to buy a graphics card: tips on buying a graphics card in the barren silicon landscape that is 2021
Best Buy is the retailer of choice for Nvidia Founder's Edition graphics cards, so it's assumed that's what you'll find in-store today. The aforementioned leak also suggests that's the case, but Best Buy has not confirmed this on its website.
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In order to get your hands on one, you'll need to be an early riser. Staff will begin handing out tickets that guarantee you a graphics card on the day from 7:30am, and the store will open from 8am. That's all local time, depending on the store in question.
Once the tickets are all distributed and the graphics cards accounted for, that's it for this round of restocks. God speed.
Jacob earned his first byline writing for his own tech blog. From there, he graduated to professionally breaking things as hardware writer at PCGamesN, and would go on to run the team as hardware editor. He joined PC Gamer's top staff as senior hardware editor before becoming managing editor of the hardware team, and you'll now find him reporting on the latest developments in the technology and gaming industries and testing the newest PC components.