Just Like That, Nvidia's RTX 3050 8GB Is Out of Stock Everywhere

Today marks the official launch date of Nvidia's entry-level GeForce RTX 3050 8GB graphics card, and as expected, retail availability is proving nearly impossible to find. Just a few hours in and all RTX 3050 GPUs are out of stock from the select few retailers that are selling RTX 3050s in the United States. Even if you did manage to find a card in stock, there was a good chance it was priced well above Nvidia's baseline MSRP.

Newegg appears to have the largest selection of RTX 3050 models at its warehouses, but to combat shortages, Newegg locked all 3050 sales to its shuffle program. That means you can only buy a card if Newegg's program picks your ticket at random. Newegg does have a complete list models with many cards priced at $249, but again, we don't know how many of each model are available. There may only be a handful of $249 cards, but many more for the $329 to $489 models.

Here's the rundown of card prices we're currently tracking. Note that Nvidia only has limited ability to set the MSRP on card models from its partners, and it looks like only cards using reference clocks (1777MHz boost clock) use the $249 price point. All factory overclocked cards cost significantly more.

Besides Newegg, Best Buy and MicroCenter are the only other vendors we are aware of that have RTX 3050 listings displayed. Best Buy has just two 3050's on display, the Gigabyte RTX 3050 Gaming OC and Eagle OC. As expected, all SKUs are currently out of stock.

Micro Center has some RTX 3050 variants available at some of its local stores, but the volume isn't great. In the select few stores which have cards on sale, availability is severely limited according to Micro Center. If you have a store near you, Micro Center is selling the Zotac Twin Edge OC, Asus Dual Fan OC, Gigabyte Gaming OC, and Asus ROG Strix OC model — and again, all cost more than $249 because they're factory overclocked.

This perhaps leaves eBay as a last resort to purchase an RTX 3050, as long as scalper fees are in your budget. There are only three listings on eBay (at the time of writing), but they are incredibly expensive. Ranging from a minimum of $743 for a Zotac Twin Edge, all the way to a whopping $2,026 for a Palit StormX shipped from the UK. Thanks but no thanks. At those GPU prices, you should pick up an RTX 3060 or RX 6600 XT instead.