By Christopher Groux
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NVIDIA's GeForce RTX 3060 graphics card goes on sale February 25 for $329 MSRP, and while it may be the hardware maker's lowest-tier offering, the card is still likely to be in extremely high demand and short supply. With that in mind, we'll reveal when the 3060 is expected to go on sale, offer a few retailer links and share our own tips to ensure you get an order in on time. The rush is about to begin once more, so here's everything you should know.
What time does the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 release?
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While all previous NVIDIA RTX GPUs have released around 9 a.m. EST on the day of release, NVIDIA has officially announced different plans for the 3060. In an email sent to press, NVIDIA said the RTX 3060 is expected to be available at nationwide retailers around 12 p.m. EST on February 25.
That being said, as we saw with Sony's PS5 pre-order fiasco back in September, it may not hurt to have your tabs ready at 9 a.m. EST just in case some stores decide to release their stock a little early. Even though NVIDIA has likely established strict sale provisions with its partnered stores, it never hurts to be overprepared on GPU release day.
Pre-order links
Now that you know precisely when the RTX 3060 is expected to go on sale, it's time to figure out where you might want to buy one. NVIDIA isn't selling a Founder's Edition of the 3060, so that means all versions of the card will be offered via third-party manufacturers. In keeping with that idea, you may want to start your search at third-party stores before visiting NVIDIA's own site.
This list of retailers isn't completely exhaustive, but here are some of the best places to secure a 3060 on launch day. We've cached the pages to search for the 3060 already, so hopefully, they populate correctly once the cards go live.
B&H in particular has avoided the last few graphics card releases on launch day, but we thought it might be helpful to include the store on our list as an outlet once all the other options have been totally exhausted.
Best tips for ordering an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060
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You've got the official release time and a few links you might use to make your 3060 pre-order, so now we'll offer a few helpful tips to potentially allow you to get your card ahead of those pesky bots. Some of these tips may be obvious to experienced online shoppers, but here are a few retail tactics we've learned after successfully securing a few hot tech items during the pandemic.
- Pre-enter payment info: With the exception of the official NVIDIA store, all the retailers listed above allow customers to enter their payment info for an account at any time before a purchase is made. With that in mind, you should add every credit, debit or Paypal you intend to use for your store of choice in advance. When the rush of orders starts to come in, stores sell products to the ones who pay them the fastest. They're not going to wait for the person who's still entering their card number at checkout. If you don't like the security implications of storing credit cards, you can always delete the data after the sale is made.
- Follow some solid sources: While refreshing product pages over and over again sometimes works, it also doesn't hurt to set up alerts for some deal-focused Twitter accounts too. We're partial to accounts like Wario64 and IGN Deals that often provide retailer links or updates on item availability on a moment-to-moment basis. The minutes it takes for a retailer stock alert email to send won't be fast enough for the 3060, so depend on Twitter for faster information.
- Apps are fast: Also related to speed, many shoppers find that purchasing hot items through smartphone apps is faster than using a desktop website. This is especially true if you have your payment info entered in advance. Some have also found that the RTX GPU product pages display first on mobile too. We're still personally partial to desktop ourselves, but folks with a good phone may want to consider this route.
- Use your best hardware: It goes without saying that, given you're about to be interacting with websites and apps that will be severely overloaded, you should always enter the battle using the best hardware possible. Even though you're only working from a browser, you still need to make sure there are no hardware-based issues that might slow you down. Especially in the GPU race, every second counts.
- Sneaky Best Buy: While most sites like Amazon and Newegg tend to sell out all their GPU stock immediately, Best Buy tries to stagger its sales in an effort to ensure real people can secure their goods. This means that, when it comes to sale times, Best Buy may not have any cards available till 12:30 p.m. EST or even 1 p.m. Even after launch, the "add to cart" button may flicker on and off at an unpredictable interval. Watch Best Buy closely, because you may luck out once the 3060 sells out elsewhere.
The NVIDIA GeForce 3060 goes on sale February 25 for $329 MSRP.
Are you planning to order an RTX 3060 on Thursday? What are your best pre-order tips for securing hot items? Tell us in the comments section!
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