Best Buy will have RTX 30-series graphics cards on August 26, 2021

By Robert Carnevale
last updated

This is a PSA.

NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 (Image credit: Harish Jonnalagadda / Windows Central)

What you need to know

  • Best Buy will have RTX 30-series GPUs on sale on August 26, 2021.
  • They will likely sell out immediately.
  • If you want a shot at getting one, you need to start camping out right now.

Update: Best Buy's RTX 30-series store locator event page seems to be experiencing intermittent issues.

The best graphics cards have been in critically short supply for some time now. Everything about the cards is being tracked, from unit stocks on eBay, to how much over MSRP the GPUs are being sold for by retailers. In short, it's madness — madness Best Buy is capitalizing on, hence why it's giving interested consumers notice that on August 26, 2021, it will have limited stocks of NVIDIA's coveted RTX 30-series cards available.

This influx of fresh GPU stock is only going on at select Best Buys, so use the retailer's store locator tool (opens in new tab) to make sure you're not going to be camping out in front of an ordinary store devoid of RTX 30-series cards. And make no mistake, you will be camping. Just a few short months ago in June, we all got a front-row seat to a Best Buy RTX buying party, wherein people were sleeping in lawn chairs in front of the store and grabbing spots nearly 24 hours in advance.

Expect competition to be fierce, should you choose to attempt an RTX card purchase on August 26. Card purchases will be limited to one per person, and the odds are that if you get there with just a few hours to go, you won't be walking away with the GPU of your dreams.

Alternatively, you can just wait out the GPU shortage from the comfort of your home and pick up an RTX 3060 Ti with ease when the semiconductor shortage lessens in 2023 (maybe).

Robert Carnevale
Robert Carnevale

Robert Carnevale is the News Editor for Windows Central. He's a big fan of Kinect (it lives on in his heart), Sonic the Hedgehog, and the legendary intersection of those two titans, Sonic Free Riders. He is the author of Cold War 2395. Have a useful tip? Send it to robert.carnevale@futurenet.com.

5 Comments
  • All the links to Best Buy are down.
  • For whatever reason, Best Buy's page keeps going live then going down. Every few refreshes the result flip-flops on my end.
  • Who waits in line at a store to buy something these days? Why not just sell online and limit one per customer?
  • To answer your questions in order: 1) Many people, hence why Best Buy does this time and time again. 2) Because people can't use bots to cheat the system in real life, and Best Buy knows this.
  • It's nuts that people are camping out at a store to buy 400 dollar plus product. It would be more effective to have a ticketing - you buy the card and you get your ticket number. You go in-store the next day, with your ticket confirmation and payment card. The caveat is that you must pick up the card with 24 hours otherwise it gets released to the open stock. Upon release, the charge against payment details is refunded. Upon pick up - these details are then locked for a month across all stores - preventing people going to multiple stores with a view to scalp / buying multiple cards. The latter is to alleviate the strain on the supply - allowing folks who haven't brought a card yet to be able buy one. As it stands this insanity signals to oems that people will do whatever to get hold of a gpu - price be damned.