Well, that was a terrible experience.
Nvidia’s RTX 3070 went on sale this morning at 6 a.m. PST, but the card immediately went out of stock across major retailers, leaving consumers—including us—annoyed, but not surprised.
The outcome is a repeat of the RTX 3080 and 3090 launches; both products sold out on day one almost instantaneously, sparking customer outrage. To try and break the cycle, Nvidia decided to delay the RTX 3070’s release by two weeks in the hopes it could build up more inventory.
Unfortunately, today’s launch was another kick to the groin. We were among the users hoping to buy the RTX 3070 Founders Edition from Nvidia’s website. The sun wasn’t even out, and yet our adrenaline was up in an all-out effort to obtain this damn card.
But when 6 a.m. rolled along, we immediately began to worry. Nvidia’s website failed to offer up a buy button, even after multiple refreshes.
Minutes later, Nvidia’s website displayed a “See All Buying Options” button. Clicking it brought us to another page, which revealed Nvidia didn’t plan on selling the product directly at all. Instead, the company redirected us to buy the RTX 3070 from Best Buy.
For a moment, we were relieved. Best Buy’s website showed an actual “Add to Cart” button. But after we clicked it, we were met with more disappointing news. Instead of actually adding the RTX 3070 to our cart, the page told us to wait, and offered some follow-up instructions.
“Every few minutes, we’re going to release more inventory,” said a pop-up window. “Shortly, the button below will turn back to yellow (unless we sell out). At that point, try adding it to your cart again.”
So we waited. And waited. Then, finally, we were actually able to add the RTX 3070 to our cart and begin the checkout process.
SUCCESS! WE DID IT! We’re on our way to buying the card!
Oh, wait… No. Never mind. Sigh…
As we tried to clear the checkout process, an error occurred and the RTX 3070 was gone from our cart. Later, we realized we wouldn’t have been able to buy the card anyway. Apparently, Best Buy had no more stock in our area in San Francisco. We tried repeating the process again and again, in the hope something might change. But by 6:30 a.m., Best Buy’s website said the product was out of stock.
The closest we came to obtaining the card was at Newegg. We managed to add a Zotac model RTX 3070 card to our cart. But we failed to complete the checkout process in time, and the card was gone by 6:04 a.m.
The situation appears to be no different for other consumers who tried and failed to buy the product on launch day. Nvidia’s official forums are already full of angry complaints about the RTX 3070’s limited supplies.
“I had it on Best Buy’s website and THEN ALL OF THE F****** SUDDEN IT SAID THEY WEREN’T DELIVERING ANY MORE,” wrote one user.
“Looks like the RTX 3070 launch is a bust too! I could not find a single card on any sites…” wrote another.
Indeed, for us, the whole experience felt like being toyed with. In one moment we had the card, and then in the next, we didn’t. And now, regret. Our major error was not trying to buy the card directly from Best Buy in the first place at 6 a.m.
Not everyone came up empty-handed on launch day. Already, some scalpers are selling the card on eBay, and showing off screenshots to prove they successfully ordered the card on day one. Others managed to buy the card from physical retail stores and have it in hand. The prices range from $750 to over $1,200 for what’s normally a $499 product.
PCMag is also in a Discord chat server full of Nvidia users out to buy the card. And at least a few users reported success buying the card from Best Buy and Newegg. Users on Nvidia’s Reddit forum also appear to have had some better success buying from Best Buy and physical Micro Center stores.
We reached out to Nvidia for comment and will update the story if we hear back. But the company expects demand for the RTX 3000 series to outstrip supplies for the rest of the year. Perhaps your best bet to obtain the card is to try EVGA.com, which has created an online queue notification system to sell the cards to consumers as more stock arrives.
