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Nvidia's RTX 3090 Graphics Card Launch Is Another Letdown

Did you wake up at 6 a.m. PT to try and buy the RTX 3090 card on launch day? We did, but like many other consumers, we came up with nothing.

Michael Kan
 & Michael Kan Principal Reporter

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(Credit: Nvidia)

Nvidia’s launch of the RTX 3090 graphics card has been no better than the RTX 3080: Again, the product was almost impossible to buy.

The RTX 3090 was supposed to go on sale via Nvidia’s website at 6 a.m. PST today. But when it was time, the company sent us through a loop of product pages before showing us an “Out of Stock” tab on the UK version of the site.

Numerous other users reported a similar situation on Twitter. 

We kept refreshing the RTX 3090 product page only to see the “Out of Stock” tab again and again. Only at around 6:11 a.m., did we notice a change: the page began showing us an “Add to Cart” button. However, we didn’t get much further than that. Once we added the RTX 3090 to our cart, and tried to check out, Nvidia’s web page simply stalled. We did this several times, but got the same result. By 6:30 a.m., the page was no longer showing an "Add to Cart" button and the Out of Stock tab returned.

Nvidia's website stalling on the check out process (Credit: Nvidia)

The launch day problems echo what happened with the RTX 3080, which launched last week. PC gamers hoping to buy the card on day one from Nvidia say the company’s website instantly began showing an out-of-stock notice when the sales began at 6 a.m.

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Nvidia later blamed the rocky rollout on a flood of traffic to the website, which was later overrun with bots from resellers purchasing the company’s stock of RTX 3080 Founders Edition cards. In response, the company said it was upgrading its online store with more capacity and bot protections. 

Nevertheless, Nvidia warned the RTX 3090 might be hard to come by during today’s first day of sales. “We want to apologize upfront that this will be in limited supply on launch day. We know this is frustrating, and we’re working with our partners to increase the supply in the weeks to come,” the company wrote in a post yesterday. 

Related

We’ve reached out to Nvidia about the launch day problems and we’ll update the story if we hear back. But not everyone came up empty-handed from Nvidia’s website. A reporter at The Verge posted on Twitter that he managed to snag one.  

The RTX 3090 was also hard to purchase at third-party retailers. The product seemed to immediately go out of stock on Newegg, Best Buy, and EVGA. In the meantime, eBay is already starting to list RTX 3090 units bought up by resellers with some prices reaching $2,799 to $3,000.

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About Our Expert

Michael Kan

Michael Kan

Principal Reporter

My Experience

I've been a journalist for over 15 years. I got my start as a schools and cities reporter in Kansas City and joined PCMag in 2017, where I cover satellite internet services, cybersecurity, PC hardware, and more. I'm currently based in San Francisco, but previously spent over five years in China, covering the country's technology sector.

Since 2020, I've covered the launch and explosive growth of SpaceX's Starlink satellite internet service, writing 600+ stories on availability and feature launches, but also the regulatory battles over the expansion of satellite constellations, fights with rival providers like AST SpaceMobile and Amazon, and the effort to expand into satellite-based mobile service. I've combed through FCC filings for the latest news and driven to remote corners of California to test Starlink's cellular service.

I also cover cyber threats, from ransomware gangs to the emergence of AI-based malware. In 2024 and 2025, the FTC forced Avast to pay consumers $16.5 million for secretly harvesting and selling their personal information to third-party clients, as revealed in my joint investigation with Motherboard.

I also cover the PC graphics card market. Pandemic-era shortages led me to camp out in front of a Best Buy to get an RTX 3000. I'm now following how the AI-driven memory shortage is impacting the entire consumer electronics market. I'm always eager to learn more, so please jump in the comments with feedback and send me tips.

The Best Tech I've Had:

  • My first video game console: a Nintendo Famicom
  • I loved my Sega Saturn despite PlayStation's popularity.
  • The iPod Video I received as a gift in college
  • Xbox 360 FTW
  • The Galaxy Nexus was the first smartphone I was proud to own.
  • The PC desktop I built in 2013, which still works to this day.

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