(Credit: Best Buy)
If you got up early today to buy Nvidia’s newest PC graphics cards, you probably came away disappointed as the GeForce RTX 5090 and 5080 sold out instantly at online retailers.
"Never went into stock," wrote one user in Discord chat devoted to snagging GPUs.
We were among the gaggle of consumers who had their computers and smartphones ready to buy the products from Best Buy and Newegg on Thursday morning. Online sales were expected to start at 6 a.m. PST/9 a.m. EST — and that’s just what happened.
At about 6:01 a.m. PT, Best Buy kicked off sales for the RTX 5090 and 5080 Founders Edition models, allowing customers to add the products to their carts. We clicked as fast as possible, which prompted Best Buy’s site to place us into a digital queue for the graphics cards.
Minutes later, the site gave us an error: "Something went wrong," the site said before booting us out of the line.
We immediately added the product again, which sent us back into the digital queue. But by 6:06 a.m., Best Buy’s site gave us the bad news: "Sorry, this item has sold out. Please check back later, we'll hopefully have more soon!"
We held out hope we could buy the RTX 5080 Founders Edition model. But at 6:11 a.m., Best Buy’s site once again told us all supplies were gone.
Attempts to buy other RTX 5000 models from Best Buy and Newegg also came up empty. In Newegg’s case, the retailer gave us a chance to add a few RTX 5090 models to our cart. But as we tried to finish the checkout process, the site told us the item had just gone out of stock.
Many other users had the same experience: “Had 2 phones refreshing Best Buy and Nvidia to get a 5090, once 6am hit, it took a few seconds to load and Nvidia said ‘no results found’ and Best Buy no longer coming soon, just sold out,” wrote one user on Reddit.
Indeed, the stock ran out so fast that it gave us flashbacks to the 2020 launch of Nvidia's RTX 3000. Another Reddit user added: "I have 10+ years of experience trying to purchase a GPU at launch, and this was by far the worst one yet. None of them have been good since COVID, but at least you would see a few cards available in an instant before they sold out. With this one, all cards went from coming soon to sold out, except BB [Best Buy] which was a lost cause."
Still, not everyone came up empty today. We’ve seen screenshots online showing that at least a few consumers were able to snag GPUs from Best Buy and Newegg. But it looks like the vast majority will need to wait until Nvidia shores up its supplies. In a forum notice, the company told consumers earlier this week it’s working to ship new units every day to retailers.
Best Buy decided to sell the GPUs on launch day as an online-only sale. Meanwhile, Micro Center is offering it in stores, which has created large lines of people waiting outside its US locations. But based on user reports, most Micro Center stores had fewer than a dozen units on hand — a sign that supplies for the GPU model are extremely low.