Buying the latest gaming hardware is a notoriously difficult experience, but this year is particularly bad. All of Nvidia’s new RTX 30-series GPUs—as well as the upcoming PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X—sell out in seconds once orders open up.
While bot accounts make many of these purchases, EVGA has a new tool that may increase your chances of successfully purchasing a brand-new Nvidia graphics card.
The manufacturer’s new virtual queue lets you sign up for a waitlist that guarantees you a chance to buy the RTX 3080 once more are available. You don’t have to keep the page open on your PC or smartphone, and you don’t need to continually refresh your browser. When it’s finally your turn, you’ll receive an email notification that the RTX 3080 is in stock, and EVGA will reserve one unit for you. If you don’t buy it within an eight-hour window, however, the reservation moves onto the next person in line.
You can sign up for EVGA’s virtual queue here, though anyone who signed up for in-stock alerts from EVGA are on the waitlist already. The email you use for the virtual queue must match your EVGA store account to buy the GPU at checkout.
Reservations are made in order of signups, so the quicker you join the virtual queue, the sooner you can potentially buy that RTX 3080 you’re seeking. The virtual queue system is much better than the free-for-all model that most retailers use, but EVGA warns that you may have to wait until at least the end of the year before you get a chance to buy the RTX 3080.
If you’re impatient, the RTX 3080 is available from several other retailers—but without a guaranteed reservation, it’ll be much harder to successfully buy one before they sell out. Here are a few tips that can help:
Sign up for restock notifications with Nowinstock, plus any alerts you can get directly from the online stores you use.
Use Visualping.io to monitor websites and receive notifications when store listings are updated.
Create an account for each store you use and stay signed in as much as you can.
Have all your checkout information saved in your browser’s autofill or a password manager to make the purchasing process as quick as possible.
Think happy thoughts. You’ll get that graphics card someday.