The best methods to score a graphics card in 2023 || The Struggle to Find a Graphics Card
How to Score a Graphics Card in 2021
The Struggle to Find a Graphics Card
So you're trying to finish your gaming PC build and you just can't find a graphics card. Or maybe you're a PC flipper like me and you're at a standstill because you just can't secure GPUs. If that's you, then sit back, relax, take a breath. It's really not as hard as you think. And today, I'm gonna help you out. Let's get into it.
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Method 1: Buying New Graphics Cards from Retailers
In today's video, I'm going to show you the three main different methods on how you can score a graphics card, no matter what your budget is. And I'll do my best to deliver as much value as possible to increase your chances of success for each of these methods. Just for some credentials onto why I'm someone that could be making this kind of video, here's a quick look at my GPU stash. And I promise I'm not trying to brag or flex. You guys have seen my videos and have seen all the builds that I'm selling on my website. I'm getting GPUs perfectly fine during this shortage. And no, barely any companies are actually sending them to me for free. The only GPUs that get sent to me these days are for day one embargo releases like the recent PowerColor 6600 card. So don't think for a second that I have any more of an advantage than you do when it comes to buying graphics cards. Now, I do technically have one advantage. This is actually kind of a big one. Since YouTube and my business are my full-time gig now, I have a lot more time than you guys do. And I'm not naive to think that that doesn't play a factor. If you want to buy a graphics card in 2021, you're gonna unfortunately have to sacrifice some of your time and put in the work like I'm doing almost every single day. With that aside, let's jump into the first method.
This one is probably the most obvious but definitely worth explaining, and that's simply buying new graphics cards from retailers like Newegg and Microcenter. If you live next to a Micro Center, then I'm sure you're already aware of this. But they've been having some pretty good stock lately at not so terrible prices. And if you live next to one, this definitely needs to be the highest method on your priority list, unless you're looking for a used budget card, which we'll talk about in just a second.
Now, yes, before you start pounding away on your keyboard, Micro Center can inflate the prices sometimes. But not for the most part. If there's ever a brand new GPU launch like the 6600 or 6600 XT, you can guarantee that they're gonna have a pretty beefy stock of them and they're not gonna be terrible prices. Now you may need to wait outside in line for a couple hours, but remember, if you want a GPU, you gotta put in the work. The other retailer that I would recommend using is Newegg. But for this method, again, this is only for relatively new and higher-end graphics cards. There's actually two methods here to use on Newegg. The first one being the Newegg Shuffle. And for those of you that don't know, Newegg has been doing the Shuffle event almost every single day where they put up a bunch of different GPUs and GPU combos for sale. You enter in which ones you would like to buy and then a few hours later, they'll randomly pick the winners and then they can buy them. For those of you that are saying that you haven't won a Shuffle yet, I guarantee you just haven't entered in enough times yet. For those of us that enter in the Shuffle almost every single day, I'm pretty sure we've all won at least one time already. And it's actually a pretty reliable method if you're entering every day, at least to secure one GPU. The timing on when you get that GPU is based purely on luck though. I've personally been trying to buy every single combo that costs under $1,000 just for a quick starting point. But whenever there's a brand new GPU launch, they're actually pretty good at posting all the different models for just that new GPU at MSRP prices. So whenever there's a new GPU launch, that's definitely the time to enter the Shuffle if you're not already doing it every single day. Just a couple of weeks ago during the 6600 launch, a bunch of the members of the Exclusives in our ZTT Discord server actually won that graphics card. It's really not that hard to win despite what you may be hearing.
And then quickly, the other method using Newegg is to simply stalk the website for GPU combos for whatever the newest graphics card is. Right now, the newest launches are the 6600 and 6600 XT. And multiple times per week, Newegg will randomly post combos on there outside of the Shuffle that include the new graphics card and one other component, usually a power supply or a motherboard. I've actually bought like four to five combos now for just the 6600 XT already. And this is my number one method of getting the new GPUs. You're not going to find these combos on places like the Buildapcsales subreddit, because most people don't even know that these combos exist. This is purely just from putting in the work. If you want to get a graphics card this way, then I would recommend just typing in on Newegg "RX 6600 XT combo" like at least 10 times per day if you're serious about buying one.
Method 2: Buying Used Graphics Cards from EVGA B-Stock
Next up, we get to our second main method of buying a graphics card. Hopefully, just that first method already brought you some value, but if it didn't, I know this one will. If you're interested in any budget to mid-range used graphics card, then you 100% have to be using EVGA B-Stock. EVGA B-Stock is basically EVGA's used store. They post up their refurbished parts all day, every day for you to buy at really great prices, especially power supplies. But once a week, they will drop GPUs, and sometimes these GPU launches are massive. Seriously, they'll sometimes post 20 different models of graphics cards all the way from like a GTX 970 up to an RTX 3060 or 3070 sometimes. Usually, there's a ton of inventory for us to buy, but you need to make sure that you're properly optimized on that website because once everyone figures out that there's a B-Stock GPU drop, the website crashes every single time. I really want to make a dedicated video on how to increase your success chances for B-Stock, but you definitely need to do things like make sure you're signed in already, make sure your PayPal or credit card information is already plugged in, and most importantly, make sure you have some sort of method to tell you every time there's a B-Stock GPU drop. The number one way that I know how to do this is just to join the ZTT Exclusives by becoming a Twitch sub or a YouTube member. You'll gain exclusive access in the exclusive section of our ZTT Discord server, and we actually send out pings every time there's an EVGA B-Stock drop, and it's honestly probably the most reliable way that a lot of us are buying GPUs right now. It's honestly not a crazy story to hear when one of us buys three to four different GPUs in a single B-Stock drop. This is easily the best method that most of us use to secure GPUs, and it's the reason why my personal GPU stockpile is so big right now.
Method 3: Buying Used Graphics Cards from Mercari
And finally, moving on to the third and final method. This one wasn't relevant a few months ago, but now that the GPU shortage is finally starting to turn around a little bit, buying used graphics cards off Mercari is actually very reliable for me. Mercari has always been a really great method for buying not just graphics cards, but any used PC hardware at some really great prices. And almost every single one of my used gaming PC build guides is rocking at least one part from this website. Once you're logged in, you can actually save specific searches and get notifications for when a new part gets posted that fits the criteria of your search. I would recommend setting up searches for things like "graphics card," "GPU," "RTX," "RX," and "GTX," just to name a few. Keep checking back on this, and I promise you'll eventually find some cards that aren't terribly priced by 2021 standards. But there are a few GPUs that I recommend specifically hunting for to increase your chances of success. You're gonna have to be smart on this one and realize what GPUs are selling and which ones are hot for not so terrible prices right now. About six years ago, everybody was buying a GTX 970 because the price and performance when those launched were just amazing. But now that people are starting to finally get their hands on RTX 3000 series graphics cards, they're selling their GTX 970s at not so terrible prices. Remember that when I say this, I'm talking about 2021 standards here. Two years ago, you could snag up a 970 for sometimes less than 100 bucks. That price is now around 170, but even still, that's not a terrible price for a graphics card that can play AAA titles in 1080p with 60fps. You just can't compare the prices of what they were two years ago to what they are now. It's honestly just a complete waste of time because we're probably never gonna get back to that point. Unfortunately, this is just the current price of a GTX 970, and these are the current prices that we need to work with. That's just one single example, but hopefully that paints the picture of the point that I'm trying to make. Try to find anchor points that you can base any purchasing decision off of, like a $170 GTX 970. If you see a GTX 960 for $160, that's probably not worth it because you know you can snag a 970 for just a few bucks more. There's also some GPUs that you can probably not even waste your time searching for, like the RX 570 and RX 580, which used to be amazing for budget builds, are virtually nowhere to be found right now because miners have them all. I honestly haven't bought a single RX 480 or 580 in the last year, and Nvidia cards are definitely a bit easier to find these days from what I've been seeing.
Conclusion
So those are my three main methods of securing a GPU, which is obviously working for me, and hopefully it brought some value to you. Comment down below if any of these methods actually helped you find a graphics card or if you didn't know about any of them. Also, feel free to click the video that's on the screen now to talk about how I scored a different GPU with a method that I didn't talk about today. But just like always, I hope you enjoyed this video.
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