A Nintendo DS game that was classified as ‘lost media’ for nearly two decades is currently within tantalizing reach of video gaming fans and archivists. All the fans need is about $9,100, and no rival bidders on an eBay auction for an ultra-rare, perhaps one-of-a-kind, development cartridge thought to contain the PokePark Fishing Contest DS minigame.

Japanese game archaeology enthusiast Yoshino @ Federation (renpou.com) shared details of the eBay auction and its significance to their tens of thousands of social media followers.

So, what’s the deal with PokePark Fishing Contest DS, and why is it ultra-rare or even classified as ‘lost media?’ This fishing mini-game was lost for several reasons. Firstly, it was a download-only title. Secondly, its distribution was limited to those attending a short-lived Pokémon theme park venue in Japan (PokePark 2005). It also eluded archivists because it would be removed from a DS handheld when it was powered off, or after a 12-hour limit, whichever triggered first.

The eBay listing shows a large development and testing cartridge, front and back. There’s also an image showing the cartridge working. However, the on-DS-screen proof of viability is limited to “a Japanese-language screen indicating a high-score ranking communication program.”

The Germany-located seller, catbearpaws, says the cart was acquired as part of a private lot, and is selling the hardware as-is, with no promises regarding functionality, compatibility, or provenance. Catbearpaws has a 100% selling record and is asking for bids starting at €7,999 ($9,100), with less than three days left to run. They also may accept offers via the eBay Make Offer button/process.

Our machine-translated version of the eBay listing screen content appears to confirm that this is indeed a dev cart that was used for hosting “PokePark Fishing Contest DS” assets of some kind. Whether a playable version of the game can be downloaded, transmitted, or extracted from this hardware remains to be seen. As mentioned, the seller isn’t guaranteeing anything about this expensive but potentially important retro gaming artifact.

The CEO of GameStop — one of the world's largest video game retailers — has said that Sony’s decision to halt the production of physical game discs in 2028 is “totally irrelevant” to the company's business. Speaking to BloombergTech in an interview on Thursday, July 16, Ryan Cohen made the comments while responding to questions on how console makers’ going disc-less might affect GameStop amid the company's controversial bid to buy eBay.

When asked, “If the hardware makers are reportedly moving to disc-less on the console side, future game launches are digital only, where does that fit in for the business plan?” Cohen responded, “It doesn’t matter at all. Software, it mattered in the past. Software today makes up less than 12% of the business, and collectables makes up over half the business. So, it’s totally, totally irrelevant.”

Cohen's characterization doesn't exactly match GameStop's own filings, but the underlying trend does. In fiscal year 2025, the company reported total net sales of $3.63 billion. At $729.3 million, Software — which includes physical game discs, game cartridges, and digital download codes by GameStop’s classification — accounted for 20.1% of the total, the lowest among the company's product categories. Collectibles brought in $1.06 billion at 29.2 percent, while hardware and accessories — including new and pre-owned hardware, accessories, hardware bundles, interactive figures, strategy guides, and mobile/consumer electronics — remained the largest single line at $1.84 billion, or 50.7 percent.

The year-on-year growth figures also appear to support Cohen's stance, with software revenue dropping 27% in FY24 and hardware revenue dropping 12%. Meanwhile, revenue from collectibles — covering apparel, toys, trading cards, gadgets, other pop-culture products, and submission services for authentication and grading of trading cards — grew by 47%.

Much of the Bloomberg interview was focused on Cohen's somewhat controversial bid for eBay. GameStop began accumulating eBay stock on February 4 and delivered an unsolicited, non-binding proposal on May 3 to acquire all outstanding shares at $125 apiece, split evenly between cash and GameStop stock — an offer valuing eBay at roughly $56 billion, against GameStop's own market capitalization of around $10 billion. eBay's board rejected it on May 12, with chairman Paul Pressler writing that the board had determined the proposal was "neither credible nor attractive." Cohen has said he intends to take the offer directly to eBay shareholders.

It's not often we see a repair video that includes no repairing, but that's exactly what happened when an Asus TUF RTX 4090 landed on the legendary desks of Northridge Fix. We've covered their escapades before, how they revived a RX 7800 XT and brought a dead 4090 back to life, but this 4090 befell a fate worse than death — it was a hollow scam.

The unlucky customer, who got the card second-hand off eBay, couldn't get their GPU to post no matter what. As such, they sent it in for repair with a brief note explaining: "The device does not display from any output." When it was opened up to be inspected, Alex, our host, found something truly harrowing. There were no GPU core or VRAM chips on the PCB. While the card looked fine from the outside, it was really just a skeleton.

Alex went on to explain how this has become a common occurrence, saying that his repair shop receives dead RTX 4090s like these all the time with stripped internals. These cards are sold for cheap on used marketplaces, where uninformed buyers often fall for the unrealistic prices. Even then, some of these bad actors have started to price these hollow 4090s "properly" such that no one would expect a too-good-to-be-true scam, so the trap evidently still works.

GPUs like this largely come from underground modding operations in China, where many high-end GPUs are not easy to import. Skilled technicians take existing gaming-grade GPUs, like a 4090, and surgically remove their core and VRAM so put them on custom PCBs with upgraded components-most often higher VRAM capacity. Stripped donor cards subsequently make their way onto online marketplaces and trick buyers into buying useless graphics cards.

A rare engineering sample of the Nvidia RTX 3080 Ti Founders Edition with 20GB of VRAM was recently sold in an auction on eBay. This specific variant never managed to reach retail, thus making it one of the most unusual Ampere-era GPUs to surface online. According to the listing, the auction concluded with the buyer offering $1,999, which is pretty wild for a high-end graphics card that is two-generations old.

The seller included photos of the GPU, showing the original packaging box and a bright green sticker on the GPU that reads, “Not for sale, for development only.” The seller also confirmed that the unit is in excellent condition and fully functional. However, since it is not a retail product, running games or any 3D workloads would require the use of a third-party driver such as Nvidia-patcher, as there are no official drivers available for this card. This could potentially translate to poor or unstable performance, although that remains unconfirmed.

An engineer in the U.S. recounts being "stressed out for the two weeks" after someone bought their used Nvidia GeForce RTX 4090 graphics card on eBay, then had the audacity to return it with the GPU and memory chips removed from the board. Piscian19 told fellow Redditors that a "pristine" used RTX 4090, sold on eBay, was almost immediately returned for the reason of "no video." Thankfully, the story has a happy ending, as eBay eventually refunded the emotionally frazzled seller.

Should you buy a used graphics card? After dealing with cryptomining-induced GPU shortages two generations back, the prior generation graphics cards were reasonably available for the past couple of years... and then AI-induced shortages hit, retail availability became a problem, and GPU prices shot up. Finding one of the best graphics cards has become a difficult proposition, at least for certain models, leading many to consider the used graphics card market.

The good news for prior generation GPUs — the Nvidia RTX 40-series, AMD RX 7000-series, and Intel Arc A-series — is that cryptomining hasn't really been profitable for the past 2–3 years. That means any used cards likely haven't been running 24/7 at 100% load for months on end. That doesn't mean all cards have been treated equally well, but if you're careful about how you proceed, a used graphics card isn't necessarily a bad idea.

The bad news is that prices on used graphics cards — using eBay sold listings as a proxy — are likely also far higher than many will be willing to pay. The GPU shortages have caused most previous generation GPUs to increase substantially in price over the past several months. For example, here's a chart showing sold listings for Nvidia's RTX 4070 over the past six months:

There's a massive dip in the first part of December, perhaps caused by people selling off used cards with plans to pick up something faster in the next month. The number of individual sales jumped to as many as 60 cards per day, and prices dropped to as little as $200. Things then returned to a relative "normal" of around $500 until the end of January, after which the shortages at the RTX 5080 and RTX 5090 launch seemed to clue people in on how limited supplies might get. Since the start of February, the average price for a used RTX 4070 sold on eBay has increased to over $600.

Things are starting to calm down, at least a bit, and the newer RTX 5070 has been routinely available (in the U.S.) for $550–$600 over the past few weeks. At that price, there's no reason to consider paying a similar sum for a used 4070. The RTX 5070 might not be a massive generational upgrade, but in our testing it's 18% faster than its predecessor at 1440p ultra. But I digress — check our GPU benchmarks hierarchy if you want more details on how the various current and prior generation GPUs stack up.

The question we want to answer is, even if you can buy a used card, should you? Here are the things you should know when you're considering buying a used graphics card.

Price and Performance: Searching for a Deal 

The first step in looking for a graphics card is to set your budget. Once you decide how much you're willing to spend, you can then start looking for a graphics card — new or used! — that falls in the appropriate range. You should also set realistic performance expectations.

Once upon a time, in the days of yore, gamers might see up to double the performance for roughly the same price when upgrading to a two generation newer card. Again, our GPU benchmarks article gives the important details (check the second page for a more extensive older test suite where we benchmarked almost every GPU of the past decade). That's no longer the case, with perhaps a 25~35 percent improvement per generation if we're lucky.

You should also think about the rest of your PC. If you're still using a 4-core Haswell-era CPU from 2014, running Windows 10, it's probably time to look at a full system upgrade. Windows 10 support will end October 2025, and you basically need a CPU and motherboard built after 2017 (give or take) to be able to run Windows 11. Yes, there are Windows 11 installation workarounds, but do you really want to go that route? That's your call.

Generally speaking, you want to keep your PC build balanced. If you don't have a top-end CPU, there's not much point in buying a GPU like the RTX 5090 or even RTX 4090. You can check our CPU vs GPU performance to see the impact of using various combinations of graphics cards and processors, and the games you play will also be a factor.

To help put the used graphics card market into perspective, here are the eBay average prices for sold listing from the past 30 days (March 12 through April 11, 2025). This is U.S. market data, and what you can find in other regions of the world can and will vary from what we're showing. It's also possible to get something quite a bit below the average price if you're patient.

The point isn't that eBay prices are a perfect indication of the used GPU market, but that they are an indicator. If U.S. eBay prices are trending up, we expect other regions to follow that pattern — not necessarily to the same extent, but trends don't happen in a vacuum.

For those looking for a used graphics card, start by checking the eBay prices versus retail prices and official MSRPs — even if the MSRPs often seem to have little to do with reality these days. It should hopefully be obvious, but if you're looking at eBay and the GPU you want typically costs more than a brand-new card from somewhere like Amazon or Newegg, you shouldn't buy from eBay. Just get the new card.

In a similar vein, prior generation GPUs are going to be difficult to find at most retail stores, which means buying used is basically required. Most listings at places like Amazon for prior generation GPUs are from third party "marketplace" sellers. While some are legitimate, you'll want to exercise caution and pay attention to item descriptions and return policies — the same rules we apply toward buying used cards off eBay, in other words.

Not surprisingly, the best values right now are mostly on budget to midrange cards from one or two generations back. Intel's Arc B570 is the highest ranked current-generation card, but keep in mind that performance is only slightly better than an RTX 3060 12GB, and slightly worse than an RTX 4060. But at least it can't be any more than a few months old.

Exercise due diligence and proceed with caution

Once you find a reasonable deal on a used graphics card, the next step is to consider the source. If a friend of family member offers to sell you a used card at a price you're willing to pay, great! Outside of that scenario, however, there's often no way to tell where a graphics card has been or what it's been doing for the past few years.

When you're shopping online, at places like eBay, Facebook, etc., our advice is to assume the worst. Don't take any information the seller / lister provides at face value. Older GPUs (RTX 30-series, RX 6000-series) are almost guaranteed to have been used for mining, and that can lead to VRM issues, memory instability, or other potential problems. We'd also be wary of "like new," "open box," or even "factory sealed" listings, as all can be faked.

Murphy's Law is in full effect here. If something could have been done with a GPU, it probably was. But that doesn't mean a card can't be salvaged. Thermal pads and thermal paste can deteriorate over time, and dust can build up in the fan blades and heatsink fins. It's possible a bit of cleaning and TLC will make a card that was struggling run like new. You might want to factor in the cost of new pads and even new fans, as well as the time required to clean a card.

Alternatively, if you can meet up in person for a purchase — or better yet, get someone to bring the card to you so you can test it — you can tell a lot about a card just by looking at it. Check for dust, and check to see if the screws holding the card together have been removed. (Those "warranty void" stickers do actually have some benefit.) If someone has a card in hand and it looks clean, especially in the nooks and crevices, there's a good chance it wasn't seriously abused. Obviously, this doesn't apply to eBay, and it's a potential advantage of places like Facebook Marketplace and Craigslist.

Graphics cards aren't like fine wines — older isn't better

As with any product, age can make a big difference. We're not dealing with antiques or fine wines, where older means better. It's more like buying a used car. If a GPU is only a year old, even if it was driven hard, it should still have a warranty and is less likely to have serious problems. Purchasing an ancient "high mileage" graphics card on the other hand could just be asking for trouble.

If you find a reasonable deal on an RTX 40-series or RX 7000-series, worst-case, it's a couple of years old and probably wasn't used for mining, as Ethereum mining stopped being viable in mid-2022 (prior to when those GPUs launched). An RTX 30-series or earlier, or RX 6000-series or earlier, is an entirely different matter. Such cards likely went through the 2021–2022 mining heyday, and even older GPUs might have also been used for mining in 2017. 24/7 mining puts a lot of wear and tear on a card, and five-year-old hardware is simply more prone to problems than newer parts.

Conversely, an RTX 50-series, RX 9000-series, or Arc B-series used graphics card can't possibly be from before early 2025 (or December 2024 for the Arc B580), which means it should be totally fine right now. Unless it's a scam listing (see blow).

In short, buying a used GPU that's from the latest generation tends to be safer than buying a previous top-tier GPU from several years back. You could get lucky with a pristine GTX 1080 Ti, or you could end up with a 1080 Ti on its last legs, with VRMs or other components on the board that are starting to go bad. Plan accordingly.

Also, if you're digging deep in the bargain bins, do note that AMD has officially retired all RX Vega / RX 500 and earlier GPUs. Only the RDNA RX 5000-series and later cards still have active driver support. Nvidia has also retired driver support for GTX 700-series and earlier GPUs.

With Windows 10 reach end of life later this year, you'll need Windows 11 drivers and that might prove difficult for older GPUs. Stick to cards with active driver support, unless you're specifically trying to build a retro-gaming PC.

Tips for avoiding scams, for buyers and sellers

Generally speaking, if you buy something off eBay, even if the seller says "no returns accepted," you can still ask for a refund if the product doesn't work. But it's better to deal with someone that has a normal 30-day return policy. Our experience is that eBay also tends to be heavily biased toward buyers, incredibly so, to the point where selling anything you can't afford to lose on eBay feels risky.

Related to this, we strongly recommend sticking with sellers from within your country of residence. While returning a faulty product to China might be possible, it takes a lot longer, and shipping will probably cost more. Plus, it might take a week or more to get to you in the first place, which isn't fun if you just want a working graphics card. (And opens up the potential for the return window to expire during transit, another common scam.)

You should also look at the seller's history. Don't buy anything from a brand-new seller, particularly if the deal looks too good to be true — it probably is! Someone with hundreds or thousands of past transactions won't want to damage their reputation. Many graphics card companies also have eBay stores, which should be safer than other options.

You should also ask several technical questions. "Hey, I was wondering when you bought this graphics card and what sort of PC you used it in." Ask why they're selling the card. Have them send you a photo or video of the card running an actual game — have them open Tom's Hardware to show the date as well. It's better to be an annoying buyer than to get duped.

Pay attention to the description as well, looking for bogus "box only" or "picture" listings. For eBay, you can put a minus sign in front of terms you wish to exclude from your search results. We recommend using the following terms on any GPU searches:

-image -img -jpg -jpeg -pic -picture -png -parts -drawn -digital -box

If you're trying to sell your own graphics card, for eBay in particular we would simply cancel any and all orders from buyers that haven't been around for more than a year at least, preferably two or more, with numerous orders. Look for expensive items as well — it's easy for scammers to create an account and "buy" a bunch of cheap items to make the account look legit, and then switch to an expensive GPU like an RTX 5090 for $3,000 or more. Each scammer account only needs to succeed once.

Also, be wary of anxious buyers: If they urge you to "please ship fast" it could mean they're using a bogus payment method and they want the package to ship before they get caught. "I'm buying this for a friend/relative" messages are also red flags in our book. Another common scam is to buy something and then say, "Oops, I gave you the wrong address..." and try to get you to change shipping. Just cancel the order if someone says the address was wrong.

Regardless of account age or communications, you should also punch the ship to address into Google Maps and look it up. It's difficult / impossible to determine if a house might simply be an Airbnb or VRBO rental (another scam tactic), but we know of someone that shipped a product to what turned out to be a storage unit. The buyer claimed the product "was not as advertised" and the seller ended up taking the hit.

Be sure to test any used graphics card ASAP

Once you've purchased a used graphics card, there's one last critical step to take once the card arrives: Test it, ASAP! Our graphics card reviews and benchmarks can give you some idea of what to expect in terms of performance, assuming you have a similarly fast CPU and system, but stability is just as important as speed for a used part.

We recommend breaking out some strenuous benchmarks once you get the card, to verify it works properly. 3DMark might suffice, but it's most useful if you have a paid version where you can tell it to loop a test sequence 50 times. FurMark is a good torture test, but any demanding 3D game can suffice. You'll want to have some other utilities running to check GPU temperatures, fan speeds, and power use. In fact, we have a whole article on how to test your graphics card.

The point is that you want to throw some serious work at the GPU to ensure it runs properly. If it doesn't, the sooner you can ask for a refund and return the card, the better. You should also check clock speeds and memory speeds. If you're only seeing 1500MHz while gaming on an RTX 4070, or your memory runs at a lower speed than it should, something is wrong. See our how to check your graphics card temperature for additional details.

You should run HWInfo64, MSI Afterburner, or some other utility and log the results, then check for a large decline in clocks accompanied by a fast ramp in temperatures. It's not unusual to see 60–80 degrees Celsius on many GPUs, but anything above 80C tends to be worrisome.

If you do manage to buy an RTX 50-series GPU, check the ROPS count as well. A few early batches of RTX 5090, 5080, and even 5070 cards shipped with "missing" ROPS (Render Outputs), which can drop performance by 5–10 percent. If you get a good price, maybe that's okay, but don't pay full dollar for such a card.

Final thoughts on buying a used graphics card 

If reading this has you worried that you'll spend a bunch of money on a used graphics card only to end up with a non-functional lemon, great: We've done our job. An ounce of prevention and all that. Or if you prefer, there's the old cliché about not spending more than you can afford to lose. The majority of sellers — on eBay, Facebook, etc. — are probably just regular people who aren't trying to scam you, but there are plenty of horror stories out there.

Dealing with a local seller can offer you more peace of mind, but once you pay cash and the seller walks off, you're basically stuck with whatever you bought. eBay and auction sites aren't necessarily great either, but eBay tends to side with buyers far more often than sellers. Shop from an established eBay seller with a long history (years of activity) and good feedback, and you probably (hopefully) won't get burned.

Given the choice between buying a new graphics card for MSRP and saving a bit of money by going with a previous generation card that might perform a bit worse, we'd almost invariably advise PC gamers to suck it up and spend the extra money on a new card. It's simply so much safer and less likely to cause problems. But if money is short or you've stumbled on a particularly compelling deal, there are perhaps worse things you could do than buying a used graphics card.

MORE: Best Graphics Cards

MORE: GPU Benchmarks and Hierarchy

MORE: All Graphics Content

Since launch, Nvidia’s scarce GeForce RTX 5090 graphics card has been almost impossible to secure unless you’re willing to hand 2-3x the MSRP to scalpers. The same trend extended to other GPUs in the Blackwell family, reminiscent of the pandemic-struck days. A user at r/nvidia has aggregated data on RTX 5090 Founders Edition GPUs sold on eBay into a neat chart, giving us insight into current market trends. After the post-launch volatility, market prices have somewhat stabilized for the past one month, with a slow but consistent downward trajectory.

It’s important to understand this data accumulates listings featuring both used and new GPUs. A week before launch, we already saw a glimpse of Blackwell's horrendous supply woes with scalpers charging as much as $7,000 for “pre-reserved” RTX 5090 slots. Surprisingly enough, attendees at GTC this year were given the opportunity to secure one of 1,000 RTX 5090 units at MSRP and that number apparently surpasses Taiwan’s total reported allocation at launch.

The chart depicts a downward trend in pricing since launch, with average selling prices of completed eBay listings dropping from $6,000 to $4,000. Through closer inspection, the week following launch saw RTX 5090 prices range from as low as MSRP to as high as $10,000, rivaling the listed prices of Nvidia’s ProViz RTX PRO 6000 Blackwell GPU with 96GB of VRAM. From January 30 to March 21, the standard deviation, which indicates the variation from the mean, was $1,121.98. When limiting our scope to just March, the standard deviation sees a sharp decline to $145.60, indicating market stability or, at least, consistent pricing across resellers.

The average price of an RTX 5090 has also dropped in March per the data, in the sense you might not end up paying $10,000 to scalpers… just $4,000 and some change. We found similar results from Camelcamelcamel, a website that tracks prices for products sold on Amazon where after the initial volatility spikes to $9,000, prices have now settled at $5,000. While this isn’t exactly cause for celebration, it is a welcome improvement and could indicate lower prices in the future. Of course, that’s considering if Nvidia and AIBs manage to supply cards in sufficient quantity. Notably, this data does not include custom RTX 5090 models among other RTX 50 series GPUs, it just concerns the RTX 5090 FE.

Price gouging this generation unfortunately also extends to system integrators, who are being offered entry-level RTX 5090 variants for over $3,000. AMD’s RX 9070 GPUs face similar constraints, as you’d be hard-pressed to find even an entry-level model at MSRP.

Intel has already handed out samples of its upcoming Arrow Lake 200S series of processors to independent reviewers. But with just one day left before the official launch, it appears that one Core Ultra 7 265K has made its way to eBay in the United Kingdom - though the seller isn't exactly offering a bargain.

The Core Ultra 7 265K has been listed for £450 or $580 but let us remind readers that this is the expected price tag of Intel's flagship Core Ultra 9 285K - so consider the upcharge as an early adopter's tax. The details mention that this CPU is boxed, unused, and comes with a 3-year Intel official warranty.

We discourage anyone from using unofficial channels to purchase CPUs, typically there is no recourse or support once the purchase is made - that and the 20% extra on what is believed to be the official list price. It would've at least made sense if an LGA 1851 motherboard was part of the equation.

Assume, hypothetically, you've dropped half a grand, trusted the seller, and snagged the CPU - now what? Without an LGA 1851 motherboard, that CPU is paperweight or literally a pile of useless sand, especially if you were hoping to use the CPU one day earlier than everyone.

In any case, ahead of the launch tomorrow, the Core Ultra 7 265K offers 20 cores divided into eight Lion Cove based performance cores and twelve Skymont based efficient cores. The CPU offers a respective boost clock of 5.5GHz in tandem with 70MB of total cache. We expect Intel to price the Core Ultra 7 265K in the ballpark of $400, but let's wait for official numbers.

Sony announced the PS5 Pro and its 30th Anniversary Limited Edition variant earlier this month, with pre-orders now available on the Sony website. The former will start shipping on November 7 for $700, while the latter becomes available on November 21 for $1,000, with only 12,300 units made globally. However, even though the release dates for these consoles are still more than a month away, a quick search on eBay shows several results marked as ‘Presale’ or ‘Confirmed Pre-Order.’

The PS5 Pro sells for about $1,000 on the e-commerce platform—a nearly 43% premium over Sony’s price—but the pricing for the PS5 Pro 30th Anniversary console is far more egregious. Most listings for the limited-edition console start above $3,000 — a 200% markup from the original—and we’ve even seen a listing asking for $12,300.

These prices are reminiscent of the PlayStation 5’s (and practically every other high-profile electronics, like the RTX 3000 series GPUs) launch during the height of the pandemic in 2020. While Sony has limited pre-purchases of the PS5 Pro and limited-edition versions to just one per user, scalpers seemingly find ways to bypass this security system to make money off the average consumer.

Hopefully, Sony has learned its lesson during the launch of the PS5 and has made enough units to avoid the scalper problem. After all, we don’t have Covid-related lockdowns anymore, so getting production up and running shouldn’t be a problem. However, the limited-edition run of the PS5 Pro 30th Anniversary Edition would be an issue. Given that Sony is keeping the number of units available low — with each individual numbered as a collector’s item — it is a prime target for scalpers, as we can see on eBay right now.

The only way we can combat scalpers is to not buy from them. It would likely mean you won’t get the PS5 Pro right at launch, but what’s a little patience to avoid getting stiffed by people taking advantage of a situation? But if you’re a hardcore PlayStation fan and didn’t get the chance to the PS5 Pro 30th Anniversary Edition, we still do not recommend buying from a scalper. After all, who knows what other types of scams they might be running to separate you from your hard-earned money?

An Alcatel Minitel 2 terminal rescued from a fire is up for auction on eBay France. The melted case of the vintage piece of technology makes it clear the item is useful only as a conversation piece, or perhaps an object of art. Its steep starting bid, approaching $500, might also attract only the most dedicated of collectors.

The Minitel was an online service provided by France Telecom from 1982 until 2012. Begun in 1980 as an experiment to reduce the cost of printing telephone white pages, it developed into a way for users to make online purchases, book train reservations, search the telephone directory, send email, and more. It worked much the way the World Wide Web does today and was the world’s most successful online service until the World Wide Web took that distinction.

The terminal available for auction is an Alcatel model of the Minitel 2, manufactured in 1993. This model succeeded the Minitel 1B, which can still sometimes be found at garage sales. The terminal included a CRT monitor capable of monochrome text, although color models were later available at an additional cost. The base model Minitel was provided free of charge to France Telecom customers in exchange for them not receiving paper copies of residential telephone directories.

The unit being auctioned off is described as being saved from a fire, and the truth of that is certainly evident. While its CRT and keyboard remain intact, the case is melted almost beyond recognition. One of the images shows a sliver of a document the seller believes may have been printed from the terminal. Aftermarket printers were available for the terminals.

The Minitel 2 up for auction is located in Argenteuil, France, sold by eBay user renbat-23. The seller has many other listings running on the auction site, most of which are antiques or works of art. Renbat-23 describes the melted Minitel as a piece of art, and the random patterns of melted plastic do offer some interesting and possibly even aesthetically pleasing shapes.

The starting bid for the item is 450 euros ($482), and there were no bids on the listing at the time of publication. The auction ends Sunday, June 23 at 1:32pm CEST.

Lenovo was brave enough to debut the first Windows foldable screen PCs, but its follow-up has been "coming soon" for longer than seems reasonable. We reviewed the original Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Fold (13.3-inch) back in Dec 2020, but the new and improved 16.3-inch model we had hands-on time with in September 2022 has never been released. However, one of the unreleased Lenovo prototypes has now appeared in an eBay listing. This "Ultra RARE Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Fold 16" Unreleased Prototype 16+256GB Foldable," is currently listed at $1,999 (Buy It Now or Best Offer) plus applicable shipping from Beijing, China.

Lenovo's revamped Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Fold addressed many of the shortcomings raised in our review of the smaller device. It was immediately clear that the larger 16.3-inch folding screen was better suited to use in laptop mode, and replacing the original Intel Lakefield chip with Alder Lake options was a welcome upgrade. However, we didn't have enough time during the hands-on to assess whether other original model weaknesses like software bugs, and if battery life had been ironed out.

WC-William on eBay provided quite a thorough description of the Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Fold Prototype for sale. The specs he shared showed the model in his possession is pretty much the same as our hands-on system, but the CPU / RAM / SSD config is near the lower limits for this device. In other words, Lenovo's official spec shows that this machine is supposed to be configurable better than this listing: 12th Gen Intel Core i7 ES model, 16 GB of DDR5, and 256 GB SSD.

As a prototype, this machine might have been passed around, poked, and prodded a lot, so there is some wear present. For example, the listing mentions two screen flaws: a noticeable black dot (group of stuck pixels?), and some irregular screen shading on part of the display panel. Also, the webcam doesn't open, but that is expected as a driver issue. The seller asserts that the ThinkPad's flaws "does not really impact everyday use." To sweeten the deal, it is claimed that the $1,999 asking price is "about $1200 below the released price," and a matching unreleased stylus, which would retail at $100, is included in the sale. 

One last warning is given to potential buyers, asking them not to tinker with the driver, BIOS, or system updates as changes might upset the prototype's current state of functionality. No returns will be accepted, says the seller.

Now we are more than halfway through 2023, and rival 17-inch foldable devices have been available for some time, it is feasible that the ThinkPad X1 Fold (16.3-inch) might never be released in the form outlined above. Anyone looking for a cutting-edge portable upgrade today, especially based on Intel processors, will probably be keeping their powder dry for news of the exciting mobile refreshes that are frequently leaking.

Today at eBay, users can find the AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D for its best price to date. This processor usually goes for around $449 but right now, Newegg is selling it for just $406 through eBay. This processor is notably fast for gaming, reaching performance levels that beat even the Ryzen 9 7950X3D.

We reviewed the AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D when it first debuted and immediately recognized it for its fast performance speeds. We also praised it for its power efficiency and support for PCIe 5.0 The biggest drawback is that it uses the AM5 ecosystem which can get pricey. However, with today’s discount in place, that’s easily mitigated.

The AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D uses Zen 4 architecture. It has a total of 8 cores and 16 threads. The base operating speed clocks in at 4.2GHz but with max boost enabled, it can reach 5.0GHz.

It supports PCIe 5.0 and can use up to 128GB of DDR5 via two memory channels. It comes with integrated Radeon graphics so no graphics card is necessary to get off the ground with visual output. AMD recommends using a liquid cooler with the unit to get the best performance.

Visit the AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D product page at eBay for more details and purchase options. We’re not sure for how long the offer will be made available.

While Intel was busy demonstrating its 14th Generation Meteor Lake processors at Computex 2023, others were already flipping the same hybrid chips on eBay. A "brand new" Meteor Lake mobile processor (via harukaze5719) has gone up for sale on eBay for $999, and the seller has two available.

The Meteor Lake in question is a mobile variant, so it's useless to anyone unless they have a compatible platform to house it. Meteor Lake will come to laptops first, which explains how merchants have managed to get their hands on early Meteor Lake chips and put them up for sale. Intel has yet to confirm whether it has any plans for the desktop. A leaked Intel roadmap claims Meteor Lake will reportedly debut as low-powered Core i3 and Core i5 parts. A subsequent rumor alleges that Intel has canceled the 6P + 8E configuration for desktop Meteor Lake.

According to the eBay description, the processor is seemingly a Meteor Lake P 6C+8A+GT2 model. The P-series SKUs are explicitly designed for thin and light laptops, so they typically have a low TDP with reduced clock speeds. Previous Raptor Lake-P and Alder Lake-P processors adhere to the 28W TDP limit, so Meteor Lake-P will likely follow the same guideline.

The Meteor Lake-P chip seems to feature six P-cores and eight E-cores. However, remember that there are two low-powered E-cores inside the SoC tile. Therefore, the Meteor Lake-P processor has a 16-core, 22-thread design, the same chip that Intel used in its Computex 2023 demo. If we don't consider the SoC cores, the Meteor Lake-P would share the same configuration as the flagship Core i7-1370P Raptor Lake-P that powers thin laptops, such as the Framework Laptop 13.

Meteor Lake-P leverages Redwood Cove and Crestmont cores that are slated to bring significant uplifts over the Raptor Cove and Gracemont cores inside Raptor Lake-P. Meteor Lake-P will also arrive with buffed-up integrated graphics. Leaked Meteor Lake benchmarks revealed the processors with Xe units with up to 128 EUs or 1,204 ALUs operating at 2.1 GHz. Raptor Lake-P and Alder Lake-P Xe iGPUs max out at 96 EUs for comparison. The added EUs and higher clock speeds could make Meteor Lake-P deliver graphics performance similar to entry-level discrete options from Nvidia or AMD. 

One of Meteor Lake's selling points is the VPU (Versatile Processing Unit) unit, which resides inside the SoC tile, and is responsible for AI workloads. The VPU, based on third-generation Movidius technology, is available in all Meteor Lake chips. Unfortunately, while Intel showed off the VPU's capabilities, the company didn't provide benchmark numbers.

Intel will rebrand Meteor Lake processors and provide insight into the new "Core" rework later. More details on Meteor Lake will be available in the year's third quarter. However, the processors won't hit the retail market until summer. Intel's plans for Meteor Lake are nothing short of ambitious, with the chipmaker aiming to ship millions of Meteor Lake chips to consumers over the next year.

24GB or 48GB SO-DIMM memory is nearly impossible to find in the current DDR5 market, with no manufacturer blatantly advertising or selling kits in these new memory capacities. But one memory manufacturer is selling 48GB SO-DIMM DDR5 memory kits, and you can buy them right now.

Based on a previous report from William Lam, Mushkin is selling three 96GB Redline SO-DIMM DDR5 memory kits on eBay featuring dual 48GB SO-DIMM. These kits come in 4800MHz, 5200MHz, and 5600MHz versions, respectively, featuring a starting price of $325.

While these kits are not cheap, they are available and can be dropped into any laptop or device supporting 48GB DDR5 SO-DIMMs. In addition, 48GB modules offer more flexibility than traditional 32GB modules, providing up to 96GB of capacity with just two modules and a whopping 192GB capacity with four. 

With SO-DIMMs, laptops and compact devices can enjoy these new memory capacities, which have been regulated almost exclusively to the DDR5 memory market. 24GB and 48GB kits were originally announced this January as brand-new memory capacities for the consumer DDR5 segment. The desktop market already enjoys these new capacitors, with Corsair and G.SKill launching several high-performance 24GB and 48GB DDR5 desktop kits just a few months ago.

But the same cannot be said of the mobile memory market. Mushkin is the only active seller of 48GB SO-DIMMs we can find on the internet right now, with Crucial being the only other memory manufacturer that has mentioned 24GB and 48GB modules whatsoever.

Hopefully, memory manufacturers will realize the potential of 24GB and 48GB SO-DIMM modules and make more kits soon. But at least you can buy Mushkin's 96GB kits right now and enjoy the benefits of 96GB of memory compared to the traditional 64GB limits on current DDR5 SO-DIMM memory.

Today direct from Newegg at eBay, you can find the AMD Ryzen 9 7950X3D for its lowest price yet. This processor usually goes for around $700, but right now, Newegg has marked it down to $629 over at its eBay profile. This is the lowest price we’ve ever seen for the processor since its launch.

We reviewed the AMD Ryzen 9 7950X3D in March, shortly after it first debuted, and overall regarded it as a top-tier processor due to its maximum gaming performance and a hefty allotment of cores. We specifically appreciated its performance and efficiency, as well as its overclocking support. Of course, the biggest caveat was pricing, but today’s discount makes that con less of a concern.

The AMD Ryzen 9 7950X3D processor uses the Zen 4 architecture. It has a total of 16 cores and up to 32 threads, a base speed of 4.2 GHz, but can boost as high as 5.7 GHz. This processor comes with PCIe 5.0 support and can connect to four USB 3.2 ports as well as 1 USB 2.0 port.

Users can install up to 128 GB of DDR via two memory channels with the AMD Ryzen 9 7950X3D. It also has integrated AMD Radeon Graphics, so no GPU is necessary to get off the ground with the processor—although we highly recommend pairing it with one for gaming.

For more details about this offer, visit the AMD Ryzen 9 7950X3D CPU product page over at Newegg’s eBay profile. It’s not clear how long the discount will be made available.

Today at eBay, you can find the AMD Ryzen 9 7900 for its lowest price to date. This processor debuted earlier this year and has dropped to $369 for the first time since launch. It’s usually priced around $429, so this discount saves users $60 off the going rate. This CPU is sold new by Antonline, an authorized AMD seller, and includes a full warranty.

The AMD Ryzen 9 7900 uses Zen 4 architecture and comes with integrated AMD Radeon graphics so a graphics card isn’t necessary to get off the ground with it—though we would definitely recommend one for gaming. We published our AMD Ryzen 9 7900 review when it was released, noting our appreciation for its performance in both single and multi-threaded use cases. It’s overclockable, as well, lending to notably high boost frequencies.

Users have 12 cores to take advantage of alongside 24 threads. It has a base speed of 3.7 GHz but can reach up to 5.4 GHz with max boost enabled. The AMD Ryzen 9 7900 supports up to 128 GB of DDR5 via two channels. This edition is unlocked for overclocking and uses AMD EXPO Memory Overclocking technology. Users also receive a Wraith Prism stock cooler.

To get a closer look at this deal, visit the official AMD Ryzen 9 7900 product listing over at Antonline’s eBay profile. As of writing, it’s not clear for how long this deal will be made available.

Anyone can own one of the best graphics cards, but not everyone can get their hands on the iconic 3dfx Voodoo 5 6000 graphics card. However, this unreleased gem won't come cheap. The card is currently at $12,600 in an eBay listing and has several more days of bidding before the selling price becomes known. We thought the price was notable a few days ago when it was going for 'just' $5,500. 

The Voodoo 5 6000 is a valuable artifact because it was the last graphics card that 3dfx made, but it never arrived on the market. It's the equivalent of EVGA's unreleased GeForce RTX 4090 graphics card that eventually went to a collector for a whopping $12,400, except the Voodoo 5 6000 has more history, and it'll be interesting to see what the highest bidder is willing to offer.

As spotted by Twitter user Löschzwerg, a graphics card enthusiast and collector put up a Voodoo 5 6000 prototype for auction on eBay. This is the real deal, unlike the Voodoo 5 6000 replicant we saw a couple of years back. With six days left on the auction, the coveted graphics card will likely end up selling for a small fortune. 

This is a Voodoo5 6000 revision 3700A prototype with the full PCI rework. According to the eBay listing, 3dfx engineer Jindrich (Hank) Semenec was the one who personally reworked the graphics card to operate stably at FSAA 8x mode. The seller has reportedly tested the graphics card, and it's "rock solid at 8X." He also claims that this prototype hails from the later stages of the 6K prototype project, and consequently, most bugs have been ironed out.

The graphics card leveraged four VSA-100 processors at 166 MHz, each sporting 32MB 166 MHz SDRAM. In addition, the Voodoo5 6000 was the first consumer gaming graphics card to boast 128MB of onboard memory. Unfortunately, the power requirements were so demanding that the AGP slot could not adequately feed the Voodoo5 6000. As a result, the retail samples relied on an external power supply connecting to an AC outlet. Nonetheless, some Voodoo5 6000 prototypes, such as the one from the eBay auction, use a Molex adapter, and others have the Molex connector soldered to the PCB.

The Voodoo5 6000 was a marvel of a graphics card during its time, but the high production cost derailed its launch. In addition, the graphics card used a multi-chip (four VSA-100 chips) design where competing GeForce and Radeon models stuck to a single chip. Furthermore, the 128MB VRAM and external power brick didn't help the Voodoo5 6000's cause. Long story short, 3dfx eventually went bankrupt in 2002, and all that is left are these precious, unreleased Voodoo relics of the past.

After failed attempts to auction off the brand’s GeForce RTX 4090 on eBay, EVGA has taken to its forums to carry out the auction. After the company’s abrupt exit from the GPU market, the GeForce RTX 4090 FTW3 prototype, or “Next Gen Graphics Card” as EVGA calls it due to licensing issues, will make a fine collector’s item.

EVGA previously took to eBay to auction off the graphics card. It had fetched up to $13,200 before eBay removed the listing. The company has restarted the auction on the EVGA forums, where the current bid, at the time of writing, is $6,200. However, it still has a long way to go before it matches the last bid on eBay.

All the proceeds from EVGA’s auction will go to St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. The auction finalizes on December 16th at 11:59 AM PT, so interested parties have more than enough time to submit a bid. However, the brand is auctioning the graphics card as it is and will not provide a warranty or accept returns.

Although it’s a preproduction sample, EVGA’s GeForce RTX 4090 FTW3 is a working graphics card. YouTuber JayzTwoCents has already taken one of the samples for a spin. Since EVGA ended its partnership with Nvidia, the graphics card uses a qualification AD102 die and relies on EVGA’s home-brewed firmware. The prototype features a 2,520 MHz boost clock, the same as the Founders Edition. Therefore, its performance should be in the same alley as the GeForce RTX 4090 Founders Edition.

EVGA was one of the most popular Nvidia partners and was very good at making graphics cards. So it’s a shame that the company departed from the graphics card market. Many enthusiasts would love to see EVGA hook up with another significant chipmaker like AMD or Intel. However, the company has said it is concentrating on its other hardware products, which we suspect potentially offer higher profit margins.

If you’re an EVGA fan, it’s your chance to own what is likely the last graphics card that the company manufactured. It won’t come cheap, but it’s for a good cause.

Scalpers love it when objects of desire are in short supply. Sadly for this buy-low sell-high crowd, people apparently aren't very interested in the GeForce RTX 4080. During the first week of availability — usually a period of peak demand, especially at this time of year — the hoped for feeding frenzy has failed to materialize. People seem more interested in keeping their cash or opting for the RTX 4090 flagship.

If these trends continue, Nvidia and its partners, retailers, and the loathsome scalpers will have to reconsider the RTX 4080 pricing. That could result in some scalpers still holding stock bought at a premium price. Pour one out for the sorry scalper (not really).

eBay tends to be the favored scalper route in the U.S. If we look at the overall eBay sales numbers for the RTX 4080 and RTX 4090 graphics cards over the past week, there's direct data indicating the lukewarm reception for the 4080.

• GeForce RTX 4080 sales numbers are incredibly low compared to the flagship, with the RTX 4090 outselling the RTX 4080 3.4 to 1.
• An average of eight RTX 4080 graphics cards are sold per day on eBay US.
• Sales of the RTX 4080 on eBay have flat-lined or declined since the launch date.
• The average RTX 4080 on eBay is priced about 30% over MSRP, which is noticeably less lucrative than the RTX 4090 (38% over MSRP).
• The average RTX 4090 price on eBay during its first week was 54% over MSRP, with 64 cards sold per day.
• In the wake of the RTX 4080 launch, the flagship 4090 seems to be getting more popular.

Other interesting data we have gleaned from eBay US searches shows that current scalping profits on RTX 4080 sales are marginal at best. The average selling price of an RTX 4080 on eBay is currently $1,560 and dropping. We calculate that to break even (due to eBay fees, tax, shipping etc) a scalper would have to have purchased their RTX 4080 at $1,350 or less — not a trivial feat today.

That's why the Nvidia GeForce RTX 4080 Founders Edition is the favorite among the scalping fraternity. It's widely considered an appealing and high quality design, and it's sold direct and via select partners at Nvidia's $1,199 MSRP. These cards aren't available in great quantities, however, and Nvidia continues to work on mitigating scalping access. That's why Nvidia recently introduced the Verified Priority Access program in some regions.

An RTX 4080 Founders Edition purchased for $1,199 would need to sell for about $1,350 just to break even on eBay (with its 14% in fees). If the lukewarm reception continues — and it certainly might, especially considering early indications of AMD's RDNA 3 performance — even Nvidia might find difficulty moving 4080 cards for $1,200.

Scalpers Gonna Scalp

On Monday, Twitter's AMD GPU reacted with glee, as it posted about RTX 40-series scalpers being "burned," just like in the wake of the crypto-collapse. The social media account that claims to represent the AMD enthusiasts of Reddit says it counted 500 eBay listings for RTX 4090 graphics cards, with some of the listings offering >10 in inventory.

However, from our observations, RTX 4090 prices are holding steady or even rising a little in the wake of widespread consumer disappointment with the RTX 4080. We'll have to see how things continue to develop in the coming weeks, especially once AMD RX 7900-series cards arrive, but it's a safe bet scalpers will continue to pick up any cards they can flip at a 20% or higher price than they paid.

The mining era and GPU shortage might be over, but scalpers are still making chaos in the GPU market. Scalpers have gone to town on Nvidia's GeForce RTX 4090, selling cards at well over MSRP on eBay — with some cards priced at $4000 and higher.

eBay scalper listings start at $2,299, and most prices sit in the $2500 to $3200 range. At the high end, we've seen them listed as high as $4,499 — though most of the sold listings are in the $2500 range (our colleagues at PCGamer did some math and found that about 135 units were sold yesterday, with an average selling price of $2,524). 

But what's especially crazy is that many of the RTX 4090 listings are pre-order listings. This means the seller doesn't physically have the GPU — and you'll have to wait for the seller to get the card from the retailer they bought it from before they can even send it to you (and this is assuming nothing goes wrong). 

It looks like people are buying, though — the 135 sold yesterday account for about a third of the listings. The RTX 4090 went on sale yesterday — and sold out immediately, so desperate customers have no choice but to pay the scalped markup or wait for restocks. 

Scalpers buying up RTX 4090s isn't surprising to see, as this has happened at every GPU launch over the past several years. 

Is Nvidia Keeping Availability Low on Purpose?

The GPU market is in a good state for gamers, thanks to the decline of cryptocurrency mining. This means there is a chance Nvidia wants to stifle RTX 40 series availability — at least for a little while, as Nvidia and its AIB partners are sitting on a mountain of unsold RTX 30 series cards. This is why we're seeing pretty big price discounts on high-end RTX 30 series GPUs at the moment. 

Nvidia also overbought a ton of TSMC 4N silicon at the height of the GPU shortage last year. This will force the company to try and make the most profit off of silicon by selling cards at the highest prices possible, giving Nvidia even more incentive to keep availability low. 

Even if Nvidia is keeping supply artificially low, we doubt the company will stifle the market as badly as the GPU shortage of 2020 and 2021. But we suspect availability will take some time to return to normal for the RTX 4090, as well as the RTX 4080 16GB and the RTX 4080 12GB when they launch later this year. 

GPU prices are coming down, particularly if you can find a short-term sale. Just one week after Ethereum successfully completed The Merge, and in the midst of the Nvidia RTX 40-series launch announcement, graphics cards simply can't hold on to their previous value. If you're looking for one of the best graphics cards, we'll show you the current pricing on the latest generation as well as previous generation models.

Let's start with the latest generation GPUs, all of which are still available at retail. There are a few previous generation Nvidia Turing cards included as well, mostly from the GTX 16-series but also the RTX 2060. The previous price data is from right before the Ethereum Merge.

Overall retail prices have fallen 3.5% on average since last week, but that's sort of obscuring a few of the bigger changes. RTX 3090 Ti held steady, but the RTX 3090 dropped 11%, as did the RTX 3060 Ti. Even better, AMD's RX 6750 XT, RX 6700 XT, and RX 6700 10GB all showed double-digit percentage drops, with the MSI RX 6700 XT Mech 2X and ASRock RX 6700 XT Challenger D both going for $359.99 right now.

As good as though prices might seem, considering you're looking at somewhere between RTX 3060 Ti and RTX 3070 levels of performance — plus you get 12GB of VRAM — the real darling of the value segment right now continues to be the Radeon RX 6600. The Sapphire RX 6600 Pulse can be picked up for just $229.99. That's the same price as the EVGA RTX 2060 6GB, and while you don't get DLSS support, you do get more VRAM and generally 20% better performance in traditional rasterization games.

Not every GPU became cheaper over the past week, though. The RX 6950 XT was on sale before, and that ended now, resulting in a $40 price increase. RX 6500 XT and RX 6400 prices are also up, which is weird as no one should be buying those considering the RX 6600 more than doubles their performance. Several other GPUs remain flat on pricing as well — not too surprising considering we're only looking at the past week.

What about previous generation GPUs? For these, we're only looking at eBay prices, since that's where you'd have to go for many of the cards. Granted, a few of the Turing GPUs (2060 and 1660/1650 models) are available at retail still, though prices tend to be quite a bit higher.

Prices are down 4.3% on average, but there are a few GPUs where prices increased slightly — the RTX 2080 Ti, GTX 1650, RX 5700, and RX 5500 XT 8GB. Other models show some steep declines, with the RTX 2060 down 11%, and RX 5500 XT 4GB has fallen 25%! Note that only four RX 5500 XT 4GB cards were sold, however, which definitely distorts the picture.

As noted in our RX 6500 XT review, it's actually slower than the previous generation RX 5500 XT in most games. Sure, you get ray tracing hardware, but not enough of it to really matter. If you need a cheap budget GPU right now, picking up an RX 5500 XT for under $100 (used) isn't a bad idea. Plus, with 4GB the cards weren't much good for mining purposes, meaning you're unlikely to get a card that's been abused for the past two years.

Another interesting piece of information is that the AMD RX 5700 XT is now the best value out of all GPUs, at least if you're willing to take a risk on buying a used graphics card. And there is a risk, especially if you end up with something that's been blasted with high pressure water. Caveat emptor, as always, and look for established sellers with a return policy.

If you're in a rush to find a graphics card either for a new PC gaming build or to replace something that's on its last leg, this will hopefully put things in perspective. Otherwise, we recommend continuing to wait as we can only see prices on most of these GPUs falling even more in the next month or two while we await GeForce RTX 40-series GPUs and Radeon RX 7000-series GPUs.

The Ethereum Merge has occurred, and as expected, GPU mining profitability has plummeted. Will things eventually recover, or will the best graphics cards finally be free from the cryptomines? We're anticipating a flood of used graphics cards hitting places like eBay, so we wanted to grab this snapshot in time of GPU prices on eBay over the two weeks prior to The Merge.

We've been tracking GPU prices on eBay for the past 18 months or so, and we've watched the most popular cards for mining purposes fall from unsustainable highs to somewhat reasonable values. Granted, you're taking a risk buying a used graphics card, but if you stick with the RTX 30-series and RX 6000-series, it's probably not that risky. Maybe. Anyway, let's get on to the numbers over the past two weeks, and we'll compare those to eBay GPU prices from the month of August.

There's nothing too surprising with the trends shown here. We've been watching GPUs drop in cost on secondhand markets most of this year, and with Nvidia RTX 40-series Ada GPUs, AMD RX 7000-series RDNA 3 GPUs, and Intel Arc Alchemist GPUs all slated to launch in the next few months (or sooner), people continue to sell off their existing graphics cards for whatever they can get.

Interestingly, the lowest prices on some models are much better than the average prices we're showing here. It's difficult to say if every alleged sale on eBay actually ends up going through — buyers and sellers have been known to cancel — so if you're patient it's potentially possible to get an even better value on a card that's up for auction.

Overall, we saw prices come down on every GPU from the current generation, with an average decline of 6.9% (weighted by the number of each GPU sold). The biggest change was on the RX 6950 XT, which dropped 16%, though it should be noted that volume is very low at just four cards sold in the past two weeks. The RTX 3080 12GB also saw an impressive 11% decrease, with 51 GPUs sold.

If you're looking for a new graphics card, you should also check retail GPU prices and see how those compare to eBay pricing. Most cards are 10–15% cheaper on eBay, but the price premium for a brand-new card is probably worth paying. Let's quickly look at the previous generation cards as well.

Previous generation Turing and RDNA GPUs dropped slightly more in price, though now we're dealing with graphics cards that are potentially up to four years old — some of which possibly mined for most of that time. AMD's RX 5700 XT, RX 5700, and RX 5500 XT 8GB all dropped by close to 20% compared to the month of August, while the RTX 2060 price actually increased slightly by 3.4% — sort of ironic, considering brand-new RTX 2060 cards are one of the best values right now.

Nvidia's RTX 20-series GPUs are holding on to some remaining value much better than AMD's RDNA GPUs. That's basically where things were prior to 2020, as the Nvidia marketing was strong and there was a case made for getting a card with ray tracing and DLSS support. Still, it's a bit ludicrous that you can buy an RX 5700 XT for less than an RTX 2060 on eBay these days.

According to our GPU benchmarks hierarchy, the RX 5700 XT is 30% faster than the RTX 2060 at 1080p medium, 34% faster at 1080p ultra, and 38% faster at 1440p ultra. Heck, even the RX 5700 basically ties the RTX 2060 Super — admittedly that's without factoring in DXR or DLSS. Anyway, if you're looking for a reasonably fast GPU that costs less than $250, the RX 5600 and 5700 series cards certainly warrant a look.

The question now is where things will go from here. It feels like GPU prices on existing hardware are standing on a precipice, waiting for a massive fall. Traditionally — meaning outside of the past two years of abnormality — we would expect all the current generation hardware to be selling well below launch MSRPs, in an effort to clear out any remaining inventory right before AMD and Nvidia release new graphics cards. That hasn't happened yet, at least not for Nvidia.

The fastest RTX 30-series GPUs like the RTX 3090 and 3080 series are more reasonably priced than before, but really it's only the RTX 3090 Ti and RTX 3080 Ti that are selling well below their earlier MSRPs. Those were drastically inflated to begin with, so cutting the 3090 Ti from $1,999 down to $1,099 wasn't particularly hard to do. But the vanilla RTX 3080 10GB still starts at around $739 at retail right now, and the RTX 3050 through RTX 3070 are also selling above MSRP.

There are lots of rumors about specifications and potential performance for the upcoming GPUs circulating. If those are even close to accurate, we could see RTX 4080 cards selling for under $999 while delivering significantly better performance — and power efficiency — than the RTX 3090 Ti. Now toss on the aftereffects of the Ethereum Merge and it's difficult to imagine that a good chunk of the ~20 million GPUs that were mining Ethereum won't end up being sold off in the next month or two.

As we noted in the main Ethereum Merge article, right now most GPUs are now making less than $0.50 per day, and that value continues to drop. Short of some GPU minable cryptocoin surging to the front in the near future, most large-scale GPU miners would be better served by closing up shop rather than continuing to pay for power, space, support, and infrastructure.

Having already covered a price drop on the 5800X3D this week, it's a surprise to see its price fall even further. But, thanks to a Labor Day sale (and looming Ryzen 7000 availability), you can now pick up AMD's Ryzen 7 5800X3D on eBay (via seller Antonline) for just $365 , thanks to a 15% Labor Day discount. One of the best gaming CPUs just got a lot more attractive at this price and is a fantastic upgrade for an older AM4 gaming system. 

Gigabytes 48-Inch Aorus FO48U 4K OLED monitor is available for a staggeringly low price of $599 at the moment from Newegg if you apply the $100 promo code LDYBW2236 at the checkout and make use of the $200 rebate option. Although I'm not a fan of rebates, sometimes it's worth the effort for savings like this. Check out our review of the Aorus FO48U and see why we thought it worthy of an Editors Choice award. 

Power up your rig with an EVGA 220 P2 SuperNOVA 650W modular PSU for $69. This 80 Plus Platinum-rated PSU is a superb pick for a new system build at this price.

We have even more great deals on headsets and RAM below, so scroll on for more details.  

TL;DR — Today’s Best Deals

• AMD Ryzen 7 5800X3D: was $449, now $365 at eBay via Antonline
• Aorus FO48U 4K OLED 48-Inch: was $1,499, now $599 at Newegg with promo code and rebate
• EVGA 220 P2 SuperNOVA 650W Modular PSU: was $179, now $69 at Amazon
• HyperX Cloud Core Wireless Gaming Headset: was $99, now $49 at Amazon
• Corsair Vengeance 32GB DDR5 5600MHz RAM: was $229, now $166 at Newegg with promo code

Today’s best deals in detail

Looking for more deals?

• Best deals on tech & PC hardware
• Best gaming laptop deals
• Best monitor deals
• Best PC and laptop deals
• Best SSD deals
• Best CPU deals
• Best Dell and Alienware deals
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You can currently get your hands on Intel's flagship processor, the Core i9-12900KF, for only $499 on eBay through Antonline. That's almost $50 off its usual price from other resellers. The 12900KF is one of the best CPUs for gaming and you can also check out our review of the Core i9-12900KF for more information and see why it received our Editor's Choice award. 

If you're looking for a good laptop deal, the Asus TUF Dash 15 (Model: FX517ZR-F15.I73070) is just $1,249 at Best Buy. This 2022 model of the Asus TUF Dash 15 lineup features a 12th Gen Intel i7 CPU and Nvidia's RTX 3070 GPU. This is a potent combination of components for the price. 

We also spotted Noctua's reliable NH-D15 which has been reduced to only $99 after having a recent surge in price for a while. This mainstay of the large air-coolers market is a great alternative to AIOs and has the added bonus of near silent operation.

Scroll down for more great deals.  

TL;DR — Today’s Best Deals

• Intel Core i9-12900KF CPU: was $614, now $499 at eBay
• Asus TUF Dash 15 (12th Gen, RTX 3070) Gaming Laptop: was $1,499, now $1,249 at Best Buy
• Noctua NH-D15 CPU Cooler: was $142, now $99 at Amazon
• HyperX Cloud II 7.1 Gaming Headset: was $99, now $69 at HP
• AOC AGON AG322QCX 31.5-Inch Curved Gaming Monitor: was $429, now $219 at Walmart

Today’s best deals in detail

Looking for more deals?

• Best deals on tech & PC hardware
• Best gaming laptop deals
• Best monitor deals
• Best PC and laptop deals
• Best SSD deals
• Best CPU deals
• Best Dell and Alienware deals
• Best 3D printer deals
• Best Raspberry Pi deals

Cryptocurrency miners in China have started dismantling their operations and offloading the best graphics cards on the second-hand market. As Bitcoin and Ethereum came crashing down and graphics card pricing began to normalize, miners are looking to cut their losses and sell off their equipment.

Sellers have flooded Xianyu, a second-hand Chinese marketplace similar to eBay, with many used GeForce RTX 30-series (Ampere) graphics cards. We suspect that the miners aren't the only ones getting rid of their stock, but the Xianyu merchants also include scalpers and internet café owners. For example, Twitter user I_Leak_VN spotted multiple listings of custom GeForce RTX 3080 graphics cards reportedly selling for 3,500 yuan, or $523.21.

For reference, the GeForce RTX 3080 has a $699 MSRP, so these used graphics cards are selling way below MSRP. In addition, Twitter user MEGAsizeGPU discovered that some sellers deviously used fake pricing to attract buyers. In reality, some of the merchants are asking for between $600 to $750 for a GeForce RTX 3080.

Some miners have resorted to live stream auctions to get rid of their graphics cards. As per a Baidu post, miners are selling tons of GeForce RTX 3060 Ti graphics cards between $300 and $350. Once upon a time, the GeForce RTX 3060 Ti was one of the most popular models for mining, given its performance and price tag. But unfortunately, the Ampere-powered graphics cards are just lying on the floor like cheap rugs waiting for the highest bidder.

It's not just the minor-league cryptocurrency miners feeling the crypto squeeze. Even big mining farms like Toronto-based outfit Bitfarms have started to take action. According to a CoinDesk report, Bitfarms sold 3,000 BTC valued at $62 million to reduce the company's debt and boost liquidity. The company's now down to 3,349 BTC. In addition, Riot Blockchain, one of the big-name miners, has started selling its bitcoins since April to raise cash.

Ethereum's transition to Proof-of-Stake (PoS), commonly known as "the merge," has suffered multiple setbacks over the years. Ethereum developer Tim Beiko expects the merge to reach completion between August and November. Miners still have a few months to unload their assets. However, it wouldn't be very intelligent to pick up a graphics card with a history of operating 24/7 in the cryptocurrency mines, even if the price looks attractive. But who knows. Maybe used Ampere graphics cards will be dirt cheap by November and worth the gamble.

Intel likes PC systems powered by its processors to wear their stickers proudly. Thus pre-built desktops and laptop PCs with Intel CPUs will invariably come with a shiny holographic sticker already adhered in a prominent position. If you have lost one of these stickers or somehow become spoiled, you might be pleased to know Intel has a quick and efficient Replacement Intel Inside Logo Label program. How do we know it is fast and efficient? Because Redditor Excellent-Ad-7062 just used the service and gave it a glowing review.

The Redditor recently bought a used Intel processor for a system and, as he "always liked the stickers," wondered about how to acquire one. Of course, if you search Google, you will come across various eBay and Amazon sellers. Still, if you have proof of purchase of an Intel processor or system powered by an Intel chip, you can get a new sticker for free via the link in the intro paragraph.

For proof of purchase, you can screenshot or photo an invoice, receipt, or packing slip to send along with your online request form. If you don't have any of that kind of proof, you will be able to save a screenshot from the Intel System Support Utility (linked to via the form) instead.

Intel's response to the request impressed the Redditor, who said the new sticker arrived briskly via FedEx with a note, as above. Others commented that filling in the form to the arrival of the sticker took three days. Intel's note is charmingly polite but assertive about how to make use of the new sticker. "Your support for the consistent and proper use of our brand identity is greatly appreciated," writes Intel. "By applying your label to the front of the system bezel, it will help ensure that we consistently meet our brand promise to deliver innovation, reliability, and leading-edge technology."

Genuine Intel stickers have a certain quality about them. Holographic elements give them an eye-catching depth when viewed from various angles. Depending on the processor generation, you will also see a representation of the processor architecture from the back. Tip: check this out before sticking the sticker on your PC.

Please note that users in some countries will face a customs fee for the import/processing of the Intel replacement sticker.

We hope Intel extends its service to include Arc graphics stickers. Sadly, holy PC trinity rivals AMD and Nvidia don't appear to offer a similar sticker replacement service.

Ebay is littered with Steam Deck scalpers, with some attempting to sell the gaming device for more than three times what you would pay through Valve.

With the devices in short supply, and official pre-order fulfillment times edging further into the future, markets like eBay provide a sideways route to acquiring one of these PC gaming handhelds. However, going the Ebay way will make you pay a lot for your lack of patience, with completed listings of what should be $529 devices easily seen fetching over $1,500. PCMag first reported on the significant number of scalpers, many of whom appear to have the device in-hand and ready to ship to potential buyers.

In the US, Valve sells Steam Deck devices at $399, $529 or $649, for capacities of 64GB, 256GB, and 512GB, respectively. There are some other differences with regard to storage speed and the screen glass, and you can read about those in our full-fledged Steam Deck review.

At the time of writing, the official Steam Deck Steam Store Page allows one to reserve any of the three SKUs mentioned above for a nominal fee ($5), with one big drawback. All Steam Deck pre-orders today come with the warning that your order is expected to be fulfilled "after Q3 2022." So you may end up waiting until Q4 this year, and that is a long time in tech. But the idea of paying so much more should set off the alarm that buying off of Ebay may be a bad deal.

Pondering over the first page of listings, most continental US sellers seem to be hoping to achieve $1,500 or more from their Steam Deck sales listings. Some have quite ridiculous Buy-it-Now pricing, over $2,500. Most of these promise they have the device "in hand," and will happily ship anywhere.

A second tier of US scalper sellers have dared to go the auction route, and have done fairly well. It looks like they can even raise over $1,400 for a 64GB eMMC machine. A cheaper eBay purchase option seems to be to buy a device from Europe. These seem to be commonly $700 to $800, but you will have to wait and that is a lengthy transit, so not as comfortable a purchase.

Another interesting category of eBay listing that the Steam Deck seems to have inspired is the sale of a device that hasn't yet shipped. In the image below you can see a user who has a reservation which will become available to ship on April 1, 2022.

We have checked through a few of the device reservation sales and they have all been described in the item specifics as a "handheld system" with model and capacity descriptions. However, it doesn't seem to be a highly reassuring way to spend so much money. Due to this uncertainty the descriptions mentioning "in hand… ships immediately" look like they are preferred. Still, you should be wary and ask get answers about any questions you may have if you're even thinking of bidding.

Many of these prices are lower than in July, when people were selling reservations for as high as $5,000 when we didn't even know the device's release date.

Save Your Money and Buy a New Laptop?

The Steam Deck is an undeniably cool device,. But it still needs a bit of time to mature and live up to expectations, and remember - it earned its four-star rating in our review at MSRP pricing.

If you are considering paying $1,500 or more on a portable PC for gaming, perhaps one of the new breed of compact but powerful laptops could meet your needs at this kind of price, or less. In the meantime the Steam Deck platform matures, improves, and you might even get to see the Steam Deck 2 or 3 arrive before you feel again like splashing the cash.

For those of you considering a gaming laptop we have a recently updated guide covering the Best Gaming Laptops of 2022. If portability is key, which is likely if you are reading about the Steam Deck, you might want to read through our Best Ultrabooks and Premium Laptops 2022.

Prices on the best graphics cards, and even previous generation graphics cards, continues to decline. We normally look at GPU prices on a monthly basis, but the current situation warrants more frequent updates. This time, we're looking at the first two weeks of March compared to the entire month of February.

We looked at GPUs from the past two generations sold on eBay, and every single card again showed a drop in prices. Some fell by just a few percent, others like the RX 5500 XT dropped by 20%. The overall average decline came in at just under 9%, and a slightly lower 8% dip if we confine our view to just the current generation (RTX 30-series and RX 6000-series) graphics cards.

Here's a look at the data. We've included average fps (frames per second) values for the cards from our GPU benchmarks hierarchy, and also put in Ethereum hashrates from our best mining GPUs article. As you can probably guess, there's a definite correlation between the drop in mining profitability and the decrease in graphics card prices.

These latest price drops come in the wake of an average 11% decline in February, compared to January prices. All told, GPU prices have decreased on average by 25% since December 2021. Of course, it doesn't help that prices back in December were often double the official AMD and Nvidia MSRPs.

With the latest price drops in place, typical eBay pricing on RTX 30-series cards is still 68% higher than Nvidia's recommended prices — even including the very expensive RTX 3080 Ti and 3090. AMD's RX 6000-series cards by comparison are only 41% higher than the official MSRPs. Going back to the previous generation, Nvidia's RTX 20-series cards are now just 9% higher than their launch MSRPs, while the GTX 16-series cards cost 47% more than their launch prices. Finally, AMD's RX 5000-series cards currently cost 49% more than their launch prices.

It's not just eBay prices dropping. Newegg prices basically match or beat what we're showing in the above table. For example, this MSI RTX 3080 10GB card now costs just $1,127 — nearly $200 less than the eBay price. A Gigabyte RTX 3080 12GB meanwhile goes for $1,250. RTX 3070 Ti starts at $900, RTX 3070 at $852, RTX 3060 Ti at $660, RTX 3060 costs $520, and the new RTX 3050 can be had for $400. The story is similar on the AMD side of things: RX 6900 XT, RX 6800 XT, RX 6800, RX 6700 XT, RX 6600 XT, RX 6600, and RX 6500 XT prices generally match or beat what we're seeing on eBay, sometimes by a significant margin, all without the annoyance of the shuffle system.

Amazon's prices are still quite a bit higher than elsewhere, but we're seeing plenty of retailers now carrying inventory, with prices steadily decreasing week by week. If the current trends continue, we could actually see graphics card prices at close to the official MSRPs by the second half of 2022. That would be great, especially with Ada / RTX 40-series and RDNA 3 / RX 7000-series GPUs rumored to be coming in the fall. Hopefully, the Ethereum transition to proof of stake will also occur by then, which should remove one more reason for the inflated GPU prices. However, shortages on components and other factors like the Russian invasion of Ukraine may slow down progress.

Update 3/2/2022 2:38AM PT:

Raspberry Pi co-founder Eben Upton has responded to our questions and we have included Upton's responses in the updated story.

Updated Article

With sales now exceeding 45 million units in its first decade, you'd be forgiven if you thought that the Raspberry Pi was immune to the global chip shortage. Sadly this isn't the case as most major retailers in the U.S. and UK are out of stock of Raspberry Pi 4 models, with third-party Amazon sellers and eBay scalpers marking the boards up as much as 400 percent.

In a recent episode of The Pi Cast, Raspberry Pi co-founder Eben Upton revealed that demand was far exceeding what the organization could supply.

To celebrate 10 years of the Raspberry Pi, Tom's Hardware hosted a special episode of The Pi Cast, featuring Raspberry Pi co-founders Eben Upton and Pete Lomas.

When asked by a viewer "When can we expect supply of the Raspberry Pi 4B to be back to normal?" Upton initially quipped that he was "stopping answering this question" but then went on to confirm that they were making around 500,000 Raspberry Pi computers per month but there is a "credible backlog of one to two million units", and that "backlog eats everything that we can make." 

Upton continued to explain that some of the backlog is with resellers who are offering the units for sale as and when they arrive, while others operate a pre-order system. In Upton's response to our questions, Upton states that "the issue here isn't a shortfall in production: it's an inability to ramp production *up* to meet surging demand. It's a fairly broad-based constraint across a number of components on the board."

Upton has been upfront with the supply of Raspberry Pis, writing a blog post covering the situation in late 2021 when the organization had to raise the price of the 2GB model hit with a $10 price increase and bring the 1GB model of Raspberry Pi 4 out of retirement in order to hit the $35 price point.

The resellers which offer a pre-order, such as Farnell are showing exceptionally long lead times. At the time of writing the UK arm of Farnell states there is a 372 day lead time on 2,4 and 8GB models of Raspberry Pi 4. The wait is even worse for US customers, with no stock expected until April 17, 2023. We put the long lead times to Upton and his response was "I'm not sure that algorithmically computed lead times on websites make a lot of sense at the moment." Upton goes on to illustrate the point by highlighting that some STM32 microcontroller parts are listing lead times up to 2027. Upton goes on to say that the "best advice I can give is to speak to your reseller" and to understand lead times and how often they are receiving new stock.

With supply dwindling to a trickle, it is inevitable that prices will increase and scalpers will meet the need of the desperate. A quick search of eBay sees pages of Raspberry Pi 4s selling for well over its list price. We spotted a 1GB Raspberry Pi 4 at a "Buy It Now price" of $105, $70 more than the list. Another seller offered new Raspberry Pi 4 2,4 and 8GB models at a respective $140, $170 and an eye-watering $210.

When will this all end? Upton believes that "it'll finish when the global semi-conductor shortage finishes and trying to predict that moment is making fools of us all"

The Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W is also impacted by supply shortages. While Upton didn't reveal any details specifically for the Pi Zero 2 W, the Zero range of boards have historically been limited. Older models of the Raspberry Pi Zero saw purchase limits imposed to prevent bulk purchases. Right now the Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W is out of stock everywhere, even with the official resellers. 

One Raspberry Pi that has only been lightly impacted by the shortage is the Raspberry Pi 400. This keyboard centric Raspberry Pi 4 4GB is an exceptional piece of kit, but the change in form factor breaks direct compatibility with HATs, though it is easily mitigated with a breakout board. At most e-tailers, a Raspberry Pi 400 goes for around $100, but Micro Center has it for just $69.

Other Raspberry Pi products, such as the Raspberry Pi Pico seem to be unaffected. Raspberry Pi now directly sells its Arm Cortex M0+ powered SoC in reels of 500 and 3,400 units. The RP2040 is an efficient use of silicon, with a 300mm wafer yielding around 21,000 dice. Upton confirms that the Pico is currently insulated from the global supply shortage, with enough "material in hand for 10-20Mu of RP2040, so no impact on Pico or any of the other RP2040-based boards out there."

Finding a Raspberry Pi

Waiting a year for a pre-order or paying over the list price is not the ideal. If you want to score a Raspberry Pi for the best price then you need to be proactive.  

André Costa's rpilocator scrapes the main resellers website's for stock levels and reports the results every few minutes. The site tracks many different models of Raspberry Pi, from the Zero 2 W, to the unobtanium that is the Raspberry Pi Compute Module 4. The results are also reported via Twitter, for those times when you are not at the computer.

For now we have to ride out this rollercoaster of supply and demand.

The last time you could buy one of the best graphics cards for anything close to MSRP was nearly two years ago, just before the pandemic hit. At the time of the GeForce RTX 3080 launch, we mistakenly thought it was just initially high demand and recommended that no one pay scalper prices of $1,000 or more. Hindsight shows just how wrong we were. But now, with the recent downward trends in GPU prices showing another 11% month-over-month drop, there may be light at the end of the tunnel.

We've gathered the data for the month of February and compared it with pricing from January — using eBay prices, since that's readily available. (Most retail outlets don't provide historical sales and pricing information.) The good news is that, at least for the time being, it appears we've passed the peak and are headed down. The bad news is that there's still a long, long way to go. Here's a look at the past two generations of GPUs, all in one table:

Not a single GPU managed to hold its former price, which is great to see. Normally, there's a bit of variance where maybe a few GPUs still go up in price even though most drop, but that's not the case this time. The biggest losers were the GTX 1660 Super, RTX 3070 Ti, GTX 1650 Super, and RTX 2060 — though we're not counting the RX 6500 XT and RTX 3050, since both of those launched in January and only had limited availability during that month.

The majority of GPUs showed double-digit percentage drops in pricing, with 20 of the 33 cards falling in that range. In fact, only two GPUs showed less than a 7% drop in price, the RX 5500 XT 4GB and 8GB cards. Perhaps that's because they were already near the bottom of the pricing ladder, or maybe it's because the RX 6500 XT proved to be quite anemic, often trailing its ancestors in performance.

If you prefer a more granular look at prices, the above gallery shows the eBay pricing trends for all 16 of the current generation RTX 30-series and RX 6000-series graphics cards. Some show an obvious downward slope over the entire month of February, while others tended to be a bit more variable. But when we look at the GPUs sold for the entire month, the trends become clear.

Taken as a whole, this is great news, but prices remain drastically inflated. The best "deals," if we compare current eBay prices to the official AMD and Nvidia MSRPs, are still at least 35% higher than the MSRPs. Even then, MSRPs on many of the cards are quite a bit higher than what we would normally expect. The RX 6500 XT, for example, "only" costs 36% more than the $200 MSRP, but historically, a budget design like this with a 64-bit memory interface would have sold for closer to $120. The 3070 Ti and 3080 Ti likewise suffer from inflated MSRPs.

Based on theoretical price and performance, the most desirable cards are the RTX 3080, RTX 3060, RX 6800 XT, and RX 6600. Of those, only the RX 6600 has a somewhat reasonable price that's only 40% higher than the MSRP. The RX 6800 XT costs 80% more than the MSRP, while the RTX 3060 and 3080 sell for more than twice the official Nvidia price.

The GPU Outlook for the Rest of 2022

Looking forward, how long will it take for things to return to "normal" if the current trends continue? First, big disclaimer: It's impossible to predict where prices will go in the coming months. The extremely volatile cryptocurrency market has a strong influence on GPU prices, and there are still a lot of difficulties with the supply chain. But if these latest trends were to continue, best-case, we'd start to see some GPUs like the RX 6600 and RX 6500 XT selling at MSRP in about three months. Cards like the RTX 3080 would require closer to seven months. But again, there's basically zero chance we'll see a steady and continuous 10% drop in prices each month for the next half a year.

There are plenty of other things to look forward to in six months as well. Most pundits (including us) expect Nvidia to launch its next-generation Ada Lovelace / RTX 40-series GPUs in the fall. With all rumors and leaks indicating a move to TSMC's 5nm N5 process instead of the current Samsung 8nm 8N, we could be in for a major performance improvement. At the same time, TSMC N5 wafers will cost significantly more than Samsung Foundry's 8N wafers, and there's a good chance we'll see generational pricing increase quite a bit.

AMD has also stated that it plans to launch RDNA 3 / RX 7000-series graphics cards this year. Again, late fall would make the most sense, and there's a good chance TSMC's N5 node will get the nod again. If correct, that will make for an interesting apples-to-apples comparison, as both companies will have access to the same lithography, leaving the underlying GPU designs to fight it out and declare a winner.

And let's not forget Intel, either. We're not expecting Intel Arc to attack the top of the performance stack, but there's definitely an opportunity for Intel to undercut the pricing offered by its competitors. Rumors suggest the fastest Arc GPUs could come close to the RTX 3070 and RX 6800 in performance, and both of those are still selling for around $1,000. So if Intel can deliver similar performance for $600, it could win a lot of friends in the gaming community. That's assuming, of course, that drivers don't sink the ship.

It's shaping up to be an exciting year for GPUs, with pricing heading in the right direction and plenty of new offerings slated to launch in the coming months. We'll be reviewing the cards when they become available and adding them to our GPU benchmarks hierarchy — which now offers a more granular look at performance, with and without ray tracing. Fingers crossed, hopefully the upcoming launches will be better than what we've experienced over the past two years.

This is a great time to get your hands on a Ryzen 9 5950X for just $629 on eBay. AMD's flagship processor is capable of running all the latest games and applications at their full potential and is backward compatible with most AM4 socket motherboards - with the appropriate BIOS updates. The Ryzen 9 5950X also received our Editors Choice award for its specs and performance.

Do you want more storage on your PC? Then this Samsung 980 PRO 1TB NVMe SSD could be just what you're looking for. If it's a budget gaming headset you want so that you can issue commands and hear your opponents creeping up on you, then this Astro A10 has over 50% off of its usual asking price right now.   

Check below for even more great deals today.

TL;DR — Today’s best deals

• AMD Ryzen 9 5950X: was $799, now $629 at eBay
• Samsung 980 PRO M.2 1TB: was $229, now $149 at Amazon
• Astro A10 Gaming Headset: was $59, now $24 at Newegg with code PRSBPA522
• Razer Huntsman V2: was $249, now $199 at Amazon
• HP Victus Gaming Laptop: was $859, now $749 at Newegg

Today’s best deals in detail

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Collectors of rare PC hardware have just missed out on the chance to own a little piece of history: a prototype Intel GPU claiming to be the only working Larabee board in the world. It sold on eBay France for a mere €4,650 ($5,234) and even came in a snazzy case.

Apparently fully working, a screenshot shows the BIOS startup, but without drivers, the Larrabee GPU is marked as an Intel engineering sample for internal use only. Exactly which truck it fell off to end up in the hands of the seller remains unknown, though we have no reason to doubt the bonafides of the vendor, who has a 100% feedback rating.

Larrabee was Intel's 2008-vintage attempt to make a GPU, or rather a GPGPU, separately from the project that led to Iris Pro. Rather than following in the footsteps of Nvidia and ATi, Larrabee used the X86 instruction set with special extensions, and the GPU functioned more like a hybrid of a CPU and GPU. In addition, it did a lot of its work in software rather than using specialized graphics hardware, using a tile-based rendering approach. The idea was to make a board that could accelerate more diverse workloads than 'just' games and achieve graphics effects that GPUs at the time couldn't manage, such as real-time ray-tracing and irregular shadow mapping.

Larrabee's processor was derived from Pentium designs, fitting 32 (or 24 in a cut-down version to use defective chips) in-order cores, each with four-way multithreading, onto a single chip. Each core had a 512-bit vector processing unit and used a 1,024bit (512bit bi-directional) bus to communicate with memory. It was speculated that 25 cores were enough to run Gears of War, an Xbox 360 game, without antialiasing.

Larrabee was general-purpose enough that, theoretically, the GPU could have run its own operating system. However, its graphics performance was poor compared to competing products, and the project was shelved as a GPU in 2009. Its GPGPU approach, however, is echoed today in things like Nvidia's CUDA, which opens up the power of the GPU's parallel processing to other applications.

The Larrabee technology passed to Intel's supercomputing division, which eventually built an accelerator card for high-performance computing released as Knights Corner, and the Xeon Phi co-processors, in 2012. They hung around until 2019 and were used in supercomputers, including Cori at the National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center, and China's Tianhe-2, which topped the list of the world's fastest supercomputers from June 2013 until November 2015.

Nvidia's GeForce RTX 3050 might still be a few days away from launch, but that hasn't stopped online retailers from putting the ray tracing focused "budget" GPU on the presell market already. According to XanxoGaming (via VideoCardz), a Peruvian retailer already has RTX 3050 listings available with incredibly high prices -- well above the cards' MSRP of $250. There's also an RTX 3050 listing on Newegg that shares the same story.

The Peruvian retailer in question is preselling a Palit RTX 3050 Dual OC for a whopping $453. For $53 more, the retailer is also preselling a bundle with the same RTX 3050 model, paired with Geil Orion DDR4-3200 memory for a total of $506. Despite the deal, the bundle won't make the RTX 3050's highly scalped price any sweeter.

Even worse is Newegg's listing showcasing an MSI RTX 3050 Gaming X selling for an absurd $699.98. In fairness to Newegg, this is a marketplace listing from an aftermarket seller, meaning Newegg hasn't assigned the pricing.

Nonetheless, the price is absurd and nearly three times the card's original MSRP value. For $699, you can find more capable cards such as the RTX 3060 for similar prices on sites such as eBay.com.

If these prices mean anything, they are a good indication of future scalper pricing for the RTX 3050. We've already seen AMD's new entry-level Radeon RX 6500 XT going for $500 on eBay, so we wouldn't be surprised to see RTX 3050's going for even more money thanks to the GPUs' beefier specifications.

Speaking of that, Nvidia's RTX 3050 will pack 2,560 CUDA cores paired to 8GB of GDDR6 memory on a 128-bit memory bus. In preliminary advertising, Nvidia states the RTX 3050 will be nearly twice as fast as its predecessor, the GTX 1650, which, if true, would make the RTX 3050 a sweet upgrade to Nvidia's entry-level lineup. Not to mention the fact it has RT cores and Tensor cores as the cherry on top.

Early benchmarks revealed that the RTX 3050 is a much faster card than the RX 6500 XT, but in turn, this will also increase its value on the "scalper market." So if Nvidia can't keep up supply, you can say goodbye to a sweet $250 performance bargain.

It may seem like a broken record at this point, but the supply of the best graphics cards — not you, Radeon RX 6500 XT -— is extremely limited. Battered by chip shortages and demand from cryptominers, gamers still have trouble securing GeForce RTX 30 and Radeon RX 6000 GPUs at MSRP. However, Antonline claims to have several EVGA GeForce RTX 30 cards in stock, albeit bundled with superfluous hardware.

It boils down to picking your poison: do you want to pay hundreds over MSRP to get the graphics card of your choice from a scalper, or do you pay over MSRP (via bundles that you probably don't even care about) from a retailer? For example, Antonline has the EVGA GeForce RTX 3060 XC GAMING 12GB in stock, but it is bundled with an EVGA SuperNOVA 650W G5 80 Plus Gold PSU, EGA X17 mouse, EVGA Z12 RGB keyboard and three months of Xbox Game Pass for PC.

The grand total for the entire bundle is $739, but we must remember that the GeForce RTX 3060 XC GAMING 12GB has an MSRP of $439 — a difference of $300. A quick check at Amazon shows that the PSU, mouse and keyboard go for $75, $30 and $20, respectively. In addition, three months of Xbox Game Pass will set you back $30. So even if we consider the $155 in "value adds," Antonline is still tacking on an extra $145. The card alone is going for around $700 on eBay right now.

But if you're desperate for a graphics card and potentially need the mouse, PSU, and keyboard for a new build anyway, this could be an acceptable solution for gamers. But, of course, the worst-case scenario is that you sell the unneeded hardware to recover some of the additional costs.

Also offered is the GeForce RTX 3060 Ti XC Gaming 8GB bundled with the same PSU, keyboard and Xbox Game Pass subscription for $880. However, the X17 mouse is swapped out for an EVGA CLC 280 Liquid CPU cooler. The GeForce RTX 3060 Ti XC Gaming 8GB has an MSRP of $479, while the liquid cooler sells for $70. Either way, the extra goodies come nowhere close to making up the $400 difference between the bundled price and the MSRP for just the graphics card. For those keeping score, the going rate for the EVGA GeForce RTX 3060 Ti XC GAMING 8GB on eBay is around $825. 

Antonine has several other bundles in stock, including the EVGA GeForce RTX 3090 FTW3 Ultra Gaming for an eye-watering $2,714.93. You can see all the available bundles here. 

As it stands, it doesn't appear that GPU supplies are going to improve anytime soon. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang claims that we could seem improved supplies during the second half of 2022, but that may be wishful thinking. Not only are we still backed up with GeForce RTX 30 demand, but with the arrival of GeForce RTX 40 "Ada Lovelace" graphics cards also expected during the latter half of 2022, we may be in for a seemingly endless loop of GPU buying hell.

Its safe to say that AMD's RX 6500 XT has had a less-than-stellar launch over the past two days. From its underwhelming performance, to its horrendous availability, the card is nearly impossible to find anywhere. It has become such a big problem that even scalpers are barely able to acquire any of these RX 6500 XTs, with just eight listings on eBay.com at the time of this writing.

This isn't to say the listings are cheap by any stretch of the imagination. Most of the scalpers on eBay are selling the cards for around $350-$400, and in some cases $500, which is more than double the 6500 XT's MSRP. For a card of this caliber, paying over twice the MSRP is an all-around bad investment no matter which way you look at it.

For those same prices, you can buy a scalped GTX 1650 Super, or even a GTX 1660 or its Super variant either used or brand-new, which are all higher performing than the RX 6500 XT and won't be plagued by any of its handicaps including its notorious PCIe x4 limitation.

Strangely, most of the AIB partner models are missing from scalper listings. The only cards being scalped are the Gigabyte Gaming OC, with its ridiculously overpowered triple fan WindForce cooler, and the more entry-level PowerColor RX 6500 XT ITX. Models from other brands such as ASRock and Sapphire are completely missing, which is strange considering they are available from Micro Center. I guess scalpers don't shop at MicroCenter?

In any case, this situation demonstrates how incredibly rare the RX 6500 XT is to purchase, despite AMD handicapping the GPU to prevent miners from shopping for it. This is a bizarre circumstance considering the RX 6500 XT should be one of the easiest and cheapest cards to produce, with the design being cut down from its bigger brothers like the RX 6600.

One can argue that the silicon and technology shortages have something to do with the lack of GPU volume, which is probably true. However, the amount of availability we're seeing today appears to be lower than AMD's other RDNA2 cards on launch like the RX 6600 and RX 6600 XT.

However, with news circling that AMD originally planned Navi 24 to be a laptop-exclusive die; it explains why there's barely any availability to be had on launch week. As it seems the RX 6500 XT was a last ditch effort by AMD to get an entry level RDNA2 card to market.

The DDR5 shortage is potentially just as bad as the graphics cards shortage, and as we've charted out below, that means that some 32GB kits are being scalped for $2,500. The more lenient scalpers (via PCMag) are selling DDR5 memory kits on eBay for twice and sometimes up to three times their cost. Luckily, only Intel's 12th-Gen Alder Lake processors currently make use of DDR5. However, Alder Lake processors, which are some of the best CPUs for gaming on the market, are equally happy with the best DDR4, so early adopters aren't forced to pay ridiculous prices for DDR5 — unless they want to.

The transition of the voltage regulation from the motherboard over to the memory is both a blessing and a curse for DDR5. It's great to have a power management integrated circuit (PMIC) on the module itself, since it not only improves voltage regulation but also brings other features, such as threshold protection and power management. The problem is that the PMIC plays such a crucial role in DDR5 that you can't produce DDR5 without it. That's basically what's happening right now.

A global PMIC shortage has put memory manufacturers in a bad predicament where they have the available ICs and no PMICs to finalize production. We've spoken with three major vendors, and they've confirmed that the shortage of PMICs and prolonged due dates have affected DDR5's availability. One manufacturer told us that it has zero DDR5 stock at the moment, and the next run won't happen until next month. Sadly, the brand is only estimating up to 300 units for the worldwide market.

Obviously, not having a steady stock of PMICs not only thwarts production but also delays R&D efforts. Manufacturers are working with what they have. One of our sources informed us that the company only has a handful of PMICs, which slows down overclocking development and prevents the team from properly testing new products.

DDR5 RAM Pricing

Alder Lake officially went up on preorder on October 27, and so did many DDR5 memory kits. However, the supply was extremely limited since many memory kits sold out instantly and weren't even available for purchase. Scalpers immediately took advantage of the DDR5 shortage and started putting up eBay listings for ridiculous amounts of money.

The more lenient scalpers (via PCMag) are selling DDR5 memory kits on eBay for twice and sometimes up to three times their cost. Others are just preying on the weak and flipping DDR5 memory for small fortunes. One seller has put up Corsair's Dominator Platinum RGB DDR5-5200 32GB (2x16GB) memory kit for a whopping $2,500, a 660% increase over its retail $329 price tag. Another eBay listing has two such kits for $5,000.

The sad part isn't just that the only obtainable DDR5 memory kits are out of reach, but it's the fact that some consumers are paying these kinds of prices. According to a screenshot from eBay's Terapeak tool, eBay merchants have moved up to 15 DDR5 memory kits during the last week with selling prices between $1,099 and $2,500.

Early DDR5 memory modules are utilizing PMICs from Renesas. Once more manufacturers like Richtek and Amtek jump into the fray, there should be a steadier supply of PMICs. Samsung has also announced that the company is producing PMICs for its own DDR5 products.

If you plan to upgrade to Alder Lake, you currently have two options. One is to just wait this DDR5 shortage out. Alternatively, you can opt for a Z690 motherboard with DDR4 memory slots. The bad news is that motherboard brands are currently only offering DDR4 support on the lower tier models. There is more variety (and quality) on the Z690 offerings with DDR5. At least Raptor Lake will in all likelihood reside on the same platform. Small consolation when DDR5 kits are selling for as much as a complete RTX 3080 gaming PC.

Touted as the upcoming Ryzen 5 5600X killer, Intel's Core i5-12400F (via momomo_us) is available for puchase on eBay for $322.88. If you rather have the integrated graphics, the Core i5-12400 is also up for sale at $364.77.

With Alder Lake, Intel decided to push the K-series processors first, saving the more pocket-friendly SKUs for a later date. During the announcement, the chipmaker confirmed that it was shipping up to 28 more Alder Lake SKUs to OEMs for prebuilt systems that are slated to debut early 2022. Intel didn't commit to a specific date, but many believe that the non-K processors could arrive as early as January.

It would seem that a few of the unreleased Alder Lake chips may have gotten lost in the process. Affari Temporanei, an Italian retailer and also the eBay seller, has put the Core i5-12400 and Core i5-12400F processors up on eBay. The merchant marked the hybrid parts as OEM chips, but didn't confirm whether they're engineering samples (ES) or not.

Affari Temporanei also listed the Core i5-12400 and Core i5-12400F on its online shop with similar pricing to the eBay listings. Apparently, there's only one unit each. Interested consumers from the U.S. would probably want to purchase through eBay since that's the only plaform where Affari Temporanei offers worldwide shipping. Obviously, it's a big risk since these are alleged OEM chips so they don't come with standard warranties. Since the Core i5-12600K retails for $299.99, you are definitely paying a huge markup just to get the chips before everyone else.

Core i5-12400F, Core i5-12400 Specifications*

*Specifications are unconfirmed.

The Core i5-12400F and Core i5-12400 made their first appearance at a Canadian retailer a few days ago. If the information is accurate, these are hexa-core chips without the small Gracemont cores. That means they sport six Golden Cove cores with Hyper-Threading. The processors could feature a boost clock up to 4.4 GHz. Affari Temporanei stated a 2.5 GHz clock speed, which is likely the base frequency.

There are two specifications that we can be certain of. Intel has already revealed the inner workings of Alder Lake so we know the Core i5 models come equipped with 18MB of L3 cache. The model names tell us that the Core i5-12400F and Core i5-12400 have a 65W PBP (Processor Base Power). However, the MTP (Maximum Turbo Power) rating is unknown. For comparison, the Core i5-12600K sports a 150W MTP so we can state with certainty that the Core i5-12400F and Core i5-12400 will have lower MTP values.

Both the Core i5-12400F and Core i5-12400 have boasted strong performance in preliminary benchmarks. We'll have to put them through their paces, but from what we've seen so far, they are poised to be the new budget gaming kings.

Microsoft’s Xbox Series X mini fridge went up for preorder today priced at $99 (£89.99), and it’s already turning out to be a hot seller. Retailers like Target quickly sold out of the small appliance, with scalpers taking advantage of limited early supplies to make a buck or two via third-party marketplaces.

In the United States, there are already nearly 200 listings for the Xbox Series X mini fridge on eBay, with "Buy it Now" prices ranging from around $300 to $350. Searching through the completed listings on eBay shows that over 150 eager enthusiasts have already agreed to pay well over MSRP for the novelty item. It’s a similar situation at eBay UK, where prices are holding firm between £250 to £300. 

There’s no question that the Xbox Series X is a hot-selling game console that is difficult to obtain at MSRP. However, we never would have guessed that interest in its mini fridge counterpart would be so high. 

While it looks cool, the Xbox Series X mini fridge is only large enough to accommodate a dozen drink cans, and it has two small door pockets for loose items. A USB port is included on the front of the device to plug in an accessory for recharging. There are even glowing green LEDs at the top of the console to mimic its $499 console counterpart. The Xbox Series X mini fridge comes with both AC and DC adapters in the box, so you can use it just as easily at home as you can on-the-go inside your car.

Microsoft claims the mini fridge can bring its temperature down to 50 degrees Fahrenheit (10 degrees Celsius) — not quite as cold as the recommended 40F (4C) kitchen refrigerator temperature, but perhaps good enough for a cool beverage.

Interestingly enough, the Xbox Series X mini fridge has already racked up nearly 427 reviews at Target.com, even though nobody has taken possession of the device. In a classic case of review bombing, the Xbox Series X mini fridge current has a 2 out of 5 stars rating based on 427 “reviews” from customers. At the moment, only 60 percent of Target shoppers recommend it.

According to Microsoft’s Aaron Greenburg, gaming enthusiasts who missed out on Target’s initial online preorders will still have a chance to score the Xbox Series X mini fridge. Fresh stock will be available in-store when it officially launches in December.

Gigabyte has already issued a voluntary recall for the brand's GP-P850GM and GP-P750GM power supplies, both of which are known to occasionally catch fire. However, the company says a recent security breach delayed its RMA plans. The company has finally put up a fully functioning RMA portal for GP-P850GM and GP-P750GM owners that desire a refund or a product replacement.

Not all GP-P850GM and GP-P750GM power supplies are eligible for the refund or exchange. GP-P850GM units must have a serial number between SN20343G031011 and SN20513G022635, while GP-P750GM units must carry a serial number between SN20243G001301 and SN20453G025430. Make sure you have your invoice nearby as proof of purchased is required for either action.

Owners who purchased their units from an authorized Gigabyte reseller, can opt for a refund or product replacement. Unfortunately, owners that acquired the power supply from a non-authorized seller, such as eBay, Craigslist or Amazon marketplace, are only eligible for a product replacement.

Gigabyte has spoken with its retailer partners so the majority are participating in the refund and exchange program. If your retailer isn't, you can file your claim directly with Gigabyte through the claims portal. If you have any questions in regards to the process, you drop an email to powersupply@gigabyteusa.com.

The Galax GeForce RTX 3080 Ti SG — the SG is for "Serious Gamer," if you're wondering — looks to compete with the best graphics cards by offering a unique extra: a fourth clip-on fan to boost cooling performance. That's double the fans of Nvidia's reference GeForce RTX 3080 Ti Founders Edition, if you're keeping track. The 3080 Ti currently ranks as the second fastest GPU overall in our GPU benchmarks hierarchy, just a couple percent behind the RTX 3090, and less than one percent ahead of AMD's competing RX 6900 XT — though those results don't include ray tracing, DLSS, or FSR performance comparisons. How does Galax fare against the competition, and more importantly, will you be able to find one in stock anywhere? The answer to the latter, unfortunately, is generally no, though readers over in Europe might have better luck.

Galax products are also sold under the KFA2 brand overseas, but other than slight differences in the box art, the cards are the same. The parent company for both brands is Palit, which by volume is one of the largest graphics card companies in the world. Despite the name, the Serious Gamer edition is basically equivalent to Nvidia's reference model. Out of the box, it sports a boost clock of 1695MHz, just 30MHz higher than the Founders Edition. If you install Galax's Xtreme Tuner Plus Software and use the 1-Click OC option, you'll get a mostly meaningless bump to a 1710MHz boost clock — that's less than a 1% difference. Still, we've used the factory overclock for testing, and we'll use that for the specs table below.