Nvidia GeForce RTX 3060 Deals: Where to Find Them

Finding GeForce RTX 3060 deals, including GeForce RTX 3060 Ti deals, means locating one of these ephemeral GPUs for the lowest possible price — not a price matching or beating Nvidia's official MSRPs, which isn't going to happen. The perfect storm of supply failing to meet demand has resulted in worldwide shortages of the best graphics cards, or really anything from the past two generations in our comprehensive GPU benchmarks hierarchy. We've combed the interwebs looking for the best ways to get one of these GPUs, though, and there are still ways to save money.

Be sure to check our GeForce RTX 3080 deals and GeForce RTX 3070 deals as well. The latter is particularly useful as sometimes the cost difference between a 3060 and 3070 system may be relatively small.

Quick Links: RTX 3060 Deals

Nvidia's RTX 3060 series consists of three potential GPUs. The RTX 3060 Ti 8GB came first, followed by the RTX 3060 12GB and the mobile RTX 3060 6GB for laptops. It's an interesting balance between features, performance, and price. Note that the RTX 3060 was also the first GPU to feature Nvidia's LHR (lite hash rate) technology, which it inadvertently "cracked" by releasing an unlocked driver. It has since been fixed with updated VBIOS revisions, while the original RTX 3060 Ti had no limiter but the newer models feature LHR tech.

The RTX 3060 Ti technically delivers the best overall performance, but in many ways the RTX 3060 ends up being more desirable. We've seen in multiple recent gaming benchmarks, the latest being Battlefield 2042, how having more than 8GB of VRAM can provide a smoother overall gaming experience. That puts the mobile RTX 3060 variant at a serious disadvantage, since it only comes with 6GB, but then you probably won't be attempting to run demanding games at 4K with maxed out settings on an RTX 3060 laptop.

Before we get into how to find RTX 3060 deals, let's set the stage. Our GPU price index tracks recently sold GPUs on eBay. The RTX 3060 Ti has a theoretical starting price of $399 and the RTX 3060 supposedly starts at $329, but in practice most cards sell for more than double that price. On eBay, the average price on the RTX 3060 Ti was $907 during the month of October, and the RTX 3060 averaged $698 — and average prices right now tend to be even higher, what with the holiday shopping spree kicking into high gear.

That's not a perfect look at the market, but it does give a reasonable indication of what some people are willing to pay. Retail outlets like Amazon and Newegg tend to follow the eBay trends, more or less using the adage of "if you can't beat them, join them" — "them" being the scalpers in this case. If you can find a GeForce RTX 3060 or GeForce RTX 3060 Ti for substantially less than the average eBay price, we consider that an "RTX 3060 deal," even if it's still far more expensive than the official MSRPs.

Unlike the 3080 and 3070 cards, the RTX 3060 Ti arrived before the vanilla 3060. In a strange twist of fate, increased competition from AMD and a concern for the efficacy of another 6GB "mainstream" card led Nvidia to equip the desktop RTX 3060 with 12GB of memory. It's also 15Gbps GDDR6 rather than 14Gbps, which is what the 3060 Ti and 3070 use. However, the memory uses a 192-bit interface instead of 256-bit, so total bandwidth ends up at 360GBps vs. 448GBps on the 3060 Ti. Combined with the lower core counts, performance often ends up being about 20% lower than the 3060 Ti, but we've seen several recent games where the added memory enables better performance at 1440p and 4K.

Because the 3060 Ti originally came without a hashrate limiter, it remains quite popular among cryptocurrency miners and the price is nearly the same as the RTX 3070. We've included both LHR and non-LHR models in our research, but generally speaking the non-LHR models tend to cost about $100 more than the LHR variants. If you're only interested in gaming, using your GPU the way the good lord Jensen intended, don't pay extra for a non-LHR card.

The lowest prices we've seen for a complete RTX 3060 desktop PC start at around in the $1,200 range. Interestingly, you can get a laptop with an RTX 3060 for a lower price (see below), but you'll also get lower performance from the laptop. Generally speaking, you'll want at least a Ryzen 5 or Core i5 processor, 16GB of memory, and a 500GB or larger SSD.

Based on what we're seeing online, the cost of a complete prebuilt PC — not including the RTX 3060 — works out to around $525. That doesn't include the cost of assembly or the OS, which typically add about $200. That means you're effectively paying around $525 for an RTX 3060 if you buy a full PC at the lowest possible price.

The lowest price we're seeing right now is at least $100 more than the RTX 3060 desktops, but that's a reasonable premium, especially since you get some other worthwhile upgrades. The base PC would cost around $675 on its own, plus the OS and assembly add about $200, which means you're paying the equivalent of around $505 for an RTX 3060 Ti. If that were for a standalone GPU, it would be far and away the best deal around right now.

If you just want to see what’s out there, check our complete list of all the RTX 3060 laptops you can buy. We'll be looking for any other reasonable GeForce RTX 3060 deals during the holiday season and will update this page and our list of the best gaming laptop deals if and when we find them.

Given the continued supply shortages and increased demand for gaming PCs and laptops, many of the best deals will sell out quickly. Leave a comment if you find something better than what we've currently listed.

TOPICS

Jarred Walton is a senior editor at Tom's Hardware focusing on everything GPU. He has been working as a tech journalist since 2004, writing for AnandTech, Maximum PC, and PC Gamer. From the first S3 Virge '3D decelerators' to today's GPUs, Jarred keeps up with all the latest graphics trends and is the one to ask about game performance.