Get an RTX 3060 with 12 GB of VRAM for just $329.99 at Newegg — MSI Ventus 2X OC model back in stock with free shipping

MSI RTX 3060 12 GB Ventus 2X OC — (Image credit: MSI)

Barely a week ago, we reported that Nvidia's notion of bringing back old graphics cards actually became a reality. As a quick heads-up, we just spotted an MSI Ventus 2X 3060 12 GB OC selling at the virtual stand of Newegg for a scant $329.99, with free shipping included. The card was essentially nowhere to be seen for years, and when it showed up, it carried near-$400 price tags.

The 12 GB of VRAM are particularly welcome sight in this day and age, where 8 GB is a significant constraint for contemporary games. That amount also makes this card a viable platform for running AI models locally.

Check out all the GeForce RTX 3060 Ventus 2X 12G OC at Newegg.

The specific card on hand is the MSI GeForce RTX 3060 Ventus 2X 12 GB OC, a dual-fan variant with a 1087 MHz GPU boost clock. Though the RTX 3060 GPU is quite frugal in its power consumption and heat generation, the steel backplate MSI included is still a welcome sight as it should help keep fan noise low by dissipating heat and avoiding PCB bending. Three DisplayPort outputs and an HDMI 2.1 connector decorate the backplate.

Given the AI-driven shortages, affordable graphics cards being in stock again is a definitive positive — particularly when they're loaded with a good amount of VRAM. This variant of the RTX 3060 will make short work of most any game at 1080p resolution, be quite competent at 1440p with fairly high detail levels, and even play many a title with aplomb at 4K with judicious care with settings. Nvidia's top-notch DLSS 4.5 upscaling will help you in that endeavor.

Additionally, freely available AI models have been getting smarter by the day, and 12 GB of VRAM grants you the ability to run many of them locally without spending a dime or having your data siphoned off. If you were considering this path to replace or supplement commercial bots, $329.99 is a good price, as any, to get the homelab ball rolling.

If you're looking for more savings, check out our Best PC Hardware deals for a range of products, or dive deeper into our specialized SSD and Storage Deals, Hard Drive Deals, Gaming Monitor Deals, Graphics Card Deals, or CPU Deals pages.

Bruno Ferreira is a contributing writer for Tom's Hardware. He has decades of experience with PC hardware and assorted sundries, alongside a career as a developer. He's obsessed with detail and has a tendency to ramble on the topics he loves. When not doing that, he's usually playing games, or at live music shows and festivals.

17 Comments Comment from the forums

SSGBryan

Exact same price I paid for mine in 2021.
Reply
Guza

I got RTX 5060 for $300 few weeks ago. Yea it has 8GB vram but has 50% better performance and doesnt lose as much performance using DLSS 4.5. This sounds like a horrible deal.
Reply
hotaru251

or save bit more and grab a 9060 xt w/ more raster performance, better RT performance, & 16gb ram....

no telling how long Nvidia will even support the 30 series refresh and again even then its on 2nd gen RT cores.
Reply
Loadedaxe

No offense to TH, but no....$329 was the MSRP in 12/2020

FO Nvidia...maybe at $229.....but no we aren't buying your 5 year old crap at MSRP...
Reply
dva852

SSGBryan said:
Exact same price I paid for mine in 2021.
Your expectation of declining prices for tech toys is in question. If tech toys are priced like houses, you would be ecstatic. It's not quite there (yet), but it's about...halfway?

These "it's old, it should be cheap" sentiments are now antiquated. You still have the pre-DC (data center) mindset, circa 2024. It's not 2024 anymore.

For consumer PC hardware, I expect slow-walk progress. The NAND/DRAM price bottleneck will throttle any major HW advances anyway. Intel's bLLC CPU? Big Zen6 uplift? 60-series Super? Yeah, whatever, who cares if nobody can afford it.

IOW, be content with what you have, as there won't be new toys for a while.
Reply
SomeoneElse23

I'd like see some of the high end 4000's come back.

A flood of new 4090s would bring the prices down to reasonable levels, and you wouldn't need a fire extinguisher.
Reply
dva852

SomeoneElse23 said:
I'd like see some of the high end 4000's come back.
Nvidia has moved on from 4000 series. Restarting production would mean setting up tooling, production runs, etc, and would make per unit more expensive than continuing 5000 production. It's probably why 3060 isn't cheap(er) than it is. People don't think about manufacturing costs.

SomeoneElse23 said:
A flood of new 4090s would bring the prices down to reasonable levels, and you wouldn't need a fire extinguisher.
No, it won't. AI peeps have deeper pockets than PC DIYers, and would snap up any 4090 at prices higher than you're willing to pay.
Reply
hotaru251

SomeoneElse23 said:
A flood of new 4090s would bring the prices down to reasonable levels
...it wouodn't.

you can have near infinite amount of 4070 supers or 4080's and price would stay high due to the vram each gpu needs being so costly due to the limitation of availability.

It isnt a scarcity of gpu's that issue..its the fact ram is so costly thus anything uses ram has to match that additional cost.
Reply
Loadedaxe

dva852 said:
Your expectation of declining prices for tech toys is in question. If tech toys are priced like houses, you would be ecstatic. It's not quite there (yet), but it's about...halfway?

These "it's old, it should be cheap" sentiments are now antiquated. You still have the pre-DC (data center) mindset, circa 2024. It's not 2024 anymore.

For consumer PC hardware, I expect slow-walk progress. The NAND/DRAM price bottleneck will throttle any major HW advances anyway. Intel's bLLC CPU? Big Zen6 uplift? 60-series Super? Yeah, whatever, who cares if nobody can afford it.

IOW, be content with what you have, as there won't be new toys for a while.
I agree that the market has changed and that AI/Data center demand has permanently altered pricing. I also agree we're unlikely to see the kind of price/performance leaps we enjoyed a decade ago.

Where I disagree is that this somehow justifies a five year old GPU selling for its original MSRP. Those are two different discussions. The RTX 3060's development costs have long since been recovered, and NVIDIA is reporting record profits. Pricing it closer to $225-250 wouldn't be charity...it would simply acknowledge that this is older hardware while building goodwill with the gaming community that made GeForce the dominant brand in the first place.

I think many people will hold onto their hardware longer, but that's because GPUs have become increasingly expensive, not because a five year old card is somehow worth what it was in 2021. There's a difference between accepting today's market realities and pretending those realities make old hardware a good value at launch pricing.
Reply
SSGBryan

dva852 said:
Your expectation of declining prices for tech toys is in question. If tech toys are priced like houses, you would be ecstatic. It's not quite there (yet), but it's about...halfway?

These "it's old, it should be cheap" sentiments are now antiquated. You still have the pre-DC (data center) mindset, circa 2024. It's not 2024 anymore.

For consumer PC hardware, I expect slow-walk progress. The NAND/DRAM price bottleneck will throttle any major HW advances anyway. Intel's bLLC CPU? Big Zen6 uplift? 60-series Super? Yeah, whatever, who cares if nobody can afford it.

IOW, be content with what you have, as there won't be new toys for a while.
You are reading a lot more into what I wrote. It was a statement, nothing more.

I am content with what I have: (Intel B580) for gaming; it is a fine 1440p High card. My "work box" (3d/stable diffusion) has a 5070ti (699 on Black Friday) & 5060ti (429 when on sale).
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