If you’re in the UK and currently hunting for an RTX 5090, you’ve probably noticed that stock is… limited, at best. The good news is, Overclockers UK has updated its X account with news of incoming stock. The bad? The estimates for new RTX 5090s available for sale are given as between three and 16 weeks—which is about as wide a margin as I’ve seen related to GPU stock, at the very least.
It’s not just the RTX 5090 with a potentially long lead time, either (via Notebookcheck). The RTX 5080 has an ETA of two to six weeks, which is also a fairly substantial wait to buy a now-launched GPU from one of the UK’s largest PC hardware retailers.
RTX 50 Series Stock Update 31/01/2025Stock UpdateRTX 5090 sold out and pre-orders ceasedRTX 5080 sold out and pre-orders ceasedDue to incredibly high demand and limited stock, all 50 Series cards sold shortly after launch with some pre-orders taken in restricted quantities.…January 31, 2025
It’s not Overclockers UK that’s at fault here, just to be clear, nor is the UK unique in its absence of RTX 50-series GPUs.
We’ve been keeping track of where to buy the RTX 5090 and where to buy the RTX 5080 respectively, and it’s been a struggle finding available stock in both the UK and the US no matter which retailer you looked at, although we’ve certainly found a few next-generation Nvidia cards for sale.
Newegg says that its own stock of RTX 5090 and RTX 5080 cards sold out in record time, with the retailer claiming an ‘eight to ten times increase’ in traffic over the course of the launch.
So, stock is limited worldwide, prices are high, and even those that camped out in tents for days before the launch were likely to have ended up disappointed. Still, it was a chance to meet up with your fellow PC hardware enthusiasts and eat a hotdog in a parking lot, at the very least.
Just for funsies, 16 weeks is the rough gestation period of a pig. So if Overclockers UK’s longest estimate is correct, UK buyers could also experience the joy of piglets in four months time alongside their shiny new piece of graphics hardware—if a mummy pig and a daddy pig loved each other very much at this exact moment.
Best CPU for gaming: The top chips from Intel and AMD.
Best gaming motherboard: The right boards.
Best graphics card: Your perfect pixel-pusher awaits.
Best SSD for gaming: Get into the game ahead of the rest.
At least we’ve all learned something. It’s unclear when the current RTX 50-series stock shortages will let up, but if I was a betting man I’d say that these cards were going to be hard to get hold of for some time to come.
Those of you holding out for the fastest of Nvidia’s new offerings may have to wait a while longer yet, but our best graphics card deals page is stuffed full of GPUs you can actually buy right now.
Worth a look if you really need a new graphics card this minute, isn’t it? Looks like you might be hanging around until the pigs come home, otherwise.