Abstract created by Good Solutions AI
In abstract:
- PCWorld reviews that Nvidia RTX 5090 graphics playing cards have reached excessive pricing, with an Asus ROG Matrix Platinum mannequin listed at $7,499 on Newegg.
- Common RTX 5090 costs have doubled from $2,000 in January 2025 to round $4,000, making high-end gaming PCs more and more unaffordable for shoppers.
- These unprecedented value will increase are pushing consumers towards prebuilt techniques or lower-tier alternate options like RTX 5070 playing cards beginning at $650.
Only a 12 months in the past, we complained that MSI was bumping up costs for RTX 50-series playing cards to ranges that have been outrageous on the time, starting from $819 to a whopping $2,400 on the excessive finish. As we speak, I noticed Newegg promoting an Asus ROG Matrix Platinum GeForce RTX 5090 for $7,499.
The craziest factor is that, sure, this can be a one-off from an impartial vendor—however solely when you think about that a lot of the Nvidia RTX 5090 playing cards offered by Newegg hover round $4,000. Amazon isn’t significantly better, with the common value listed at about $3,800 by my estimates.
Significantly, how did we get up to now? We have been complaining about MSI RTX 5090 playing cards at $2,400 a 12 months in the past ($400 over MSRP), solely to look at costs shoot up even additional like a pump-and-dump memecoin.
I do know, PCPartPicker’s pattern line exhibits that the RTX 5090 was about $2,000 in January 2025—concerning the value of what we’d take into account a reasonably dear pocket book—and has elevated to $4,000 since then. By some means, we’ve merely come to simply accept that.
Foundry
Fortunately, RTX 5080 playing cards are “solely” about $1,500 or so, and RTX 5070 playing cards are about $650—however these $650 playing cards solely embrace 12GB of RAM. In the meantime, a 5070 card with 16GB of RAM prices $1,100 or so, relying on the place you look. You may quibble over the worth, however the differential appears constant. (By the way in which, AMD’s Radeon playing cards is perhaps lots cheaper, however nobody desires these.)
Not solely do these costs put an insane quantity of strain on unusual shoppers, they utterly overturn the apple cart of comparative pricing. If a graphics card inflates the worth of a desktop or laptop computer, it might probably drastically change our suggestion on whether or not to purchase that system or not. Shortages and value hikes which can be ripping by way of the business, and the chaos has nonetheless but to hit sure segments.
That’s why analysts have been recommending bundles final Black Friday as a strategy to offset the worth hikes. Retailers usually tend to settle for losses throughout a bundle of elements, particularly if a part of that bundle features a software program license or bundle that doesn’t have manufacturing prices.
The opposite choice is a prebuilt PC, which is admittedly only a bundle of elements in the event you’re being cynical. Shopping for down—accepting a slower GPU like an RTX 5060—could make a PC extra fairly reasonably priced, like this Core i7 14700F/32GB DDR5/RTX 5060 desktop for $1,219 at Newegg.
Finally, the costs of these prebuilts will most likely skyrocket, too. Bear in mind, the present AI-driven RAM shortages might final for years. That doesn’t seem like hyperbole now, does it?
It’s nonetheless exhausting to imagine, nonetheless, that you could actually purchase a used automobile for concerning the value of the ROG RTX 5090 card listed above. It’s March 2026, and it’s solely going to worsen.
