Where in the heck can I buy a video card?

This spring my son and I put together a mid-level gaming computer based around a case that we found someone throwing out. I haven't put together a computer in about 2 decades, and thought it would be a fun project.

We got everything done except the video card.  Recently my son was starting a programming class and so I bought a used 8 GB video card from OfferUp so that we could get it up and running.

Unfortunately despite my amateur inspection of the card, and checking with the seller that it was used for gaming and not mining, it seems to have some issues and causes the computer to crash.

I had out IT guy, who does repairs on the side, take a look at it and he confirmed that the card seems to be failing and is causing the issue. Looking on "reputable" online parts stores it seems that nearly all cards are out of stock. Any suggestions on where I should be looking for a tested or warrantied card?

It is extremely hard to source a video card as they are almost all being pressed into service of mining coins.

https://www.pcgamer.com/where-to-buy-a-graphics-cad/

In addition to Newegg Shuffle, people have been buying premade PCs and taking the video cards out to use in their own machine.

Supply and demand at the moment has them selling for about 2x msrp. 
 

I know some people that have gone to Micro Center at 4:00 am and got in line. It is hit or miss as they only get a couple cards a shipment and not on the same day. It is random. Also when you get in line if all they have left is a 3090 it is take it or leave it.  Yes you could resell it but then you are back to where you started but a 3090 is $1500 msrp if I remember. Probably more than the entire pc you built. 

Thy www.pcpartpicker.com 

They will show compatibility with other components in the build was well as links for purchase.

How old can it be and still be useful? I'm sure I have some very old gpu based cards around but were talking 5 years old and were mid level then

Prices have dropped a bit from the high, but it's still bad.

Manufacturers are starting to make cards that can't be used for mining, but of course, the supply chain issues are now part of the problem.  

Thanks guys. It seems like my options right now are to buy a new, expensive top of the line card, or run an old one for now until the crypto market crashes, which I think will happen early next year.

In reply to dculberson :

I Would think that they would work for programming and "normal" usage. What's the spec's on them?

I think Britain Smith was selling a card, but I can't find the post at the moment.

I may have a extra GTX1060 I can send your way for free to get it up and running. Let me dig through my pile o parts this evening. 

I was juuust gonna offer up a gtx260 but gtx260<<<gtx1060

In reply to wearymicrobe :

That would be amazing, thank you!

Anything I have is gonna be nowhere near a gtx1060. 

I rent a room to a guy who has a Nvidia quadro K 6000 12 GB guaranteed to work $300.00.  He was building a setup to do the 3D video stuff he's been working on and decided to upgrade to RTX cards and so the K 6000 has been sitting on a shelf.

Tiger Direct

Insight

It's near impossible. That's why when I finally decided to build another sim rig this year, I just went with a prebuilt gaming PC. It was expensive, no doubt, but it's got some pretty awesome specs and handles anything I do on it without a problem. 

In reply to z31maniac :

I did the same thing several months ago. After assembling pc's since I was handed down a 386, got on newegg etc to build the replacement for the win7 machine I put together right when win7 was released, and simply couldn't find a video card that didnt double the build budget. Held my nose, surfed to Dell, and bought an alienware. Never in all my born days did I see me buying a predone box but never in all my born days did I guess there'd be a huge artificial GPU shortage either.

Don't forget some of the CPU's have and built in GPU. Just got a R5 with Radeon gpu in it. Only 240$ Off Amazon. 

Junghole said:

Don't forget some of the CPU's have and built in GPU. Just got a R5 with Radeon gpu in it. Only 240$ Off Amazon. 

That's not going to handle anything serious. I run iRacing on 3 - 32" 1440p, 144hz monitors, the specs on my computer from Skytech are:

 

• CPU: AMD Ryzen 9 3900X 12-Core 3.8GHz (4.6GHz Max Boost)
• Case: Skytech Chronos, Black Edition w/ Front Mesh
• CPU Cooler: 360mm AIO Cooler
• Motherboard: X570
• RAM: 16GB (2x 8GB) G.Skill Trident Z Neo RGB DDR4 CL16 3600MHz
• Graphics: Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 10GB
• Primary Hard Drive: 1TB Seagate 520 Gen4 NVMe SSD
• Power Supply: 850 Watt Gold 80 Plus Certified

I haven't downloaded and tried ACC yet to see what kind of FPS I'd be able to get. I suspect in the future I'll just keep buying pre-builts, even when GPU's become readily available at MSRP again. The extra money for being ready to go and having a warranty and tech support is just worth it. Granted, I haven't needed their tech support, but it's nice to know it's there if I have a problem.

More time is more valuable to me than more money, most of the time. 

Thanks everyone for the help. wearymicrobe I'll send you a PM and am happy to pay shipping if your offer still stands. Otherwise I will probably be reaching out to you NOT A TA. For now I'm going to pull out the bad card and run it on the output on the motherboard for basic web use, since it crashes every time we try to use it now 

I know nothing about these things so if you might be interested in the one my buddy has send me a PM and I'll give ya his email address. It's not going anywhere as he's not actively trying to sell it, I'd asked him about it after reading this thread and remembering him mentioning he had some kind of video thing he bought but then decided not to use.  I ship daily if he wants me to ship it to you.

My sons build has been on hold for over a year, to the point the he has stopped looking for a video card.   Any more leads, send them my way.

I'll try to post the specs for compatibility.

In reply to z31maniac :

I bought my skytech, similar to yours, because without spending months watching for sales, it was cheaper to just buy one ready to go starting from nothing.

I've built enough systems from scratch, and aside from the feeling of accomplishment when it's done, I see no real gains and usually a higher cost versus just buying a ready made and swapping hard drives or adding ram.

RevRico said:

In reply to z31maniac :

I bought my skytech, similar to yours, because without spending months watching for sales, it was cheaper to just buy one ready to go starting from nothing.

I've built enough systems from scratch, and aside from the feeling of accomplishment when it's done, I see no real gains and usually a higher cost versus just buying a ready made and swapping hard drives or adding ram.

I am in no way opposed to buying a whole system, but it sucks when the alternative is simply upgrading your current system, not building a whole machine from scratch.

If things keep up at this rate I may be looking at a whole system in a year or so though.  This 1070 is old.