Nvidia Blackwell stock woes are compounded by price hikes as more RTX 5090 GPUs soar in pricing, and I’m sick and tired of it all at this point

Zotac has hiked pricing with RTX 5090 models on its US online store
Two of those, including the top-end board, now cost $500 more
This follows similar moves by Asus and MSI with the Blackwell flagship on their own online stores

Zotac is the latest third-party graphics card maker which currently seems to be inflating the price of Nvidia’s Blackwell flagship GPU.

VideoCardz noticed a Reddit post (see below) which flagged up that over at the Zotac store in the US, its RTX 5090 models just became a lot more expensive – and these GPUs are certainly nowhere near the official MSRP.

Zotac 5090 Amp Extreme is now $3000 and the 5090 Solid OC is now $2700 from r/nvidia

As you can see, the Zotac RTX 5090 Amp Extreme now tips the scales at a wallet-worrying $3,000, and even the lesser RTX 5090 Solid OC model is a weighty, and equally concerning, $2,700 drain on your bank balance.

This represents a fresh increase of $500 on the price tag in the case of both graphics cards, according to the info divulged on Reddit here.

Zotac is one of the board manufacturers that sells their products directly from their own online store, with Asus and MSI also being in this club. Unfortunately, all three of these companies have hiked pricing, particularly with the RTX 5090 (which Asus recently inflated by a hefty amount, so its top-end GPU is even more expensive than Zotac’s Amp Extreme).

(Image credit: ShutterStock)

Analysis: Hiking pains

You could argue that price is always going to be related to supply and demand, and if it isn’t crystal clear enough now, the supply of Blackwell GPUs has thus far been pretty terrible, and demand has way, way outstripped it. Even the demand for the expensive RTX 5090, with the flagship being hit with some of the most ridiculous price hikes that we’ve witnessed so far in this new generation of Nvidia graphics cards.

Further arguments, as VideoCardz points out, can also be piled on here, such as the import tariffs courtesy of Trump. But ultimately, what we’re seeing with RTX 5090 pricing goes beyond the pale really.

In this case, Zotac’s Solid OC is technically the entry-level RTX 5090 (it’s actually a step up, being the overclocked version, although it only has a very modest overclock applied – and apparently the base version isn’t listed on the US store any longer, anyway). The Solid OC really shouldn’t be much above Nvidia’s MSRP, which is $1,999 (the price of the Founders Edition), but this GPU is now a whopping 35% more expensive.

(I should make it clear that the Zotac store in the US is down right now, as I write this, for maintenance apparently. Could that mean pricing is being adjusted again, after these reports have popped up? Possibly, and I’ll keep an eye on that.)

At any rate, the other argument I’ve seen is: well, the RTX 5090 models are all out of stock anyway, so who cares what the price is – it’s kind of irrelevant. And while that’s certainly true, this is a short-term view and rather shortsighted as such. When inventory does start to filter back in, that jacked-up pricing is (presumably) still going to apply (for a time, perhaps, until supply and demand corrects further).

What’s unfortunate is that a robust uptick in RTX 5090 stock was predicted to happen towards the end of March, where we’re sat now, and there’s no sign of any such increase in supply. What’s going on with that? The rumor might have been plain wrong, or perhaps Nvidia has rejigged its chip allocation, and remains just too preoccupied with sales of heavyweight AI graphics cards (which use that same GB202 chip as the RTX 5090).

Meanwhile, there are tales on Reddit of waiting lists for pre-ordered RTX 5090 graphics cards that are so lengthy, those who’ve already put their money down are likely to be waiting at least another three months for the GPU to be shipped.

It’s all a bit of a nightmare, frankly, and with AMD’s RX 9070 stock also disappearing as soon as it arrives in stores, even if Team Red’s supply is a good deal better than Nvidia’s Blackwell graphics cards, it’s still a tricky situation for would-be buyers. And that’s exactly why a good number of PC gamers (myself included) are getting fed up with the situation, and have resigned themselves to a strategy of just waiting out this stock-and-pricing-storm for the foreseeable.