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Hardware launches are often bracing experiences. Scrambling to hit checkout on an online basket is its own rush, but there are those who really want to ensure their spot in line. Over the years, we’ve heard plenty of stories about folks camping to ensure they really are the first in-line on launch day. We’ve heard fewer stories about folks camping in line almost four days before launch IN JANUARY.
Hardware launches are often bracing experiences, and few understand this better than the folks camping outside of a Micro Center store in Tustin, California right now. It’s all in the hopes of scooping up either a Nvidia Geforce RTX 5090 or RTX 5080, both of which launch January 30.
The $2,000+ RTX 5090 is the flagship of the new RTX Blackwell generation, offering at least 30% higher 4K performance than the old RTX 4090 but with the promise of a neural rendering future alongside Multi Frame Generation right now.
That new feature is what’s giving the RTX 50-series the big generational boost in supporting games here and now. The RTX 5080 is less exciting, feeling more like some sort of RTX 4080 Ti Super, but it still gets to rock the Multi Frame Gens, and that’s surely what people are queueing up for.
According to this Reddit post, campers set up shop about three days ago, and this video from Tuesday evening shows the line is only getting longer. For those curious, Tustin has seen night time temperatures sitting around 46°F on average this week (that’s roughly 7°C)—I hope those staking out the Micro Center are layering up. At the very least, a certain grill meister appears to be keeping some folks warm with hot food.
This extreme queuing tactic is likely because there will be a severely limited supply of both 50-series cards for the foreseeable future. Just this week, MSI said they had received a limited supply of 5090 cards from Nvidia, and recently Overclockers UK also revealed they had a ‘single digit’ number of Nvidia’s RTX 5090 cards a week before launch.
Considering scalpers are already trying to flog cards they definitely do not have for $7,000, you can understand why some are instead opting for an in-person purchase. Though the line in Tustin is perhaps one of the longest, committed queuers have also been observed outside of Micro Centers in Dallas and Houston, Texas.
Plenty more hardware hounds hoping to rock up early on launch day are also posting in the MicroCenter subreddit to ask about their chances for different store locations. If you’re not feeling like rising bright and early or dusting off the camping equipment yourself, you can take a look at our curated list of RTX 5090 online retailers right here.
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Kurt Indovina
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