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Do you have a method for ensuring or increasing your chances at getting a piece of hardware, let's say a GPU, from an online store when supply is short?
During the darkest crypto/pandemic/scalping days, it seemed that only those with scripts or some other method were able to get one directly.
I need a new one soon, might be able to wait for the 4000 Super series, and I'm expecting them to be torn off the digital shelves quickly at launch and then prices will rise.
Supplies have gotten more robust, even if prices are still a little top-heavy. If you're dead set on a specific version from a specific vendor, you might have to do some shopping around or bending over backwards, but if you're just looking for a specific chip and just want a moderately competent cooler on it, you're much less likely to have a problem. Price increases after launch have been more limited to the top end and been modest even there. And nVidia has been doing some price drops or 'relaunches' shortly after initial release for a few of the 4000-series, most awkwardly the
4080 12GB4070TI.A lot of stores have physical inventory, albeit sometimes with per-household sales limits. MicroCenter, if you have one near you, is the obvious go-to, but BestBuys and even some WalMarts (wtf) have started stocking mid- and high-end current generation cards, and sometimes been able to keep them in stock. Note that some stores will not have all of their inventory out in the display cases, even if those display cases seem bare; I just picked up a 3060 a few weeks ago, and the MicroCenter in question only had display slots for 4000-series cards -- normally asking staff to check 'in the back' is a waste of time, but this is one exception.
That said, unless you're doing a lot of cutting-edge ray-tracing-heavy gaming at 4K or in VR, some very high-end (and given the prices, paid) rendering work, or some very specific AI/ML use cases, or have money to burn, I'd also caution against immediately going for the cutting edge. At the simplest level, there's just been a number of 'new' cards with little or no performance benefit for steep price increase, most famously nVidia's 4060's nearly at par with the 3060s, or in AMD/ATi land the 7800XT being a rounding error with the 6800XT.
That's doubly the case if you're looking at a 4070/4080 Super, which are the only cards with rumored near releases. You're probably looking at 800+ USD at the low end at MSRP, if not closer to 900 USD, and buying by a script on launch date means you'll be buying before the review embargoes fall. I don't expect them to be complete stinkers, and current SKUs aren't the worst things we've ever seen from nVidia (have you ever heard of a GTX 800-series card? had to explain the 16-/20-series bullshit?), but even if it's a reasonable wager, you're still betting a pretty sizable stack of cash on nVidia not doing something stupid.
All that said, for scripts, the tools available vary, though (given the increased availability since late 2022's crypto crash) a number would need to be updated for new cards. In essence, they're little more than a scheduled task or cronjob pinging a web page with a given search query at a specific interval; this is Python101, or if you wanted to be miserable you could do it as a curl and a painful amount of piping. It's deciding whether you want this to just ping you, or to autobuy, that's harder... but that's hard as a strategic challenge, rather than practical one.
Guess I'd settle for an autoping for a few good stores I don't mind buying from. I live in a small country, and can't buy from abroad, so there's only a handful of options lol.
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