MSI says its RTX 5090s won’t ship until February 6, after Nvidia warns on stock levels – and I’m starting to worry that buying a next-gen GPU will be a seriously uphill struggle

The Nvidia GeForce RTX 5090's power connection port

(Image credit: Future / John Loeffler)

MSI’s US store will only have RTX 5090s on pre-order come launch day
While the flagship GPU can be bought on January 30, it won’t ship until February 6
This is happening against a backdrop of broader worries about stock levels, which Nvidia has also just warned on

MSI’s RTX 5090 graphics cards that’ll be sold through its own store won’t be made available to buy on the official release date of January 30 – rather, these GPUs will be up for pre-order on that day (tomorrow), but not shipped until a week later.

As per information shared by a representative of MSI on Discord, as discovered by VideoCardz, the RTX 5090 will only be available for pre-order on January 30, whereas the RTX 5080 will be purchasable and ship on the same day. RTX 5090 models from the official MSI store in the US won’t ship until February 6, we’re told.

The MSI rep said they couldn’t talk with any surety about the situation with other retailers, but did confirm that those other retailers would have at least some stock of MSI’s RTX 5090 models (as you’d hope).

Analysis: The consuming GPU gloom

Unfortunately, this is another in a fair old string of rumors about the RTX 5090 being very short on stock when the flagship GPU first launches. We can’t say anything for sure, with all this being unofficial chatter via the grapevine – even if some nuggets are from representatives of companies in the know, such as MSI here.

If you want an RTX 5090, then, the situation is looking very shaky indeed, and the odds of you getting one tomorrow, on the official launch day, seem extremely slim. If not actually impossible going by what is said by MSI here (well, you can order a flagship GPU, to be fair, but you won’t get it for a week). This is perhaps why some people have taken extreme measures such as camping out in queues in front of retailers already, in the hope of securing their RTX 5090.

More folks will be after the RTX 5080, mind you, which is far more reasonably priced (relatively speaking). And there has been some better news about that GPU in terms of stock, though it still sounds rather thin on the ground, and the level of demand will likely mean that this Blackwell graphics card also sells out in a flash. The additional worry with the RTX 5080 is that pricing for third-party graphics cards will be inflated well above MSRP in the main, for many models, though we’ll have to see if that pans out.

All in all, it’s difficult to be even remotely optimistic about the chances of getting an RTX 5090 in particular, but also an RTX 5080, especially given the recent comments from Nvidia, and now MSI. With scenarios like these, scalpers are, of course, rubbing their hands together with glee at the potential price-gouging profits to be made – which inevitably adds to the difficulty of the average gamer trying to secure a shiny new GPU.

It’s hard not to be disappointed by all this, and I’m certainly struggling to avoid becoming overly gloomy in my outlook with Nvidia’s imminent GPUs. It’s not even the RTX 5080 I’m primarily looking at as a graphics card upgrade, although any hope I might grab this as my next GPU has been pretty much dampened by the talk of potential price hikes over MSRP and stock difficulties. My real worry is that the noises being made around stock extend to the RTX 5070 (and its Ti sibling), the mid-range models I’m really looking at (including rumors that it could be delayed to March).

As I said, fighting the gloom feels like an uphill struggle right now, but I just have to keep reminding myself that it’ll only be a matter of time before the stock situation settles down, if it does play out badly with the RTX 5070 at launch. Right? Or, I’m looking at an AMD RX 9070, which is where the thinking of a number of PC gamers may be heading, I suspect…

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Darren is a freelancer writing news and features for TechRadar (and occasionally T3) across a broad range of computing topics including CPUs, GPUs, various other hardware, VPNs, antivirus and more. He has written about tech for the best part of three decades, and writes books in his spare time (his debut novel - 'I Know What You Did Last Supper' - was published by Hachette UK in 2013).