Zotac has a plan to keep RTX 5090 and 5080 GPUs away from the clutches of scalpers – and it sounds like it might be working

• Zotac has fired up a scheme via its US Discord channel
• Active community members can enter a raffle to win the chance to buy an RTX 5090 or 5080
• It looks like this plan is helping in the good fight to beat scalpers

The scramble for Nvidia’s new graphics cards has been an unpleasant affair (once again), especially with the RTX 5090, as stock of the flagship GPU has been even more scarce than the RTX 5080 – but Zotac has a plan to help genuine buyers (as opposed to scalpers) in the US.

VideoCardz reports that Zotac’s Discord channel in the US is running a “priority access campaign exclusively for our loyal community” to offer active members an opportunity to purchase an RTX 5090 or 5080 graphics card.

It’s a raffle system, with a chance to buy as the prize, and there are some conditions attached, as you might expect. Notably a clause that any Discord member must have been actively engaged in discussions, challenges, and the like, to be eligible. Anyone joining to spam a few three-word-messages in the hopes of getting a purchase won’t (or shouldn’t) be considered.

Any kind of “manipulation” or “cheating” won’t be tolerated either, Zotac says. Furthermore, the board maker will keep an eye on reselling activity, with serial numbers of GPUs that are bought being recorded, and a threat of publicly exposing any scalper who does resell their graphics card.

Analysis: Zotac shows the way

Quite how Zotac might police the entire playing field for resellers isn’t clear, and probably not feasible, but still – I’ve got to admire the stance taken here against scalpers and bots.

These nefarious characters make any low-stock hardware launch much more of a nightmare than it should be, so efforts such as the scheme Zotac has concocted here must be applauded.

Wondering how Zotac plan has played out so far? According to the Reddit thread that VideoCardz picked up on this development through, Zotac’s Discord channel has witnessed a flood of folks signing up since the announcement.

So, it’s certainly going to drive more traffic for the channel, clearly, but if all a new member does is spam rubbish, they should be weeded out and be ineligible for the Blackwell purchase raffles.

Those who were active members before the announcement have apparently got a private channel with separate raffles to the main ones, with much greater chances of winning (like 25%, compared to less than 1% for the main raffles, we’re told, though take that with some seasoning).

It all sounds well enough organized, in short.

Why don’t all graphics card makers go down this route? Well, as VideoCardz points out, Zotac is one of the smaller outfits of the larger manufacturers (if you get what I mean), and it’s probably much more of a headache for some of the biggest operations in the GPU sphere to run a scheme such as this.

Still, shoring up defenses against scalping more broadly when it comes to popular launches like the RTX 5000 GPUs is well worth giving some more thought to, for both retailers and Nvidia’s board-making partners alike. Sadly, what we’ve seen elsewhere is official asking prices from graphics card makers themselves creeping up, or even jumping up, as a reaction to thin supply in the face of huge demand – so, what’d be a start is not doing this, please.

We’re trying to help as best we can, through our guides on where to buy an RTX 5080 today and also our RTX 5090 graphics card finder too. Best of luck out there, GPU hunters, but of course if you’re already on the Zotac Discord, you need to get yourself in the lottery there.

You might also like...

• Nvidia is investigating reports of crashes plaguing RTX 5090 and 5080 GPUs, with possible driver issues maybe hitting RTX 4000 models too
• Nvidia's RTX 5080 has dethroned AMD's RX 7900 XTX at the same price – but good luck finding one
• The end of the Nvidia RTX 4000 series is nigh – with the RTX 4070 expected to sell out in weeks