A Reddit user recently shared their bargain-hunting experience, purchasing four RTX 2080 Ti graphics cards for a total of $600 (approximately 4,290 RMB) on a second-hand trading platform, bringing the cost per card down to just $150 (approximately 1,072 RMB).
The RTX 2080 Ti, as NVIDIA's consumer-grade king during the Turing era in 2018, with non-reference models initially priced at $999 (approximately 6,716 RMB), and the founder's edition reaching as high as $1,199 (approximately 8,213 RMB), making it a flagship gaming graphics card in the ten-thousand-yuan range back then.
To this day, the retail price for well-maintained original RTX 2080 Ti cards on the second-hand market mostly hovers between $450 and $600. This player managed to acquire four cards for just $600, representing a typical low-price steal.
In terms of hardware specifications, the RTX 2080 Ti features 11GB of GDDR6 VRAM and a 352-bit memory bus width, setting a first-tier performance benchmark at the time. The card has a rated power consumption of 250W. Most non-reference models on the market come with dual or triple-fan cooling solutions, supplemented by multi-phase digital power delivery to ensure stability during prolonged high-load operation.
Even today, with the RTX 50 series dominating the market, its 11GB of VRAM still holds an advantage over some new mid-range cards with only 8GB when handling high-resolution textures.
The original poster stated that he has already performed deep performance tuning on the graphics card. Through undervolting and overclocking, he achieved a frame rate of approximately 100 FPS in Battlefield 6 at 2K resolution.
However, since 2018, the graphics card market experienced a cryptocurrency boom, during which many RTX 2080 Ti cards were used for around-the-clock mining. Although mined cards are not necessarily dead on arrival, the long-term high-temperature operation of VRAM chips and wear on fan bearings are risks that cannot be ignored.
Additionally, this card can be modified to expand its 11GB VRAM to 22GB. Several repair shops have even started publicly offering RTX 2080 Ti VRAM upgrade services, complete with modified VBIOS, allowing customers to use them directly without any hassle.
For average buyers, snagging this deal at $150 requires a certain level of hardware identification skills and hands-on repair capabilities.