EVGA GeForce RTX 3090 FTW3 Ultra Gaming, 24GB GDDR6X, 10496 CUDA Cores, 1800MHz Boost Clock, 3x Fans, ARGB LED, Metal Backplate, PCIe 4, HDMI, DisplayPort, Desktop Compatible

I had some issues in the beginning, the main screen kept disconnecting, going black and flickering. Add to that, on reboot the screen sometimes would remain dark and for minutes the boot cycle did nothing. I was *ahem* freaking out a bit. Did I get a poorly refurbished part for $900? No, all my life I've lived in the 1050/60 and 1080 world. So I never thought of the cables, they were always sufficient. But with this 3090 and running on an ASUS 165hz monitor, my dinky HDMI cables turned out to be a bottleneck. Don't use DVI to HDMI or HDMI to DisplayPort converters. Invest in a new set of 4K or 8K cables that go directly from DisplayPort to HDMI in the cable itself. Converters may not be able to handle the bandwidth due to contact resistances in the connector joints. I've even seen DisplayPort to SVGA (???) cables at MicroCenter. I struggled with my two monitors cutting in and out with the slightest movement of the cable on several different cables until I changed them and converters didn't help. The card has 1HDMI and 3 Display port outputs. I've accumulated a lot of HDMI/DVI monitors and when I resolved the cable issue, I set up a four monitor display and it worked just fine with no video issues at all. It ran a 3D Unity shooter at ultra max quality settings and 4K resolution with the three other three HDMI monitors (1920x1200 each) connected and it ran just fine at at a 70-120fps range. It is an older game (7 Days) so it may be not much of a test compared to Claire Obscura or some other recent 3D game but I am satisfied. I should be able to connect instead monitors an El Gato for lecture recording and the Wacom tablet for Blender each of which also demand an HDMI video port. They've been gathering dust because the 1080 didn't have but one HDMI and DVI port. When the GPU is engaged (in a game and not during the normal windows screen displays) it will send a jet of hot air out of the back vent feeling like a hair dryer - and it will erratically rev up the fans sounding like a supercharger going up and down through gearshifting. It is noticeably noisy due to the constant reving up and down but the noise itself is somewhat muted and is on average is fairly quiet even when the GPU is running. It is hot though, and does warm up my little room after a few hours on mild [40-60 degF] days. Probably puts out about 150-200W in heat out of the back through GPU case vent. The motherboard onboard LED temperature display shows 39degC in windows mode and climbs to 61 when I run 7Days. Note: I use a Noctua Air cooler this monster card sits closely, about 1", to the fins but it fit just fine on my ROG Strix 870E motherboard but make sure it fits yours. The GPU power requires three PCI-e power inputs so be sure to check your supply is large enough and enough cables to supply the 380W average the card will need along with your CPU. 800W is a good minimum but plenty of sites will give you good estimates for your CPU/GPU combination. Despite my initial learning curve troubles and misgivings about a refurbished card, this one is feels like I acquired a new 3090 card. Maybe I'll get a refurbished 5090 in the year 2030 from

I was hesitant to buy a refurbished GPU off of Amazon. The card arrived next day with an acceptable level of packaging. The card had one or two bent fins on the heat sink, but otherwise was free of any signs of damage or misuse. I ran into some issues initially, but after reinstalling the NVIDIA drivers the card performs as expected. The card stays cool and quiet. It is replacing a dual GPU set up for blender cycles, a 4070 and a 3080ti. The cards performed well, however I was maxing out VRAM while working on heavy scenes, and the 4070 was incredibly loud. With the advances in real time rendering, I've moved my rendering pipe-line to Unreal engine and look forward to the creative freedom a doubling in VRAM will afford. I use 3d-coat for asset creation, and the extra cuda cores/memory makes for a smooth, hiccup free experience. While a 32 gig 5090 would be ideal, spending 3k+ on a card and an upgraded power supply seemed....excessive. Refurbished products off of Amazon are always a crap shoot, but in this case I came up lucky. I don't play games very often, but I'm sure it's good enough.

Probably the Best Investment You Can Make Right Now I’ve been deep into AI for years now, and at a certain point, my home system became less of a tool and more of a bottleneck-shaped paperweight. The time for an upgrade was long overdue. As luck would have it, this realization coincided with NVIDIA’s launch of the 5000 series. Naturally, I looked at the 4090 and the mythical 5090—until I saw the price tags. A 5090 (Nvidia’s current flagship card) has an MSRP of $1999 (lol, as if you’ll ever see it for that). After spending hours navigating a labyrinth of price-gouging, out-of-stock listings, and enough scalper nonsense to make concert ticket resellers jealous, I had a thought: "What ELSE could I buy with this money?" The list was long. A down payment on a used car. Three months of mortgage payments. A solid vacation. Or—craziest thought of all—a GPU that doesn’t require a second mortgage. So I passed on the latest highway robbery and picked up a 5070 Ti instead, assuming it would be a reasonable middle ground. After all, NVIDIA won’t stop hyping up the 5000 series as the ultimate AI powerhouses. They conveniently forgot one minor detail: The software isn’t ready. If you enjoy spending hours patching together a half-broken Frankenstein installation of PyTorch and CUDA—only for it to implode the moment you update anything—go ahead, grab a 5000 series card. If you’d rather just get work done, the 3090 is a no-brainer. For years, the 3090 has been a proven workhorse. No hoops to jump through, no compatibility nightmares—just raw power. Sure, it’s not the latest and greatest, but it’s also not a $5000 paperweight. I was hesitant about spending over $1000 on a 3+ year-old GPU with last-gen architecture… until I installed it. This GPU cooks. I’ve thrown everything at it—simultaneous instances of Stable Diffusion (SDXL) and Kobold, two massive 8GB+ AI models running side by side—and the card didn’t even break a sweat. The real kicker? I never had to troubleshoot a thing. I quite literally just slotted it into my PCI-e slot, booted up, and got to work. Since then, I’ve seen it crank out 90+ FPS in a benchmark test while also running an AI instance. With no other programs running, it easily pushes 160+ FPS. It might not be the most power-efficient card anymore, and it doesn’t have NVIDIA’s latest marketing gimmicks—but: ✅ It works. ✅ It won’t melt its power connectors. ✅ And you can buy it for less than three months of mortgage payments. Unless you have a burning desire to be an unpaid beta tester for the 5000 series software stack, do yourself a favor—get a 3090, save a ton of money, and actually get stuff done.

It worked great for almost exactly a year and then completely stopped working. I had it doubled checked in a computer repair shop and they verified it was done. I knew this was a risk buying refurbished, but I am regretting not going new for the warranty. I will not be buying refurbished computer parts again.

Bought 2 of these and they both are like new. Definitely recommend.

Looked like it was in good shape, but doa