Get a refurbished RTX 2060 graphics card for £189, a crazy-low price
The cheapest RTX and DLSS-capable graphics card for £180 less than a new version.
The RTX 2060 isn't the new hotness that it was a few years ago, but a global pandemic and chip shortage means that the card is still a surprisingly capable option three years later. The cheapest RTX 2060 on Amazon costs £370, but if you're willing to go refurbished you pay way less: just £190.
That's a heck of a deal for an RTX and DLSS-capable graphics card, especially given the GPUs come with a six month warranty from the folks at Laptop Outlet. This Zotac card will run rings around the GTX 1660 Super, the best card you could buy new for this price, especially in games that support DLSS to boost frame-rates.
Compared to other graphics card generations, the RTX 2060 is roughly equivalent to the RTX 3050 or the GTX 1070, with the former normally selling for at least £100 more than the RTX 2060 and the latter lacking RTX and DLSS capabilities. So if you're coming from a GTX 1060/RX 580 or worse, then you should see a significant performance uplift.
Of course, if you're building a gaming PC from scratch and planning to use a 1080p or even 1440p monitor, then the RTX 2060 remains a great choice for the same reasons - good performance and all of the features that you're likely to need.
So is it worth getting refurbished or otherwise used graphics cards? In my experience, you will know within a few hours of testing a graphics card whether it has any issues or not. Any failures tend to be exceedingly obvious, like crashing immediately upon starting a game, suffering from extremely high temperatures or just not displaying an image at all, all of which are likely to have been checked for on a unit sold as 'refurbished'. If the graphics card works fine for that initial period, then chances are that it'll keep working for years. So if you get a bum card, you can send it back for a refund without any grief, and if you don't, then you're getting a pretty incredible savings on a card that will perform just as well as a brand-new model. Either way, I think it's well worth it for anyone with a limited GPU budget.
What do you think - are you tempted to take the plunge? Let me know in the comments below and stay tuned for one more deal tonight!