NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 12GB reportedly set to make a return in July

We recently covered rumors that the RTX 3060 12GB was set to return to market shelves in June. Now, we have a bit more evidence to back up that rumor: Chinese Board Channels have confirmed that the 5-year-old NVIDIA GPU is indeed returning this summer. The timeline differs from what was previously leaked, but it seems the Ampere GPU will be on store shelves by July at the latest.

Per a new post from Chinese Board Channels, the RTX 3060 12GB supply will resume in June. This means that NVIDIA will start supplying the 3060 GPU to board partners in June, allowing them to enter mass production. The add-in board partners are then expected to deliver the finished RTX 3060 12GB cards around July.

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Among the partners expected to receive allocations for this re-launch are ASUS, MSI, Colorful, and GALAX (recently incorporated into Palit). All these board partners already have existing designs for the RTX 3060, so it may be easier for them to just re-launch those designs instead of making new ones from the ground up. After all, cost-cutting seems to be the entire point of this re-launch.

The RTX 3060 12GB has been rumored to return for some time now. It was initially touted for a Q1 2026 release, but then later rumors put the launch window around June. Many industry experts are expecting the RTX 3060 12GB to replace the RTX 5050 9GB in NVIDIA's lineup, as the Blackwell GPU is reportedly on hold. Both these GPUs target the budget segment, but the older "Ampere" card lacks many of the modern features the RTX 5050 would offer.

NVIDIA is expected to produce the RTX 3060 12GB chips on the Samsung 8nm DUV node, which was used to manufacture all Ampere GPUs. The RTX 3060 12GB has a 192-bit bus and was launched in January 2021 for $329. It will be interesting to see how NVIDIA prices the re-launched RTX 3060 amid the global chip shortage. Of course, NVIDIA has not yet confirmed these rumors in an official capacity.