In Search of a GPU

Note quite sure how much more drama I would have to go through to find the kind of GPU I am looking for. I do not deny that my requirements are quite a list but I honestly don't think it's an impossible one. All I am looking for is a mid range low profile professional card that can handle 4K video encoding quite well and can play some basic games so that I can record them.

After giving up my dream of building a Hacintosh computer with a compatible GPU, I am back again in the market looking for a good GPU. I was checking out the Nvidia RTX A2000 for quite sometime now. I never used a dual slot based GPU that can blow it's hot air outside of the CPU. I thought that would be a great card since my case is quite small and I won't be dealing with the case getting hotter, specially when I am encoding my videos.

I was checking the prices on eBay and I found someone in Brooklyn selling the same card for $299. According to his listing, he already sold 125 of those card and quite a few of those buyerl left good feedback. He listed them as brand new item. I reached out to him with few question and he replied all of them promptly. What didn't make sense though is why he's selling it for such a lower price and why he mentioned only one year of warranty is beyond me.

As far as I can tell, the retail price for those cards are suppose to be $449 or above and they suppose to be offering 3 years of warranty. I suspected that may be he was selling the refurbished item with brown boxes, otherwise there's no way he can sell that GPU for such a lower price when others are selling the same item in used condition for similar or higher prices. I skipped eBay listing and started searching in online.

I found few seller and one of them turns out to be the Micro Center located at the edge of our neighborhood who are selling it for $499. I was excited, the card which is definitely brand new and though it should be quite a GPU upgrade for my computer. I eventually got the card and got back home. Alas! I figured, I left the key-chain at the store. I went back there again to pick up my key-chain. Thank you Micro Center for holding my key-chain.

I came home, opened up the box and started running some test with my brand new card. Somehow Nvidia RTX A2000 finished encoding a 15 minute long 4K video and it took little over 35 minutes to complete the job. That surprised me a bit. My Nvidia Quadro P620 which is few generation older than A2000, finished the same task within 33 minutes. To me, that didn't make any sense at all. On top, A2000 got really really hot and that scared the hell out of me right away. Less than 24 hours after purchasing the card, I returned the card today and now I am back to square one. Looking for a better GPU.