NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060
Hacker ApprovedShares rank 12 of 42 graphics cards by recommenders
Recommended as a cheap way to run local AI models and play games at 1440p. Critics mention high power draw and driver or kernel problems.
Recommended as a cheap way to run local AI models and play games at 1440p. Critics mention high power draw and driver or kernel problems.
30 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 23
- criticize it
- 7
- approval share
- 77%
Recommended in 11 of 13 months
- November 2025: recommended
- December 2025: recommended
- January 2026: recommended
- February 2026: recommended
- March 2026: recommended
- April 2026: recommended
- May 2026: recommended
- June 2026: recommended
- July 2026: not recommended
- August 2026: recommended
- September 2026: recommended
- October 2026: recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it carries the badge
- 23 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, met.
- 3.3 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, met.
- Recommended in 11 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Cheap way to run AI models
“The cheapest way to run this model at larger contexts is probably a 12gb RTX 3060.”
Comment from 16 Apr 2026 in “Qwen3.6-35B-A3B: Agentic Coding Power, Now Open to All” “It even fits on a 3060 with turboquant / Q4 at decent speed (40T/s) for ~200$”
Comment from 5 May 2026 in “Accelerating Gemma 4: faster inference with multi-token prediction drafters” “Add $200, buy a used 3060 and you won't need to offload cache to RAM.”
Comment from 29 Aug 2026 in “Run Qwen3.8 27B locally: real numbers from my Mac Studio” - Comment from 21 Dec 2025 in “A guide to local coding models”
- Comment from 8 Mar 2026 in “I ported Linux to the PS5 and turned it into a Steam Machine”
- Comment from 20 Mar 2026 in “Regex Blaster”
Good value used or budget
“on a used RTX 3060 for the price of two months of ChatGPT Pro”
Comment from 20 Mar 2026 in “Regex Blaster” “Actually budget friendly is RTX 3060 12Gb.”
Comment from 20 Apr 2026 in “We got 207 tok/s with Qwen3.5-27B on an RTX 3090” “you can buy a second-hand 3060 for cheap”
Comment from 4 Nov 2025 in “Server DRAM prices surge 50% as AI-induced memory shortage hits hyperscalers” - Comment from 29 Aug 2026 in “Run Qwen3.8 27B locally: real numbers from my Mac Studio”
Faster than Apple and AMD rivals
“NVIDIA GPU for example RTX 3060 with 12GB Vram was much faster than my M1 Max”
Comment from 14 Jun 2026 in “I indexed 669 GB of my GoPro videos using my M1 Max computer and local ML models” “My 12GB 3060 on my linux server outperformed the 7900XTX by 40%.”
Comment from 22 May 2026 in “Was my $48K GPU server worth it?” Good for learning and video
“You can definitely learn the basics on like a 3060 by following blog posts”
Comment from 4 Feb 2026 in “FlashAttention-T: Towards Tensorized Attention” “It's really fun to be able to make these kind of videos on a whim.”
Comment from 5 Jan 2026 in “All AI Videos Are Harmful (2025)”
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
Driver and kernel trouble
“When you can't run your Nvidia 3060 because the kernel was outdated”
Comment from 11 Feb 2026 in “The Switch to Linux and the Beginning of My Self-Hosting Journey” “it has not been trouble free for me”
Comment from 2 Jun 2026 in “Nvidia RTX Spark” Re-released in weaker versions
“Everyone re-releasing their old crap. Nvidia is remaking the 3060 too I believe because they can use cheaper older RAM on it.”
Comment from 3 Jun 2026 in “32GB of DDR5 now costs $375 – AI shortage continues to squeeze PC building” “Consolation prize, they will bring back the RTX 3060 8GB.”
Comment from 15 Jan 2026 in “Nvidia Reportedly Ends GeForce RTX 5070 Ti Production, RTX 5060 Ti 16 GB Next”
Other graphics cards people recommend
The four most recommended other graphics cards, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
| Product | Recommend | Criticize | Approval | Months | Owned | Badge |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 | 116 | 21 | 85% | 12 | 5 yrs14 owners | Approved |
| NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 | 102 | 37 | 73% | 12 | 1 yr3 owners | Approved |
| NVIDIA RTX PRO 6000 | 77 | 26 | 75% | 12 | — | Approved |
| Nvidia GPUs | 67 | 67 | 50% | 11 | 6 yrs3 owners | — |
| NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060This page | 23 | 7 | 77% | 11 | — | Approved |
What people said
29 of the 34 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“you might as well just get an RTX 3060 and save yourself a lot of hassle”
“plays absolutely every single game I want to play at 1440p; with nice visuals.”
“my $700 laptop with a 3060 can run 9b models”
“Add $200, buy a used 3060 and you won't need to offload cache to RAM.”
“Since the 3060s would have to communicate constantly using pcie”
“NVIDIA GPU for example RTX 3060 with 12GB Vram was much faster than my M1 Max”
“Everyone re-releasing their old crap. Nvidia is remaking the 3060 too I believe because they can use cheaper older RAM on it.”
“it has not been trouble free for me”
“My 12GB 3060 on my linux server outperformed the 7900XTX by 40%.”
“Many current video games struggle on the 3060”
“I meant to recommend the 3060 12GB version.”
“It even fits on a 3060 with turboquant / Q4 at decent speed (40T/s) for ~200$”
“Actually budget friendly is RTX 3060 12Gb.”
“The cheapest way to run this model at larger contexts is probably a 12gb RTX 3060.”
“Sucks 800w at full load, idles below 50w.”
“That's fast enough to be usable.”
“nice to play around with the smaller models for free”
“nice to play around with the smaller models for free (minus electricity) and with 100% uptime”
“on a used RTX 3060 for the price of two months of ChatGPT Pro”
“Your best ~$300-400 option for inference is still the RTX 3060”
“My 2023 Nvidia 3060 laptop I spent $700 on?”
“When you can't run your Nvidia 3060 because the kernel was outdated”
“You can definitely learn the basics on like a 3060 by following blog posts”
“nVidia support for the 3+ series of hardware has gotten pretty stable”
“Consolation prize, they will bring back the RTX 3060 8GB.”
“It's really fun to be able to make these kind of videos on a whim.”
“My current rig pulls less than 500w with two cards (3060+5060).”
“Cheap tier is dual 3060 12G. Runs 24B Q6 and 32B Q4 at 16 tok/sec.”
“you can buy a second-hand 3060 for cheap”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.