Japan's ITmedia has recently conducted an in-person survey of PC hardware buying trends in the areas of graphics cards, DDR5 memory and gaming keyboards—a PC USER investigative journalist headed over to Akihabara Electric Town district in Tokyo, where they spoke to shop clerks working at various retail stores. Western media outlets have focused on the segment that focused on NVIDIA GeForce RTX 40-series graphics cards—models based on the RTX 4080 GPU are said to be the least popular option with the buying public. One interviewee stated: "Due to the issue of overlap, fewer people are choosing RTX 4080 cards. Many opt for RTX 4070 Ti if they seek high-end performance, and for ultra-high-end, they go up to RTX 4090. Therefore, we deliberately limit our stock (of the RTX 4080)."

A staff member of PC Workshop's Akihabara Store said: "It might be a little short in supply globally...The demand for RTX 4090 has been constant, but it's becoming a bit difficult to get in stock...It seems like there is a worldwide supply shortage. This may be due to reflection on the RTX 3000 family and to avoid overstocking the market." Parts of the PC hardware community believe that NVIDIA is prioritizing the manufacture of AI GPUs over high-end gaming chips, but it is too early to tell whether this is impacting global markets right now. Another store assistant added: "The models priced in the 250,000 yen (~$1665) range are still on backorder." ITmedia observed that the showcase shelves/cabinets for RTX 4090 models in this particular store had noticeable gaps. A rival shop is reported to be gambling on a larger stockpile of RTX 4080 cards, in anticipation of their flashiest customers opting for the second best Ada Lovelace GPU in the event of minimal RTX 4090 replenishments.