With Chinese citizens unable to get their hands on RTX 4090 GPUs, many have turned to the black market to get their hands on the powerful graphics cards.
While some have found scam GPUs without integral components on online stores, sellers in China are buying pre-built machines to rip out their GPUs and sell them on the Chinese black market.
Via VideoCardz, a Taipei seller of Nvidia RTX 4090 graphics cards in China is still profitable, despite costing sellers a lot of money to bring in. The seller in Taipei reportedly spent around $91,000 on 20 pre-built PCs but still managed to profit on the hardware.
With the AI boom occurring in China, the RTX 4090 specs and similar cards are hugely popular. However, with US sanctions banning the sale of Nvidia GPUs in the Chinese market due to their AI advantages over competitors, it’s becoming extremely hard to get access to the hardware in the region.
At the time of writing, it seems that the Nvidia RTX 4090 GPU is the most popular GPU to import in China whenever possible. While there are easier to acquire off-shoots — such as the RTX 4090 D that was released to comply with US sanctions, the more powerful card is still extremely sought after in the region.
At the time of writing, the Taipei retailer is still looking to bring RTX 4090 PCs back into mainline China. However, with US sanctions strictly halting the import of specific Nvidia hardware into the region, it’s not known how long the retailer will be able to keep supplying Chinese gamers and companies with the GPUs.
The Nvidia RTX 4090 has just been succeeded by the brand-new RTX 4090 SUPER. Available to purchase now, the new graphics cards are a huge step up in terms of power.