RTX 5090 becomes the new favorite for smuggling, with 12 cases intercepted by customs in a week

Abstract:

Macau Customs has recently continued to crack down on "water smuggling" activities and uncovered multiple smuggling cases involving RTX 5090 graphics cards and memory sticks.

Customs intercepted 12 illegal trafficking cases at the Macau International Airport, the Macau Port of the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macao Bridge and the Border Gate.

Smugglers hide in a variety of ways. Customs officers discovered abnormalities through machine inspection images. In the outbound passenger inspection area at the border gate, they found that someone had hidden old electronic products and suspected silver particles in their clothing and various places on their bodies, including a large number of memory sticks. In a more extreme case,

someone taped the CPU and memory sticks to their legs in an attempt to break through.

The core reason why RTX 5090 has become a smuggling target is the skyrocketing price. Affected by tight supply and AI panic buying, the price of RTX 5090 on the US e-commerce platform has soared to more than US$7,000 (approximately RMB 46,970), and some high-end non-public models have even been sold for US$8,000 or more. You know, the official suggested retail price of this graphics card is only US$1,999,

and the current market price is more than 3.5 times the original price.

The pressure to increase graphics card prices continues. According to Bopantang news, AMD has notified channel partners that it will officially implement price increases for graphics card products in the global market starting from October 1, involving models such as the RX 9000 series and the previous generation RX 7650 GRE.

Among them, the RX 9070 increased by 700 yuan to 6,299 yuan, and the RX 9060 XT 16G increased by 600 yuan to 4,899 yuan. The price increase was mainly due to another increase of about 10% in graphics memory costs and an increase in chip foundry costs.

The memory market is equally crazy. According to Jeongdong Choe, senior vice president of the Semiconductor Division of TechInsights, the memory price increase boom will continue for 3 to 4 years.

What is even more worrying is the growth rate of AI storage demand. Cui Zhengdong pointed out: "The growth rate of AI storage demand is no longer 1.2 times or 1.4 times in history, but has soared to 4 to 6 times in the short term. Each manufacturer only builds one or two new wafer fabs, which is simply not enough to meet this demand."