Abstract:
U.S. retailer Micro Center has recently begun requiring customers who purchase RTX 5090 graphics cards to sign an "Advanced Computing Product Purchaser's Statement", otherwise the sale will not be made. A customer who purchased a complete machine at a store in Tustin, California, posted the form online.
The form is quite detailed. Purchasers must fill in their full legal name, address, government-issued photo ID, phone number and email address. If the end user is different from the purchaser, the actual user, installation location and intended use of the product must also be specified.
The form clearly states: "Export prohibited, without exception. Micro Center will not sell this product to a purchaser with the intent to export, resell, transfer, or in any manner cause the product to leave the United States, regardless of destination." The wording of this statement leaves no room for maneuver.
This is not an isolated incident. Some netizens said that when purchasing a GPU from another retailer last summer, they were asked to fill out a similar but longer form. It's unclear why Micro Center recently started enforcing this policy.
The background is that the United States has recently stepped up its crackdown on GPU smuggling. Starting from November 2023, graphics cards with a computing power of RTX 4090 and above have been banned from export to China. Recently, three people, including the co-founder of Supermicro, were charged with smuggling Nvidia hardware worth US$2.5 billion, further promoting the tightening of law enforcement.
However, this form does not record the serial number of the GPU sold. The industry has questioned how much it will stop smuggling or whether it will simply serve as a deterrent.
As of now, Micro Center has not responded to this.
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