Asian Traders Bypass Chinese Video Card Sanctions
Residents of nations bordering China have created a new business avenue: buying computers with GeForce RTX 4090 video cards and reselling these graphic accelerators on the Chinese market, according to a report by MyDrivers. This practice is essentially a way to circumvent the US sanctions that prohibit the delivery of these specific video cards to China. A noticeable increase in interest for computers fitted with high-end NVIDIA cards has been recorded in Taiwan, South Korea, Singapore, Vietnam, among other countries.
From Video Cards to Pre-Built PCs
Initially, small entrepreneurs from countries neighboring China were buying stockpiles of GeForce RTX 4090 desktop accelerators as soon as they hit the store shelves, only to resell them at a significantly higher price in the Chinese market. However, retailers countered this by offering GeForce RTX 4090s exclusively within fully assembled PCs, a strategy that appears not to have quelled the trend.
Rising Prices for High-performance PCs
The trend of buying computers with advanced video cards for subsequent resale is noticeable in some areas. As a result, the price of high-performance PCs in these markets has significantly increased, in some cases, by up to 60%.
Case in Point: The Unnamed Shopper
An unnamed buyer serves as an example of this trade practice. The buyer purchased 20 high-performance computers equipped with GeForce RTX 4090 graphics, each costing over $4500. Despite a total expenditure of over $91,000, the transaction was made in pursuit of quick and easy profit.
The Underlying Cause
The root cause of these transactions is US sanctions against China, where NVIDIA offers a stripped-down video card, the GeForce RTX 4090D, as an alternative, at the same price they earlier sold the full-version card.
