Scalpers ignore US sanctions and exploit ban on Chinese RTX 4090s

U.S. tech sanctions on China have certainly caused a stir for over a year, with scalpers (from surrounding countries) now finding easy profits in stripping back full PC builds and selling the RTX 4090s in China.

The sanctions banned the RTX 4090 in China. Nvidia’s answer to this was the RTX 4090D, released specifically for the Chinese market at the end of 2023. The D variant of the hugely powerful RTX 4090 was a stripped-back version that offered a 10.9% reduced CUDA core count and 5.8% less peak GPU power. Despite this still being one of the most powerful GPUs on the market, it’s not as good as the original RTX 4090 and scalpers are making quick cash by simply removing the GPUs from prebuilt RTX 4090 gaming PCs and selling them to hungry buyers.

Scalping continues through US sanctions on China

A MyDrivers report alludes to the super high demand for the RTX 4090, which has caused its price to increase by up to 60% in markets near China, such as Taiwan and South Korea. This has presented an opportunity for RTX 4090 retailers to take the card off their shelves and instead offer it up within a pre-built gaming PC, allowing them to sell more components thanks to the allure of the RTX 4090.

According to this report, one crafty scalper bought 20 prebuilt gaming PCs from a neighboring country, costing them around 650,000 yuan – or around $91,000. With the Chinese market itching to get its hands on the powerful GPUs, the entrepreneur is confident they’ll not only make their money back but a tidy profit on top too. This reflects just how much gamers in China are willing to pay for the illegal and superior RTX 4090.

COVID’s global lockdown was the last great scalping playground and we’ve not really seen anything on that scale since then. During this time, the pandemic worsened the shortage of components as shipments were delayed. At the same time, demand for gear was increasing as people started working from home. With this recent scalping tale, it does beg the question of whether we could see another scalping boom in the near future.