RTX 5090 cards selling for $5,000 on China's black market as DeepSeek AI models drive demand

In brief: China is in a frenzy to get its hands on the Nvidia RTX 5090 graphics card – but not just because people are desperate for more FPS in their games. The demand is the result of DeepSeek's AI models, which companies realize they can run on Nvidia's consumer GPUs at a fraction of what it would cost them to buy AI accelerators. DeepSeek's industry-disrupting R1 models can efficiently run on consumer GPUs, rather than expensive AI accelerators such as the H20. As reported by The Information (paywalled article), the situation has led to demand for the China-specific RTX 5090D reaching a point where the cards are being sold on the black market for up to $5,000. And even at that price, the chances of finding one are pretty slim. It's not just China where the RTX 5090 and 5090D are being bought for more than 100% of their $2,000 MSRP. eBay.com has several listings for the cards ranging between $5,000 and $10,000, many of which are actaully shipped from China. There are also a number ... Read full article.