News Hong Kong Customs Busts GPU Smugglers, Seizes 300 Nvidia CMP 30HX GPUs

[Admin]

Chinese authorities raid GPU smuggling ring based in Hong Kong that was using fishing boats to traffick GPUs.

Hong Kong Customs Busts GPU Smugglers, Seizes 300 Nvidia CMP 30HX GPUs : Read more

 

[lazyabum]

How do I get one, with the Display ports added ? What a waste.

 

[escksu]

Lol.... Back then they smuggle drugs, now they smuggle gpus!!

 

[velocityg4]

I guess you can say. Bitcoin mining wasn’t in the cards for them.

 

[LolaGT]

It is likely a little more complicated than just needing ports added to the board. There might be traces still in the board, but likely not components in line that are needed for outputting a display signal.
I'm not a tech though, so don't really know, I only guessing. It would be sad to think a bunch of these might end up in a landfill or scrapped in a couple years when they would still have years of life left in them potentially.

How do I get one, with the Display ports added ? What a waste.

 

[Incipient]

"Sadly, there are no signs of when the suffering will end for gamers."

That is objectively not correct. When eth moves to PoS there is a strong sign demand from miners will drop off, at least at the current price point. The next best altcoin is about half as profitable as eth, and that's before the massive hash rate moves from eth!

 

[Giroro]

It is likely a little more complicated than just needing ports added to the board. There might be traces still in the board, but likely not components in line that are needed for outputting a display signal.
I'm not a tech though, so don't really know, I only guessing. It would be sad to think a bunch of these might end up in a landfill or scrapped in a couple years when they would still have years of life left in them potentially.

It depends on how lazy Nvidia was when "redesigning" a GTX 1660S reference board into a mining card. My guess is "very lazy".
It's pretty likely to be the same leftover boards, with some parts left unpopulated.
Nvidia could just populate those missing parts and sell the cards to gamers... but I think they are enjoying the part of all this where people in the market for a $200 card are now forced into desperately paying $1100+ for a $600 card with a $700 (reference) MSRP. They have no incentive to even attempt to serve the low/mid range for at least the rest of the year.

The funny thing is I actually managed to get a 6900 XT direct from AMD for MSRP. I don't even want this card, but that was the page that I misclicked on first when AMD restocked. I guess it's just the card I have to use now. Maybe I'll finally get DLSS, better encoders, and usable ray tracing in a 2-3 generations when I feel like I've gotten $1000 worth of use out of this toy.
It's just sitting on my desk; I can't decide if I should open it or sell it or what. It's not like I could trade it for an RTX 3080, because those are priced way higher right now.
The cat is out of the bag now. I doubt Nvidia's board partners are ever going to charge less than $1,000 for a 3080, even after stock stabilizes. I'm also quite sure that the 3000 Super/ 4000 series will have much higher starting prices when they eventually come around. Midrange gaming is going to be dead for the next several years, if not longer.

 

[Heat_Fan89]

Lol.... Back then they smuggle drugs, now they smuggle gpus!!

At least no one has been found stuffing them in their orifice.

 

[InvalidError]

It's pretty likely to be the same leftover boards, with some parts left unpopulated.
Nvidia could just populate those missing parts and sell the cards to gamers...

Between the ESD protection diodes and all of the tiny filter components, this is easier said than done on a board that has already been soldered, probably not worth Nvidia's time especially for GPUs it has already been paid for.

 

[LolaGT]

I was more kind of more musing when these are common in the wild if some tech junkies will pick one up and see if they can get it to function.
No one ever believed nvidia would redo them to function as gpus, no reason for them to, they are getting paid for not doing that.

 

[InvalidError]

I was more kind of more musing when these are common in the wild if some tech junkies will pick one up and see if they can get it to function.

There is no point in third-parties bothering with it either: provided Nvidia didn't go so far as completely disable all video output capabilities from firmware or prevent it from being used for 3D, you can skip the need to painstakingly install all of those 0201 components by hand by simply routing video output through the IGP or a secondary GPU as people have done with previous "mining" cards.

 

[LolaGT]

I expect they will, just for fun and the challenge. Again, I am and was referring to one off experimentation. Not someone trying to actually do it because it was a great idea, for making money or otherwise.

There is no point in third-parties bothering with it either

 

[Geezer760]

How do I get one, with the Display ports added ? What a waste.

Talk to Gung Pi Yu He's the owner of that gpu smuggling boat, He may be able to help you out for a price with that.

 

[derekullo]

No officers these aren't graphics cards.

They are next generation space heaters with integrated blockchain technology.

 

[Jim90]

...
The funny thing is I actually managed to get a 6900 XT direct from AMD for MSRP. I don't even want this card, but that was the page that I misclicked on first when AMD restocked. I guess it's just the card I have to use now. Maybe I'll finally get DLSS, better encoders, and usable ray tracing in a 2-3 generations when I feel like I've gotten $1000 worth of use out of this toy.
It's just sitting on my desk; I can't decide if I should open it or sell it or what. It's not like I could trade it for an RTX 3080, because those are priced way higher right now.
...

Hmmm.....there's a definite stench in the air...!!!

 

[Krotow]

How do I get one, with the Display ports added ? What a waste.

Nope. Besides missing components on board GPU chips themselves most likely are ones where output circuitry faults was detected during binning. Certainly not worth to mess with them for gaming.

At least no one has been found stuffing them in their orifice.

We can only hope that crooks will not catch the idea to use live beings - animals or people - in this way.

 

[Giroro]

Between the ESD protection diodes and all of the tiny filter components, this is easier said than done on a board that has already been soldered, probably not worth Nvidia's time especially for GPUs it has already been paid for.

I didn't mean that they would rework mining boards that are essentially finished, I agree that wouldn't be worth it. But they should be able to make batches of both mining and gaming SKUs on the same line, if they wanted to. When I said leftover boards, I assume that they are either unpopulated... or more likely a new production run of an old design.

When looking for a cheap card to drive a monitor, I bought a Tesla M2050 on ebay (cheapest card I could find with 2GB+). It turns out that card has no display outputs, but there's definitely unpopulated space on the board for them. It appears to be the exact board of a Tesla C2050, which actually has one (of 2 possible) DVI ports populated and a more useful cooler. The only real point of bringing that up is because it's a minorly interesting parallel that shows Nvidia isn't exaclty breaking new ground with their mining cards. Also, don't buy a server compute GPU to run a monitor.

 

[Olle P]

The article is a bit unclear: What direction was the smuggling going? Were they trying to get the goods in to or out from Hong Kong?