Friday, November 24th 2023

Special Chinese Factories are Dismantling NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 Graphics Cards and Turning Them into AI-Friendly GPU Shape

The recent U.S. government restrictions on AI hardware exports to China have significantly impacted several key semiconductor players, including NVIDIA, AMD, and Intel, restricting them from selling high-performance AI chips to Chinese land. This ban has notably affected NVIDIA's GeForce RTX 4090 gaming GPUs, pushing them out of mainland China due to their high computational capabilities. In anticipation of these restrictions, NVIDIA reportedly moved a substantial inventory of its AD102 GPUs and GeForce RTX 4090 graphics cards to China, which we reported earlier. This could have contributed to the global RTX 4090 shortage, driving the prices of these cards up to 2000 USD. In an interesting turn of events, insiders from the Chinese Baidu forums have disclosed that specialized factories across China are repurposing these GPUs, which arrived before the ban, into AI solutions.

This transformation involves disassembling the gaming GPUs, removing the cooling systems and extracting the AD102 GPU and GDDR6X memory from the main PCBs. These components are then re-soldered onto a domestically manufactured "reference" PCB, better suited for AI applications, and equipped with dual-slot blower-style coolers designed for server environments. The third-party coolers that these GPUs come with are 3-4 slots in size, whereas the blower-style cooler is only two slots wide, and many of them can be placed in parallel in an AI server. After rigorous testing, these reconfigured RTX 4090 AI solutions are supplied to Chinese companies running AI workloads. This adaptation process has resulted in an influx of RTX 4090 coolers and bare PCBs into the Chinese reseller market at markedly low prices, given that the primary GPU and memory components have been removed.
Below, you can see the dismantling of AIB GPUs before getting turned into blower-style AI server-friendly graphics cards.

For assurance that these cards work, factories are stress-testing them after modifications in Furmark, 3DMark, and AI applications, probably running some smaller LLMs locally to test their compute capability. Indeed, this process could potentially brick a lot of AD102 GPUs if not handled with care, but the yields of this experiment are unknown to anyone outside these factories.
Sources: Baidu Forums, via WCCFTech
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48 Comments on Special Chinese Factories are Dismantling NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 Graphics Cards and Turning Them into AI-Friendly GPU Shape

#26
Prima.Vera
Palit might get the hammer for selling engross cards to the Chinese market...
Posted on Reply
#27
Evildead666
I wouldnt say its wasteful.
Those coolers can be repurposed, maybe to 4080 cards, on the cheap.
The boards though will probably have to be recycled, i dont see that many 4090 users requiring a replacement board, but with the 4090 burnouts happening, maybe they could be sold on that market.
These AI boards are going to be resold to Chinese AI companys for a profit, enough to offset the costs of making them.
AI companies are throwing cash at anyone that can sell them decent, or even half-decent, AI gpu's...
Its just another sanction that wont have the impact that was expected...
Posted on Reply
#28
Dragokar
It is the same procedure that we had in the mining and covid craze. The companies will probably send out statements that they don't encourage others to buy or use such cards, while they sold them straight from factory into the trucks. :D
Posted on Reply
#30
AusWolf
Who didn't see this coming besides the US government? :rolleyes:
Posted on Reply
#31
natr0n
Those sobs are shady geniuses.
Posted on Reply
#32
N/A
How is it friendlier. Can't place them too close to each other.
Posted on Reply
#33
Wirko
N/AHow is it friendlier. Can't place them too close to each other.
Unfortunately there are no pics or descriptions of the "end product". Those might be half-slot-wide PCIe cards packed closely together and immersed in braking fluid at -10°C, which is cooled by hacked air conditioners, or some other cheap solution just good enough to barely work (like all those antminers we've already forgotten about).
Posted on Reply
#34
R0H1T
DragokarIt is the same procedure that we had in the mining and covid craze.
The entire AI fad is like the crypto craze except with at least 10-100x more money backing it than what BTC had back in the day. I'm not talking about the value of BTC but real companies making & baking hardware for AI like there's gonna be no tomorrow!

This bubble will also pop & probably leave a bunch of plebs unemployed/broke in the end :shadedshu:
Posted on Reply
#35
Jism
Chrispy_Sanctions.
They can't buy 4090 chips direct from Nvidia right now, but they can buy 4090 cards from Asia-based manufacturers not under the same sanctions as US-based Nvidia.
And they are repurposing 4090's to put these on a AI type of PCB and resell them to consumers or businesses in China?

I guess a big profit.
Posted on Reply
#36
TheoneandonlyMrK
nguyenJust watch this clip yesterday, Chinese made a frankenstein desktop 3060 out of 3060 mobile chips, and they came out superior to the original desktop ones in term of efficiency
Binning, it's not new and the most efficient chip obviously goes in the Lowest power device, always has.
Like founder's edition cards typically get the Best bins with aib getting the next bin down.

This isn't a good use of resources IMHO.

Kinda funny,, , quite the sign for how caught up China's fabs and GPU tech is that this is the solutionthey have.
Posted on Reply
#37
Chrispy_
JismAnd they are repurposing 4090's to put these on a AI type of PCB and resell them to consumers or businesses in China?

I guess a big profit.
Businesses, probably state-owned - though that's speculation on my part.

China is buying all the AI-capable hardware they can because the sanctions mean they can't obtain them directly from the US and Europe. There's huge money in AI right now and I wouldn't be surprised if businesses are paying $5000 per GPU. There's zero official supply and tons of business demand.

Wealthy gamers might be buying them too, but realistically if the 4090 is selling for the equivalent of $5000 and a $7900XTX or 4080 is 1/5th of that, you're probably just going to buy one tier down where there's still plenty of inventory and nowhere near as much scalping / price-gouging.
Posted on Reply
#38
Xebec
The pic showing the test systems running looks AI generated. Is this real news?
Posted on Reply
#40
Darmok N Jalad
I suspect they have people in other markets buying up the cards and shipping them back to China. I've noticed a few times the buyer for PC stuff I've sold on eBay was Chinese but their location is in a west coast port city. They have lots of ratings for purchases, but never for any sales. I kinda wonder if they just go to some big mill that strips them down and they get rebuilt, like all those Machinist X79/99 motherboards out there. Same goes with sellers. They've figured out to ship their stuff to the US and then sell it though a US account. I guess this way they can work more easily with customs? Might be easier to ship a crate of 4090s to China than to do it in small batches. The sale happens in the US, and the goods are then transferred to China by the owner. I'm not a customs expert by any means, so I could be way off here.
Posted on Reply
#41
jonanddy
R0H1TWell it's at least a small surprise they're not being escorted directly from the factories, or maybe not o_O

Pretty sure if CCP wants these chips/parts they can get them almost any way possible, after all most(?) of them are "assembled" in China!
They’re not assembled in China, they’re assembled in Taiwan
Posted on Reply
#42
TheoneandonlyMrK

HMNN Defence force definitely required.


the coincidences mount up.

This is how SCUM do business(AND OFTEN HAS DONE), and supporting such harms the PC ECOSYSTEM they serve and you all love, wise up.
before you have to rent your game off nvidia who choose what your game is.
Posted on Reply
#43
RH92
Broken ProcessorI'm guessing they need as much AI brain power as possible so it can hopefully find a solution to the financial wildfire the country is heading into./s
Believe me if that was the case NVIDIA would be selling all those 4090s towards the US :roll:!
Posted on Reply
#44
Broken Processor
RH92Believe me if that was the case NVIDIA would be selling all those 4090s towards the US :roll:!
When Ever Grand collapsed it was an issue now Country Garden is in trouble it's 4 times bigger. I mean take you pick from countries leavin BRI with Italy being the latest, brand new homes being torn down because no one can afford them, infrastructure projects like high speed train going massively over budget and open sections loosing massive amounts of money. Run's on banks, province income over estimation proping up the yen. Just because other probably state owned businesses are still spending like the cash will never stop flowing doesn't mean everything is ok. Look at 07 the signs where there most chose to ignore.
Posted on Reply
#45
trsttte
WirkoUnfortunately there are no pics or descriptions of the "end product". Those might be half-slot-wide PCIe cards packed closely together and immersed in braking fluid at -10°C, which is cooled by hacked air conditioners, or some other cheap solution just good enough to barely work (like all those antminers we've already forgotten about).
I'd be curious about that too, how much convenience can they be gaining to be worth manufacturing entire new boards (and all the components those require) and coolers!? Doesn't make sense to me, seems like more a marketing/info op designed for spectacle to show sanctions are not working - well they're doing something if this is what it takes lol
Posted on Reply
#46
R-T-B
R0H1Tbut real companies making & baking hardware for AI like there's gonna be no tomorrow!
This happened with BTC too. Heck even Intel got in on it and made a BTC ASIC at one point.

Yes, it'll pop someday.
Posted on Reply
#47
ratirt
Nvidia the way it meant to be scammed.
US gov restricts sales for top end graphics chips so NV sells 4090 as low end AI chips to bypass restrictions. Classic scam just to get profit :)
I wonder how much is that one in the Chinese market. Maybe you can buy for peanuts now in China with shipping.
Posted on Reply
#48
Redwoodz
ratirtNvidia the way it meant to be scammed.
US gov restricts sales for top end graphics chips so NV sells 4090 as low end AI chips to bypass restrictions. Classic scam just to get profit :)
I wonder how much is that one in the Chinese market. Maybe you can buy for peanuts now in China with shipping.
Nvidia should be fined a billion dollars. This was illegal. The restrictions are there for a reason. Throw Jensen in jail!
Posted on Reply
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