NVIDIA GPUs have become so in-demand for so-called "AI" workloads that a "black market" has emerged around them -- at least, in the eyes of the US Government. In China, it's simply a "market." We adventured on extensive travels throughout Asia and spent hundreds of hours investigating the issue

The Highlights

• We spoke to everyone about NVIDIA’s AI GPU black market, including middlemen who connect buyers and suppliers
• The export of these GPUs to China is in violation of US Government law, which includes numerous restrictions on semiconductor processing capabilities
• Fueling greed, manipulation, and propaganda, we think NVIDIA is playing all sides

Table of Contents

• AutoTOC

Intro

We’re multiple administrations deep in a technological cold war over processing power between the United States and China. China’s Cyberspace Administration has labeled some US graphics processing products as a security risk, seeking answers about US government backdoors in the silicon. Meanwhile, the United States has imposed heavy restrictions on exports of graphics processing units, or GPUs, being sold to Chinese companies by American companies. The sale requires rarely-granted licenses for each import scenario to legally export GPUs above a certain performance level, with the stated objective being to restrict progress of private and government projects, including AI development, in China, while trying to maintain the US’ claimed AI leadership. 

The United States takes this so seriously that, just this week, the Department of Justice had two Chinese nationals arrested in California for what the DOJ alleges is the smuggling of tens of millions of dollars of GPUs.

But where there’s prohibition, there’s smuggling.

Editor's note: This was originally published on August 17, 2025 as a video. This content has been adapted to written format for this article and is unchanged from the original publication. This particular story had a saga of what we felt was censorship behind it, thanks to Bloomberg L.P., which we've detailed extensively: Part 1 (Our Channel Could be Deleted) and Part 2 (YouTube's Systematic Punishment). This was written to be seen as a video, so the adaptation sticks to a more viewable/colloquial use of language.

Credits

Host, Writing, Lead Editing

Steve Burke

Editing

Vitalii Makhnovets
Tim Phetdara

Editing, Graphics

Andrew Coleman

Camera

Tannen Williams

Research and Writing

Ben Benson

Acquiring "Illegal" GPUs in China

In China, it's not an illegal market -- it's just a market.

We spoke to everyone about this NVIDIA AI GPU black market: We found middlemen who connect buyers and suppliers, users who can understand the demand and explain it, using the most dystopian definition of wealth -- how many GPUs one has.

We also found independent repair shops who, simply doing their jobs, salvage valuable silicon components from dead PCBs of banned GPUs, innovatively hand-modifying them to be better than and have more VRAM than NVIDIA’s own official product SKUs. These shops are not explicitly a part of any "black market," they're just repair shops that happen to sometimes work on export-controlled GPUs.

We met multiple people who, when asked the same question, gave the same passcode-like Chinese idiomatic expression, or chengyu (成语), which translates to “open one eye, close one eye.” In other words, it means, “to turn a blind eye.” We heard this saying so much that we made a T-shirt based on it to help fund this investigative report.

"There's a new kind of black market, and it's high-end AI GPUs. This particular black market is worth billions of dollars a year"

And among others, we even spoke with a US-based Chinese national buying video cards to strip them and ship the GPUs to Chinese companies, which violates US export control law.

One of our viewers was able to meet with a GPU smuggler, whom we’ll call “The Plug.” The smuggler spoke limited English, but they both understood one universal truth: money. He operated a GPU testing rig inside of a Prius that he drives around multiple states in the Western United States. The least suspicious thing in his car was a spare license plate in the trunk, but we’ll come back to “The Plug” towards the end.

"Black market" is normally a phrase associated with drugs or guns, but there's a new kind of black market: high-end, AI GPUs. This particular black market is worth billions of dollars a year and is hiding in plain sight.

Hong Kong is our first stop along our journey. 

By skyscraper count, Hong Kong would be the tallest city on earth. The density is unbelievable. We spent a few days here for this story, wandering markets and meeting sources.

We went to Hong Kong to learn what the demand drivers are for the banned GPUs, how they get into China, and more about the illicit side of the GPU smuggling business. 

Big Adventure 

To provide a big overview of our big adventure, it began when we booked a 24-hour plane ticket to Hong Kong and 20 days of hotels across Hong Kong, Shenzhen, Zhengzhou, Huizhou, Taipei, and more. At least one of us got detained by at least one of the governments involved in this story, but we can't talk about these indecipherably singular or plural instances or instance of any aforementioned detainment.

Then we talked to a lawyer about the previous sentence, then investigated whether or not GPUs are actually smuggled with lobsters into Hong Kong.

We eventually found a pile of GPUs that are now export controlled and met a professor who really wants to make sure you know that they were “legally obtained.”

After leaving Hong Kong, we booked a boat to Shekou, China. Then headed to Shenzhen, got kicked out of a warehouse, and used high-speed rail to go deep into China, where we met a guy who thinks that desoldering a GPU and reballing it is no big deal. 

We got a ton of information about GPU smuggling from a guy named “5.” 

After that, we went back to Shenzhen for the third time in two weeks, went back to Hong Kong, flew to Taiwan, before finally getting back on the plane to the US.

Perspective

We shot over 12 hours of interviews

We spoke to a lot of people on the record for this story and learned about the dystopian world of high-tech GPU smuggling. We spoke to people ranging from owner-operator trading companies to professors of economics building datacenters. We even tried to talk to the US Department of Commerce, but they didn’t reply, and every person on the chain from the US Department of State had out of office auto responders because we coincidentally emailed them the same week of an especially problematic story that enigmatically involved namedropping. 

We wanted to connect as many pieces of this puzzle together as we can today, and that’s why we shot over 12 hours of interviews that we just spent weeks cutting down. The point is finding people who know people, and each person in our lineup today led us to at least one other person in this video, eventually building the full pipeline of smuggler-to-user. Although this story isn’t about drugs, it is about a different thing that billionaire executives get a high from: AI. 

But before we get to any of those interviews, we need to establish the basics of this geopolitical mess.

The story is complicated, so we'll start with defining these key facts: Why these GPUs are banned, the new 15% license (which only applies to two GPU models), who buying and selling is legal or illegal for, and then the timeline. 

We have over 400 pages of research that went into finding sources and understanding the laws.

Why They’re Banned

AI GPUs have been in the mainstream news constantly.

This story has been a complete mess to follow. It has spanned years and two US administrations. We have over 400 pages of research that went into finding sources and understanding the laws. 

Reports warned of NVIDIA product use in nuclear weapons research

Here’s why governments care about AI GPUs:

NVIDIA functionally holds a GPU monopoly in our sector of the industry, which is building computers to play video games. That now feels relatively innocent by comparison to AI. The company leveraged decades of gaming domination to build a foundation for what it now focuses on, which is making the most powerful GPUs for AI in the world. Reports warned of NVIDIA product use in nuclear weapons research, facial recognition technology allegedly used in Russia to suppress dissent and growing concerns of AI facial recognition use in the US for similar deployments, alongside reports of use in international spying and in drone warfare. 

NVIDIA finds itself in the middle of all of this. Even though NVIDIA disputes selling to some of these entities -- for example, it says that it doesn’t sell GPUs to Russia -- the products still find their way there. NVIDIA is making money one way or the other. Someone is buying it, maybe from someone else who bought it from someone else, and it may be transacted through smuggling. But NVIDIA does end up selling the device ultimately to somebody. Regardless of who they sell to, NVIDIA plays a big part in this worldwide obsession of AI.

And we think it’s playing all sides, but we’ll talk about that more at the end. Besides, when there’s a gold rush, it’s better to sell the pickaxe than swing it.

Although the US doesn’t talk too much about its own use of AI, it spends a lot of time talking about China’s.

The US restricts NVIDIA’s GPUs through export control rules that ban the sale of certain GPUs into China. The restriction is for the sale of GPUs by American companies or companies that want to transact business in America to companies that are in China or the Chinese government itself. Some examples of export-controlled GPUs include gaming GPUs like the RTX 5090 and 4090, which are useful in AI applications (mostly for their high VRAM capacity), and data center/AI GPUs like the A100, H100, H200, and B100, as well as the others shown in the image above. This list is constantly in flux. There are some new and incoming exceptions for the NVIDIA H20 specifically, which has faced Schrodinger’s GPU ban depending on whether CEO Jensen Huang had a one-million-dollar dinner at Mar-a-Lago with Donald Trump on a given week. 

GPU Export Control Timeline

Now, we’ll get into the timeline of GPU export controls across multiple administrations. We have a separate article with the full, bulleted timeline here.

Obama Administration and Early AI Talk

Even at the end of the Obama Administration in 2016, the US Government was just starting to talk about AI in relation to national security in a Wired interview. Then-President Barack Obama said:

“Developing international norms, rules, protocols, verification mechanisms around cyber security generally and AI, in particular, is in its infancy. You got a lot of non-state actors who are the biggest players. Part of the problem is that identifying who's doing what is much more difficult. If you're building a bunch of ICBMs, we see them. If somebody's sitting at a keyboard, we don't. And so, we've begun this conversation. A lot of the conversation right now is not at the level of dealing with real sophisticated AI but has more to do with essentially states establishing norms about how they use their cyber capability. Who are you more afraid of: big brother and the state or the guy who's trying to empty out your bank account? Part of the reason that's so difficult is that if we're going to police this wild west, whether it's the internet, or AI, or any of these other areas, then by definition, the government's got to have capabilities. If it's got capabilities, then they're subject to abuse. And, at a time when there's been a lot of mistrust built up about government, that makes it difficult.”

First Trump Administration and Biden Administration

Those were the early days.

the Biden Administration took major action in 2022 by restricting exports to China, Hong Kong, and Macau

The first Trump Administration started a commission advising Congress on maintaining AI leadership, including simply banning the sale of some advanced semiconductor equipment and chips to China. Years of back-and-forth, a pandemic, an election, and Chat GPT’s launch later, then the Biden Administration took major action in 2022 by restricting exports to China, Hong Kong, and Macau. 

NVIDIA’s Ampere architecture A100 and newer codename “Hopper” H100 GPUs and systems were all restricted. NVIDIA shed tears for $400 million worth of lost sales as a result and was especially sad when many of its export-compliant alternatives to these also got banned, like its newly-created A800, H800, and L40S, in addition to NVIDIA’s RTX 4090 gaming card. NVIDIA said it didn’t expect “near-term meaningful impact” on its financials.

Second Trump Administration

NVIDIA responded by designing a workaround to the previously worked-around workaround, leading to the H20. Then the government added new rules for high memory bandwidth cards and the Biden admin tried to come up with an AI chip diffusion rule that would limit the quantity of GPUs being sold into different countries rather than only by processing power metrics, because the government really didn’t know how the fuck to measure these things and NVIDIA, knowing more about GPUs, could tweak any dial it wanted to just barely be compliant. Then DeepSeek came out and everyone panicked, stocks plummeted, and the government scrutinized the role of NVIDIA GPUs in it. In February 2025, Fiscal Year 2025 results were posted and NVIDIA’s Singapore revenue skyrocketed to 18% of total revenue based on customer billing location despite shipments to Singapore being claimed to be less than 2% of Fiscal Year 2025 revenue, which caused people to say “wait a minute.” Unrelated: Several GPU smugglers were arrested in Singapore one day after the fiscal year report was posted, which caused people to say “that makes more sense.”

In May, 2025, Trump implemented wide-sweeping tariffs and rescinded the Biden chip diffusion rule that would have limited how many AI GPUs Jensen could sell to other countries

AMD spawned out of nowhere to say it wrote-down $800MM of inventory due to export controls. NVIDIA one-upped it with a write-off of $5.5 billion.

In May, 2025, Trump implemented wide-sweeping tariffs and rescinded the Biden chip diffusion rule that would have limited how many AI GPUs Jensen could sell to other countries, Jensen then said, “It’s just an incredible vision. I think this is going to be a transformative idea for the next century for us. These 2 initiatives are completely visionary and it’s going to be transformative for America.”

The H20 GPU that was created to comply with rules was still okay, then Jensen had dinner with Trump at Mar-a-Lago for $1,000,000, then the H20 got banned -- he must have chosen a bad restaurant. In July, Jensen Huang met with Trump and was permitted to sell H20s again, Huang went to China, China said Jensen’s GPUs have tracking devices and backdoors, NVIDIA denied that, Jensen went to Washington, Trump then spoke very highly of Huang (and Lisa Su), and more importantly, he ragged on Intel’s CEO. Intel’s CEO then went to Washington, so Trump likes him now. Tim Cook materialized from the infernal plane to give Trump a 24-karat gold “gift,” and “gift” is in quotes because that’s not what that’s called. Then we get to this past week, when Trump asked NVIDIA and AMD to pay 20% to the US government for sale SPECIFICALLY of the H20 and AMD Instinct MI308 sales, not all GPUs as some erroneously reported. Cousins Jensen Huang and Lisa Su negotiated Trump down to 15%, and now they’re allowed to sell two specific cards that were originally created to comply with the laws before they changed and somehow everyone walks away a winner. Except now China doesn’t want them anyway.

That about sums it up.

Except one last thing that happened as we were writing this: The Department of Commerce doesn’t yet know the legality of the deal, with Tom’s Hardware highlighting legal expert arguments over Article I, Section 9 of the Constitution.

If you want the full details with all of the in-between, make sure to check out our massive timeline article. 

A New Law

There was also recent news about a 15% revenue share between NVIDIA and AMD with the United States Government for sale of some AI GPUs. Trump stated, “This is an old chip that China already has and I deal with Jensen who is a great guy and NVIDIA. The chip that we’re talking about, the H20, is an old chip. China already has it in a different form, different name, but they have it. Or they have a combination of 2 will make up for it and even then some […] but the H20 is obsolete. You know, it’s one of those things, but it still has a market. So I said, listen, I want 20% if I'm going to prove this for you, for the country, for our country, for the US. I don't want it myself, you know, every time I say like 747, I want. Yeah, for the Air Force. So when I say I want 20, I want for the country. I only care about the country. I don't care about myself and he said ‘Would you make it 15?’ So we negotiated a little deal. So he's selling an essentially old chip that Huawei has a similar chip, a chip that does the same thing and I said 'good, if I'm going to give it to you' because they have a, you know, they have a stopper, what we call a stopper. Not allowed to do it. A restricted is really known as a restrictive covenant.”

If you were to read only the headlines, you’d think that this applies to all GPUs and that the ban is over, and then you might also think that a market in China, or in the US’ eyes, an illegal market in China, would cease to be so illegal. That’s not the case. 

This new 15% revenue share would, if it’s legal (and they’re not sure yet), allow NVIDIA to sell specifically the NVIDIA H20 GPU to approved Chinese entities. They likely can’t be on the entity list. It would allow AMD to sell specifically the Instinct MI308 GPU to approved Chinese entities. The proposed license would not affect any other GPU that currently does not have a license. The government hasn’t made clear yet if NVIDIA’s partners would also be permitted to make these sales. 

That means that other banned GPUs, including the RTX 4090, RTX 5090, H100, B100, B200, and so forth, remain banned. 

The H20’s extremely high 96GB memory capacity would enable large models to fit in memory and actually run, especially with multiple GPUs in a single rack, even if it’s slower. That means companies can achieve performance targets by stacking GPUs which are lower clock and core count but higher capacity.

As for the newer Blackwell architecture GPUs, Trump stated, “Now Jensen also has, Jensen’s a very brilliant guy, and Jensen also has a new chip, the Blackwell. Do you know what the Blackwell is? The Blackwell is super duper advanced.”

Let’s not give NVIDIA any ideas on new GPU names.

Trump added, “I wouldn’t make a deal with that. Although it’s possible I’d make a deal, a somewhat enhanced in a negative way Blackwell. In other words, take 30% to 50% off of it. But that’s the latest and the greatest in the world. Nobody has it. They won’t have it for 5 years. On the Blackwell, I think he’s coming to see me again about that. But that will be an unenhanced version of the big one.”

For now, these “Super Duper” GPUs are not licensed for sale. 

In short: The H20 and MI308 were compliant with the US Government’s original rules, then the rules changed during design & production and they were banned, then AMD and NVIDIA collectively declared over $6B in financial impact as a result. 

Then the US Government said, ‘Wait a minute, we can help with that if you cut us in.’

It reminds us of the unpredictability that we highlighted in our tariffs documentary.

The H20 most certainly is not “obsolete,” though. It’s still very desirable in China, and with a lot of them, they become particularly potent.  

How the US Determines GPU Bans

Setting a threshold for banned hardware should be objective since it can be tested.

This is a graph from the Department of Commerce that visualizes the original threshold at which a computing product became automatically banned for export to parts of the Middle-East and China without a granted license. There have been some changes since, but back when this was made, the “Total Processing Performance” score on the Y-axis was used to determine cards in need of a license. The government needed a metric to calculate against, so it created its own.

Accelerators and video cards have a lot of metrics in their spec sheets, including memory capacity (which is critical and as simple as a pass/fail for certain training and AI uses), memory bandwidth, GPU clock speed, GPU SM or CU count, TPCs, Tensor Cores, ROPs that are sometimes randomly missing on NVIDIA devices, TFLOPS, TOPS, PFLOPS, GFLOPS, gigabits, power, and more.

So then, banning a product could probably be based on some sort of benchmark rather than a random metric from a spec sheet, but the US government, illustrating what an absolute clusterfuck this situation was and now remains, decided to instead multiply one random metric from a specsheet against the bit length of the operation being executed. FLOPS, or Floating Point Operations Per Second, and TOPS, or Tera Operations Per Second, are calculated by the company making the spec sheet and aren’t a great measurement of actual performance. These numbers are based on both marketing and whether we’re talking about FP8, half-precision FP16, single-precision FP32, double-precision FP64, or Tensor performance, so the government said, “the rate of MacTOPS is to be calculated at its maximum value theoretically possible” and “the rate of MacTOPS is assumed to be the highest value the manufacturer claims in brochure[s] for the integrated circuit.” So it’s not based on a bunch of real-world benchmarks of applications or something useful. The government also references MacTOPS as the theoretical peak of TeraOPS in multiply-accumulate computations.

The Biden administration used this “Total Processing Performance” (or TPP) score in 2023, with the government later adding a “Performance Density” metric dividing the TPP by the die area in square millimeters. In other words, the government didn’t want NVIDIA to be able to sell more of a lower-performance GPU to make-up for the loss of high-performing parts with multi-GPU solutions. 

There are a lot of reasons this doesn’t capture the full picture, like sparsity, APIs, differing methods to calculate FLOPS, and different performance for different applications, but the government needed a way to define a threshold, so this is what it made. The limit was a TPP score of 4800, exceeded by even the RTX 4090 when calculated using Tensor performance.

Now, if this doesn’t mean anything to you, that’s OK, because it probably doesn’t mean anything to people signing the laws either. Or maybe that’s not OK, but you get the idea.  

Something like a higher memory capacity, lower FLOPS performance GPU or even series of GPUs like RTX 3060 12GB cards might be able to get the work done more effectively if it only needs memory. Memory wasn’t factored into the TPP calculation.

That was the point of the H20, but then the absurdity of the situation expanded by introducing an opaque memory bandwidth requirement. The Register wrote, “Unlike with previous export controls, the Commerce Department's Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) hasn't issued specific guidance on how much I/O or memory bandwidth is too much.”

So it seems that, across now two administrations, the United States is creating formulas based upon numerical calculations and then, when NVIDIA and AMD tweak numbers to fit within that box, it is retconning those rules in a guess-and-check process.

Experts & Roles

We spoke to a lot of people in this story across different languages, which made it complicated. The discussions come from:

Dr. Vinci Chow, Senior Lecturer in the Department of Economics at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, responsible for building his department’s machine learning servers and sourcing GPUs from middlemen suppliers.

Dr. Zǐ Háo Fù, a Research Assistant Professor at the Chinese University of Hong Kong and Affiliated Lecturer at the University of Cambridge. Zihao specializes in both computer science and linguistics.

Various retail workers at the computer markets in Hong Kong to get a ground-level understanding.

Zhou, Creative Director of Product at video card manufacturer Yeston. Yeston is not involved in any "black market" of GPUs and mostly deals with AMD; however, the company gave us a tour of its GPU factories to better understand production processes.

An anonymous seller who goes by the pseudonym of “SILVER,” based in Shenzhen Bao’an and manages a warehouse in Hong Kong that receives and processes smuggled GPUs.

Vincent, a resourceful fence who lives next to the warehousing and markets filled with GPUs and accelerators. He buys and sells these devices in Shenzhen Huaqiangbei. His job is to know people. 

Vincent’s Cousin is the fixer’s fixer. If someone needs a component to fix a broken video card or to build a new one, they go to people like him to get the integrated circuits.

“Mr. 5,” a Bilibili hardware reviewer with a specialized focus on thermal solutions. Like us, Mr. 5 has had run-ins with NVIDIA that have ended in a soured relationship over disputes regarding independent reviews and editorial independence.

Brother Zhang, a renowned Bilibili uploader (basically a YouTuber in China) who runs a video card repair shop in Zhengzhou. In addition to repairs, he regularly gets large orders from customers asking him to build them custom, unofficial, higher VRAM capacity NVIDIA GPUs for large language model tasks. Brother Zhang is not a direct part of any "black market," as, again, his business operates legitimately within China as a repair shop. It does, however, come into contact with GPUs the USA considers to be "illegal" for sale into China.

Companies in Singapore and Taiwan who act as intermediaries between NVIDIA, NVIDIA’s partners, and companies in China. The Singaporean and Taiwanese companies are able to bring banned GPUs and servers in and re-sell them to Chinese companies, skirting export controls. We are unable to disclose their identities as there would likely be punishment from multiple governments and NVIDIA.

The “Plug,” a US-based Chinese citizen who drives around the country buying hardware from American end-users and resells it to companies in China and Hong Kong.

And a special thanks to our translator Raymen Wu of the BLK SODA agency in Taiwan.

The Smuggling Pipeline

Here's the pipeline.

If a GPU doesn’t fall off the back of a truck in China after it was assembled, or if it isn’t a "QC defect" that disappears from the scrap pile, it may instead be moved by “ants” to get to China. There’s a saying in Chinese that we heard a few times (mayi banjia - 蚂蚁搬家), which translates to “ants moving” that represents a linear pipeline. Each ant in the fireline serves a specific role. It’ll help to name those to keep everything straight. Here’s what we came up with:

The Source has access to GPUs. This could be as innocent as you unknowingly selling your card on Facebook Marketplace to The Plug. 

The Plug is responsible for acquiring from the original source and re-selling the hardware to the China-based distributors. 

In between, there’s a Mule. Sometimes this is the Plug himself doing a trip home. We learned that overseas students also regularly return with what are feasibly defended as personal GPUs, that they bought at a retailer like Best Buy, that may then get resold for markup and profit. In either case, the Mule gets the GPU into the country either by shipping it without interception or by hand carrying it.

Next is the Middleman, receiving the GPUs and often interfacing with or managing the warehouses that store the cards. The Middleman buys from multiple Plugs, including factories that get rid of rejects with fixable or unimportant QC defects, then sells those devices to more localized distributors.

That’s when we get to the Fence, who buys and sells GPUs between middlemen and warehouses to end users in China.

Then, we have who we’re calling the Fixer, except this time, it’s literal. The Fixer is an optional step that may involve soldering and modifying a GPU to improve it beyond its original specification to make it more marketable for domestic AI uses. They might also just fix QC defects from the factories.

Finally, we have the User. This is self-explanatory: The user is the demand driver, and oftentimes, large enterprises want dozens or hundreds of GPUs or more, while smaller users like the university may just want individual units or small batches.

With everyone’s role named, let’s continue.

Demand Drivers

Our journey began in Hong Kong. 

HONG KONG: Dr. Vinci Chow, Chinese University of Hong Kong

Upon arriving in Hong Kong, one of our GPU dealer informants slipped us a price sheet for a mix of GPUs that are both export controlled and not.

Some of the banned ones on the list include the 5090, 4090, 4090 (48GB), A6000, A100, and A100 (80GB). The person who provided the price sheet works with smugglers. The problem is, we don’t know what the going rate for these GPUs is.  

So we hopped in a Hong Kong cab and headed across Victoria Harbor and over to the Chinese University of Hong Kong to meet up with Dr. Vinci Chow.

We found him through a Reuters story from a couple years ago. He works in the economics department at the university and he’s responsible for having built many of the servers and machine learning systems that are in use daily. 

"Upon meeting Chow, he showed us some A100 GPUs, which he emphasized were, 'legally obtained.'"

He has a whole blog detailing his process, including the difficulty of sourcing components and the ease with fixing problems when so close to Shenzhen, such as having custom PCIe riser cables built and basically done the same day. 

Dr. Vinci Chow is the right person to start us off with this story and educate us on where to go next. We’re here to understand the user’s perspective because before there could be any market for it, there has to be demand. And that is what the university and organizations like it generate. 

it's illegal to export to China without [a] permit but it's completely legal on our side, right? There's nothing that says that you cannot buy a high-end GPU.

- Dr. Vinci Chow

Upon meeting Chow, he showed us some A100 GPUs, which he emphasized were “legally obtained.” He elaborated that he obtained them around when ChatGPT was released and got them for “quite cheap.” He expressed that, during this time, even the A100, which became export-banned in 2022, “was actually quite cheap.” He shared that he got the A100s for “less than 10,000 US Dollars.” Following ChatGPT’s release, however, Chow said that the prices went “crazy.”

Pointing out the oddity of the export ban, Chow stated, “It's interesting because, you know, it's the export ban, right? So it's illegal to export to China without [a] permit but it's completely legal on our side, right? There's nothing that says that you cannot buy a high-end GPU. So, from our end, as long as we follow all relevant procedures, there's absolutely nothing illegal about, for us over here, to buy these GPUs. So that makes it for a very interesting environment.” He added, “These universities have been purchasing GPUs. It’s completely legal on our side, right? Yet this is clearly not supposed to happen from the perspective of the US government.”

Regarding pricing and availability of export-banned GPUs, the professor stated, “If you pay enough, supply is there. Maybe not if you want to build a super cluster, right? For research, most researchers are talking about 1 or 2 GPUs. And if they have the funding, then it’s possible to obtain that. It’s just everything is more expensive.”

Having built Chinese University of Hong Kong’s cluster of GPUs during COVID, he has first-hand knowledge of how much banned GPUs cost to get in Hong Kong and estimated that an H200 would cost around “$30K.” When we looked at our GPU price sheet, the H200 was going for 213,000 HKD, which amounted to roughly $29,700 USD. This corroborates his estimate. 

When we asked Chow how he thinks the export-banned GPUs get into China, he stated, “So these GPUs are almost certainly moved one at a time, right? It’s very hard to get a full HGX system.”  

Later, Chow introduced us to his friend and associate Dr. Zǐ Háo Fù, who works in the university’s linguistics department and has a background in computer science. He uses the university’s mainline datacenter to train large-language models. He shared that they currently use A40 GPUs, gaming GPUs, and sometimes have an RTX 6000 available (NVIDIA has multiple generations of RTX 6000, including Ada Lovelace and Blackwell). Zǐ Háo elaborated that memory is the “most important part for researchers.”

When we asked Chow (hypothetically) if they could get whatever GPUs they wanted with limitless money, he explained that if they had millions of dollars before the GPU ban, they could get them. He also stated that, “With the export ban, [university] departments are not necessarily willing to publicly list their computing capabilities.”

Datacenter

Chow showed off the GPU cluster he constructed. He explained that a single 8-GPU system can put out around 4,000 watts. For reference, this would require 2 standard US residential circuits to support at 20A per circuit or, as Dr. Chow says, would be about “two hair dryers.”

He also shared that you can’t plug the GPUs into a standard wall socket as that would immediately blow the fuse and that they had to install 2 three-phase power within their GPU cluster room. 

Chow shared that they have roughly 30 A100-class GPUs and a bunch of 3090s and 3060s. This amounts to roughly 50-60 GPUs.

Discussing the logistics of how the US determines which GPUs should be banned, Chow stated, “If you go back like five years ago, everyone probably would think that like, yeah, FLOPs is a very important metric to consider. But turns out when it comes to loading large models, what we all care about is how much memory, how much VRAM you have, right? You simply cannot load a model if you don't have the VRAM. So now H20 becomes a very attractive option.” He added, “the H20 has drastically lower FLOPs, but then it actually has more memory than the original H100.” For reference, the H20 has 96GB of memory, whereas the H100 has 80GB. Chow added, “So it’s actually in some sense more attractive.”

While the idea of black markets might convey back-alley deals, Chow says that the export-banned GPUs are simply shipped to customers. 

When we asked if the GPU bans were effective, Chow responded, “It is effective in preventing the building of a very big cluster. It’s just not possible to get 100,000 of the GPUs.” 

He mentioned that the H200s were also assembled in China, which raises an interesting question of what prevents these GPUs from 'falling off the line.' Chow elaborated on that, stating,  'I don’t understand how it works at all. How is the ban even working?'

When we asked them why they think the US government cares so much, Zǐ Háo stated, “I guess they just want to delay the speed of other countries of training the model, but their ban is very weird.” When we asked them if the ban seemed targeted at military uses or Chinese companies in general, Zǐ Háo said, “I guess it’s in general.” Chow chimed and said, “I don't think, from the US government's perspective, there's this distinction between like Chinese academia versus Chinese military versus Chinese commercial. I don't think they really consider there's a distinction.”

When we asked to see if Huawei’s hardware seemed compelling, Zǐ Háo shared that he doesn’t know people who use Huawei hardware, but it may be a fallback option in the future if consumers in China can’t get NVIDIA GPUs.  

All these high-end GPUs are still manufactured in China, but they're not allowed to be sold in China.

- Dr. Vinci Chow

Chow explained to us that the A100 GPUs he acquired were “assembled in China.” He mentioned that the H200s were also assembled in China, which raises an interesting question of what prevents these GPUs from “falling off the line.” Chow elaborated on that, stating,  “I don’t understand how it works at all. How is the ban even working?” He points out that the box for the banned GPUs even “clearly state that they are manufactured in China.” Chow shared a theory on how banned GPUs are able to be sold in China, “My guess is there must be spares. I don't know. Spare SXM modules, spare casings, and then somehow these spare parts just get assembled into a complete GPU and get sold.”

I would be surprised if they don’t, right? I would be surprised. I would be really surprised if they don't. These are very expensive items. I would imagine you would keep track of everything

Dr. Vinci Chow

Recapping the ridiculousness of the situation, Chow stated, “All these high-end GPUs are still manufactured in China, but they're not allowed to be sold in China. And somehow the US government thinks that's going to work and somehow the Chinese government also allows that to happen. I have no idea how actually that whole thing works.”

We asked both professors if NVIDIA knows whether all of this is happening and Chow stated, “I would be surprised if they don’t, right? I would be surprised. I would be really surprised if they don't. These are very expensive items. I would imagine you would keep track of everything.” 

Hunting for Banned GPUs (Golden Computer Center)

After this discussion, Zihao parted ways and Vinci brought us to one of his favorite tech spots in Hong Kong: The Golden Computer Center and the outdoor Apliu Street tech flea market. We asked him if we could go find some supposedly banned GPUs, like the RTX 5090, just available out in public. The hope was to find a shopkeeper with some ground-level or consumer knowledge.

When we asked Chow if the export controls are having their desired effect for the US, he responded, “Well, yes, in terms of stopping China from building a comparable GPU cluster to the US.”

While we were visiting Golden Computer Center, Chow pointed out some purchasable “parallel import” GPUs, which means they were smuggled into the country. We saw banned cards for sale here, including the 5090 Founders Edition. Despite the sometimes inflated prices, we were surprised at how easy these GPUs were to purchase. It seems like one of the main impacts of the GPU bans are the prices of the cards. Chow theorizes that the cards are moved into the country one by one, often by traveling students. 

We asked a shopkeeper there, “What’s the most popular card?” He said it was the 5090 and that they come from Australia and Taiwan, neither of which has an export ban on these GPUs to China. He also said they can “buy a lot” of 5090s from mainland China. 

Hong Kong was impressive and filled with character and culture -- and GPUs, apparently, because one of our next sources sent a message the night we were planning to hitch a ferry to Shekou Port in Shenzhen. He told us that we could buy a GPU as soon as tomorrow if we wired him money immediately.

That seems like the responsible thing to do, and because it’s fully above board as a buyer, and because he texted us a photo of an RTX Pro 6000, which was very intriguing since it’s Blackwell, we decided the best way to learn more about buying export-controlled GPUs in China would be to just do it. So far, all the contacts were aware that some form of factory repurposing, theft from the line, QC rejects, and actual by-hand smuggling are involved -- but none knew for sure how the GPUs move. To get closer to the sources, we decided to wire the funds and get an address.

We ended up sending out $3,289 via wire on a tight deadline, with our boat bringing us to the seller the next morning. 

Turn a Blind Eye: How GPU Smuggling Works

HUIZHOU: Mr. 5

We then packed up and boarded a ferry to Shekou Port, but we decided to take a quick detour: Rather than go straight to Shenzhen to meet our GPU plug, we first went to meet up with someone else -- a source who told us he has more information on how GPUs get into China. We traveled to HuiZhou to meet a guy known as “Mr. 5.” 

HuiZhou is a city with some serious grit.

The city has grown to take some of Shenzhen’s factory industry as it’s been pushed out over the years with Shenzhen’s expansion and as it’s turned into more of a metropolis. We spent a good amount of time in HuiZhou over the last decade, mostly visiting case, painting, tempered glass, and tooling factories.

"we asked him how 5090s get into China. He responded, 'It’s like this. China already produces the heatsinks and components. China makes a lot of 5090s. That’s the first way in.'"

Mr. 5 is a cooling hardware reviewer and has specialist knowledge in factories that make video card cooling solutions, including NVIDIA’s. This experience allows him more access to information about the peculiar relationship between factories making cards and the companies that technically can’t sell them to the country where they’re made. We instantly related to Mr. 5 for his own editorial disputes with NVIDIA’s review sampling process, where we have felt the company seeks to control review direction. 

They can buy it and use a ‘human flesh backpack.’ They carry that back and it’s not illegal in China

- Mr. 5

His username is “51972” on Bilibili.

“Human Flesh Backpack”

Speaking to him in Chinese, we asked him how 5090s get into China. He responded:

“It’s like this: China already produces the heatsinks and components. China makes a lot of 5090s. That’s the first way in. The second is [...] The US has a ban on sales to China, but there’s no ban in China. Because Shenzen and Hong Kong are close, there’s only one customs check. Many people can get it from Hong Kong or other countries. For example, America, Japan, Singapore, etc. They can buy it and use a ‘human flesh backpack.’ They carry that back and it’s not illegal in China. They can purchase it that way. There’s one other method: for some people, it’s just for money and they choose to smuggle. So they use a ‘special channel’ (smuggling) to get it back.”

A few months ago, if you carried an RTX 5090 in from outside, you could earn about 2,000 to 5,000 RMB. You could make so much money.

- Mr. 5

We asked Mr. 5 if he thought most of the banned GPUs come in one at a time, and he replied:

“There are many ways. In China, we have a special type of ‘job,’ scalper. He can go back-and-forth many times in one day to bring them back, and every time he does, he brings some back. He can also organize people or a group of people to go to Hong Kong together to buy. Then he gets the difference in price. Each card gets from 500 to a few thousand RMB. That’s the method he uses. Strictly speaking, this kind of action is illegal, but it’s a gray area. They can organize people from Shenzhen, Hong Kong, or other countries. Of course, there are many other ways, like international students bringing them back. In China, the 5090 is not banned.” He added, “A few months ago, if you carried an RTX 5090 in from outside, you could earn about 2,000 to 5,000 RMB (about $280 to $700 USD). You could make so much money. The craziest is when the 5090 released during Chinese New Year, some people who brought one back from overseas made 10,000 RMB (about $1,400 USD). So a lot of people thought, ‘If I go abroad, I’ll buy an extra one.’” 

Of course [NVIDIA] know. For this matter, of course they know, but, how, ‘how do I say this?’ ‘Open one eye, close one eye.'

- Mr. 5

Mr. 5 stated, “China has an old saying, ‘All the hustle and bustle in the world is only for money and interest.’ I also have to add that many of the RTX 5090s are ‘made in China.’ The video card was born here locally, so a few brands choose to sell domestically in order to digest inventory. Because it takes a few months to ship by ocean freight--we already know it takes 1-2 months to get from China to the USA by boat, which wastes time. But if it’s sold domestically in China, it can be turned-around quickly. Funds return faster. This is also lower pressure and reduced inventory.”

NVIDIA’s Awareness of Smuggling

When we asked Mr. 5 if he thinks NVIDIA knows about what’s going on with all of the banned GPUs being sold in China, Mr. 5 replied:

“Of course they know. For this matter, of course they know, but, how--how do I say this?--‘Open one eye, close one eye.’” This translates to “turn a blind eye.” 

When we asked Mr. 5 if NVIDIA would want to stop it, he simply replied, “No” since the Chinese market is so big. 

SHENZHEN: Suppliers, Middlemen, & Fixers of Banned GPUs

Our next stop was in Shenzhen Bao’an to meet with a trading company that sits between Hong Kong and Shenzhen warehouses. They’re the trading company’s trading company, and we planned to buy an RTX 5090 from them. 

Shenzhen was a fishing village just 40 years ago. Now, it’s one of the most technologically advanced cities on earth. Shenzhen has some extreme Cyberpunk vibes with its mix of technology and surveillance.

It has packed tech markets in Huaqiangbei, including some of the weirdest computer parts we’ve ever seen. There are entire buildings dedicated only to small phone repair shops with their own kiosks, another building dedicated to a mix of computer hardware, gaming, and miscellaneous components, more still for just integrated circuits, and all of these places have people who know people. That’s their job. 

But with Shenzhen’s technological rise comes with it an uncomfortable omnipresence of CCTV and facial recognition, which feels more fitting today than ever before now that we know worldwide government facial recognition is a big user of AI GPUs. 

Buying an “Illegal” GPU

We started the day by meeting up with our translator for the next two days, Raymen, who’s helped us on factory tours for years now. Because Uber doesn’t work in China -- since it uses the Google Maps API and Google is blocked by the firewall -- Raymen also was our man with the locally compatible apps to get us places. This became especially important now that even cash is becoming less acceptable by some cafes and restaurants, as everyone has moved to paying with the WeChat app.

With our ride booked, we set off to see if the wired funds turned into a GPU and tried meeting up with our GPU supplier.

Upon meeting with them, we explained that we were media, and they allowed us to record them talking but didn’t allow us to show their faces or divulge their names or company name. 

They gave us the RTX 5090 we purchased, which wasn’t even much more expensive than what we would have paid for it in the US. 

We asked them what the most common GPU is that their customers buy and one of them, whom we’ll call “Silver,” stated the H800, A800, and 5090 D. These are are all banned GPUs (the 5090 D was not originally banned). We then asked them what sells better between the 5090-class cards and the H100 type GPUs, and they replied “5090 D.” 

We asked them if anyone buys high-end AMD GPUs and they responded, “Very few. AMD’s GPUs are rarely useful. We’ve had second-hand customers, but high-end is very rare.” We then asked to see if people were buying Intel GPUs, and they responded, “Intel is the least!”

'睁一只眼, 闭一只眼 '/ 'Turn a Blind Eye'

- "Silver"

We then asked them if they think NVIDIA knows about people buying and selling banned GPUs in China and they echoed what Mr. 5 said and replied, “They ‘open one eye, close one eye.’ They know you can buy it.” 

The most important thing we learned here was where to go next: Just like how the ants move GPUs piece by piece, we’ll have to collect our information piece-by-piece. The company said that some cards have become more difficult to get, but they can still get them. 

The fact that they texted us a photo of an RTX 6000 PRO Blackwell card -- the very same that we just bought for $8,500 in the US and that is hard to get at home -- shows that they’re resourceful. Their price is $8,600 US, which is actually cheaper when factoring-in US taxes and shipping. 

So the ban isn’t stopping them, and the 6000 PRO Blackwell GPU is a serious AI card (that we’ve benchmarked) with 96GB of memory. It’s banned and in demand. This company isn’t used to single-GPU sales like ours: It mostly transacts with other trading companies and in high volume, interfacing with a Hong Kong distributor to bring the cards into Shenzhen, moving it across one more border, another ant in the chain. That meant they could connect us with their distributor, which would be familiar with where we could find smugglers, but this company itself neither knew many smugglers directly nor knew many end users. That’s OK, because each link in this chain will get us one ant closer to the information we need.

We took note of their information on the distributor and smuggling side to use when we got back home, then they helped point us toward our next stop: Huaqiangbei, which is located in Shenzhen.

We hopped in a car and drove 40 minutes to meet with a GPU trader we found in the city, over near Huaqiangbei. 

SEG E-Market: The Biggest Tech Market in the World

Huaqiangbei is home to the world-famous SEG E-Market, or Saige, where we’ve found some of the strangest computer parts we’ve ever seen. Huaqiangbei has the highest concentration of technology and integrated circuits in the world, with a neverending maze of multiple disconnected, multi-story malls specializing in all electronics. If your life depended on getting a complete product made in a single city block, Shenzhen Huaqiangbei is your best bet.

Fortunately, this time, we’ll be with this guy:

This is Vincent. His profile picture on one messaging app is Van Gogh, so he has a sense of humor. He seems to have a natural ability to make people -- and cars -- get out of his way and he argued with security guards about us being able to film.

Vincent generally seems to have an attitude of getting shit done.

But before we met him, we had some concerns going into this one that it’d be fruitless or that no one would even be there to meet us. Luckily, he met up with us after we arrived. 

We can only move [GPUs] slowly, but there are a lot of people in China.

- Vincent

We asked Vincent if it was difficult to get the GPUs. He replied, “The market has a lot of them” and pointed us towards the nearby SEG E-Market. Vincent runs a trading company and buys and sells the GPUs. We asked him how the high-end GPUs get into China, and he said, "They often come through Hong Kong” and added that “Taiwanese people also sell them here.” He confirmed that the GPUs are often brought over one-by-one. When we asked him if this one-by-one movement was enough, Vincent replied, “We can only move them slowly, but there are a lot of people in China.”

If it’s a common card like a 5090, we have them in China. Chinese factories made those [5090s] and sell them

- Vincent

Consequences of Smuggling

We then proceeded to ask if there were any consequences from bringing those cards in. He replied, “If it’s a banned video card, then China doesn’t have any first-party [cards]. You can only bring it in from outside. If it’s a common card like a 5090, we have them in China. Chinese factories made those [5090s] and sell them. That’s the way it is. If you’re talking about high-tech servers, you can only bring them in from outside. China doesn’t have these [high-tech parts].”

When we asked Vincent if China cares, he responded, “It’s not the Chinese government’s business. It’s a US ban.”

He revealed that “each person has their own method to get cards in. Normally, I just get it from Hong Kong because it’s close.”

We asked Vincent what his normal order amount was and he replied, “Relatively low. Just 1 or 2 [per customer].”  We then asked what was the most in-demand GPU, and he responded, “The 4090 is relatively popular, but the 5090 is too expensive. No one wants it.” When we pointed out that the 4090 was banned, he was surprised and stated, “Really? 4090? It’s relatively common.”

We found it interesting that some dealers of "banned" GPUs aren't even aware that they are banned, illustrating just how easy these parts are to get.

Vincent stated, “We don’t know the reason for the ban, we can only buy and sell what’s on the market.”

We then asked Vincent if we could follow him to SEG E-Market and walked there with him. 

Vincent led us over to various large wholesale and consumer retail markets. His office is within about a 10-minute walk from SEG E-Market, which is his daily haunt.

There’s one peculiar detail in all of this: Vincent has customers both in and outside of China, but his foreign customer base is relatively high. He mostly deals in RTX 4090s, which seems to be a trend as you’ll see with our smuggler contact at the end.

That means that Vincent is buying 4090s that either never left China -- but were supposed to -- or were likely illegally re-exported to China, and is then re-re-exporting them to his foreign customers. It’s like an infinite loop.

He used to work as a shopkeeper in the mall itself and would interface with factories or anyone else who wandered in. 

we went into a shop and asked if they had 5090s. The shopkeeper said that they do

These days, he’s closed shop and is a buyer instead. He mostly takes orders online, doesn’t keep much inventory, and then just walks across the street to buy whatever was ordered that day. It’s basically a concierge GPU-picking service.

While at SEG market, we went into a shop and asked if they had 5090s. The shopkeeper said that they do and they confirmed that they did have them and could sell them for 19,800 RMB, which was roughly $2,757 USD. That’s not bad and is pretty close to US pricing. 

Speaking to shopkeepers, and like with the other interviews, we learned that people rarely want AMD GPUs and basically no one wants Intel.

Along the way, he introduced us to his cousin in the integrated circuit business. 

Vincent walked us around and repeatedly expressed confusion at the ban list. He sees RTX 4090s everywhere and RTX 5090s are easy to get

His cousin connected a missing link for us: People like him, selling FETs, inductors, capacitors, resistors, MLCCs, and so on for repair shops, can help to supply the parts needed for upfit or modifications. For GPUs, this can also include sourcing additional VRAM for modifications.

some sellers told us that they’re capable of sourcing devices like the A800 or even A100

Vincent walked us around and repeatedly expressed confusion at the ban list. He sees RTX 4090s everywhere and RTX 5090s are easy to get, just expensive. He was pretty sure that their abundance meant we were mistaken, but we checked and re-calculated, and they are export controlled devices. He told us about how 5090s are easy to get because the local factories supply them, matching Mr. 5’s comments earlier. Vincent pointed out everything from RTX 20-series GPUs, GTX 16 cards, 30-series, A1000 cards, Quadros, BTC mining rigs, and 5090s, and 4090s. Although some sellers told us that they’re capable of sourcing devices like the A800 or even A100, they did not have them on-site. They have them in a more secure spot. 

That’s because there’s a separate area for the warehousing. Fortunately, we learned where they are from our new friends in SEG. Like every other link in this chain, we kept getting closer to understanding the full story.

Warehouses

On a rainy morning, we headed over to the warehouses containing all of the GPUs to get a better idea for how many there might be. SEG’s guards have never been particularly friendly toward filming to begin with, but ultimately, they’re not police. The worst that happens is we get asked to leave. Besides, there weren’t any signs saying we couldn’t be there.

From the perspective of the United States, the warehouse we visited is filled with highly illegal items. They didn't have export licenses.

From the perspective of people working here, however, they’re just doing their job. It's not shady. It's not some subterranean refuge of firearms. It's just a poorly lit warehouse like any number of other warehouses around the world, but the perspective of the American government would be different from the people working here, who just want to sell these things and go home.

If GPU sellers don’t have certain GPUs, they purchase them from these warehouses. We saw stacks upon stacks of GPUs for sale. These feed into SEG and get distributed to Alibaba sellers like Vincent and get sent out from there. To be clear, not all of the GPUs we saw in the warehouse are banned, but we did see a couple 5090s. 

From the perspective of the United States, the warehouse we visited is filled with highly illegal items. They didn't have export licenses. From the perspective of people working here, however, they’re just doing their job. It's not shady. It's not some subterranean refuge of firearms. It's just a poorly lit warehouse like any number of other warehouses around the world, but the perspective of the American government would be different from the people working here, who just want to sell these things and go home.

The warehouse security did eventually kick us out for filming, although they were oddly polite about it, which we appreciated.

Zhengzhou

Next up, we headed to Zhengzhou on a 5 hour and 50 minute high-speed rail ride to visit Brother Zhang’s repair shop, where they build custom 48GB GPUs. 

Brother Zhang is famous for repairs on Bilibili. He’s got video cards and spare parts all over his shop and he saves everything that he can salvage, then rips the good components from the boards to reuse them for other ones. Brother Zhang is an interesting guy in the chain because he’s not directly part of the GPU black market -- he just fixes video cards. He does that for consumers and for companies. Sometimes, that means people want him to modify video cards to, for example, double the VRAM. That’s where it gets interesting for our story.

Speaking to him, we learned that his shop tests about 50 GPUs a day and, while we were there, we saw them testing 4090s and 5090s. Most of the GPUs are from NVIDIA, but there are some from AMD, with relatively few from Intel. Most of the cards that come into his shop come from all throughout China and most of his customers know him because of his videos.

"He converted a 24GB RTX 4090 into a 48GB RTX 4090"

The ultimate reason we’re at Zhang’s shop is to see how video cards are modified. Because if there’s an export ban on GPUs going to China, then it becomes critical for China to be more self-sufficient in keeping those GPUs that they do manage to get to stay in service. Most of the repairs are more typical things you'd expect of soldering. There's board heaters, soldering irons, surface mount components gathered from suppliers nearby, and a lot of test stations. But one thing that's unique to China and especially to this shop is the ability to take an existing model video card and completely modify the SKU into something that NVIDIA doesn't even make. NVIDIA is intentionally restrictive with how much RAM it puts on cards. Part of that is to upsell people to more expensive models. Actually, that's pretty much all of it. That's basically why they do it. But at shops like Zhang's, they double the VRAM on some of the cards that come through, making it into a fully custom SKU. We wanted to see if he had one lying around that he could show us, and he did one better than that: his shop made a modified 48GB RTX 4090 right in front of our eyes.

He converted a 24GB RTX 4090 into a 48GB RTX 4090. The unit that we looked at went through 6 repairs: It originally didn’t work at all, then it had a memory problem, then it had display issues. While the card works now and the GPU itself is functional, because its board has had so many issues, it would be better to harvest the expensive components (like the GPU) and put them on a new board to avoid other potential failures. 

When we asked Zhang what the success rate was, he told us it was about 99%. Impressive.

Because NVIDIA doesn't make a 48GB 4090, the repair shop has to source its own PCB and cooling solution. Other shops commonly sell both of these on the open market in China. It needs something that has enough pads for all the memory modules they're adding to it, more memory, and a pre-populated VRM. They work with a third-party supplier that builds a PCB, uses an SMT line to place all the VRM components, and has the extra wiring, circuitry, and pads to support 48GB of memory. 

To create a 48GB 4090, the first step is to disassemble the card.

From here, they heat the GPU to 260 degrees Celsius for about 5 minutes, which allows them to pull the GPU off the PCB. Zhang revealed to us that they get about 10-20 orders at a time and, when we asked him if NVIDIA had contacted him to tell him to stop, he responded, “I don’t think they will.”

The next step is to work on the memory. To do this, they place a PCB on a board heater and use a hot air station to heat pinpointed memory modules and remove them without risking damage to other components on the board. From there, they’ll add them to a newer board. This, ultimately, allows them to double the card’s memory capacity. 

Next, they took out a template for the solder balls and cleaned it with rubbing alcohol. From there, they poured solder balls into the template and positioned it on top of the memory modules. This allowed them to bake the new solder balls onto the memory modules, which they could then attach to the PCB. They then applied flux to wet the solder balls and used a solder wick to pull off the excess solder.

From start to finish, it took [the shop] about 2 hours to make a 48GB 4090

When we asked Zhang what 48GB RTX 4090 cards normally sell for, he told us over 20,000 RMB, which is roughly equivalent to $2,785 USD. That’s not a bad price.  

From there, he put a lid on the template and poured in soldering balls, allowing them to adhere to the memory. They then heated the modules on a hot plate that ran at around 195 degrees Celsius. Because the template only allowed them to do 8 at a time, they had to do the solder ball process twice. They then applied heat directly to the surface where the solder balls were using a hot air station.

The next step involved cleaning the GPU in order to mount it to a new PCB. From there, they added flux to the GPU. They then applied a custom template to the bottom of the GPU and poured solder balls on top of it and used the template to sift the solder balls.  

The next thing the shop did was place the GPU on top of a jig to hold it in place on top of a hot plate to protect it.  

They then placed the memory modules onto the PCB and, again, used the hot air station.

Finally, after about 2 hours, the shop added the GPU to the PCB and placed it under heat to bake the GPU back on.  

From there, the team cooled the GPU off with a fan and added thermal paste. A technician placed a heat sink on top to test the card to see if it worked, leading to an instant success.

From there, they attached the GPU and PCB to the rest of the video card’s cooler and chassis. From start to finish, it took them about 2 hours to make a 48GB 4090. 

At the beginning of this process, the card was working, but it had been through so many repairs that it was very likely to break again at some point from something they couldn't really predict. From a waste standpoint, it's just better to figure out a way to save that card because the PCB is kind of the least valuable part and is also the least precious of the resources. Being able to save the silicon that's in the memory and in the actual GPU itself provides a lot of value, but it especially offers value in China, where they just don't have as much supply, even though the supply looked good from what we saw. Purely from the perspective of people in China, not only is this better than what NVIDIA shipped to begin with, and really not that far off in price when the card was at its most scalped, it's also just a good way to keep the silicon in circulation even as things like MOSFETs, capacitors, or PCBs die.

The silicon tends to be pretty resilient and it doesn't really die that often on GPUs. What this tells us is that this is maybe an alternative method to getting more GPUs into supply. If they take the broken boards and then put functional silicon back into circulation, it's a certain level of ingenuity, and there aren't many places that are set up to handle it. Brother Zhang's shop is impressive.

Video Card Factory

Next, we headed back to Shenzhenbei in a high-speed rail trip that added roughly 1,000 miles to our journey, planning to meet up with Yeston Creative Director of Product Zhou. Yeston is a video card manufacturer.

Zhou and Yeston were not officially contributing to the black market side of our research, but they did show us around their factory and there were a few interesting things we learned that relate to our story. The big takeaway is that factories receive their GPU supply from their partners. That would be AMD, Intel, or NVIDIA, and the memory is often packaged with it. But for the most part, everything else that they use, unless they're buying reference PCBs, all come from whatever sources they want to find for their supply. 

for at least the gaming class cards, which the 5090 more or less is one of, there's enough volume and NVIDIA’s hands off enough that it would be pretty easy to make these disappear

We were also informed that there's very little oversight in terms of the management of the rejects at these places. They can file for refunds if, for example, a chip is bad. But if they screw up a board in their own process, then it's going to be on them to deal with the defect.

Factory work for GPUs is highly automated. For at least the gaming class cards, which the 5090 (more or less) is one, there's enough volume and NVIDIA is hands-off enough that it would be pretty easy to make these disappear. The biggest reason for this is that there are partners for the 5090s, unlike cards that only NVIDIA makes, such as the RTX Pro 6000. Since there are partners, NVIDIA is only tracking when they sell those partners the GPUs. NVIDIA doesn't necessarily keep tabs on where those get distributed once they're done being manufactured. For this reason, if a factory wants to just sell the GPU domestically in China and they think they can get away with it without being added to the entity list, which would very likely kill their business with NVIDIA, then they might sell them domestically. That might be how some of these trading companies get a hold of them. It's an easier way to make them disappear than through channels that are more publicly visible from NVIDIA and the government. 

Yeston doesn't make 5090s, but the processes they taught us about illustrates how that could happen. 

As for the server grade solutions, there are manufacturers for those that are pretty tightly controlled. Basically, the silicon is made in Taiwan, shipped to wherever it's going to be assembled, and accompanied by the other components sourced in China. As a result, it's easiest to keep the whole supply chain there, including the assembly. 

after seeing how a highly skilled group like Brother Zhang's repair shop can just repurpose all those components that are still good, you could see how there would be value in figuring out a way to make that board disappear, even if it's supposed to be in the trash

Factories use surface mount technology (SMT) lines with conveyed inflow of PCBs and reels upon reels of components that are placed smallest to largest, with the most valuable typically at the very end. That would often be the GPU and VRAM. Heatsinks are installed often through a manual process at the end. There is often manual assembly even for NVIDIA's high-end products.

We have seen NVIDIA's server video cards (and servers) being made in different factories. If the factory finds a defect, however unlikely, it could 'disappear' into scrap to be resold to the domestic market later. Dr. Vinci Chow had such a board where he had a broken link, and so there's a good chance that card stayed in China and never left. If it was reported as a defect to NVIDIA, then it may have effectively just been written off and considered trash. After seeing how a highly skilled group like Brother Zhang's repair shop can just repurpose all those components that are still good, you could see how there would be value in figuring out a way to make defects -- or "defects" -- disappear, even if it's supposed to be in the trash. 

This comes back to NVIDIA turning a blind eye, because they'd eventually notice it from the serial number popping up somewhere. NVIDIA might choose not to notice it, though. Besides, once someone has a card, especially in China, there's not a ton NVIDIA can do, anyway.

Taiwan

We then headed to Taipei, Taiwan. Most of our stay in Taiwan was for another story; however, we did accidentally unturn one stone with something interesting under it.

A B2B company in Taiwan noted to us that it is commissioned by Chinese companies to import servers for pre-testing and pre-assembly and setup steps. When we asked what GPUs the servers ran, we realized that all of the hardware is export-controlled.

Once the B2B agency completes its testing, it ships the system out to the original buyer. Basically, they act as an intermediary to buy the machine, then mark it up and reship it to the original purchaser.

We also spoke with a company that conducts business in Singapore. The company informed us that they are also aware of similar passthrough so-called “testing” services.

Smuggler

Our last link in this chain is actually the first: The smugglers themselves, and we’re back in the US for this. We didn’t think we’d be able to find one doing the dirty work, but in the final hours producing this story, one of our viewers provided a lead. This led to about a day of production delay as we were wrapping this project up, but as far as we’re aware, this is the first content piece that actually features someone doing the highest risk dirty work.

Everyone else we spoke to is in China. They’re safe from US retaliation. But large-scale smugglers get arrested, fined millions of dollars, and can spend years in prison if they were serious volume movers.

A viewer contacted us to say that he’d connected with a traveling GPU buyer. The story went that this guy drives around buying specifically RTX 4090s. He doesn’t care about anything else, including 5090s, because those don’t sell as well to China. 4090s are ideal, he told us, because they can be modified into cost-effective 48GB models, like at Brother Zhang’s shop.

The smuggler was extremely open with us in text messages written only in Chinese, but wasn’t open to us flying out to him. He did allow us to share footage of his car, however.

The Plug offers $2,000 flat per RTX 4090, which isn’t a bad price. He told us that he then finds ways to get them into China

The Plug, as we call him, has an ATX test bench, motherboard, simple downdraft cooler, power supply, obviously a CPU, RAM, and an SSD, and gigantic battery in the trunk of his Prius. He also has at least one spare license plate in his trunk in addition to the one on the back of his car. We’re not sure why, but it’s better not to ask.

People like The Plug post on Facebook Marketplace and other common online reseller forums looking to buy GPUs, just like anyone else in your city would. The Plug offers $2,000 flat per RTX 4090, which isn’t a bad price. He told us that he then finds ways to get them into China. He recently was scammed out of $5,500 of payments owed by a Hong Kong buyer that resells in Hong Kong, so lately, he’s been considering hand-carrying the devices in luggage instead.

His margin is slim. He makes just under $300 US per GPU, not counting gas, potential hotels as he travels, and time. Our understanding is that some in his shoes will strip the GPU cooler off and ship just the PCB back to China, increasing their margin. Coolers are available in abundance where they’re made, so it can be cheaper to do this than to pay for the weight and size. 

He sometimes buys entire computers just to take the 4090s out, as that’s what the bounty is on. He then sells the remaining system back to anyone who’ll buy it. He told us that 5090 prices in China are falling so fast due to oversupply, ironically, that he’d lose money reselling it to China and would do better flipping it to Americans.

The Plug isn’t rich. He seems to be doing OK, but it’s not the type of wealth you might expect for such risk. 

We can’t overstate how important it was to get this piece into the story, as this allowed us to fully complete the chain. We want to provide a huge thanks to our anonymous viewer for their help. 

Many of the sources we met in Asia during this trip told us they simply didn’t know how the GPUs actually get in, and now we know. People doing this on a small scale like The Plug are unlikely to be caught, but operations transacting millions of dollars worth of GPUs would have a harder time getting them out undetected.

That brings us to the end of our travels, but not the end of this piece. We still have two more entities to look at, and that’s NVIDIA and the US Government.

Details: Legality

The legality is simple -- this is our understanding of it. 

There is no restriction on purchasers, only on sellers the US has control over. Even Americans buying GPUs in China are not violating any laws, as the purchase of a GPU in China is not restricted.

We’ll start with selling:

The simplest answer to “who the sale of GPUs is restricted for” is anybody who doesn’t have a specific export license and who would be governed by US law, and NVIDIA can’t just bypass it by shipping from a different country. It has to do with the sale, not with the shipment location. That includes entities buying from US companies, like European companies, who would be under guidance both from NVIDIA and, if they do business in the US, its government. 

It’s also illegal for anybody in the United States, citizen or not, to sell these GPUs to China, Hong Kong, Macau, or companies in those locations if the seller does not have a re-export license.

It is not illegal for a person of any nationality in America to sell a GPU to any non-restricted entity.

As for buying, as Dr. Vinci Chow stated, “There’s absolutely nothing illegal for us over here to buy these GPUs.” 

But it’s also not illegal to sell them in China for a Chinese company. The Chinese government doesn’t generally enforce American export laws. Other nations cooperating with the United States might, such as the recent arrests in Singapore, but once the GPU is in China, the people in possession of it likely don’t care -- buyer or seller or someone who does both, like GPU dealer Vincent.

The only control over Chinese companies that the US has is the Entity List, which would hurt their business prospects with American companies -- but only if they care about that. Chinese GPU middleman 思騰合力科技有限公司 (Sitonholy Technology Company) in Tianjin landed on the Entity List for transacting banned GPUs and being found out. Sitonholy purchases GPUs from anyone who can get them into China, and then they bid on domestic projects like data center build-outs.

The Entity List was used to restrict, for example, DeepCool previously, resulting in their American partners ceasing business with them for fear of frozen assets, audits, or collateral bans. This hurts companies like DeepCool that want to operate in the US and even shut down their California office, but for Sitonholy, they mostly want to do business with other Chinese companies, and so it’d have limited impact unless they wanted to expand to do business with Americans.

Beyond the entity list, the US really has no control over what happens inside Chinese borders. That means the only point at which a GPU could feasibly be intercepted and a person arrested would be operating in the US or in transit to intermediary countries, such as Singapore, which may have their own export laws. The people buying and selling them within China are not breaking any of their own government’s laws, though.

We think the story of AI GPUs has become a story of corruption between governments, and the wealthiest company on Earth.

NVIDIA is Playing All Sides

And so we come back to NVIDIA. At every turn, it really looks like NVIDIA is playing all sides. If there’s enough money to be made, anybody is NVIDIA’s friend. 

We think the story of AI GPUs has become a story of corruption between governments and the wealthiest company on Earth.

For example, on April 30th, Amazon-backed AI startup Anthropic called on the US government to increase export control restrictions to China. As part of a blog post, Anthropic said the government needs to improve its export enforcement to reduce smuggling. The company cited examples of chips being smuggled with “prosthetic baby bumps” and “live lobsters.” This upset NVIDIA, obviously, because NVIDIA doesn’t like restrictions on making money.

So, NVIDIA shot back. Seemingly taking a page out of Trump’s playbook, NVIDIA essentially called this fake news and stated, “American firms should focus on innovation and rise to the challenge, rather than tell tall tales that large, heavy, and sensitive electronics are somehow smuggled in ‘baby bumps’ or ‘alongside live lobsters.’”

We unearthed this official Hong Kong customs website detailing a white van busted driving on the Zhuhai-Macau bridge, filled with 280 kg of undeclared live lobsters and, yes, 70 smuggled GPUs

Gaslighting by NVIDIA

Anthropic isn’t telling tall tales--it’s right. A 2022 video previously showed a security check at Zhuhai port in Guangdong, not far from Shenzhen, wherein a woman with a prosthetic baby bump was shown to have been carrying CPUs and iPhones instead. The report made it to customs.gov.cn, stating that she arrived from Macau, a common go-between (similar to Hong Kong). This story got international attention in technical media and we reject the possibility that NVIDIA wasn’t aware of it. We found the official Chinese Government posting about smuggling from Macau, so there's public record. Imports to most of China are taxed, and so tax evasion coupled with smuggling will increase margin on the electronics rather than sharing it with one of the two governments. If you’re already breaking a US law, it seems some just go for a hat-trick and increase the profits. 

As for the lobsters, that’s real, too: We unearthed this official Hong Kong customs website detailing a white van busted driving on the Zhuhai-Macau bridge, filled with 280 kg of undeclared live lobsters and, yes, 70 smuggled GPUs, complete with photo evidence. 

NVIDIA’s response to call these 'tall tales' then is not only defensive, but serves to gaslight and grossly mislead, we think

The Hong Kong customs itself calls this “zousi,” or smuggling, and notes a maximum sentence of 7 years.

NVIDIA’s response to call these “tall tales” then is not only defensive, but serves to gaslight and grossly mislead, we think, and is tantamount to lying for sake of downplaying reality for its own benefit. But then this is a common NVIDIA tactic, including its dishonest approach to reviews that we’ve already detailed and its deceptive and we think false advertising of the RTX 5070 as being equivalent to an RTX 4090, which is provably and comically false.

Another instance of NVIDIA’s “fake news” defense was following a July 24 publication by the Financial Times, reporting that more than $1B worth of NVIDIA’s AI chips had been smuggled to China. In response, NVIDIA, whose blind eye is turning an awful lot lately, downplayed the issue, and stated, “Trying to cobble together datacenters from smuggled products is a losing proposition, both technically and economically. Datacenters require service and support, which we provide only to authorized NVIDIA products.”

That sounds like something a company selling support would say. And the first part doesn’t really match the whole “the more you buy, the more you save” assertion. It’s only a winning proposition by all of their prior years of statements. If your only option is a useless insufficient data center or a cobbled-together sufficient data center, then a cobbled-together one is still a winning proposition by comparison. It’s weird for the company to pretend that this isn’t worth doing. It’s worth lots of money. 

Tech Exec Sycophancy

That same day, whitehouse.gov posted an article titled, “Wide Acclaim for President Trump’s Visionary AI Action Plan.” Near the top of the post, it highlighted a sycophantic quote from Huang, which read, “America’s unique advantage that no country could possibly have is President Trump.” And we could call that sycophantic if it was about any president. 

On August 5, NVIDIA got another opportunity to talk. The US Department of Justice announced it had arrested two people in California for smuggling “tens of millions of dollars’ worth of sensitive microchips used in artificial intelligence (AI) applications” to China. The BBC reported that court documents say the shipments included the NVIDIA H100 and RTX 4090. Rather than admit smuggling exists, NVIDIA downplayed the situation and stated, “This case demonstrates that smuggling is a nonstarter.”

Except that anyone who made tens of millions of dollars before getting caught had a pretty good start, and so did their customers. This is a bullshit statement from NVIDIA that seemingly aims to downplay and deflect to reduce lawmaker attention on its monopoly.

NVIDIA also said, “We primarily sell our products to well-known partners, including OEMs, who help us ensure that all sales comply with U.S. export control rules.” NVIDIA noted that, “any diverted products would have no service, support, or updates.” 

Again, this is not fully true. Our own sources in this story noted that, although something like an HGX system would be hard to service, a standalone PCIe GPU could be parted-out and covered under a separate warranty, even in China. 

a government committee called Deepseek a 'threat to national security' and said Deepseek had used NVIDIA’s technology

Fears of Deepseek

Meanwhile, the US began scrutinizing NVIDIA’s technology for getting into China, whether or not the company itself was directly involved. In a bipartisan report called “Deepseek Unmasked,” a government committee called Deepseek a “threat to national security” and said Deepseek had used NVIDIA’s technology, “AI model appears to be powered by advanced chips provided by American semiconductor giant NVIDIA and reportedly utilizes tens of thousands of chips that are currently restricted from export to the PRC.” It continued, “NVIDIA designed and manufactured many of these chips to create the most sophisticated possible chip while skirting U.S. export controls. This has allowed these chips to be exported to China as the U.S. government develops stricter restrictions. Since March 2024, it is estimated that NVIDIA has produced over 1 million chips for the Chinese market.”

Singapore Suspicions

The government also examined NVIDIA’s significant revenue growth in Singapore compared to China based on SEC filings, particularly in years featuring restrictions. The government questioned “whether PRC customers are arranging for the diversion of sensitive chips that are reportedly sold through Singapore,” since revenue from Singapore had grown from almost nothing since 2021. 

NVIDIA has defended its sales to Singapore by saying that “Customers use Singapore to centralize invoicing while our products are almost always shipped elsewhere.” According to NVIDIA, shipments destined to Singapore were only 2% of the company's total revenue in 2025. But we also know that Singapore has made numerous arrests relating to GPU smuggling, so there appears to be some reason for the concerns, whether or not NVIDIA itself wants to turn a blind eye to it.

Ignorance is Bliss

Despite the allegations, NVIDIA downplayed any smuggling of AI chips. 

In a video uploaded 2 months ago, Jensen Huang spoke on smuggling, and stated, “Governments understand that diversion is not allowed. And there's no evidence of any AI chip diversion.” Except that there is evidence of it -- not only in this very story, but in readily available reports online for years now.

Huang continued, “Our data center GPUs are massive. These are massive systems. The Grace Blackwell system is nearly two tons. And so you're not going to be putting that in your pocket or your backpack anytime soon. And so these systems are fairly easy to keep track of, but the important thing is that the countries and the companies that we sell to recognize that diversion is not allowed and everybody would like to continue to buy NVIDIA technology. And so, they monitor themselves very carefully and they're quite careful about that.”

This one is interesting. Huang is right that it’s much harder to smuggle Grace-Blackwell or Hopper HGX-class complete systems. Dr. Vinci Chow’s statements align with this when he said, “It's very hard to get like a full HGX system.” But it still happens. At least one of NVIDIA’s GPU and server customers in another country told us that they facilitate intermediary transmission to China and in fact showed us the server racks on-site in their facilities. We weren’t allowed to film them, but we saw them. A separate representative told us that document forgery through third-party countries can also disguise such transshipments.

One middleman told us that an NVIDIA distributor gets parts into China; a downchain factory told us that NVIDIA’s QC rejects sometimes end up repurposed and kept in China, salvaging the GPU and VRAM and scrapping the rest; Dr. Vinci Chow told us that one of his own devices had a defective link on it, contributing to this statement. And when he asked him whether he thinks NVIDIA knows all of this is happening, he replied, “I would be surprised if they don’t, right. I would be surprised. I would be really surprised if they don’t. These are very expensive items. I would imagine you would keep track of everything, right? It’s hard to know what [a person] plans to do with all of these defective parts, but I’ll be very surprised that no one has ever thought of the possibility that, if it’s something so valuable, someone would come up with a use [for] even a defective one.”   

NVIDIA’s Hypocrisy

So in one set of statements, NVIDIA said that smuggling doesn’t really happen because the export controls work and keep partners in-line.

But in another statement, Huang called the US export controls a “failure,” talking out of both sides of his mouth, we think. He spoke of competing Chinese GPU brands posing a threat to NVIDIA, “The local companies are very, very talented and very determined, and the export control gave them the spirit, the energy and the government support to accelerate their development. I think, all in all, the export control was a failure.”

But the stakes, and dollar signs, for NVIDIA had increased. Jensen said NVIDIA’s market share in China had dropped from 95% to 50%, and, in NVIDIA’s May quarterly earnings before the H20 exemption and revenue share, Jensen Huang said the company’s data center business in China was done, “However, the $50 billion China market is effectively closed to U.S. industry. The H20 export ban ended our Hopper data center business in China.” Or, as Jensen said, the China market is worth one Boeing. Boeing is probably not the best example...

Conclusion

The October 7, 2022 Biden Administration export controls had a stated goal to 'protect US national security and foreign policy interests' by implementing new export controls

Let’s look back at the timeline once more between NVIDIA and the US government, highlighting NVIDIA’s relentless appetite for global dominance.

The October 7, 2022 Biden Administration export controls had a stated goal to “protect US national security and foreign policy interests” by implementing new export controls restricting China’s ability to build high-end semiconductors, including for the development of supercomputers. There was an included goal of staving off the potential for China to develop “nuclear weapons and other military technologies.” 

Blocking the H100 and A100 led to NVIDIA creating an export-compliant A800 at about 70% of the speed of an A100 for the Chinese market. 

A year later on October 17, 2023, the US Department of Commerce updated its export compliance and restricted NVIDIA’s A800 chip as well along with the newer China-targeted H800.

Weeks later on December 6, 2023, NVIDIA told reporters in Singapore that it would be working on another new chip that would comply with the US’ new restrictions. 

The AI Diffusion Rule

On January 13, 2025, which was after Donald Trump won the 2024 presidential election, but a week before he took office, the outgoing Biden administration tightened export controls by introducing national chip caps for many countries, except for 18 allies. That’s the AI Diffusion Rule we spoke of earlier and would have gone into effect in May.

NVIDIA, who had remained relatively quiet about the regulations up until this point, criticized the restriction and made an attempt to appeal to the president-elect, and reportedly stated, “It makes no sense for the Biden White House to control everyday datacenter computers and technology that is already in gaming PCs worldwide, disguised as an anti-China move. The extreme ‘country cap’ policy will affect mainstream computers in countries around the world, doing nothing to promote national security but rather pushing the world to alternative technologies. AI is mainstream computing – ubiquitous and essential as electricity. This last-minute Biden Administration policy would be a legacy that will be criticized by U.S. industry and the global community.” It seems like NVIDIA tried to set up an appeal to the president-elect, stating, “We would encourage President Biden to not preempt incoming President Trump by enacting a policy that will only harm the U.S. economy, set America back, and play into the hands of U.S. adversaries.”

We already went over the million dollar dinner and ensuing ban-then-unban of the H20 chip.

NVIDIA Persuades Trump Administration

roughly 1 month after Jensen reportedly spent $1 million to eat dinner at Trump’s Mar-A-Lago estate, the US Department of Commerce confirmed that it will not implement the AI Diffusion Rule that NVIDIA campaigned against

Later that month on April 30, Huang said this of Trump, stating, “Without the president's leadership, his policies, his support, and very importantly, his strong encouragement[…] frankly, manufacturing in the United States wouldn't have accelerated to this pace.”

On May 7, roughly 1 month after Jensen reportedly spent $1 million to eat dinner at Trump’s Mar-A-Lago estate, the US Department of Commerce confirmed that it will not implement the AI Diffusion Rule that NVIDIA campaigned against and that was created under the Biden administration. The rule was supposed to go into effect a week later on May 15. This does not unban GPUs like the H100, 5090, B100, and so on. 

Following the termination of what was supposed to be a rule to address national security implications, the Department of Commerce, now under President Trump, stated, “The Biden AI rule is overly complex, overly bureaucratic, and would stymie American innovation. We will be replacing it with a much simpler rule that unleashes American innovation and ensures American AI dominance.” 

NVIDIA predictably celebrated the statement. The company, which has been begging to sell to China while also praising Taiwan’s importance, now took an America-first posture, collecting countries like Pokemon, writing, “We welcome the Administration’s leadership and new direction on AI policy. With the AI Diffusion Rule revoked, America will have a once-in-a-generation opportunity to lead the next industrial revolution and create high-paying U.S. jobs, build new U.S.-supplied infrastructure, and alleviate the trade deficit.” Job creation promises coming from this company, in particular, are interesting, but they are playing all sides consistently.

Later that month on May 28, Huang spoke with Mad Money host Jim Cramer. He stated, “When [Trump] rescinded the AI Diffusion Rule, it was a visionary move. It was a bold move, and he recognizes that there’s an AI race and we’re not alone. And he wants America to win.” 

A Manipulative NVIDIA

June 23, via Reuters, an official of the US State Department, which didn’t reply to GamersNexus except the Department did send us 3 out-of-office auto responders, warned of DeepSeek military and intelligence operations and warned of the use of “shell companies” in Southeast Asia to circumvent export restrictions. The report mentioned that DeepSeek had “large volumes” of high-end H100 chips, which are banned in China. 

NVIDIA didn’t like that, responded to Reuters, and stated, “We do not support parties that have violated U.S. export controls or are on the U.S. entity lists,” adding, “With the current export controls, we are effectively out of the China data center market, which is now served only by competitors such as Huawei.” Turning a blind eye to the situation. NVIDIA added, “Our review indicates that DeepSeek used lawfully acquired H800 products, not H100.”

3 days later on June 26, The Information reported that DeepSeek’s next AI model has been delayed due to a shortage of NVIDIA AI GPUs in China. This directly contradicts Huang’s comments that export controls do not work.

On July 4, Bloomberg reported that the Department of Commerce, which also did not reply to GamersNexus’ emails, was preparing new export controls on Malaysia and Thailand to reduce chip smuggling; interestingly, Singapore, which now comprises a significant portion of NVIDIA’s revenue, was not on that list despite being a known smuggling passthrough.

[Jensen Huang] really pulled off something few tech CEOs have managed. He played both Washington and Beijing and he won

- CNBC Business News anchor Deidra Bosa

On July 10, Bloomberg reported that Huang and Trump were scheduled to meet again ahead of the CEO’s planned trip to China. Days later on July 14, NVIDIA confirmed that it will resume sales of H20 chips to China with Huang stating, “The U.S. government has assured NVIDIA that licenses will be granted, and NVIDIA hopes to start deliveries soon.” 

On July 15, CNBC Business News anchor Deidra Bosa gave her synopsis on the situation and said, “[Jensen Huang] really pulled off something few tech CEOs have managed. He played both Washington and Beijing and he won.” She added, “Jensen has stayed disciplined and diplomatic with a clear message, and that is: NVIDIA’s dominance serves America’s interest.”

We write to express our deep concern over the recent decision to resume exports of NVIDIA’s H20 chips to China. As policymakers and professionals with a background in national security policy, we believe this move represents a strategic misstep that endangers the United States’ economic and military edge in artificial intelligence.

- national security experts to US Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick

On July 28, The Financial Times reported that the US Commerce Department was not going to make “tough moves” to tighten export controls to China. This is in spite of several congressional members warning the administration not to loosen the US’ export controls for AI GPUs. Several national security experts also voiced their concern by sending a letter to the US Commerce Department, which read, “We write to express our deep concern over the recent decision to resume exports of NVIDIA’s H20 chips to China. As policymakers and professionals with a background in national security policy, we believe this move represents a strategic misstep that endangers the United States’ economic and military edge in artificial intelligence.”

NVIDIA might have started off as a much more humble company, but it has become a savvy political player in a game that’s seemingly pay-to-win

On August 11, via Bloomberg, Trump said he was open to allowing NVIDIA to sell modified versions of the company’s newest Blackwell chips to China.

That brings us to today. 

There’s no one better equipped to play that game than the most valuable company by market cap in the world

Most Valuable Company by Market Cap in the World

NVIDIA might have started off as a much more humble company, but it has become a savvy political player in a game that’s seemingly pay-to-win. That seems only fitting for a gaming company to be particularly good at pay-to-win games. There’s no one better equipped to play that game than the most valuable company by market cap in the world, now at $4 trillion, led by a man whose net worth is estimated at $148.1 billion. NVIDIA knows when to bite its tongue and how to effectively appeal to the ego of politicians of all parties and all countries.

We think NVIDIA is playing all sides. We think it is greedy, manipulative, and carefully employs propaganda such as its use of the “fake news” playbook for news which is literally reality. But we don’t think NVIDIA has a particular set of beliefs beyond just making more money. We think NVIDIA will sell anyone out to make a buck.

NVIDIA is in the big leagues now. Inside of one month, reportedly paying $1 million to a sitting President after which followed the unlock of $5.5B of lost H20 revenue, followed next by a 15% split of that unlock going to the US Government, is what raises these new questions of NVIDIA's integrity in our piece. 

As for the actual black market side of it and smuggling, it was an exciting story to cover and get to the bottom of. We've learned that common methods include factory so-called QC defects, hand-carried items by students, actual smugglers on the ground in the US, and suppliers through third-party countries, among others.
We loved working on this story and meeting all of these unique people. Each person played a key role in helping us find the next person, allowing us to complete the first public, on-record, complete start-to-finish cataloguing of a smuggling pipeline for high-end silicon. We want to thank everyone who made this story possible, including our viewers who funded it.

We explore why RAM prices have gone up, the impact to NAND, the impending impact to GPU VRAM prices, and how there's nothing any of us can do

The Highlights

• We collect RAM price data so you can make purchasing decisions
• RAM price increases are for a number of reasons, including AI server demand chewing through supply, previous oversupply leading to a draw-down in manufacturing (which has now caught-up), and probably also RAM companies being a-holes
• Memory prices have skyrocketed over the last several months

Table of Contents

• AutoTOC

Intro

DRAM prices are skyrocketing right now.

Editor's note: This was originally published on November 16, 2025 as a video. This content has been adapted to written format for this article and is unchanged from the original publication.

Credits

Host, Writing

Steve Burke

Video Editing

Vitalii Makhnovets
Andrew Coleman

Writing, Research

Tannen Williams

Writing, Web Editing

Jimmy Thang

In some of our price checks today, we found memory kits increasing by 169%, 116%, 181%, and similar. By hard dollar amount, some of these have gone up by 100s of dollars for a kit of 32GBs in a span of just one to two months. Higher capacities have gone up by $400 or $500 in some cases. At one point, we observed a 1% increase per day for 13 days. There’s even new reports that these recent price increases are to blame for NVIDIA’s potentially delayed unannounced Super Series refresh with worries that the company will prioritize denser GDDR7 modules for workstation GPUs.  

Prices are skyrocketing due to a combination of things. These include data center demand, suppliers understocking due to previous oversupply, and other factors that we’ll explore. NAND Flash for SSDs will also likely go up more soon as enterprise demand ramps.

The server demand is fundamentally altering the traditional nature of the market, which means that the DRAM industry is exiting the roughly four-year cycle of memory pricing and remaining elevated for longer than typical.

For example, in OpenAI’s partnership announcement with Samsung and SK Hynix as part of its “Stargate” project, the company stated it was “targeting 900,000 wafer starts per month.” Tom’s Hardware reported that this “represents around 40% of the total DRAM output” globally.

Suppliers have also begun diverting supply resources away from desktop and towards higher margin HBM and server memory instead. 

Today, we’re going over memory prices and walking through some of the explanations for their meteoric rise.

If you’re wondering if there’s anything you can do with this information, the answer is no. We’re going to be upfront about that. You can’t do anything with this information. The most you could do is maybe make a decision on when you want to buy, if at all. 

Overview

In this article, we’ll start by comparing how desktop DDR4 and DDR5 prices have changed in the past few months, using both current listings and DRAM spot prices. DDR4 prices are unbelievably bad in terms of price increases because you’re getting hit from two sides. 1 is due to the supply going EOL and the other is simply because it’s expensive. 

Then, we’ll dig into the memory market’s conditions leading up to this point and attempt to dissect the different factors that have contributed to the current situation.

Finally, we’ll go over the DRAM industry’s 2026 forecast before wrapping up with what we consider the best RAM kits available for consumers currently.

Getting right into the price comparisons:

Price Increases: DDR5-6000

We’ll start with a DDR5 price check. For this, we need to pick kits that have relatively reliable availability to make sure the prices aren’t too impacted by simply being low stock at the retailer.

This table focuses on kits of 2 x 16GB DDR5-6000 CL30, with one kit each from four of the largest vendors. This table includes each listing’s Newegg price in mid-September, which is prior to the most apparent price increases, and then again in November.

We originally collected prices for October, but saw such an increase in the time between publishing and writing this story, which was only about a 10-day period, that we decided to recollect them and rework this story.

Since September:

G. Skill’s Trident Z5 NEO RGB kit increased by $145, from $125 in September to $270 the following month, making it the highest priced kit on the table. Just from October 28th to November 13th, we saw an increase of 13%. That’s nearly one percentage point per day in that time.

Kingston’s FURY Beast RAM saw price rise from $137 to $267, for a 95% increase.

Corsair Vengeance RAM climbed from $135 to $230, seeing a 70% increase.

TeamGroup’s T-Create Expert kit more than doubled in price, from $93 in September to $250 by the end of October. This is a 169% increase in a span of a little over a month. Just since October 28th, we’ve seen a 16% increase in price (from $215 to $250).

Broadly speaking, we’re seeing around a $130 price increase on this spec of kit since September. The average percent increase in price of comparable kits is in the range of around 100%, depending on if you expand the scope to other kits. 

Price Increases: DDR5-7000+

We also looked at some faster DDR5 kits to try and determine whether the substantial price increases would impact higher-end consumer kits disproportionately. Because high-end kits are less desirable in server deployments (although those use ECC typically), but are also more valuable, it’s an interesting data point. This table of DDR5-7200 32GB kits shows that prices basically followed the exact same pattern seen with DDR5-6000, despite the enthusiast positioning.

Naturally, the faster kits cost more in total (both in September and currently), with AVG prices of $152 and $296, but the percent increase in price is nearly identical for both DDR5 speeds.

The Corsair kit went up by $105, or 62%. In just the last two weeks, the broken-out increase was 10%. G.Skill’s Z5 Royal kit increased by $130, or 81%, with the Z5 RGB kit now at $340 from $148, or 130%. The Teamgroup kit went more than 2x, at $280 from $130 a little over a month prior to our data collection. That’s a 115% price increase.

Average price increase was also around 100% across a 1-2 month window for this speed.

A quick glance at other speeds suggests similar trends. The recent price increases look to have impacted all DDR5 speeds mostly proportionately, which unfortunately suggests that no options are safe from the absurd price hikes we’ve seen recently. 

Price Increases: DDR4-3200

DDR4 is next. The memory is still relevant for AM4 platforms and homelab type uses, but it’s also interesting because DDR4 has had its production wind-down over the past couple years. This could have a compounding effect of price hikes plus dwindling supply.

We’ll focus on kits of 2 x 16GB DDR4-3200 CL16 with an expanded date range of June 1st to November 13th. There was the most data for this spec. So that’s why we chose it. 

Using PCPartPicker’s “Current Memory Price Trend” graphs, we found that, unlike DDR5, which only saw prices beginning to increase in September, DDR4 encountered two noticeable increases this year. The first was in June (likely due to several DDR4 EOL announcements around then) and again in October, coinciding with the more recent climb in prices. The EOL announcements would coincide with a reduction in new supply.

Since June:

Corsair’s Vengeance RGB kit climbed in price from $84 to $170, or 102%.

Corsair’s Vengeance LPX RAM saw price grow by $95, from $55 in June to now $150. 

G. Skill’s Ripjaws V kit price rose considerably, from $52 to $146, or 180% higher than it was.

Kingston’s Fury Beast increased from $55 in June to $145 presently, a 163% increase in a span of months.

Compared to DDR5, DDR4 saw greater price increases by percentage, which we think is a combination of DDR4 memory still being in-demand for both servers and consumers while also winding-down production or going EOL with some supply.

DRAM Spot Price

We’ll take a look at the 2Gx8 spot prices for both DDR4 and DDR5.

Spot price for DRAM is similar to spot price for any other asset or valuable good.

Nikkei Asia Review states that “spot transactions are estimated to account for less than 10% of the overall DRAM market,” noting that DRAM distribution tends to go through middle-people rather than direct sourcing. 

Memory sticks are made in SMT lines, with brands like Corsair, Kingston, and G.Skill doing the testing and configuration of the kits, plus potential binning. 

You can see that in this footage from our factory tour of V-Color’s RAM binning and manufacturing line previously.

These manufacturers buy the memory silicon from one of 3 common suppliers: Samsung, SK Hynix, or Micron. IC Insights’ 2021 report indicated only 6% share for others.

Anyway, we’ll get to the spot price, but the point is that it’s mostly just 3 suppliers controlling those prices in totality. The down-chain stick makers can still benefit from price increases if they adjust existing memory up.

DDR5 sticks have a higher cost per stick on average, but DDR4’s spot price far outweighs DDR5’s.

At the time of writing this, DDR4’s 16Gb spot price saw a session AVG of $24.55. DDR5 16Gb solutions at 4800/5600 were $15.2 for the session average. These are not directly comparable by capacity and speeds just due to the differences in DDR4 and DDR5, but the session change is. You can see that session-over-session, these all have increases.

DDR4 is disproportionately expensive at this stage.

Based on our understanding of spot price, we’d assume DDR4 prices will eventually cost more than DDR5, as RAM vendors sell out of their remaining wafer supplies.

DDR4 Spot Price Increases (week-to-week)

For a sense of how rapidly these changes are taking place, this TrendForce chart shows DDR4’s spot price increases on a week-to-week basis.

From the week beginning 10/22 to the following week, DDR4 AVG spot prices increased for all quantities and speeds offered, with increases of 7.05% on the low end and up to 22.38% on the high. This is just week-to-week pricing.

While it’s not shown in the chart, TrendForce claims DDR5’s price inflated by 30% in the same week. The analysis firm attributed the rapid increases to “severe hoarding” as buyers rush to stock supplies.

We’ll come back to spot prices later, but for now let's dive into the market’s history for some additional context.

The DRAM Cartel

The DRAM market hasn’t been normal since COVID. To be fair, the DRAM market in particular has a uniquely corrupt history in PC hardware with multiple convictions and literal cartels, but since COVID in particular, it has had wilder price swings.

The increase in work-from-home users saw demand surge as everyone upgraded or built at-home workstations, causing manufacturers to ramp up production. But DRAM companies seem to not like oversupplying the market, since they then water-down the value of their own product.

Unfortunately, or maybe not, the heightened demand was extremely short-lived, mostly due to inflation and general uncertainty. Manufacturers quickly found themselves overstocked with inventory nobody wanted, and eventually resorted to cutting production levels in the years that followed. 

The most significant cuts occurred in late 2022 and early 2023, around the same time global DRAM revenue decreased by an unprecedented 30% QoQ in Q3 2022.

Coming back to the cartels: The DRAM market is so sensitive to supply and demand that in the past, we’ve even seen the largest manufacturers engaging in price-fixing scandals to ensure stable prices.

In other words, a gentleman’s agreement that, “y’know, if we both lower our prices, we both make less money.”

In 2006, the Department of Justice indicted two executives from Samsung and one from SK Hynix for “their participation in a global conspiracy to fix DRAM prices,” after evidence showed that the competitors had basically agreed on pricing together. 

In 2022, another antitrust case was filed, though the case was ultimately dismissed due to insufficient evidence.

The point is: the DRAM market is volatile, and manufacturers commonly reduce output levels to stabilize the price, as we’ve experienced for the last few years.

It wasn’t until the end of 2023 that prices had finally begun to improve in the manufacturers’ favor, a result of the substantial production cuts made since COVID. Throughout 2024, prices gradually increased as the market returned to an equilibrium, bringing us to 2025.

Other historical sensitivities have included earthquakes and other natural disasters, such as in Taiwan in 1999 or in South Korea in 2020 due to a power outage that destroyed millions of dollars of inventory. Reuters notes that a 30-minute outage in 2018 cost $43 million in losses, including wafer losses.

More recently, the natural disaster is less natural and more artificial: AI server demand has driven the price through the ceiling.

Server DDR5

Although reports from first-party manufacturers and analysis firms like TrendForce indicate demand for desktop DDR5 remained relatively weak, business demand for server DDR5 and HBM surged this year. 

Enterprise and server users are typically on ECC RDIMMs rather than the non-ECC UDIMM DDR5 used on desktop. 

Manufacturers were quick to capitalize on the emerging Server DDR5 demand. 

Found via Tom’s Hardware, Samsung recently raised RDIMM contract prices by as much as 50% for 4Q 2025 and major buyers are now receiving only 70% of the server DRAM ordered.

In an October 2025 report, TrendForce highlights server memory’s growing popularity, stating, “Server shipments and per-system memory density are rising in tandem, driving significant bit-demand growth and extending the supply–demand gap across calendar years.”

HBM

And then there’s HBM. Demand for HBM also took off this year as a result of its use in several high-end data center GPUs now. 

High-bandwidth memory had numerous attempts at deployment on consumer GPUs, but ultimately was too expensive to make sense.

Instead of memory modules laid side-by-side, like on a RAM stick or around a GPU, HBM stacks the memory dies and is able to pack them into a denser area, often onto an interposer, to get them closer to the GPU or CPU. 

In terms of resource usage, TrendForce states, “HBM consumes over three times the wafer capacity of standard DRAM.”

Not only is there stronger demand for server DDR5 and HBM, but there’s also reportedly higher margin from it, causing manufacturers to prioritize their wafer production towards those products if they’re able to sell them.

Long-Term Spot Price Trend

Server DDR5 and HBM demand isn’t just higher than desktop DDR5 RAM – its demand is unprecedented for the DRAM industry and it’s altering the market’s nature.

DigiTimes Asia explains:

“The memory industry has historically followed a cyclical pattern, with each cycle lasting about 3.5 to 4.5 years. However, this AI-driven cycle is abnormal; the upward cycle is being stretched, and cyclical regularity may be disrupted. Downstream customers expect the shortage boom to last at least four years or more.”

As seen in this “Long-Term Trend of DRAM Spot Prices (2000 - 2025)” graph found via Jukanlosreve on Twitter:

DRAM spot prices typically peak early in each generation’s lifetime, with highs usually between $8 and $10. This highlights DDR5 and DDR4’s EOL spot prices of $15.22 and $24.55 as outliers.

Some of this has to do with actual cost increases from higher-end technology, better process nodes, and just inflation, but we think a lot of it also has to do with the memory business learning how to fine-tune the point at which people just won’t pay more.

Shifting Dynamics

DigiTimes Asia also describes how the newfound demand is shifting dynamics between manufacturers and customers, saying, “The competition for goods is no longer among peer module makers but against Cloud Service Providers with orders of magnitude larger.”

In OpenAI’s partnership announcement with Samsung and SK Hynix, the company described plans to target “900,000 DRAM wafer starts per month,” which Tom’s Hardware notes represents around 40% of the total DRAM output, globally.

2026 Forecast

Looking ahead to next year:

In TrendForce’s 2026 Memory Price Forecast, the company projected a “structural memory price surge in 2026,” led by:

1. AI Servers, requiring large DRAM and NAND orders
2. Profit Prioritization from manufacturers – shifting resources towards server applications.

Regarding the DRAM Market as a whole, the analyst firm expects, “AI infrastructure expansion by CSPs creates supply shortages. Server DRAM receives preferential supply, forcing price increases in PC, mobile, and consumer DRAM applications.”

In addition to DRAM, the company also expects AI Server and cloud computing demand to cause NAND Flash pricing to rise, reiterating the recent remarks of the head of Phison. 

In October 2025, Phison CEO Pua Khein-Seng warned of severe NAND shortages to come in 2026, even claiming “I think supply will be tight for the next ten years,” citing a combination limited investment for the last few years as well as data center storage as the primary driving force. 

NAND flash is used in products like solid-state drives and flash drives, anything with non-volatile storage. NAND prices and GPUs come into play here as well. 

NAND Price Increases 

While not directly impacted by the DRAM changes, the NAND industry is expected to undergo a similar experience, and it’s already begun.

This month alone: Sandisk raised its November contract prices by 50%, Samsung is reportedly considering 20-30% price increases for its overseas NAND supply in 2026, and Phison’s CEO stated:

“The price of a 1 Terabit TLC NAND jumped from $4.80 in July 2025 to $10.70 in November 2025, marking an increase of over 100% in less than six months."

NVIDIA Super Series Mention

As for video cards, they’re affected because memory is on video cards. These DRAM price increases will impact the entire PC industry. 

Rumors claim that NVIDIA’s delayed its 50 Series Super refresh to Q3, as the company prioritizes its denser GDDR7 modules towards workstation GPUs, and ASUS recently warned that it may have to raise its prices to reflect the difference in RAM.

Conclusion – Best Options For Consumers

So to quickly recap: DDR4 and DDR5 pricing has nearly doubled within the past few months. AI infrastructure and cloud service providers have driven demand to unprecedented levels. Manufacturers had been cutting supply to deal with the effects from the COVID overstock, leaving them unprepared for the sudden demand.

Now, the manufacturers have begun shifting DRAM supply resources towards AI and server uses rather than desktop. It's unlikely that prices will improve in 2026. And finally, industry leaders are indicating that NAND price increases will follow in a similar fashion.

Basically, the DRAM industry is undergoing the same experience that GPUs have in the past few years. And if you’re wondering if things are going to get worse, the answer is yes. It’s probably going to get worse. This isn’t just sensational framing. It’s not good for consumers out there right now.

Businesses have realized they can utilize the hardware for AI, and whether it has any actual commercial value, it does have shareholder value as the tulips grow rampant. Data centers are willing to pay more than consumers are. 

As for suppliers, they can prioritize production of the higher-margin products by taking supply resources away from desktop components, leading to a squeezed supply which inevitably raises prices. Wafer supply is limited, so if parts get allocated to data centers, those wafers inherently aren’t becoming consumer devices. NVIDIA GPUs have already been undergoing this transformation for a while now.

In terms of advice: We can’t predict the market. We’re getting into territory where buying and selling memory might as well be trading gold, and so what’s up today could be down tomorrow. For that reason, we hesitate to give any recommendation on buying or selling because there’s just no certainty here. The bottom could fall out tomorrow on the AI bubble if, for example, a company is found to be fraudulently pumping figures in a way that shakes the stock prices to the core.

That said, assuming stability and that the trajectory remains on its projected arc, it looks like it will get worse before it gets better. Factor that into your buying however you see fit. It may make sense to go used where possible.

While it’s unlikely to produce any big savings, we’d also advise looking for any strong Black Friday deals, as we think those will be the cheapest listings available for a while. Unfortunately, it comes at a time when prices just increased, so a sale still won’t get it below what it was. Overall, we expect things to get worse before they get better.

We run through the details of Valve's new hardware (Steam Machine, Steam Frame, and Steam Controller) and interview many of the company's engineers working on the products

The Highlights

• Valve’s Steam Machine is a mini-PC that runs SteamOS
• The Steam Frame VR headset also runs on SteamOS, but is equipped with an ARM-based SOC that will be able to emulate x86 games
• The new Steam Controller makes some major iterations on the original, with a particular focus on TMR thumbsticks and connectivity

Table of Contents

• AutoTOC

Intro

Valve had several hardware announcements today.

Editor's note: This was originally published on November 12, 2025 as a video. This content has been adapted to written format for this article and is unchanged from the original publication.

Credits

Host, Writing, Editing

Steve Burke

Writing, Research

Patrick Lathan

Camera, Video Editing

Vitalii Makhnovets

Video Editing

Tim Phetdara

Writing, Web Editing

Jimmy Thang

The company is announcing its Steam Machine mini-PC with SteamOS, the Steam Frame VR headset with separable compute portion, accompanying Steam Frame VR controllers, and the new Steam Controller. There are multiple aspects of software wrapped into these, like SteamOS on ARM, FEX EMU, Proton updates, and, of course, SteamOS for desktop.

At our own expense, we bought plane tickets and booked a hotel, then flew out to Valve’s headquarters for engineering interviews -- and we got some A-tier information from the thermal, acoustic, and electrical engineering teams.

The release date for all of these is 2026 sometime, with at least the Frame targeting early 2026. Pricing is TBD. 

We were told that the Steam Machine will be priced as “an entry-level computer,” but without a range on what that means (and everyone’s interpretation is probably a little different). Valve did emphasize that it won’t be priced like a console, though, so we’d anticipate higher than console prices. There’s no telling where RAM prices will be when they launch.

Valve told us that the Frame won’t be priced higher than the Index, but was non-specific on which SKU or bundle. 

This article will focus on the news and engineering interviews for each component. We have at least two separate videos coming up that we split-out just because we have a ton of depth for all of them and we didn’t want to chop it down. Our next video covers the Steam Frame acoustics, power, and thermal engineering. We will also have a video about the Steam Deck with one of its engineers.

For now, let’s get into the specs and news for SteamOS (which is a Linux-based operating system) finally coming to desktop, the Steam Machine, the controller, and the controllers for VR. We’ll be peppering in relevant interview quotes we conducted with Valve throughout the article below. 

Valve has attempted to launch Steam Machines in the past, but never committed to a rollout. This time, they’re serious about it and they’re shipping a first-party solution. This also means that SteamOS is getting an official shipment to desktop, which should bolster support for self installs even if Valve isn’t fully tuning it outside of the Steam Machine.

Let’s start with the Steam Machine.

Steam Machine

We'll start with the new Steam Machine, which Valve claims has "six times" the performance of the Steam Deck. 

Specs Summary

Starting with the specs:

The Steam Machine uses a BGA solution with SO-DIMM memory and modular M.2 storage, shipping in 512GB and 2TB models (with a microSD slot for additional storage) and optional Steam Controller bundle. MicroSD cards can be pulled relatively seamlessly from the Steam Deck and Steam Machine and transplanted to each other with games on them (in an easier way than Windows). The CPU is an AMD 6-core, 12-thread Zen 4 processor with its IGP fused off and the GPU is a separate "semi-custom" RDNA3 28-CU chip that supports ray tracing, paired with 8GB of GDDR6 VRAM. RDNA3 was the RX 7000 series, with the 32-CU RX 7600 being relatively close as a CU-count comparison, though there are other specs to consider as well. System memory is separate at 16GB of DDR5-5600 laptop memory.

For rear ports, the Steam Machine has one DisplayPort 1.4, one HDMI 2.0 (with CEC), one 1Gbps ethernet, one USB Type-C 3.2 Gen 2 (10Gbps), and two USB 2 Type-A ports. There are also two USB 3 Type-A ports in the front, 2x2 WiFi 6E, and another two separate antennas, one for Bluetooth and one specifically for Steam Controllers. Out of the box, it ships with SteamOS.

Our biggest immediate concern without having tested it is how closed-off the box is in general, with the single 120mm fan used as a pull solution through the bottom, which has minimal elevation, and holes in the front. The front plate pulls to provide much greater access to air. We can’t really pass too much judgement here until we have it to benchmark, which we will definitely do. Valve did a lot of tuning on thermals. The system uses a 120mm fan that’s used as a pull solution, which will pull air through the bottom and the holes in the front.  

Details

There were two critical shortcomings with the original Steam Machine project: first, Valve never shipped it, although we did cover third-party small form factor PCs intended to become Steam Machines. More importantly, Valve never planned any first-party production (beyond a small beta run) and there was no reason to use the 2015 version of SteamOS over Windows.

Valve Engineer Yazan Aldehayyat: "So, essentially, we just feel like now is the right time for us to make this happen, just because we finally feel like we have the software and the hardware pieces all figured out. By all accounts, the SteamOS experience on Steam Deck, people love it, they love the convenience. We're seeing a lot of people use their Steam Deck docked to their TV. Primarily to us that just means that console, you know, experience is there. But we just simply feel like if we were to make something that's more, you know, intended for that use case, that doesn't have the weight and battery life limitations, we can give those people a much better experience."

Although shaped like a console, the Steam Machine is just a very small computer: there's a usable mouse-and-keyboard desktop mode despite the clear living room focus. The BIOS is accessible and modifiable (and navigable with a Steam Controller). From what Valve says, it sounds like it'll be a limited laptop-style BIOS, but Valve mentioned users will be able to "play around with frequencies."

We asked Valve about its choice to go with a BGA Zen 4 solution rather than something socketable, seeing as that’d benefit from AM5’s likely immortality if it’s anything like AM4. 

Valve considered modular CPUs and GPUs, but settled on soldering both chips to the motherboard for thermal and size reasons. Unfortunately, this means it’s not upgradeable, but it gives Valve more control to make it smaller. 

The CPU has a peak frequency of 4.8GHz, which sounds similar to an R5 7640U and falls short of something like an R5 7600. 

The silicon is off the shelf, but has been customized with firmware, software, and fusing off certain elements. Valve told us any included IGP is fused off, meaning AMD semi customizes these. Valve told us the Steam Machine doesn’t have a discrete chipset and instead routes all I/O through the CPU. The discrete semi-custom 28CU GPU has a maximum sustained frequency of 2.45GHz, although its peak opportunistic boost would be higher.

Valve Engineer Yazan Aldehayyat: “I mean I was on the motherboard, so I'm really proud of how small it is for what it is, it's, you know, both the CPU and the GPU's on it. We use the same thermal module to cool everything, so both the CPU and the GPU, the memory, and the FETs as well, are all connected to the same thermal module.”

Gamers Nexus: “Do you know, off the top of your head, the sort of power consumption during peak load, or nominal load?” 

Valve Engineer Yazan Aldehayyat: “So the GPU is anywhere between 110-130W, we're still dialing that in to be honest. CPU is closer to 30W. And, you know, once you add in memory and peripherals and all that kind of stuff, we're typically in the 200+ Watt range."

In a later discussion, Valve told us it locked the GPU in at 110W TDP. We asked about the VRM, although we'll have to wait for a teardown to get final answers, but this is what Aldehayyat said off the top of his head:

Valve Engineer Yazan Aldehayyat: "Six phase for the GPU, and then for the CPU we have two or three phases, I don't remember exactly. The problem is, like, there's different rails, and so, like, the GPU there's, like, six phase for core, two or three phases for memory. For the CPU, it's, I think, total about four phases. Split between different rails."

Power is handled via 12V only. On a pure technicality, it’s not necessarily 12VO in the sense that it is using a blade connector instead of going through cabling. This helps with things like space. The system also uses a 300W PSU that’s mated directly to the motherboard with a blade connector that Valve says hits over 92% efficiency in "most scenarios." Mini PCs frequently cheat the volume calculation by using external power bricks, so it's promising to see Valve commit to taking up so much of the Steam Machine's volume with a true internal PSU, especially given the thermal challenges.

Valve Engineer Yazan Aldehayyat: “We spent a lot of time thinking about airflow. Living room is actually a really challenging thermal environment, right, like people can shove them in corners, put them behind things, so we thought about how do we have intake and exhaust that is hard to block for somebody who's not really thinking about it. 

Like, so we have bottom intake, so airflow kind of just flows around the front here, through here.

And then we also have perimeter intake here, 360 again, because it's really hard to plug every single one of those. 

And then finally we have exhaust on the back because if you have cables attached here, you can't really push it all the way up against the wall, so you're always guaranteed some space."

The legs are short, which we pointed out, but Valve said its goal was to get the Machine to fit under a normal 6-inch shelf in a media unit, with the design team fighting for fractions of a millimeter. Valve claimed that the leg height allows for around 95% of the flow performance as a fully unrestricted bottom intake, which we’ll test as soon as we get it in. You absolutely need to make sure this does not go on carpet that conforms to the bottom, though.

Valve had some interesting solutions to its airflow and size limitations: There's a plastic ridge on the bottom of the Machine intended to block hot exhaust from recirculating underneath by dropping down slightly to the floor. Under normal conditions, we were told that the airflow split between the bottom vents and the perimeter vents should be 50/50. The rear of the case is made of metal for the highest possible porosity while remaining sturdy and the front is a magnetic plastic panel with the intention that users can print their own, maybe with better airflow. Valve showed us a number of alternative panels, such as an e-Ink display that they won’t be selling, but that they used for testing.

The relatively large aluminum finstack is mostly a single, shared solution: It contacts the CPU with phase change TIM, uses paste for the GPU, and then thermal putty for the rest. It doesn't directly contact the system memory or storage because neither are soldered to the motherboard.

The heatsink has four heatpipes that look like roughly 8mm solutions, paired with a single custom 120mm exhaust fan at the rear of the box using a custom cowling that gives slightly more depth in some areas for better pressure performance. Using an axial fan rather than a blower for a device in this form factor is unusual and created design difficulties, as opposed to (for example) the PS5, but was necessary in order to get enough airflow. The fan is heavily focused on static pressure, ranges between 500-2,000RPM, and has a blade-to-frame clearance of somewhere between 0.5-1mm. Valve wasn’t certain off-hand if the material is PBT or LCP.

Valve Engineer Yazan Aldehayyat: "One of the questions that people ask is like, how did you arrive at this architecture? And the answer, I think, is probably going to be surprising to most people, which is we literally designed the fan first. Because like, when you… the laws of thermodynamics are not flexible, right? If you knew how much heat you're trying to remove, you can—and you know the temperature the GPU's trying to reach, that tells you how much airflow you need. If you know how much airflow you need, you can kind of get to design the fan. So we really started by looking at what's on the market, how much airflow they can get at what static pressure, playing with blade geometries, like getting the optimal fan that we can."

The memory is upgradeable with disassembly of the Machine. We’re not sure if it’s two sticks or one at the moment.

Replacing the stock M.2 2230 SSD should be significantly easier, and there's enough room for a standard 2280 drive. 

The GPU's GDDR6 VRAM presented its own challenges, leading to a ten-layer PCB design.

Valve Engineer Yazan Aldehayyat: "Adding layers is typically done because you need the layers for routing, and that for us was the main reason, because we needed to… GDDR6 is really hard to route.”

Gamers Nexus: “Why is that?” 

Valve Engineer Yazan Aldehayyat: “It's a lot of signals, very high speed signals, you know, they're very dense, so it takes a lot of layers to do that. And also, DDR's pretty power hungry, so you have to kind of use some layers for power routing and then other layers for signal routing.”

Gamers Nexus: “And is it still true that each trace for memory needs to be the same length?”

Valve Engineer Yazan Aldehayyat: “Yes. So we have to time delay, it's not even the same length, it's time delay. So like, keep in mind the propagation delay, because the top layers will have slightly different propagation delay than the middle layers, so you have to keep that in mind. Impedance, as well. So we have, basically all the bits have to arrive at the same time. The speed of light, you know, down to, I think, like a picosecond, if I remember correctly. [...]GDDR6 is really challenging. So, like, we had to do things like back drilling, I don't know if you're familiar with that."

Gamers Nexus:  “I don't think so.” 

Valve Engineer Yazan Aldehayyat: “It's basically like, you have a hole through the board to transition through layers, just a through hole. So if you're trying to go from like layer one to layer five, you have a stub that goes all the way down to layer ten. And what happens then, when the signal transitions through, it hits that, and some reflections go through the via, and they resonate and cause interference.” 

Gamers Nexus: “Is this the same as a via? Or is it different from a via? Because vias I'm familiar with.” 

Valve Engineer Yazan Aldehayyat: “It's basically, if you think about like the path that the signals take, right, they go from layer one, and then go to layer five, and they continue on layer five. Because the via has to go through the whole board, there's a path where it doesn't take. Like a stub, like it's a junction of the road, and the signal wants to take one way, but there's the other one which is a byproduct of just the manufacturing technology. So we have to go back and drill that path and remove it, so the signal doesn't travel both paths and cause interference. 

Valve’s Jeff Mucha: “Backdrilling removes part of the via to only the part you're using."

Finally, there's a customizable LED bar on the front of the Machine that's used as a status indicator for when the display is off: for example, it can show download progress of games.

We're well-equipped to test all of Valve's thermal, airflow, acoustic, and power claims, so look forward to that at launch.

Steam Frame

The Valve Steam Frame’s key feature is a bandwidth-saving foveated streaming solution, which is similar in some concepts to foveated rendering. The Frame is built modularly with a separable, fully contained face-mounted Arm architecture computer running SteamOS. 

We last covered VR in detail back during the launch of the Vive and the Rift, back when the industry was going crazy slapping "VR Ready" stickers everywhere. That was a crazy time. It’s good that we as an industry have moved beyond two-letter initials for marketing...oh, wait.

Meta’s own ARM-based solutions are some of the more popular right now and Valve has launched the Index in the meantime, which it says is the price ceiling for the Frame.

Specs Summary

The 440g headset consists of a front-mounted 185g core unit and a back-of-head-mounted battery. Valve uses an onboard Snapdragon 8650 ARM solution with 16GB LPDDR5X of unified system memory and VRAM. The headset will have models with 256GB or 1TB of storage. The Frame has a microSD card slot, pancake lenses, 2160x2160-resolution LCDs, a 120Hz refresh rate with 144Hz “experimental mode,” and FOV up to 110 degrees. The 4 exterior cameras are monochrome but IR sensitive and the headset itself contains exterior IR illumination. Valve uses two internal eye tracking cameras for its new foveated streaming feature that we’ll get into soon.

Audio deploys four speakers built into the headstrap and two microphones in the headset. Valve also has a PCIe Gen4 custom connector for future accessories or attachments, potentially for third parties, with an example given of support for a color camera. The headset can also stream games directly from a PC using a 6GHz included USB router, bypassing traditional wireless routers and communicating straight between the PC and Frame.

The controllers have capacitive sensing for finger tracking, TMR thumbsticks (identical to the new Steam Controller's), a full set of standard controller buttons, regular AA batteries, and "Full 6-DOF tracking and IMU support."

Details

The Frame’s SOC is a Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 8650 on a 4nm process node. An ARM SOC in a headset isn’t new, but SteamOS on ARM is. This includes ARM-native compilations of DXVK and VKD3D, and it’s also the first time SteamOS is meaningfully expanding out of handhelds and into VR.

As it did with the Proton translation layer for SteamOS software compatibility, Valve has devoted significant resources to the development of FEX emulation.

Valve Designer Lawrence Yang: “Similarly to how for Steam Deck we had to make a lot of advances in Proton to make sure that was really solid before Steam Deck could be an actual viable product, for Steam Frame we did a lot of work on FEX, which we see as a… "

Gamers Nexus: “Is it a translation layer?” 

Valve Designer Lawrence Yang: "It's actually an emulation layer, so it's emulating the instruction set from x86 to ARM, so it's actually doing both Proton and FEX so that you can play x86 games standalone."

Like the existing Deck Verified program, there’ll be a separate Steam Frame Verified program specifically for running games locally on the Frame. 

Valve Designer Lawrence Yang: "In a similar way where when we launched Steam Deck we had a lot of work to do on Proton, and as time went on we patched a lot of the holes, and then it became more of a surprise when a game didn't work through Proton on Steam Deck. We're doing the same process with FEX as well. So like, right now we're pleasantly surprised that so many games are just working, and we know that once we get these into developer hands, we'll be able to learn a lot more and ahead of launch we'll have a sizable library."

Valve also told us that developers will be able to ship VR APKs on Steam, and for games with multiple versions, Steam will automatically choose the appropriate build (but it can be overridden). Valve stated "APKs can also be side-loadable just like any non-Steam applications on Steam Deck. We expect that VR APKs that don't leverage proprietary APIs to just work."

The microSD card slot should theoretically allow seamlessly swapping libraries between other SteamOS devices on a single card, such as the Steam Deck and Steam Machine. Valve confirmed this for the Deck-to-Machine already.

As for use cases, Valve is pushing for the "use your headset as your display" approach, even for non-VR content. Thus far, nobody (including Apple) has been able to fully sell a mainstream audience on this approach.

Valve Designer Lawrence Yang: "So, I would say Steam Frame kind of represents a fundamental shift in the way that we think about VR: rather than being a PCVR accessory for your PCVR titles, we see Steam Frame as just a new way to experience your entire Steam library, whether it's VR or non-VR. And that high level decision kind of filtered down into all of the product level decisions that we made for the product."

Valve seemed primarily focused on streaming from PC-to-headset for the rest, which makes sense since Valve’s biggest advantage over Meta is years’ worth of games that were developed to be run on actual gaming PCs.

Valve Engineer Jeremy Selan: "Every single device comes with a dedicated wireless adapter. This is USB 3, and it's a 6GHz native router, and it talks directly between your PC and this device. [...] So there’s a whole bunch of channels and that allows us high bandwidth, high robustness, and low latency, and it’s a dedicated link just between these 2 devices. Similarly, this headset has two radios and antennas, which means we can guarantee that one of those antennas is locked off to this dedicated connection on 6GHz while WiFi is talking on the 5GHz spectrum simultaneously to your local router." 

The dedicated wireless dongle isn't a new idea, but Valve has planned around it from the ground up. It's not strictly required, though; Valve told us that "The Steam Frame headset is Wi-Fi 7 capable, and when paired to your existing Wi-Fi, other streaming features (including Foveated Streaming and simultaneous 5/6Ghz ) are available and work great."

Alongside the dedicated wireless link, the second piece of Valve's pitch for local streaming is "foveated streaming." The naming is inspired from foveated rendering, which is a related concept that uses eye tracking to deprioritize the screen area in your periphery and render it at a lower resolution, allowing increased framerate. High FPS remains critical for VR headsets to avoid motion sickness in users, and so these technologies are used to focus the “density” of image quality on areas the user is looking at.

Eye tracking updates every 8-12ms according to Valve, although the hardware could go faster. This meets Valve's goal for stream quality while reducing power usage.

When we looked at Valve’s debug tool, the company shows user eye position and reflects the area of highest-quality rendering based on that. We tested this for a minute or two at the end of the session and couldn’t immediately notice any lag in the render quality shift, although we haven’t had time to fully analyze it. The software also showed where in the frame lifecycle and rendering pipeline the most time was allocated. It harkens back to some of our talk about simulation time error, aka animation error.

Here’s what Valve said about foveated streaming:

Valve Engineer Jeremy Selan: "So what we're doing is at the streaming layer, we're calling it foveated streaming, where the areas that you're looking, we send essentially the full, high quality content at the highest fidelity we can. And then for everywhere else you're not looking, we're borrowing those bits and also throwing them at that place where you're looking. So for instance if we had, say, one-tenth of the pixel area is where you're looking, which is a very common number, then that's effectively a 10x multiplier in effective bandwidth, quality, as well as reduced latency, because we can steer all of those bits to where you're looking. And that only works because the eye tracking is fast enough that as you look around the scene, we send the bits to where you're going to look before you land there."

If foveated rendering weren't already an established technology, we'd have a hard time believing that foveated streaming could be so reactive, but in the brief testing that we did with it, we couldn’t see any changes or difference in image quality. There are still a ton of variables involved (like the performance of the host PC), but when we asked Valve for a ballpark end-to-end system latency when streaming, we were told 10-20ms was the target, which includes encoding, transmission, and decoding.

Target bandwidth is 250Mbps, regardless of whether the headset is running wireless or wired, so that's the baseline for that loose 10x multiplier in effective quality that Valve is claiming. Everyone seems pretty confused about the Quest 3's max bandwidth, so part of Valve's advantage here is that it's shipping the streaming hardware with the headset, so everyone gets a consistent high-performance experience: for streaming, it doesn't matter what router you have or whether your PC has a wired internet connection. Foveated streaming is a system-level feature, so no additional support is required from developers.

In contrast to previous Valve headsets, the Frame is a standalone battery-powered unit with inside-out tracking: no base stations and no mandatory wires. It ships with a 21.6Wh lithium ion battery.

Valve also informed us that the Steam Frame hardware is not cross-compatible with the Index and Vive at this time.

Valve claims that power consumption from nominal to peak loads can range from approximately 7W (when streaming) to more than 20W (when running games on the headset itself). Power is heat, so at 20W, Valve’s thermal solution comes more into play.

The headset is separated into two modular units: the core and the headstrap. The face gasket is attached with magnets, so the grossest part of the headset should be fairly easy to replace, while the core is fastened to the headset with three toolless clips. The core contains the optics, the compute, and cameras, while the headstrap contains the audio and battery. 

And because everyone with a 3D printer is looking for a problem to solve, we’re sure people will make quick use of the modularity in this design.

We have a huge amount of detail on the Frame's thermal solution and how it keeps components (and users) cool, but we'll save most of that for an immediate follow-up video to this one. 

The short version for today is that there are two heatpipes flanking the silicon, with the PCB area at the backside of the BGA package cleared to allow rear heatpipe contact and conduction through the PCB. Both of these heatpipes route to a finstack at the top of the headset, near the browline, with ventilation pointed up, out, and away from the user.

There's a single custom blower fan in the core module that's governed by thermistors across the PCB in addition to chip sensors. The displays are hotspots, but that's not necessarily a problem.

Valve Engineer Jeremy Selan: "The display behaves really well when it gets warm, it's actually a benefit. One of the things you want in VR is fast transition times, because we run at such high framerates—I haven't explicitly said it, but we work on the low end from 72 all the way up to 144Hz, and the best way we're able to get those fast transition times at higher framerates is through the warmth of the device. So you can go too far, of course, like a lot of heat—this is an LCD system, and a lot of heat in an LCD isn't good—but there's this happy medium in between where the device is warmer than ambient and can therefore achieve really fast times."

Valve's justification for LCD over OLED came down to "FOV, eyebox, cost, persistence, [and] weight." To avoid blurring, the duty cycle for the LCD panels is a flat 8% at all framerates, meaning that at 120Hz with ~8.3ms frametimes, the illumination period is ~0.67ms per frame.

Sound is provided via four 16mm drivers, two per ear, that have been tuned to cancel out vibrations.

Valve Engineer Joy Lyons: "The thing that's actually really interesting is when you integrate audio into a sensitive piece of equipment like the core module where there's all sorts of tracking that's happening, the vibrations can be a limiting factor in terms of how loud the system can get. And so we designed it with two speakers per side, they're actually oriented in different [...] orientations, so that they can cancel the vibrations at the IMU in the core, while actually still doubling the amount of sound that the user is getting."

As with thermals, we have a separate deep-dive coming up on acoustics. Joy from Valve had a lot of information to share here, so we’re including that with our separate thermal video.

Headphones can be supported by Bluetooth and 3.5mm adapters.

As for the controllers, Valve claims 40 hours of battery life, depending on the AA batteries used. 

The controllers look similar to the Quest 3's at a glance, although Valve emphasizes "input parity with traditional game pad," which is part of its push to play regular non-VR games in VR. Basically, you get all the normal controller buttons in the normal places. 

Also, the capacitive grip sensing has a limited gradient for the fingers and on/off sensing for the thumb. We haven't yet tested the Index for comparison.

Valve taking a third stab at VR (and a second stab at SteamOS, and Steam Machines, and the Steam Controller, and arguably the Steam Link) feels justified in the wake of the Deck's success. As we understand it, Valve has been working on the Frame since at least the launch of the Index in 2019, according to one of the engineers we spoke to. That's interesting context, since it means Valve had the confidence to start work on another VR headset even before the pandemic VR boom, the launch of Half-Life Alyx.

The Frame should be shipping to developers in the immediate future or already. 

Steam Controller

The new Steam Controller, which is not called the Steam Controller 2, follows Valve’s previous Steam Controller that has seemingly been memory holed and overwritten for its name after being dumped en masse for $5.

The controller uses Valve’s dual touchpad input and significantly repositions and reshapes the controller ergonomics versus the original Steam Controller. Valve noted that it benefits from the Deck’s popularity and showed that controller key mappings can transfer directly to the Controller.

Specs Summary

The new Steam Controller can connect to anything running Steam or the Steam Link app and connects via the Controller Puck wireless, Bluetooth, or USB. The controller contains a lithium ion battery that can be recharged through the puck or USB, the thumbsticks are TMR and have capacitive sensing, there's a gyro with grip sensing, and what Valve calls "more advanced and powerful motors for high definition rumble" in the grips. The inputs completely replicate the inputs found on the Steam Deck, minus the touchscreen.

Details

The "Steam Controller Puck" is a dedicated USB dongle that connects to the device running Steam and provides dedicated wireless connections for up to four Steam Controllers per puck. This is both spiritually and literally a successor to the original Steam Controller dongle; Valve told us that the wireless protocol comes directly from the original Controller. Bluetooth is still an option, but it has downsides.

Valve Engineer Jeff Mucha: “So if you add multiple devices they share the bandwidth, and then when that bandwidth runs out you have, you know, issues with lag and dropout.”

Valve Engineer Yazan Aldehayyat: “But also, it's just that different PCs have different capabilities, different RF environments. It's more about the consistency than anything, like a device with Bluetooth will do really well, it's just that the consistency device to device and the consistency of the RF environment really comes into effect."

Maybe it's just us, but one of the most interesting aspects of the controller is the antenna design.

Valve Engineer Jeff Mucha: “One of the things for, like, ESD, when you have to go through compliance on a product, you have to zap it with the ESD gun, make sure that it's going to be good. With our antenna design, we landed on a design that solves the cost problem as well as ESD, because the antenna is basically grounded. So, if you hit it with ESD it doesn't blow out the front end of the chip. So, that was something that we learned on Index, and we brought that in for here. 

Gamers Nexus: “So, the cost and also just functional for the…” 

Valve Engineer Jeff Mucha: “Cost, functionality, and it actually gives us, you know, we say we have a five meter range by getting the antenna away from everything else. The controller has a lot of stuff all packed in there, so where do you put the antenna where your hands aren't going to be? [...] So the antenna, you can see the thumbsticks are here, the antenna's there, so it's kind of right in the ideal spot where you're not putting your finger up here in normal gameplay."

Valve claimed approximately 8ms of latency with a wireless connection through the Puck, but emphasized that performance shouldn't worsen as more controllers (up to four) are connected to it. The Steam Machine has the same functionality built-in, with a dedicated antenna (separate from the WiFi and Bluetooth antennas) for connecting up to four Steam Controllers.

The Puck also functions as a magnetic charger with pogo pins. Valve says its conservative estimate for battery life is 35 hours. The battery is a lithium ion pack. We asked about user repairability and replaceability of the battery. Valve noted that it's intended to be user serviceable in the sense that you can get to it with a screwdriver.

In addition to the touchpad haptics already found in the Steam Deck, the Controller contains more advanced haptics.

Valve Engineer Yazan Aldehayyat: "One example that helps us, think about like, speakers. So like, some speakers have really wideband performance that they'll play flat for a big frequency range. Some speakers don't, right, they're like a bass that only operates in kind of a very narrow frequency band. And so basically what we have here is something that's got… it's a linear motor, that has a wider bandwidth, so that it can replicate those higher frequencies [...] and waveforms better. So it's a better, higher fidelity speaker in some ways, just in a haptics world."

Valve was clearly proud of its new Tunnel Magnetoresistance (TMR) thumbsticks, which are apparently the hot new successor to Hall effect sticks.

Valve’s Jeff Mucha: "And you can see these thumbsticks, one of the things that, you know, Hall sensor thumbsticks have been a big thing in the industry; TMR is kind of new to the scene. It solves some of the power problems that Hall had, and keeping the sensitivity. 

Gamers Nexus: “Are these off the shelf? Are they customized for the sticks that you guys are using?”

Valve’s Jeff Mucha: “We work with external suppliers, and we're not like fully integrating the thumbstick into, like the mechanical housings, but yeah we're using off the shelf suppliers for these."

The Controller contains a 6-axis IMU, and capacitive grip sensing that can dynamically turn gyro controls on or off. 

The new Steam Controller’s LED markers allow it to be tracked by the Steam Frame when in VR.

Conclusion

We have a lot more coverage to come, which includes a separate Steam Deck video. We will also have a video on the acoustics, power, and thermal engineering behind the Steam Frame. 

We’re also really excited to test all of this and are interested in seeing the OS hitting desktops outside of the Steam Machine.

All of this hardware is on track for an early 2026 release date with pricing TBD.

We’ve compiled a comprehensive timeline of the GPU bans, GPU smuggling, and export controls that impact NVIDIA, AMD, and Intel

The Highlights

• The US blocks exports of advanced GPUs to China to protect national security
• NVIDIA GPUs are highly sought after in China for AI processing
• Our timeline chronicles the US export controls, NVIDIA's responses, and reports of GPU smuggling

This is a comprehensive timeline of the GPU bans, smuggling, and export controls on NVIDIA, AMD, Intel, and other high-tech semiconductor products. We are publishing this as part of our stretch goals for Black Market AI GPU — a viewer-funded film made possible through support on our store, including our new “Blind Eye” T-shirt.
The below timeline accompanies our Black Market AI GPU investigation, our biggest project yet. We spent three weeks in Asia to uncover this story, including two weeks in China and one in Taiwan. We found smugglers, middlemen, and users of so-called “AI” GPUs that the United States government has banned for sale into China.

Credits

Host, Writing, Lead Editing

Steve Burke

Editing

Vitalii Makhnovets
Tim Phetdara

Editing, Graphics

Andrew Coleman

Camera

Tannen Williams

Research and Writing

Ben Benson

We are providing this timeline for free and without third-party ads for our viewers and readers. As this situation has changed frequently and now spans multiple US administrations, we may have missed a few events. However, we believe we have compiled all the major changes – especially since the start of 2025 – that are directly relevant to the story. 

We have attempted to present it as neutrally as feasible and from a place of reporting. We’ve included links to a variety of media and government sources that we believe are appropriate for establishing the timeline of events. We have included statements from NVIDIA in many cases. 

This was a huge team effort at GN and required a massive investment in travel, writing, research, and editing to complete. If you find this information valuable, we ask that you please support us directly by backing our NVIDIA AI GPU Black Market project, buying something from our GN store, or signing up for our Patreon. Thank you.

Timeline

Note on sources: Our intent is to cite primary sources, including government documents, and a variety of secondary sources. In some cases, we link only to secondary news stories. This can occur when we include articles from credible media reports but do not have primary documents to cite. 

2018 GPU Export Controls

August 2018

August 13: The US government created the National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence (NSCAI) as part of the John S. McCain National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2019. The NSCAI had 15 commissioners who were nominated by Congress and the Executive Branch. The NSCAI was tasked with investigating how the United States should compete in AI in the modern age and recommending actions for Congress and the executive branch.

In the words of the original document, the commissioners “shall consider the methods and means necessary to advance the development of artificial intelligence, machine learning, and associated technologies by the United States to comprehensively address the national security and defense needs of the United States.”

• Source:
  • National Defense Bill (NSCAI section starts on page 1963)

2019 GPU Export Controls

May 2019

May 15: Citing national security risks, the US government added Huawei to its Entity List and restricted sales of Huawei’s equipment into the United States. 

• Sources:
  • Federal Register
  • Executive Order
  • Politico: Trump signs order setting stage to ban Huawei from U.S.
  • Reuters: Trump administration hits China's Huawei with one-two punch
  • Reuters: China's Huawei, 70 affiliates placed on U.S. trade blacklist

2020 GPU Export Controls

May 2020

May 19: The United States restricted semiconductor designs, chipsets, and technologies to Huawei and its foreign affiliates. 

• Sources: 
  • Department of Commerce Press Release
  • Federal Register
  • NPR: The Latest U.S. Blow To China's Huawei Could Knock Out Its Global 5G Plans

2021 GPU Export Controls

March 2021

The National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence (NSCAI) released its final report. The report provided recommendations to “advance the development of artificial intelligence, machine learning, and associated technologies to comprehensively address the national security and defense needs of the United States.”

As part of the report (page 216), the NSCAI recommended the US government and its allies “utilize targeted export controls on high-end semiconductor manufacturing equipment… to protect existing technical advantages and slow the advancement of China’s semiconductor industry.” 

Further on (page 228), the report said, “Looking across the AI stack, the hardware component of the AI stack contains the most viable targets for traditional export controls.” The report (page 231) focused on semiconductor manufacturing equipment for export control rules: “The primary U.S. export control target to constrain competitors’ AI capabilities should be sophisticated semiconductor manufacturing equipment (SME) necessary to manufacture high-end chips.” 

The report mentioned export controls for GPUs (page 500) as a way “to prevent the use of

high-end U.S. AI chips in human rights violations.”

• Source: 
  • NSCAI Final Report – The PDF can be downloaded from here.

April 2021

NSCAI Commissioner Christopher Darby spoke at NVIDIA GTC about the NSCAI’s report to Congress.

• Source: 
  • GTC

October 2021

October 1: The NSCAI officially ended on October 1, 2021. 

• Source: 
  • Executive Government News

2022 GPU Export Controls

August 2022

August 31: NVIDIA filed a Form 8-K with the SEC to inform investors that the US government had immediately blocked exports of its A100 and H100 chips to China, including Hong Kong. The export controls included DGX or other systems that incorporate an A100, H100, or A100X. In the financial documents, NVIDIA said the US government informed it of the export restrictions on August 26, 2022. NVIDIA stated that its third-quarter results included up to $400 million in expected sales to China that were now uncertain due to the export restrictions.

• Sources: 
  • NVIDIA Form 8-K
  • NVIDIA Form 10-Q
  • SEC Filing

September 2022

September 1: NVIDIA filed a new Form 8-K to let customers know that the US government had offered some exemptions for certain chip exports: 

“The U.S. government has authorized exports, reexports, and in-country transfers needed to continue NVIDIA Corporation’s, or the Company’s, development of H100 integrated circuits after the Company filed its Current Report on Form 8-K with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on August 31, 2022. The authorization also allows the Company to perform exports needed to provide support for U.S. customers of A100 through March 1, 2023. Additionally, the U.S. government authorized A100 and H100 order fulfillment and logistics through the Company’s Hong Kong facility through September 1, 2023.”

• Source: 
  • NVIDIA Form 8-K

Following NVIDIA’s SEC filing, media outlets reported the US government ordered NVIDIA to stop selling advanced AI chips to China. 

• NVIDIA statement: 

• “We are working with our customers in China to satisfy their planned or future purchases with alternative products and may seek licenses where replacements aren’t sufficient. The only current products that the new licensing requirement applies to are A100, H100 and systems such as DGX that include them.”– NVIDIA to CNBC

• Sources:
  • CNBC: NVIDIA stock falls after U.S. government restricts chip sales to China
  • The New York Times: U.S. Restricts Sales of Sophisticated Chips to China and Russia
  • Reuters: U.S. officials order NVIDIA to halt sales of top AI chips to China
  • CNN: US orders NVIDIA and AMD to stop selling AI chips to China 
  • Associated Press: China demands US drop tech export curbs after NVIDIA warning

October 2022

October 7: The Department of Commerce’s Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) implemented a series of export controls to “protect US national security and foreign policy interests.” The new export controls would hinder China’s ability to build high-end semiconductors and purchase advanced chips from the US, including for development of and maintaining supercomputers. 

• Sources: 
  • Department of Commerce Release
  • Federal Register (amended on October 13)

In a briefing with reporters, the US government said the new regulations formalized the guidance previously sent to NVIDIA. The Guardian reported: 

“The new regulations will also severely restrict export of US equipment to Chinese memory chip makers and formalize letters sent to NVIDIA Corp and Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) restricting shipments to China of chips used in supercomputing systems that nations around the world rely on to develop nuclear weapons and other military technologies.”

• Sources: 
  • The Guardian: Biden administration imposes sweeping tech restrictions on China
  • The New York Times: Biden Administration Clamps Down on China’s Access to Chip Technology

November 2022 

November 7: Reuters reported that NVIDIA had created a new AI chip called the A800 GPU for the China market. The A800 would be compliant with US export controls.

• NVIDIA statement:

• “The NVIDIA A800 GPU, which went into production in Q3, is another alternative product to the NVIDIA A100 GPU for customers in China. The A800 meets the US government’s clear test for reduced export control and cannot be programmed to exceed it.” - NVIDIA to Reuters

• Sources:
  • Reuters: Exclusive: NVIDIA offers new advanced chip for China that meets U.S. export controls
  • Tom’s Hardware: NVIDIA Creates New Supercomputer Chip For Chinese Market
  • The Verge: NVIDIA’s selling a nerfed GPU in China to get around export restrictions
  • TechCrunch: NVIDIA touts a slower chip for China to avoid US ban

2023 GPU Export Controls

March 2023

March 21: Reuters reported that NVIDIA had modified the H100 to be compliant with export rules to China.

• NVIDIA’s statements to Reuters:

• “On Tuesday, the company said it has similarly developed a China-export version of its H100 chip. The new chip, called the H800, is being used by the cloud computing units of Chinese technology firms such as Alibaba Group Holding Ltd, Baidu Inc and Tencent Holdings Ltd, a company spokesperson said.” [...]

“The NVIDIA spokesperson declined to say how the China-focused H800 differs from the H100, except that ‘our 800 series products are fully compliant with export control regulations.’” 

• Sources: 
  • Reuters: NVIDIA tweaks flagship H100 chip for export to China as H800
  • Data Center Dynamics: NVIDIA creates pared back H100 GPU for export to China, called H800

June 2023

June 27: The Wall Street Journal reported that the US government is considering expanding export controls for GPUs and AI chips to China. The US Department of Commerce did not comment to the Wall Street Journal. 

• Sources:
  • The Wall Street Journal: U.S. Considers New Curbs on AI Chip Exports to China
  • MarketWatch: White House says it’s focused on being at front end of supply chain for chips, won’t comment on report of possible new ban on exporting AI chips to China
  • Reuters: US mulls new export restriction on computing power in AI chips
  • TechCrunch: China’s AI firms might further lose chip access in new US ban

October 2023

October 17: The US Department of Commerce updated its export compliance for advanced semiconductors and semiconductor manufacturing equipment. The government said: 

“Today’s rules reinforce the October 7, 2022, controls to restrict the PRC’s ability to both purchase and manufacture certain high-end chips critical for military advantage. These updates are necessary to maintain the effectiveness of these controls, close loopholes, and ensure they remain durable.” 

The U.S. government has removed interconnect speed as a criterion for identifying restricted chips. Instead, it will now focus on processor performance and performance density. In a statement, the government said:

“A performance density parameter prevents the workaround of simply purchasing a larger number of smaller datacenter AI chips which, if combined, would be equally powerful as restricted chips.”

• Sources: 
  • Department of Commerce Release
  • Federal Register
  • Bureau of Industry and Security Document on Performance Density (page  21-22)
  • The Register: Biden has brought the ban hammer down on US export of AI chips to China
  • Center for Strategic & Internal Studies (posted on Oct. 18)

As part of the announcement, the administration told reporters the new restrictions affect NVIDIA’s A800 and H800 chips. A few days prior, Reuters reported that the administration would soon announce new export rules. 

• Sources:
  • Reuters: Exclusive: US tackles loopholes in curbs on AI chip exports to China
  • CNBC: U.S. curbs export of more AI chips, including NVIDIA H800, to China
  • Reuters: NVIDIA details advanced AI chips blocked by new export controls
  • Tom’s Hardware: US Prohibits Exports of NVIDIA’s A800 and H800 to China, Blacklists Chinese GPU Developers
  • The Verge: NVIDIA’s H800 AI chip for China is blocked by new export rules

October 23: NVIDIA filed a Form 8-K with the SEC that said the new export rules impact its A100, A800, H100, H800 and L40S chips. NVIDIA said it “does not anticipate that the accelerated timing of the licensing requirements will have a near-term meaningful

impact on its financial results.” 

• Sources: 
  • NVIDIA Form 8-K
  • BBC: US orders immediate halt to some AI chip exports to China, NVIDIA says
  • Tom’s Hardware: US Govt Speeds Up Export Restrictions for NVIDIA’s GPUs

December 2023

December 6: In a meeting with reporters in Singapore, NVIDIA said that it was working on new chips that comply with the government’s rules. 

• NVIDIA statement:

• “NVIDIA has been working very closely with the U.S. government to create products that comply with its regulations. Our plan now is to continue to work with the government to come up with a new set of products that comply with the new regulations that have certain limits.” – NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang, as reported in Reuters

• Sources:
• Reuters: NVIDIA working closely with US to ensure new chips for China are compliant with curbs
  • Reposted in CNBC

December 28: NVIDIA released a new version of RTX 4090 for the China market. The new chip, called the GeForce RTX 4090D, would be compliant with US export control restrictions. 

• NVIDIA statements: 

• “The GeForce RTX 4090 D has been designed to fully comply with U.S. government export controls. While developing this product, we extensively engaged with the U.S. government.” - NVIDIA to Reuters

• “In 4K gaming with ray tracing and deep-learning super sampling (DLSS), the GeForce RTX 4090D is about five percent slower than the GeForce RTX 4090 and it operates like every other GeForce GPU, which can be overclocked by end users.” – NVIDIA to The Register

• Sources: 
  • Reuters: NVIDIA launches new gaming chip for China to comply with US export controls
  • The Register: NVIDIA slowed RTX 4090 GPU by 11 percent, to make it 100 percent legal for export to China
  • The Verge: NVIDIA is releasing a slower RTX 4090 in China to comply with US restrictions

2024 GPU Export Controls

February 2024

February 1: Reuters reported that NVIDIA had prepared new GPUs for China, including the H20. Several sources told Reuters that the new offerings are less powerful than similar chips from Huawei. 

• Sources:
  • Reuters: Exclusive: NVIDIA’s new China-focused AI chip set to be sold at similar price to Huawei product
  • Tom’s Hardware: New NVIDIA AI GPUs designed to get around U.S. export bans come to China — H20, L20, and L2 to fill void left by restricted models

July 2024

July 22: Reuters reported that NVIDIA is creating a new GPU for the China market based on its Blackwell chips. Sources told Reuters that the chip would be a version of the Blackwell B200. NVIDIA did not publicly disclose the specifications. 

• Sources:
  • Reuters: Exclusive: NVIDIA preparing version of new flagship AI chip for Chinese market
  • Tom’s Hardware: NVIDIA preparing a China-focused variant of its B200 Blackwell AI GPU to comply with US export regulations
  • HPCWire: NVIDIA Prepares New AI Chip for China Amid Ongoing US Export Controls

December 2024

December 2: The US government expanded rules that limit the export of high memory bandwidth (HBM) and advanced semiconductor equipment. 

The Center for Strategic & International Studies explained the new rules on HBM: 

“The December 2024 controls change that by adopting for the first time country-wide restrictions on the export of advanced HBM to China as well as an end-use and end-user controls on the sale of even less advanced versions of HBM. The goal of these controls is, unsurprisingly, to degrade China’s AI industry.” [...]

“Modern AI chips not only require a lot of memory capacity but also an extraordinary amount of memory bandwidth. Bandwidth refers to the amount of data a computer’s memory can transfer to the processor (or other components) in a given amount of time. With low-bandwidth memory, the processing power of the AI chip often sits around doing nothing while it waits for the necessary data to be retrieved from (or stored in) memory and brought to the processor’s computing resources.”

• Sources:
  • Department of Commerce Document
  • Federal Register 
  • Government Presentation
  • Center for Strategic & International Studies: Understanding the Biden Administration’s Updated Export Controls

2025 GPU Export Controls

January 2025

January 13: The US government tightened its export controls by introducing national chip caps for many countries, except for 18 allies. The new restrictions would be called the AI Diffusion Rule. The rule would go into effect in May 2025.  

• NVIDIA statement:

• “It makes no sense for the Biden White House to control everyday datacenter computers and technology that is already in gaming PCs worldwide, disguised as an anti-China move. The extreme ‘country cap’ policy will affect mainstream computers in countries around the world, doing nothing to promote national security but rather pushing the world to alternative technologies. AI is mainstream computing – ubiquitous and essential as electricity. This last-minute Biden Administration policy would be a legacy that will be criticized by U.S. industry and the global community. We would encourage President Biden to not preempt incoming President Trump by enacting a policy that will only harm the U.S. economy, set America back, and play into the hands of U.S. adversaries.” – Ned Finkle, Vice President of Government Affairs, NVIDIA, to Bloomberg (Twitter link)

• Sources: 
  • US Government Fact Sheet
  • Federal Register
  • Federal Register
  • Bloomberg: Biden to Further Limit NVIDIA AI Chip Exports in Final Push
  • Tom’s Hardware: NVIDIA and SIA fire back at US gov's new export restrictions on AI GPUs to China

February 2025

February 26: NVIDIA filed its 10-K annual report with the SEC. In the 10-K, NVIDIA revealed that Singapore was the second-largest geographical source of revenue in 2024, behind the United States. Taiwan was third, and China was fourth.

Within the report, NVIDIA said: 

“Singapore represented 18% of fiscal year 2025 total revenue based upon customer billing location. Customers use Singapore to centralize invoicing while our products are almost always shipped elsewhere. Shipments to Singapore were less than 2% of fiscal year 2025 total revenue.”

• Source:
  • NVIDIA 10-K

February 27: Speculation began about AI GPUs being smuggled from Singapore to China. In late February, authorities in Singapore arrested three people for fraud involving servers that may contain AI GPUs. Singapore’s government granted the three people bail a few weeks later.

NVIDIA declined to comment to CNBC. 

• Sources:
  • ChannelNewsAsia: 3 men charged with fraud, cases linked to alleged movement of Nvidia chips
  • CNBC: NVIDIA’s unofficial exports to China face scrutiny after arrest of silicon smugglers in Singapore
  • Tom’s Hardware: Singapore police bust major ring smuggling NVIDIA GPUs to China-based DeepSeek: Report
  • TechCrunch: Singapore grants bail for NVIDIA chip smugglers in alleged $390M fraud

April 2025

April 9: NPR reported that the US government would not add export controls for the H20 chip after NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang attended a dinner at Mar-A-Lago. The dinner reportedly cost $1 million per head. The outlet said it was unclear whether Jensen Huang met with US President Trump directly. 

NVIDIA declined to comment to NPR.

• Sources:
  • NPR: Trump administration backs off NVIDIA H20 chip crackdown after Mar-a-Lago dinner

April 15: In a SEC filing, NVIDIA said the US government sent the company new export rules on April 9. According to NVIDIA, the H20 and all chips with the H20’s memory bandwidth or interconnect bandwidth will now need licenses to export to China. NVIDIA said the new rules would cost the company $5.5 billion in charges due to current H20 chip inventory and prior sales. NVIDIA declined to comment further to the BBC. 

• Sources: 
  • NVIDIA Form 8-K
  • BBC: NVIDIA shares plunge amid $5.5bn hit over export rules to China
  • NPR: NVIDIA discloses that U.S. will limit sales of advanced chips to China after all
  • Reuters: US issues export licensing requirements for NVIDIA, AMD chips to China

April 16: The US government released an investigative report on DeepSeek and requested information from NVIDIA about its AI GPUs. Through a letter sent to NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang, the US government asked NVIDIA for a list of its customers in China and many countries in Asia, including Singapore. The government requested all communication between NVIDIA and DeepSeek. 

• Sources:
  • US government press release
  • DeepSeek report
  • Government letter to Jensen Huang

The US Department of Commerce confirmed that it has issued new export control rules for AI chips. The Commerce Department provided a statement to The Wall Street Journal: 

“The Commerce Department is issuing new export licensing requirements on the NVIDIA H20, AMD MI308, and their equivalents.”

• Sources:
  • The Wall Street Journal: U.S. Confirms New Export Curbs on NVIDIA and AMD Chips

April 28: The Wall Street Journal reported that Huawei is expected to release its new AI chip, the Ascend 910D, soon. According to the Wall Street Journal’s sources, Huawei expects the Ascend 910D to be about as powerful as an NVIDIA H100. 

• Sources:
  • The Wall Street Journal: China’s Huawei Develops New AI Chip, Seeking to Match NVIDIA 
  • NetworkWorld: Huawei steps up AI chip race with Ascend 910D, targeting NVIDIA’s high ground

April 30: Anthropic, an AI startup backed by Amazon, called on the US government to increase export control restrictions to China. As part of a blog post, Anthropic said the government needs to improve its export enforcement to reduce smuggling. The company cited examples of chips being smuggled with “prosthetic baby bumps” and “live lobsters.”

In a response, NVIDIA said: 

“American firms should focus on innovation and rise to the challenge, rather than tell tall tales that large, heavy, and sensitive electronics are somehow smuggled in ‘baby bumps’ or ‘alongside live lobsters.’” – NVIDIA to CNBC

• Sources:
  • Anthropic blog post
  • CNBC: NVIDIA says Anthropic is telling ‘tall tales’ in its defense of U.S. AI chip restrictions on China
  • Tom’s Hardware: Despite NVIDIA claims, Chinese smugglers have used live lobsters and fake baby bumps to traffic chips
  • Hong Kong Customs release
  • China Customs release 

May 2025

May 1: Jensen Huang spoke with the House Foreign Affairs Committee to discuss domestic manufacturing and the importance of AI. NVIDIA posted the remarks online.

• Sources:
  • NVIDIA Newsroom Twitter Post
  • Tom’s Hardware: NVIDIA warns U.S. AI hardware export rules could backfire, empowering Huawei to define global standards

May 7: Following a report in Bloomberg, the US Department of Commerce confirmed that it will not implement the AI Diffusion Rule that was created during the prior administration. The rule would have gone into effect on May 15, 2025. 

The Department of Commerce released a statement to CNBC: 

“The Biden AI rule is overly complex, overly bureaucratic, and would stymie American innovation. We will be replacing it with a much simpler rule that unleashes American innovation and ensures American AI dominance.” 

NVIDIA released a statement: 

“We welcome the Administration’s leadership and new direction on AI policy. With the AI Diffusion Rule revoked, America will have a once-in-a-generation opportunity to lead the next industrial revolution and create high-paying U.S. jobs, build new U.S.-supplied infrastructure, and alleviate the trade deficit.”

• Sources: 
  • Bloomberg: Trump to Rescind Global Chip Curbs, Prep New AI Restrictions
  • Tom’s Hardware: NVIDIA celebrates dumping of Biden-era AI chip export rules — simpler new policy promised
  • CNBC: Trump administration set to end Biden’s U.S. chip export restrictions
  • NVIDIA Twitter Account

May 9: Reuters reported that NVIDIA is preparing a cut down version of the H20 for the Chinese market. Reuters sources said the chip would be ready in July. NVIDIA declined to comment. 

• Sources: 
  • Reuters: Exclusive: NVIDIA modifies H20 chip for China to overcome US export controls, sources say
  • Tom’s Hardware: NVIDIA readies cut-down HGX H20 GPU for China to comply with export control rules

May 13: The US government formally rescinded the previous administration’s AI Diffusion Rule, which was announced in January 2025. The government also announced actions to strengthen export controls for AI chips, including restrictions on using several Huawei Ascend chips

NVIDIA declined to comment to CNBC on the new export restrictions. 

• Sources:
  • US government press release 
  • BIS policy statement 
  • US government guidance on using Huawei Ascend chips
  • The Register: Trump ends Biden-era dream to cap US AI chip exports
  • Bloomberg: US Warns That Using Huawei AI Chip ‘Anywhere’ Breaks Its Rules
  • Tom’s Hardware: U.S. issues worldwide crackdown on using Huawei Ascend chips, says it violates export controls
  • CNBC: Trump administration’s next wave of China AI chip export rules are yet another obstacle for NVIDIA 

May 15: A bipartisan group of legislators introduced the Chip Security Act that is intended to stop smuggling of high-end AI chips. 

The Hill summarized the proposed legislation: “The legislation, titled the Chips Security Act, would require companies to ensure the location-verification abilities of their high-end AI chips and to report when a product has been diverted or changed location. It follows recent reports of increased smuggling of chips, including those made by NVIDIA, into China despite tight export controls.”

NVIDIA declined to comment to The Register.

• Sources: 
  • Chip Security Act text
  • The Hill: Bipartisan House lawmakers propose bill to ‘stop smuggling’ of AI chips
  • Reuters: U.S. lawmakers introduce bill to address AI chip smuggling
  • The Register: Plan to keep advanced chips from China with tracking tech gains support in Congress

May 16: The Financial Times reported that NVIDIA intends to create a research and design center in Shanghai. 

• NVIDIA statement: 

• “We are not sending any GPU designs to China to be modified to comply with export controls.” - NVIDIA to CNBC 

• Sources: 
  • Financial Times: NVIDIA plans Shanghai research centre in new commitment to China
  • CNBC: NVIDIA says it is not sending GPU designs to China after reports of new Shanghai operation

May 19: NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang told Bloomberg in a TV interview that he didn’t see any “evidence” of any AI chip diversion. Tom’s Hardware summarized Jensen Huang’s quote: 

“Governments understand that diversion is not allowed, and there’s no evidence of any AI chip diversion — recognize our data center GPUs are massive; these are massive systems. The Grace Blackwell system is nearly two tons, and so you’re not going to be shipping — you’re not going to be putting that in your pocket or your backpack anytime soon. And so, these systems are fairly easy to keep track of... but the important thing is that the countries and the companies that we sell to recognize that diversion is not allowed, and everybody would like to continue to buy NVIDIA technology, and so they very well monitor themselves very carefully and they’re quite careful about that.”

• Sources:
  • Bloomberg: NVIDIA CEO Says ‘No Evidence of Any AI Chip Diversion’
  • Tom’s Hardware: NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang says ‘There’s no evidence of any AI chip diversion’

May 21: At Computex 2025, NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang called the US export controls a “failure.” He said that NVIDIA’s market share in China has dropped from 95% to 50% due to the restrictions. The Guardian quoted Jensen Huang as saying: 

“The local companies are very, very talented and very determined, and the export control gave them the spirit, the energy and the government support to accelerate their development.” [...]

“I think, all in all, the export control was a failure.” [...]

“China has a vibrant technology ecosystem, and it’s very important to realise that China has 50% of the world’s AI researchers, and China is incredibly good at software.”

• Sources: 
  • CNBC: Jensen Huang says U.S. chip restrictions have cut NVIDIA’s China market share nearly in half
  • The Guardian: US chip export controls are a ‘failure’ because they spur Chinese development, NVIDIA boss says
  • The New York Times: NVIDIA’s Chief Says U.S. Chip Controls on China Have Backfired

May 27: Reuters reported that NVIDIA plans to launch a new, cheaper Blackwell-based GPU for the China market to comply with US export rules. 

• NVIDIA statement: 

• "Until we settle on a new product design and receive approval from the U.S. government, we are effectively foreclosed from China's $50 billion data center market." - NVIDIA to Reuters

• Sources: 
  • Reuters: Exclusive: NVIDIA to launch cheaper Blackwell AI chip for China after US export curbs, sources say
  • SiliconANGLE: Report: NVIDIA racing to develop new, scaled-down Blackwell GPUs for China

May 28: During NVIDIA’s quarterly earnings, CEO Jensen Huang said the company was writing off unsold H20 inventory due to export controls. VentureBeat posted Jensen Huang’s quote from earnings: 

“Let me share my perspective on some topics we’re frequently asked on export control. China is one of the world’s largest AI markets and a springboard to global success with half of the world’s AI researchers based there. The platform that wins China is positioned to lead globally today. However, the $50 billion China market is effectively closed to U.S. industry. The H20 export ban ended our Hopper data center business in China. We cannot produce Hopper further to comply. As a result, we are taking a multibillion-dollar write-off on inventory that cannot be sold or repurposed. We are exploring limited ways to compete, but hopper is no longer an option.”

• Sources:
  • VentureBeat: NVIDIA CEO takes a shot at U.S. policy cutting off AI chip sales to China
  • PC Gamer: NVIDIA’s Hopper GPUs are now dead to the Chinese market after export controls that made the company take a 'multibillion-dollar write-off'

June 2025

June 12: NVIDIA’s CEO Jensen Huang told CNN the company will no longer include sales and revenue from China in its forecasts. In a response to a question from CNN about whether the US government would lift its export controls, Jensen Huang said: 

“I’m not counting on it but, if it happens, then it will be a great bonus. I’ve told all of our investors and shareholders that, going forward, our forecasts will not include the China market.” 

• Sources:
  • CNN: NVIDIA will stop including China in its forecasts amid US chip export controls, CEO says

June 18: Several media reported on rumors about NVIDIA preparing to launch a “RTX 5090 DD” for the China market. The new card would allegedly reduce the memory specifications compared to the RTX 5090D. 

• Sources: 
  • Tom’s Hardware: NVIDIA planning new RTX 5090 'DD' variant for China — 24GB card with tweaked GPU latest attempt to comply with strict export restrictions
  • WCCFTech: NVIDIA Preps GeForce RTX 5090 DD For China As Export-Compliant Model, Reportedly Features Blackwell GB202-240 GPU

June 23: Reuters reported that DeepSeek is supporting China’s military and intelligence operations, based on an interview with a senior US State Department official. The official said DeepSeek was using “shell companies” in Southeast Asia to circumvent export restrictions. 

Reuters included comments from NVIDIA: 

“‘We do not support parties that have violated U.S. export controls or are on the U.S. entity lists,’ an NVIDIA spokesman said in a prepared statement, adding that ‘with the current export controls, we are effectively out of the China data center market, which is now served only by competitors such as Huawei.’” [...]

“‘Our review indicates that DeepSeek used lawfully acquired H800 products, not H100,’ an NVIDIA spokesman said, responding to a Reuters query about DeepSeek's alleged usage of H100 chips.” 

DeepSeek did not respond to an inquiry from Reuters. 

• Sources:
  • Reuters: Exclusive: DeepSeek aids China's military and evaded export controls, US official says
  • Asia Times: DeepSeek gets NVIDIA’s high-end GPUs via Singapore: US official

June 26: The Information reported that DeepSeek’s next AI model has been delayed due to a shortage of NVIDIA AI GPUs in China. 

• Sources:
  • The Information: DeepSeek’s Progress Stalled by U.S. Export Controls
  • Tom’s Hardware: AI disruptor DeepSeek's next-gen model delayed by NVIDIA GPU export restrictions to China — short supply of AI GPUs hinders development

July 2025

July 4: Bloomberg reported the US Department of Commerce is preparing a new export controls rule that would restrict the export of AI chips to Malaysia and Thailand. The rule’s goal would be to reduce AI chip smuggling to China. Based on its sources, Bloomberg said the export controls rule had not yet been finalized.  

• Sources: 
  • Bloomberg: US Plans AI Chip Curbs on Malaysia, Thailand Over China Concerns

July 10: Bloomberg reported that NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang met with US President Donald Trump at the White House before traveling overseas to China. NVIDIA did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Reuters. 

• Sources: 
  • Bloomberg: NVIDIA’s Jensen Huang Meets with Trump Ahead of CEO’s China Trip
  • Reuters: NVIDIA CEO Huang to meet Trump before China trip, source says
  • CNBC: Trump hosts Jensen Huang at White House as NVIDIA tops $4 trillion market cap

July 11: In a public letter, a bipartisan group of US senators requested NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang to avoid meeting with Chinese companies in an upcoming China trip that violate US laws or develop military applications that could undermine national security. 

Reuters included a response from NVIDIA about the senators’ letter: 

“An NVIDIA spokesperson said, ‘American wins’ when its technology sets ‘the global standard,’ and that China has one of the largest bodies of software developers in the world. AI software ‘should run best on the U.S. technology stack, encouraging nations worldwide to choose America,’ the spokesperson said.” 

• Sources: 
  • United States Senate letter to Jensen Huang
  • The Hill: Bipartisan senators press NVIDIA CEO over China trip
  • Reuters: US senators warn NVIDIA CEO about upcoming China trip
  • International Business Times: NVIDIA CEO Huang to Face Chinese Officials Over AI Export Curbs Just as Company Touches $4 Trillion Milestone

July 14: NVIDIA said it would soon resume sales of the H20 for customers in China. NVIDIA provided the following update in a blog post: 

“[Jensen] Huang also provided an update to customers, noting that NVIDIA is filing applications to sell the NVIDIA H20 GPU again. The U.S. government has assured NVIDIA that licenses will be granted, and NVIDIA hopes to start deliveries soon.”

The White House did not respond to a request for comment from CNN.

• Sources: 
  • NVIDIA Blog: NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang Promotes AI in Washington, DC and China
  • CNN: NVIDIA says it will restart sales of a key AI chip to China, in a reversal of US restrictions
  • Reuters: Chinese firms rush to buy NVIDIA AI chips as sales set to resume
  • Associated Press: NVIDIA to resume sales of highly desired AI computer chips to China

The Malaysian government began requiring trade permits for all high-performance AI chips acquired from the United States. In a statement, the Malaysian government said: 

“The Ministry of Investment, Trade and Industry (MITI) would like to announce that, effective immediately, all exports, tranships and transits of high-performance AI chips of US origin are subject to a Strategic Trade Permit. These powers are provided for under Section 12 of the Strategic Trade Act 2010 (STA 2010), a Catch-All Control provision which requires individuals or companies to notify the relevant authority at least 30 days before exporting, transhipping, or bringing in transit any item not expressly listed in the Strategic Items List (SIL), if the individual or company knows or have reasonable grounds to suspect the item will be misused, or used for a restricted activity.

This initiative serves to close regulatory gaps while Malaysia undertakes further review on the inclusion of high-performance AI chips of US origin into the SIL of the STA 2010. Malaysia stands firm against any attempt to circumvent export controls or engage in illicit trade activities by any individual or company, who will face strict legal action if found violating the STA 2010 or related laws.”

• Sources: 
  • Malaysia Government Release
  • Reuters: Malaysia says trade permit required for AI chips of U.S. origin
  • Bloomberg: Malaysia Controls AI Chip Exports As US Targets China Smuggling

July 15: DigiTimes reported that NVIDIA is preparing a new AI GPU for the China market, the RTX 6000D. DigiTimes claimed the card would become available in the third quarter of 2025, according to its sources in the supply chain. 

• Sources: 
  • DigiTimes: Exclusive: Jensen Huang's third visit to China in 2025; RTX 6000D aims for two million shipments
  • Tom’s Hardware: NVIDIA reportedly preparing RTX 6000D for Chinese market to comply with U.S. export controls — fabricated on TSMC N4, featuring GDDR7 memory capable of delivering 1,100 GB/s of bidirectional bandwidth

July 24: The Financial Times reported that more than $1B worth of NVIDIA’s AI chips had been smuggled to China. In response, NVIDIA said that building datacenters with “smuggled products” was a “losing proposition.” 

• NVIDIA statement: 

• “Trying to cobble together datacenters from smuggled products is a losing proposition, both technically and economically. Datacenters require service and support, which we provide only to authorized NVIDIA products.” - NVIDIA to CNBC

• Sources:
  • Financial Times: NVIDIA AI chips worth $1bn smuggled to China after Trump export controls
  • CNBC: NVIDIA addresses AI chip smuggling, says bootleg data centers are a ‘losing proposition’

July 28: The Financial Times reported that the US Commerce Department was not going to make “tough moves” to tighten export controls to China. According to the report, the US government would try to secure a better trade deal with China ahead of negotiations in Stockholm.

The Washington Post reported that several congressional members had warned the US administration against loosening its export controls for AI GPUs. NVIDIA and the US Commerce Department did reply to requests for comment to The Washington Post.

Several national security experts voiced their concern by sending a letter to the US Commerce Department. 

• Sources: 
  • Financial Times: Donald Trump freezes export controls to secure trade deal with China
  • The Washington Post: Trump’s retreat on China chip ban triggers policy spat
  • Tom’s Hardware: Trump freeze on export restrictions to China reportedly in aid of trade talks — White House seeking face-to-face with Xi Jinping as dissenters warn H20 reversal is a dangerous mis-step

July 29: Reuters reported that NVIDIA had ordered 300,000 more H20 chips from TSMC due to strong demand from its customers in China. Several weeks prior, NVIDIA said it would resume sales of the H20 chip to China.

NVIDIA declined to comment to Reuters.

• Sources: 
  • Reuters: Exclusive: NVIDIA orders 300,000 H20 chips from TSMC due to robust China demand, sources say
    • Repost in MSN
• Hot Hardware: TSMC Secures 300,000 H20 AI Chip Order As NVIDIA Boosts Supply To China

July 31: The New York Times reported that Chinese government officials asked NVIDIA for information about security risks associated with its H20 chip. NVIDIA denied having “backdoors” in its chips. 

• NVIDIA statement: 

• “Cybersecurity is critically important to us. NVIDIA does not have ‘backdoors’ in our chips that would give anyone a remote way to access or control them.” - NVIDIA to CNBC

• Sources: 

• The New York Times: China Summons NVIDIA Over ‘Backdoor Security’ Risks of A.I. Chips
• CNBC: NVIDIA denies its China-bound H20 AI chips have ‘backdoors’ after Beijing’s security concerns
• Reuters: NVIDIA says its chips have no 'backdoors' after China flags H20 security concerns
• Associated Press: China summons NVIDIA over ‘backdoor safety risks’ in H20 chips

August 2025

August 4: A government official told Bloomberg the United States is exploring adding location trackers for AI chips. Bloomberg quoted the official as saying, “There is discussion about potentially the types of software or physical changes you could make to the chips themselves to do better location-tracking.”

• Sources: 
  • Bloomberg: US Explores Location Trackers for AI Chips, Official Says
  • The Register: Uncle Sam floats tracking tech to keep AI chips out of China

August 5: In a blog post, NVIDIA said that its GPU products do not have backdoors or kill switches. 

• Sources: 
  • NVIDIA Blog: No Backdoors. No Kill Switches. No Spyware.
  • CNBC: NVIDIA says its AI chips don’t have a ‘kill switch’ after Chinese accusation

The US Department of Justice announced it had arrested two people in California for smuggling high-end GPUs to China that purportedly amount to “tens of millions of dollars’ worth of sensitive microchips used in artificial intelligence (AI) applications.” The BBC reported that court documents say the shipments included the NVIDIA H100 and RTX 4090. 

• NVIDIA statement:

• “This case demonstrates that smuggling is a nonstarter. We primarily sell our products to well-known partners, including OEMs, who help us ensure that all sales comply with U.S. export control rules. Even relatively small exporters and shipments are subject to thorough review and scrutiny, and any diverted products would have no service, support, or updates.” - NVIDIA to TechCrunch

• Sources: 
  • Department of Justice release
  • Bloomberg: US Charges Chinese Nationals With NVIDIA Chips Export Breach
  • Reuters: Two Chinese nationals in California accused of illegally shipping NVIDIA AI chips to China
  • New York Post: Chinese nationals living in US charged with smuggling millions worth of NVIDIA’s powerful AI chips to Beijing
  • TechCrunch: Two arrested for smuggling AI chips to China; NVIDIA says no to kill switches
  • BBC: Chinese nationals charged with exporting NVIDIA AI chips to China

August 10: The Financial Times reported that NVIDIA would give the US government 15% of its revenue from H20 chip sales from customers in China. The deal is reportedly part of an agreement that would allow NVIDIA to acquire export licenses from the Commerce Department in order to sell the H20 chip in China. AMD would be subject to the same rules for the MI308. 

• NVIDIA statement: 

• “We follow rules the U.S. government sets for our participation in worldwide markets. While we haven’t shipped H20 to China for months, we hope export control rules will let America compete in China and worldwide. America cannot repeat 5G and lose telecommunication leadership. America’s AI tech stack can be the world’s standard if we race.” - NVIDIA to the Associated Press

• Sources:
  • Financial Times: NVIDIA and AMD to pay 15% of China chip sale revenues to US government
  • The Associated Press: NVIDIA and AMD to pay 15% of China chip sale revenue to US government in an unusual agreement
  • The New York Times: U.S. Government to Take Cut of NVIDIA and AMD A.I. Chip Sales to China
  • BBC: NVIDIA and AMD to pay 15% of China chip sales to US

August 11: According to a report in Bloomberg, US President Trump said he was open to allowing NVIDIA to sell a modified Blackwell chip for the China market. The US President also said that he has negotiated with NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang about the deal to allow H20 sales in China. 

• Sources:
  • Bloomberg: Trump Open to NVIDIA Selling Scaled-Back Blackwell Chip to China
  • The Register: Trump seeing green as he weighs deal to allow NVIDIA Blackwell GPU sales to China
  • NPR: Trump says NVIDIA will hand the U.S. 15% of its H20 chip sales to China
  • Reuters: Trump opens door to sales of version of NVIDIA’s next-gen AI chips in China
    • Repost in MSN

August 12: Bloomberg reported that Chinese officials had “urged local companies” to avoid purchasing and using NVIDIA’s H20 chip, especially for national security and government work. According to Bloomberg, China questioned companies whether they had found security problems with NVIDIA’s chips.  

Bloomberg included commentary from NVIDIA: 

“AMD declined to comment, while NVIDIA said in a statement that ‘the H20 is not a military product or for government infrastructure.’ China has ample supplies of domestic chips, NVIDIA said, and ‘won’t and never has relied on American chips for government operations.’

• Sources:
  • Bloomberg: China Urges Firms Not to Use NVIDIA H20 Chips In New Guidance
  • Reuters: China cautions tech firms over NVIDIA H20 AI chip purchases, sources say

CNBC reported that the Trump Administration was still working on the details for how to implement the 15% export tax on NVIDIA and AMD for selling certain chips to China. 

• NVIDIA statement:

• “We follow rules the U.S. government sets for our participation in worldwide markets.” - NVIDIA to CNBC

• Sources:
  • CNBC: White House says it’s working out legality of NVIDIA and AMD China chip deals
  • Tom’s Hardware: White House confirms it's still figuring out the legality of the revenue-sharing NVIDIA and AMD deal for China GPU sales — 'The legality of it, the mechanics of it, is still being ironed out'

August 13: Reuters reported that US officials have covertly placed “location-tracking devices” in targeted shipments with advanced chips in an effort to catch chip smuggling to China. Unnamed sources told Reuters that the tracking devices had been placed in shipments of OEM servers, including from Dell and Supermicro. 

NVIDIA declined to comment to Reuters. 

• Sources: 
  • Reuters: Exclusive: US embeds trackers in AI chip shipments to catch diversions to China, sources say
  • Tom’s Hardware: U.S. authorities allegedly placed secret tracking devices in AI chip shipments to China — report claims targeted shipments from Dell and Super Micro containing NVIDIA and AMD chips had trackers in packaging and servers themselves

TweakTown: US authorities secretly place location tracking devices in targeted AI chip shipments to China

We’ve rounded up the best PC cases we saw at Computex 2025

The Highlights

• Thermalright is known for making a ton of cheap coolers and its trying that strategy with cases, starting with a $45 one
• SilverStone’s FLP02 is a retro-themed case that features 5.25” bay covers that resemble floppy drives
• Cooler Master showed off its MF cases, which offer a modular approach to case design
• Hyte’x X50 is the company’s most mechanically complicated product to manufacture to-date
• Lian Li is embedding fans into its case’s glass front panels

Table of Contents

• AutoTOC

Intro

During our Computex 2025 trip, we saw numerous case announcements. In this story, we’ve rounded up the most promising cases.

The showstopper this year was Silverstone’s FLP02, which is a retro-themed PC case with a functioning real turbo button, molded 5 and a ¼-inch drive bay covers that resemble floppies, and a throwback look with modern compatibility.    
Corsair also made bold moves. It had a case that split its radiator chamber into its own isolated compartment.

Thermalright is also threatening the case industry the same way it did to the cooler industry by bringing a $45 MicroATX case to the market.

Editor's note: This was originally published on June 1, 2025 as a video. This content has been adapted to written format for this article and is unchanged from the original publication.

Credits

Host, Writing, Editing

Steve Burke

Camera, Editing

Mike Gaglione

Camera

Vitalii Makhnovets

Editing

Tim Phetdara
Andrew Coleman

Writing, Web Editing

Jimmy Thang

Cooler Master is back on the scene, too, introducing its MF series of cases.  

HAVN has the BF360, which couples a heavy focus on fan design and case-thermal engineering to content with Hyte’s X50, for what each company hopes will be the top performing case on thermal charts. 

This story will re-cap some of the best cases that we think are coming out over the next few months. We’ll, of course, have to review these cases as they launch, which means we’ll have a busy year with cases. We also plan on running a story on the best cases of 2025 at the end of the year, which will include all of our test data. For now, we’re looking at the best cases from Computex 2025. 

Thermalright TR M10

Thermalright is best known for making a ton of cheap coolers. The company is applying that strategy to their first case, which they announced at Computex. Thermalright revealed its TR M10 MicroATX case, which will start at $45 and scale up to $65 for a model that includes an LCD and a digital display. Neither variant will include fans. 

The case has good cable management depth and simple cable-management passthroughs without BTF support. It also has heavily ventilated panels everywhere. The TR M10 fits 3x120mm side-mounted fans for intake and can technically fit fans at the top of the power-supply shroud. This is made somewhat more viable, although distance is a challenge, by all of the holes punched through the floor of the case and even the drive cages.

The more expensive $65 variant will feature an RGB digital display at the front that’s capable of spitting out basic numbers or seven-segment text. Externally, the case is simple. Thermalright has punched holes everywhere including the company’s logo on the side panel. The case also has a glass front and side. 

Thermalright has added shiny plastic accents to the top and front. It's intended to look like brushed aluminum, though we don’t think it looks like that. The ventilation everywhere is at least promising for thermal performance at its price. 

If the company is able to apply its CPU cooler model to cases, it will be a major price disruption for the case industry. 

Silverstone

SilverStone FLP02

Up next: SilverStone’s FLP02 gets our next spot in this round-up. The retro-themed case is an actual real attempt at a modern computer case, not just some meme, while preserving aspects of cases from the late 80s and early 90s. Its clearest downside is limited cooling capabilities, with the clearest upside being the reason it has limitations in cooling: It’s true to the era while modernizing compatibility. The SilverStone FLP02 is a looks-first case, but not in the usual way. 

The case builds upon Silverstone’s FLP01 smaller form factor case, which was originally an April Fool’s joke, and deploys a functional retro theming: The front panel features 5.25” bay covers that resemble floppy drives and include functional levers for removal. The bays can be used as typical. Below these molded covers, there’s a functional I/O panel with a power switch and reset button, both controllable by the key lock which prevents accidental usage, which is more of a call-back to the old days. With the key in the unlocked position, the switches can be used as normal power/reset buttons. There’s also a Turbo Button, which controls fan speed. In theory, someone crafty could rewire it for use with something else. Above the stack of 5.25” bay covers is a covered set of modern USB and 3.5mm I/O for audio.

The box doesn’t have a ton of airflow. The bottom-front of the case has largely blocked-off intake and support for a fan below the drive cages is really the main place you’re bringing air in. Have no illusions: This will be a poor performer in our thermal benchmarking compared to other cases and that’s the trade-off they’ve chosen, so the objective would be to configure the build in a way where cooling can brute force past restrictive panels. The front panel supports two 120mm fans, depending on drive layout, the top supports 3x 120 or 2x 140 fans, the rear can fit a 120 or 140.

The top panel is also relatively low porosity while still allowing more air movement than the cases this is inspired by. The top can accommodate liquid cooling radiators, including the 360 shown installed. This is the type of case where you’d probably want to use a liquid cooler to help overcome limitations of airflow.

Internally, the tooling for the FLP02 is the same as SilverStone’s existing series of SETA Q1, H1, and D1 series cases. 

SilverStone expects to sell the case for 200 EUR. US pricing was in flux due to variable tariffs, with an expectation of $220 USD pricing.

LD05

The company also had more contemporary cases, like the LD05 fishtank case. The LD05 has heavily ventilated lower panels and a ventilated side panel to get air into the system. This is more of a traditional design by today’s standards. SilverStone plans to ship it with 3x 120 ARGB fans included and wants to hit $100, depending on tariffs, for a budget-focused airflow case with the glass look to it.

Cooler Master

Cooler Master MF Cases

Cooler Master’s back in it this year. The company had a ton of cases. We’ll focus on the modularity offered by the MF series and will recap the others at the end of the section.

For the MF series, which we’ve decided means “Motherf*ckin,” Cooler Master has the MF600, MF500, and MF400 cases as pre-configured options of an otherwise totally modular approach to case design. The MF series will use a set of 8 corners and 12 columns, meaning that each case starts as a box of parts that can get screwed together into a case. These columns and corners will couple with a rails system internally to build the motherboard tray, allowing the cases to be reconfigured into nearly any layout. That includes inverted, mirrored or flipped, standard ATX, and also different form factors altogether.

Initially, Cooler Master plans to sell these as pre-configured, fully assembled cases by using the modular parts. In the future, the company wants to offer the ability for users to customize the build on a web interface, at which point the build instructions would go to Cooler Master’s new Los Angeles-based assembly team in the US.

As for what’s being sold sometime this year, the MF400 through 600 will be varying sizes and layouts. 

The MF600 is the largest of these, with 3x 140 fans and 1x 120 fan included. Price target is $200, tariffs notwithstanding. The MF600 has an all aluminum look to it, though uses a mix of materials for the chassis. Externally, Cooler Master has done well to blend the columns, corners, and panels to create something that has a less-gamer aesthetic to it. The front-to-back flow design is classic and should work well. Internally, the motherboard tray is basically a giant hole with some rails and slats across for support. This means a weaker tray structurally, but one which is more versatile (as shown in the reconfiguration with different orientations).

The pre-configured MF500 should be $165 and will have 2x 200mm fans and 1x 120mm fan, a much finer mesh front, and I/O on the bottom of the front panel. Going with the 2x 200s is a classic Cooler Master move that we’re looking forward to testing. 

The MF400 is micro-ATX, and so it’s smaller, with a lower price target at $150 for the same 2x 200 and 1x 120 configuration. It still uses 8 corners and 12 columns.

Cooler Master also debuted its new Cosmos cases, including a special edition variation with the NVIDIA DGX style front panel and another with ductwork for air cooling. We are currently critical of the special edition’s liquid cooling configuration and question how well it’ll work, though the size of the radiator should brute force performance (since it’s using 4x 180mm fans). It’s just that they’re blowing straight into a motherboard and wall. 

The company also showcased its “Elite” series of budget cases, featuring a tragedy of naming that doesn’t have much rhyme or reason for the model numbers. 

It also had a new Q500 Core following the Q500 series styling. The Q500 Core is supposed to be $60 to $70 and is made entirely of steel. It’ll include 3D print source files for modifications and can fit up to a 360mm radiator, but it’s not our focus today.

Hyte

Hyte X50

Hyte showcased its new X50 case, which is its most mechanically complicated product to manufacture to-date. The X50 uses a bubbly external look while attempting to be the highest-performing case on benchmark charts. Hyte uses a front panel that’s perforated all the way around the apex of the turn, leaving only a small strip at the mounting point for rigidity. The case also has louvered slats at the back, including for the PCIe slots, which add mechanical and manufacturing complexity but strengthen the chassis structure while improving airflow performance. Hyte noted that its intent, which we’ll test in our review, is to help project air away from the system, highlighting that there’s always focus on reducing intake impedance but noting that exhaust impedance is similarly important.

The louvered approach means that PCIe slot covers keep all of their original steel (rather than being removed like a typical slot cover), but the gaps are created by punching the steel outward and twisting at the joint. This keeps rigidity while theoretically reducing exhaust impedance.

The case is almost entirely steel. Internally, the power supply shroud is steel, the motherboard tray (as usual) is steel, and the walls are mostly steel. The floor and some connecting pieces are plastic, but its presence is overall mitigated.

Hyte has a few styles of feet for the X50, including what the company refers to as “paws” (shown as the rounded feet) on some color models, with bars for models like the white case.

The case can have either a laminated so-called “acoustic glass” side panel or a full-on mesh panel that’s focused on cooling performance. 

The top-mounted PSU shroud will help by enabling more bottom intake by getting the PSU out of the way, in addition to using the power supply as another fan to help guide air through the system. With a fully mesh panel, this should also help bring air into the computer from outside.

We’ll see how the case does in our review, but from a manufacturing and engineering standpoint, it already gets credit for overcoming challenges with going as mesh-heavy as the case is. You can learn more in our interview with Product Director Rob Teller in the X50 coverage from Computex. We spend a lot of time talking about Hyte’s tens of thousands of dollars of failed samples, where the company walked us through all the trial-and-error of front panels before it finally figured out how to manufacture the panel the company wanted. The case should be priced for $120 with mesh and $150 with glass pre-tariff.

Lian Li

Lian Li had a relatively large breakthrough this year with its ongoing attempts to figure out how to embed fans in glass front panels. This has historically been challenging since it results in lower yields and broken glass, or in the worst case, just less surface area available for intake since a larger border has to remain for structural reasons.

The Lian Li Lancool 217 Infinity and Lancool 4 cases both make use of this new approach to fans-in-glass, effectively mixing mesh grates in front of the fans with the tempered glass look.

The Lancool 217 Infinity is a Lancool 217 (check out our review here) including all of the tooling for the case internals. The only exception where tooling changed was to the front panel, enabling the infinity mirror effect with LEDs and the support for mounting the glass panel. The only other change is to IO, where Lian Li made it optionally mountable to the top or bottom side. The case will ship with 2x 170mm front fans in the glass and one rear-mounted fan. It should ship at $120.

The Lancool 4 is more complicated and is entirely new tooling. The case still uses the 4-door approach that the Lancool series has become known for, so the left side features a large sheet of glass resting on top of a mesh plate that opens separately. The mesh plate allows intake through fans mounted in the bottom of the case (or just the GPU), with lower panel side mounting available for 120mm fans. The panels open with a button release mechanism to allow them to separately lock. The right side also features glass and steel, with a clear line of sight through the other side of the front of the case. A cable cover door can be screwed down to hide the cable management.

A pogo pin setup allows the front panel to transfer power without use of a cable, followed by a mix of painted glass and plastic covers to hide cables daisy chaining the fans. Lian Li is considering including 3x 140x30mm front fans and 3x 120x25 side fans, with a pricing target at $130 including all 6 of these fans. This would be extremely competitive if they can do it. Lian Li has committed on camera with us to a 5-year warranty for the fans.

Lian Li had a few honorable mentions at the show: Its O11 Mini V2 made an appearance and manages to cram an ATX power supply into the case by punching out space in the side panel. The Mini V2 should be $90 without fans and $100 with 5x 120 fans. The Dan Case B4 was also an interesting showing, mostly for its ability to attach feet and switch to a much higher volume vertical orientation. It makes use of the space provided by the feet by also including a radiator extension chamber to support a 360mm radiator on the side. More interestingly to us, the Vector 100 and Vector 100 Mini cases are extremely cheap. The Vector 100 Mini micro-ATX case is intended to sell for $45 without fans, making it a direct competitor to Thermalright’s new mATX case. 

Antec x Noctua

Antec and Noctua are up next in a collaboration. The companies are working together to manufacture an alternative to the Antec Flux Pro except with Noctua fans. The Flux Pro was already a chart-topper in our case benchmarks and reviews and has been a high performer, so Antec isn’t changing much beyond colors and what fans are included.

The companies will do a like-for-like swap of 6 Noctua fans in place of the 6 Antec fans, switching to 4x 140mm NF-A14 G2 fans and 2x 120mm NF-A12 G2 fans for the shroud top. 

The case price is still being finalized, but it’ll be expensive. We’d expect to see this fall in the range of the $300s to $400s somewhere, as the case itself is typically around $180 before the Noctua fans.

Most of the time was spent on coloring the brown panels and grommets to match the fans as closely as possible.

Antec also had some other stuff, like the company’s new Antec 900, which is based on the case of the same name from decades ago.

The case had 2 variants. One of them included 2x200mm Noctua fans at the front. 

HAVN BF360

We toured the HAVN testing lab in Taiwan to look at the company’s new BF360 case, following-up the HS420 that we previously reviewed overall positively. In addition to a 40+ page presentation from its thermal engineer detailing all the various testing performed to prepare the new case and fans for launch, we also got a look at the new BF360 and its fans. We appreciated the time the company spent to demonstrate all of its testing and engineering, as most companies don’t make thermal engineers readily available.

HAVN’s new BF360 aims to be highly competitive for case thermals and has dedicated a significant amount of that toward fine-tuning the fans. We’ll see how it does in testing later in the year, of course. The case will use 2x 180mm fans at 40mm thickness in the front, helping with higher static pressure performance. In testing, HAVN experimented with positioning these front fans higher versus lower on the front panel, settling to mostly bias them slightly up in the case. This should help push more air straight into the GPU, which gets further tuning from a “ramp” shaped at the front of the PSU shroud. HAVN tested numerous shroud ramp types and shapes, finding ultimately that a wide, relatively modestly angled ramp provided the best performance with the fewest acoustic trade-offs.

The panels are heavy-duty and designed with similar attention to detail as the HS420. The case has tuned placement of the structural struts in the panels to reduce impedance to flow, with wide enough top mounting to support more 180mm fans without additional fan mount rail obstructions if going the larger route. 

HAVN has brought over smaller attention to detail embellishments on this case from the HS 420, including molded text in the plastic cable routing channels to guide novice users to potentially optimal routing pathways. For looks, HAVN is going for white and black, but with a faked stone-looking front panel. Pulling that front panel reveals the steel plate above the top 180mm fan, serving to prevent re-circulation and force air intake through the ideal channels.

For the fans, HAVN experimented with fans up to 52mm thick, but ultimately settled on 40mm thick options for a balance of thickness and performance. All of HAVN’s new fans use larger bearings, which it says helps to stabilize the blade during rotation. HAVN also has notched the leading edge of the blades to help capture and force air through the blades, although we’d need to see A/B testing to know how much that really matters.

Corsair

Corsair’s Computex showing this year was much stronger than some of its prior years. The company seems to be pushing hard after the relatively good reception of its FRAME 4000D cases and is expanding the scope of the FRAME series, but also making some radical cooling changes to its new cases.

Corsair showed its new FRAME 5000D with LCD panel, its Air 5400 with effectively three chambers that completely isolate front radiator air from the rest of the system, and it had a prototype FRAME 4000D with a power board from Singularity PCs.

The FRAME 5000D is a larger 4000D and we’ll likely test it soon enough, so we’ll skip that one and focus on the most unique of these.

The Corsair Air 5400 uses a separate chamber for a front-mounted radiator, which involves running the tubes across effectively shop brush bristles for tube routing. This means that the radiator, likely used for the CPU cooler, would pull air in externally and then propel it out of the case immediately by following an interior curved wall. The air never gets into the main chamber, which means it doesn’t increase local ambient temperature. Likewise, as a downside, this means less airflow over ignored components like the VRM or system memory. 

The bottom of the case uses a duct to guide air straight in from bottom intake, then points it straight at the GPU. Corsair claims that its A/B testing of this ductwork creates about a 1-2 degree improvement in GPU thermals versus testing without it. Likewise, there’s another top-mounted duct that could encase top fans to provide some cooling to the rest of the motherboard, although flow-through cooling from a GPU would also push air into the memory. It’ll be warmed, but that’s better than no airflow.

The rear can technically fit a 120mm fan with an adapter, but there’s no real reason to mount one. It’ll blow nearly half the air straight into a curved glass wall, potentially causing noise issues but definitely limiting thermal benefits.

Overall, the case is a riskier attempt at a new design that we don’t often see from Corsair. We’re looking forward to thermal testing on it.

The FRAME 4000D Prototype is also worth showing here: The power board at the back doesn’t provide any logging functionality (like you might find with an Elmor Labs Benchtable), but does offer cable routing by funneling all the connectors through a rear-mounted PCB. 

Like everyone else, they had other cases present, such as an open frame case, but we’ll point you toward our Computex news coverage for that.

Thermaltake

Thermaltake also had a lot at the show. For cases, its IX700 enclosure was being used in an immersion cooling system, which was mostly just cool to see. 

The more consumer-focused cases for our audience would include the View 390 Air, the TR200, and the TR300.

The TR200 and TR300 introduce larger versions of the mini-ITX TR100, just with micro-ATX support in one and ATX support in the other. Micro-ATX seems to be taking off more this year in the case market.

The View 390 Air uses a curved tempered glass panel around the top and side, with options for up to 200mm fans at the front. Thermaltake hasn’t yet finalized the stock fan configuration, but has finalized the price: It’s trying to hit $150 pre-tariff and the company thinks it can include 2 fans at that price. They mentioned to us options of either 2x 200s at the front or 2x 120s at the back or side. We’d favor the 2x 200s, mostly because users with liquid coolers will already be getting 120s, and 120s are also more common just in bins of parts from seasoned PC builders.

The case can fit fans along the right side panel as well, with 2x 120 rear exhaust fans available optionally at the back. Two can fit here because the optional screen location, found above the motherboard tray, makes the case taller and provides the clearance for a second fan.

The front panel design uses a brick pattern with a high porosity, which might actually make this fairly competitive thermally, depending on the fan configuration.

Phanteks

Phanteks was also present at the show. Phanteks had the budget-focused G370A ATX case and its XT M3 micro-ATX case. The G370A makes compromises to hit a price target of $60 while including 3x 120 RGB M25 fans. Phanteks described it as a smaller version of the G400 case. The case can fit SSI-EEB boards, though they’d block all the cable management routing aside from the highest pass-throughs, and is otherwise about as standard and plain as a case can be. The goal is price on this one.

You can learn more about the XT M3 in our Phanteks Computex coverage.

Tryx

Tryx was also present at Computex. The new Flova case is currently a concept, but Tryx is experimenting with trying to get a crossflow fan integrated with axial fans in the case. The idea would be to shove a crossflow (or transverse) fan in the space that could traditionally be used for larger front fans, which would then provide a more even, laminar flow along the top edge of the GPU and nearest the glass. Crossflow fans aren’t necessarily the best at this type of cooling, but could definitely be tuned to be competitive with enough research and care. We saw it work in the Meshless AIO mini-ITX case previously.

For now, this is an experiment that we’re excited about because we want to test something different. We have an animation showing how these work in our Meshless AIO case video review, in case you want to learn more of the science.

Montech

As for Montech, the company had a ton of cases present and will be launching them over the next year or so, with some out in Q2 2026.

For this article, we’ll just keep it short and focus on the cheapest cases from Montech that are coming out the soonest, as the others are all still being finalized:

The X5 and X5M are Montech’s newest budget-focused cases. The case is supposed to be $60 for the micro-ATX X5M and $70-$75 on the X5 ATX case. These cases use a wavy, ventilated mesh front panel. The X5 intends to include 3x 140 fans and 1x 120 stock, with an optional 2x 120 fans for the top of the shroud (which would have limited benefit due to the panel styling). The $60 X5M will include 4x 120 fans.

In Win

In Win’s cases were mostly too early in development to get into detail on. The company didn’t have prices or fan configurations ready, so we’ll skip all of those until they’re closer to ready. 

The one we can close on though is In Win’s Chronomancy, which was its 40-year anniversary case design. It’s not really meant to be sold. They expect to make around 40 units, fittingly, but it’s just kind of cool.

The case uses an IR wand with gestures to open the exterior aluminum shell, close it, open the other chamber, or adjust the volume level of various music tracks baked into the case with its included speaker. Manufacturing the case is a nightmare, using a large and thick sheet of acrylic that gets laser engraved and then slowly bent. The aluminum panels also require bending, with the front using a stainless steel and the base using large aluminum pillars.

Inside, the Chronomancy does actually hold a computer, but it’s obviously secondary to the design.

We take a look at ID-Cooling’s new air and liquid coolers, which aim to balance quality and value with their designs

The Highlights

• ID-Cooling’s A720 AD and A720 TD represent the company’s attempt to fix its acoustic problems while being affordable
• ID Cooling has a range of liquid coolers from low-end to high-end starting around $80 to $100 for 360mm coolers
• The company’s SL360 V2 Plus cooler interestingly uses a larger radiator than it does fans

Table of Contents

• AutoTOC

Intro

We visited ID-Cooling’s booth at Computex 2025 and the company showed off scented paste…and a bunch of coolers.

Looking at the company’s product at the trade show, we found ID-Cooling’s products to be more expensive than Thermalright's, but they’re cheaper than others in the market. This places them somewhere in the middle but the company is trying to keep quality levels in focus for some of their designs.

Editor's note: This was originally published on May 24, 2025 as a video. This content has been adapted to written format for this article and is unchanged from the original publication.

Credits

Host

Steve Burke

Camera, Video Editing

Mike Gaglione
Vitalii Makhnovets

Writing, Web Editing

Jimmy Thang

A720 AD 

ID-Cooling has updated its A720. It’s calling it the A720 AD and it’s targeting the higher-end market but still trying to be affordable at around $70. It represents a serious overhaul from the A720 that we’ve tested before, which was one of the top performers for its price. It was competitive with Noctua and was cheaper. The updated A720 now has pogo pins to deliver power to the fan. This means the fan doesn’t have a cable. 

ID-Cooling has also soldered the finstack to the heatpipes. This is something a couple companies are doing now. Some of them claim that this offers no performance improvement whereas others do claim a performance uplift. ID-Cooling says that, in a like-for-like scenario comparing the old A720 with the new one, the company is seeing about a 2 degree improvement at 280 watts. 

The A720 AD uses PBT fans. The most expensive fans typically use LCP, which uses a liquid crystal material in the middle for the blades. Sometimes they’ll do LCP for the inner and the outer part of the fan. This is what Noctua has done for its super expensive fans where the company is trying to get the tip-to-frame clearance as small as possible, hitting clearance numbers like .6mm or .8mm. This low of a clearance requires LCP or metal. ID-Cooling is using PBT, which helps with the price. The company tells us it’s supposed to be 30% fiberglass reinforced, which helps maintain the rigidity as the fan blades stretch towards the inner walls of the frame over time. 

620 AD

We tested ID-Cooling’s 620 in the past as well. It competed pretty closely with ID-Cooling’s older AK620, but the company showed off its new 620 AD. Like the A720 AD, the company is soldering the fin stack to the heatpipes so there’s some improvement from that and it also moves to a newer fan design. 

We asked ID-Cooling what is the biggest thing it’s trying to change with its revised coolers, and the company told us acoustics is the number 1 complaint it got. So the company has reshaped its blades to feature a more gradual curve to mitigate this issue. ID-Cooling has also changed the blade angle at the hub. We aim to test all of this as soon as it becomes available. It will be $55 and the company hasn’t announced a release date yet. We imagine it might come out around Q4. 

The 620AD offers 3 different levels for the RAM clearance on the front, which can be adjusted and clipped in. 

The outside fan is 28mm and the inside fan is 30mm. This allows the cooler to maintain a higher static pressure through the fin stack, especially with the dual-tower fin stacks. 

410 TD 

ID-Cooling already has its 410 series of coolers, but the company showed off its 410 TD at Computex. The TD stands for temperature display. This does increase the price a little and will supposedly make the 410 TD a $35 cooler.  It has a temperature digital display that shows the CPU temp. The finstack thickness has also changed with the TD model moving to 50mm. The heatpipes are all using a composite powder and groove style. 

It’s also made changes to the cold plate where ID-Cooling is trying to push the 4 heatpipes as close together as possible. It’s not as impressive as we saw at Scythe’s Computex booth, where Scythe basically conjoined them all into one direct touch pad, but they’re getting closer.  

ID-Cooling Liquid Coolers

ID-Cooling showed off a bunch of liquid coolers at Computex 2025, though not as much as at Thermalright’s booth.

SL 360 V2+

One of the liquid coolers, the SL 360 V2+,  immediately jumped out at us because its fans are a different width than the radiator. That’s abnormal. The fans are 120mm but the radiator measures 140mm wide and it was done to incorporate LED lights on the sides of the fans. 

To compensate for the smaller fans, ID-Cooling has added 2 water channels. ID-Cooling also added more liquid. Between the tank and the extra channels, it ends up with 36g more liquid. The propylene glycol percentage is around 15%. The reason that’s important is that the more distilled water there is in the loops, the better the cooling performance is. Propylene glycol helps with things like cold storage, transit, freight, and cold temperatures, but going too high with that compromises performance. 15% is a little on the lower end, which is a good thing for performance. The fans are AP120s and are 28mm thick. ID-Cooling tells us the cooler will have a 6-year warranty and that the surface area has been increased by about 15% compared to traditional 360 setups due to the size change. The cooler is supposed to be $190 when it comes out. 

Unfortunately, the cooler doesn’t come with an offset bracket, and we’ve requested that ID-Cooling include one. 

ID-Cooling informed us that there’s a .5mm gap between the bottom of the microfins and the bottom of the cold plate. Lian Li is experimenting with .3. The downside to that, or  something smaller, is there could be more flex/more weakness. The upside is the performance will be better because you’re getting the liquid and the microfins closer to the heat source, which is the CPU IHS.  

FX 360 TD Black  

At $80, the FX 360 TD Black is the cheapest liquid cooler ID-Cooling showed off. It offers a 360mm cooling setup that’s 27mm thick, which is standard. 

With an LCD screen, it’s $90. And it’s a 240x240 screen. 

DX 360

The company’s DX 360 liquid cooler offers a thicker 38mm radiator. It’s supposed to be $120 with its 2.8-inch LCD screen. Launch is TBD. 

DX 360 GDL 

We saw a prototype of the DX 360 GDL at the show. The key thing about this liquid cooler is that it has very short 100mm-length tubes. They go out from the block and go right into the radiator. The downside to this design is that it forces you to put your radiator at the top, which can be problematic in a super-tall case. The benefit to this design is that it looks clean.

ID-Cooling has also added 82 grams of additional liquid by changing the radiator size, which is 130mm wide and has 120mm fans that are 27mm thick. 

Its cap is also magnetic and pulls right off, which exposes the top of the tubes and the rest of the cooler’s block.

We take a look at Thermaltake’s full immersion cooling setup and several new cases that include the View 390 Air, TR200, TR300, and more

The Highlights

• Thermaltake’s full immersion cooling setup uses liquid and comically large hoses coupled with a massive radiator system
• Thermaltake’s upcoming View 390 Air case looks promising and offers a curved glass side panel
• The company’s TR200 and TR300 are budget friendly cases that include a TFT display panel on the front
• Thermaltake’s Mine Cube looks very reminiscent of another popular IP and offers a cooler block with 4 screens

Table of Contents

• AutoTOC

Intro

We visited Thermaltake’s booth at Computex 2025 and the company showed off its Immersion Cooling system, View 390 Air case, “Minecube” cooler, and TR200/TR300 cases.

Editor's note: This was originally published on May 20, 2025 as a video. This content has been adapted to written format for this article and is unchanged from the original publication.

Credits

Host

Steve Burke

Camera, Video Editing

Mike Gaglione
Vitalii Makhnovets

Writing, Web Editing

Jimmy Thang

Immersion Cooling

At the show floor, the company showed off a setup that offers 50 liters of “immersion cooling” within their new IX700 case. Immersion cooling means that the system is in liquid. The liquid is PA2, which is one of the more economical solutions, but is still expensive. Thermaltake tells us it's between $20 to $30 per liter.

The liquid is piped through 2 gigantic pipes, which Thermaltake tells us is rated for 20 bar. That’s insane. It then connects to a massive 4-radiator system. Overall, it’s a showcase for an enterprise solution, but it’s super cool. 

The PC had its CPU, an Intel Xeon w9-3495X, and GPU both at 100% load. CPU core temperature clocked in at about 60 degrees C and the GPU was about 64 degrees C. We estimate that the room the computer was in felt about 23 degrees C. 

The system is running 4 pumps and 4 radiators using a 4x420mm setup that are 64mm thick. Thermaltake is thinking that its immersion cooling setup will be a build-to-order enterprise solution. Taking a closer look at the radiators, they felt warm when we put our hands next to them.  

The system uses dielectric fluid, which means it’s non conductive. 

The hoses for the system seem overkill and we don’t know what industry they come from. 

View 390 Air

The View 390 Air is a $150 case. The company is thinking about including 2 fans for that price, but the company is still deciding between offering 2 fans in the front or in the back. In our opinion, Thermaltake should provide the 2x200mm fans in the front as users are less likely to already have those.   

The case’s glass side panel provides a solid wall all the way around the case. The glass measures 4-5mm thick, which is very large glass. Interestingly, closing off the top panel can work better for CPU thermals sometimes. The reason is that when you push air in, it’s not able to escape through the top.   

There is a screen that’s mounted above the motherboard, which is optional. If you don’t buy the screen version, there’s just a steel plate there instead. 

The case has spots for 3 sunken 120mm fans at the bottom and room for 3 fans on the side. We do like seeing the option for 2 fans in the back when there’s room for it, but it does make the case taller.   

TR100

The company showed off several different color SKUs of the TR100, which is a case that’s already out on the market. 

TR200 and TR300

Thermaltake also showed off its TR200 micro-ATX case. It’s supposed to be $80.

The TR300, meanwhile, is a $100 case. 

Neither case has a riser, which means the GPU is normally installed. Both cases use a newer TFT display panel on the front, which Thermaltake says offers better brightness and sharper resolution than their prior panels. 

The company also showed off a prototype wood front panel. 

Looking inside the TR300, we can see a lot of Yeston-inspired marketing material on the pump block. In addition, the case also has a closed-off side near its front that tries to obscure the power supply and its cables because the PSU is mounted to the front and is rotated on its side. Unfortunately, this design does limit options for intake fans in the front. The case relies on bottom intake fans and some on the side. Again, unfortunately, the bottom of the TR300 is not that elevated though the TR200 does have more room to breathe, which we liked seeing. 

Thermaltake is looking at a Q3 launch for both cases. 

Mine Cube

The font and aesthetics of the Mine Cube might look familiar, but is legally distinct... The Mine Cube is a cooler block with 4-sided screens, which includes the top and 3 sides. It sits on top of a VRM fan and RAM fan. 

One feedback we offered was that there was no vent on the north side to allow air to hit the VRM from this angle.

Internally, the block cover has some slats. The unit we saw only was able to get in air through one side, but we looked at a really early prototype. Users can orient the Mine Cube to whatever position they want. 

There’s a couple challenges for Thermaltake to overcome here. The first of which involves software, particularly if you want to try and link the screens in any way. The unit we saw at Computex had a character moving from one screen to the next. The other main challenge pertains to cost, especially as it comes to controlling the screens. To address this, Thermaltake has gone to a single IC to control all 4 screens. Regardless, the 360mm model, which is the only one we know of at the moment, still ends up around $350. When we asked them about the technological challenges of trying to drive 4 screens through a liquid cooler, the company said it was “not making it $600,” which is a totally valid answer. 

Thermaltake is targeting an August release for the Mine Cube. 

Project Edge

Thermaltake also showed off an early prototype of its Project Edge set of fans, which offers a series of progressing screens. The company thinks this is where the future of fans might be. To add some context here, Lian Li makes a bunch of money selling fans with LCDs on them. Now the direction might be LCDs on the side of fans.

We take a look at TRYX’s new Flova ATX case, updated LUCA L70, Turris air cooler, which features a 5-inch 720p screen, and more

The Highlights

• TRYX showed off its new Flova ATX case, which uses a crossflow cooling solution
• TRYX’s Turris air cooler offers a 5-inch 720p screen
• TRYX has made several improvements to its updated LUCA L70, which we originally called a disaster

Table of Contents

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Intro

We visited Tryx’s booth at Computex 2025 and the company showed off a bold new case design that features a crossflow fan plus two axial fans at the front. The company also showed off its updated Panorama cooler and LUCA L70 case as well as a new case and cooler.

Editor's note: This was originally published on May 24, 2025 as a video. This content has been adapted to written format for this article and is unchanged from the original publication.

Credits

Host

Steve Burke

Camera, Video Editing

Mike Gaglione
Vitalii Makhnovets

Writing, Web Editing

Jimmy Thang

TRYX Crossflow Flova ATX Case

We produced a story on the meshless AIO Mini-ITX PC, which used a crossflow fan, and it was a very interesting product. Now Tryx is shoving crossflow fans into an ATX case its calling the Flova. 

Crossflow fans are separated by disks. These disks cut across and create blocks of fan blades. The fan blades run along the whole length of the fan with a very slight angle to them. The point of a crossflow design is that air can enter tangentially to the axis of the fan and then it gets spat out, effectively, perpendicularly. This is a less directed flow. Axial fan blades slice through the air and push it. There’s a bit of a buffering effect from that. The downside is that there’s less targeted flow. The upside is that it’s a more laminar flow and it’s also sort of a gentler flow across a larger area. 

The Flova is supposed to be around $140, which is dependent on the tariff situation. TRYX is thinking of including the crossflow fan and a 120mm rear fan. 

The case has a fabric on the side and front, which gives it a little Fractal vibe. TRYX is going to have to figure out the porosity here as it looks like it can’t breathe too well. That’s the biggest downside to the design at the moment, but the unit we looked at was just a prototype. 

The rest of the case is very traditional. The Flova has a ventilated shroud top. The front of the case can support 120mm or 140mm fans, but using 140mm fans would force the crossflow fans out.  

The downside to this crossflow fan design is that it reduces the maximum size of the axial fans on the front. The unit we saw at Computex coupled the crossflow fans with 120mm ones. Without the crossflow fans, TRYX says it thinks it could fit 200mm fans in the front and definitely 160mm ones and maybe 180mm fans. This poses an interesting A/B testing scenario: For instance, do 120mm fans coupled with crossflow ones perform better than just 200mm fans? We don’t have those answers at the moment. 

We can conceivably see, with a really good crossflow fan design and implementation, there’s a possibility that TRYX is able to improve the cooling performance across the CPU and GPU. It’s really going to depend on how the company tunes for acoustics because crossflow fans can be noisy with their drum motors, which, in this instance, are located at the very end near the power cable. In our testing, it can make some higher frequency noises. It also runs at a higher RPM. The unit we saw was running around 2,400 RPM. The benefit is that the case is able to pull in air through the front and side. The crossflow fans are also a little closer to the front of the video card and should help with GPU performance, but will depend on how TRYX engineers it. 

The company is saying that the case will arrive later this year. We think TRYX will need to spend time on the acoustic testing to find solutions to contain some of the noise. The fans aren’t THAT loud, but they are a different type of noise than what most people are used to. We’re excited about testing it and have no idea on how it will perform thermally vs something like exclusive 140mm fans on the front. 

TRYX Turris Air Cooler

Next up, we looked at TRYX’s upcoming Turris air cooler, which isn’t due out until probably early next year. We’re told Turris means something like “hurricane.” The cooler uses 6x6mm centered copper powder heat pipes. The cooler’s fin stacks are soldered to the heat pipes. That’s not a new thing but we’re seeing more of it in the higher-end heat sinks. Everybody seems to be chasing these microscopic differences now to compete with each other, which is a good thing. We’re starting to see this in the $50-$100 cooler range. 

The fans are polybutylene terephthalate and are glass-fiber reinforced. Rather than LCP, which is way more expensive, they’re going with the PBT solution and that helps to keep costs down. The downside is that the blade tips can’t be as close to the frame.

The cooler also has a top plate that features a 5-inch 720p screen on top. TRYX tells us it goes up to 400 nits of brightness. The display uses a pogo pin solution.  

The fan speeds on the cooler differ from each other. The inner fan goes up to 1,850 RPM whereas the outer fan is about 50 RPM lower. We imagine this was done for beat frequency control to reduce some of the annoying humming noise.

The cooler also has an offset mount that’s pretty cool. Down the middle of the fin stack, where it mounts to the IHS, there’s an offset for Intel or AM5. 

Tryx Stage

The company also had an update to its Panorama cooler, which it’s calling the Tryx “Stage.” It’s going to be $200 for a 360mm solution with ARGB fans. It seems to be geared for all of the figurine collectors out there. We think it pairs well with Yeston video cards and Cooler Master’s Stage case as it will allow you to put all of your waifus (or husbandus) into the computer. 

LUCA L70 (Updated)

The company updated its LUCA L70, which we initially called a disaster and criticized its strength and structure. Outwardly, it looks pretty much the same, but TRYX has made some changes to the design. 

Taking a look at the back of the case, the company has added an extra hole to help with 3 and 1/2 -inch drive support, where there was an issue with that previously. The updated case also moves the 2 and ½-inch holes up, which was done to allow you to access the SATA connectors. We previously complained about how you couldn’t get into the SATA connector once the drive is installed so that change is supposed to fix that issue. 

TRYX also revamped the bottom front button of the case, which we called out for feeling mushy previously. It feels better now. 

Another change the case makes is that it adds pogo pins for the front fans. This gets the cable off of the front panel, which is good.  

The company says it’s also strengthened one of the front corners of the case.

The updated LUCA L70 also uses some guide pins inside of the glass and adds a screw to the glass panel, which secures it better. 

Panorama WB (Water Block)

When we were at TRYX’s Computex booth, the company showed off its new water block, the Panorama WB, one of which was supposedly signed by Jensen Huang. It comes with a Panorama screen, which has a VRM fan inside. The water block is designed for open-loop coolers and not AIO ones. There’s also software that allows users to adjust colors. The Panorama WB will cost $240.

Arc Vision Case

The last thing we looked at from TRYX was the company’s new Arc Vision case. The interesting thing about the case is that it comes with an optional screen in the front corner, which would pair well with a Panorama cooler. The front screen is sunken in a bit, which TRYX tells us was done to protect it from unintentional scratches from users and in shipping. The version of the case with a screen is targeting $240 and TRYX tells us that the Arc Vision’s screen will be able to communicate with the Panorama cooler. The example the company talked about was having Mario enter a pipe in one screen and exiting it on the other screen. We’re guessing for legal reasons, TRYX didn’t show that at its Computex booth. 

The less expensive model of the case won’t come with the screen and will cost around $120. 

The cases are supposed to have 4x120mm fans included. Our understanding is that it will have 3 fans on the side and 1 in the rear. 

Another interesting thing about the case is that it has a scooped shroud, which should help boost the air up into the rest of the case but we’ll need to verify that in our testing. 

There’s a lightbar included in the case and 3 of the fans are reverse blade. The case has 4mm-thick glass.

We looked at Scythe’s Scycopter liquid cooler, Magoroku air cooler, Big Shuriken 4, and more

The Highlights

• Scythe showed off its liquid cooler, which is currently going by the working name “Scycopter”
• The Magoruku is a $50 CPU cooler that’s supposed to be relatively high performing with 6x6mm heat pipes coupled with a nickel-plated copper cold plate
• We talked to Scythe about the news of its European branch closing down

Table of Contents

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Intro

We visited Scythe’s booth at Computex 2025 and the company showed off several new coolers, including a mockup of a liquid cooler. Our visit comes off the heels of the news that Scythe will be closing its European branch, which we discussed with the company.

Editor's note: This was originally published on May 22, 2025 as a video. This content has been adapted to written format for this article and is unchanged from the original publication.

Credits

Host

Steve Burke

Camera, Video Editing

Mike Gaglione
Vitalii Makhnovets

Writing, Web Editing

Jimmy Thang

Scythe Liquid Cooler

To our knowledge, we saw Scythe’s first liquid cooler at the show. We spoke with Kitagawa-san, lead designer at Scythe, who told us that he spent about the last year studying liquid coolers. 

The company also showed us a 3D-printed prototype peg with a piece of tape underneath it, which allows you to essentially stick it to any fan you want. A fan can then socket on top of the cooler and be angled to shoot air down toward the VRM or RAM, etc. 

The working name of the liquid cooler is the “Scycopter,” which is really cool and is a combination of Scythe and helicopter. Currently, the radiator thickness is pretty standard at 27mm, but that might change. 

The standard pump block will have an option that will allow you to install a fan on top of it. 

For the fins, the pitch is .1mm. That makes them pretty close together. Scythe also tells us that the total height of the copper coldplate is 1.6mm. 

Magoruku

We showed Scythe’s Magoruku CPU cooler at last year’s Computex, but it’s coming out now. It’s supposed to be $50, but the company tells us that it might be able to bring it down to $44 in the US depending on market conditions. 

The Magoruku is supposed to be a relatively high-performing, mid-range/budget cooler. Scythe is going with a flat nickel-plated copper for its cold plate coupled with 6x6mm heat pipes. 

The company is using 2x120mm “Wonder Tornado” fans as Scythe calls them. They are 25mm-thick fans and use metal brackets to adjust the fan height. 

Mugen 6 TUF

The Mugen 6 TUF is an ASUS-themed version of the CPU cooler. 

Big Shuriken 4

Scythe also showed off its Big Shuriken 4 CPU cooler, which the company also showed last year, but is now about final. It has cut-outs on the side of the fan, which Scythe says helps with performance as it allows air to escape from the sides. 

One of the things that Scythe is trying to figure out with the Big Shuriken 4 is whether to make it all black or ARGB. 

Scythe Closing Its European Branch

In regards to Scythe’s closed European branch, it sounds like the company is restructuring and moving operations to Taiwan. Scythe tells us it will still ship and sell to European customers.

We cover Phanteks’ new G370A budget case, the XT M3, and the Evolv X2 Matrix

The Highlights

• Phanteks’ new X2 Matrix case has 900 LEDs and is aiming to be around $200
• Phanteks’ G370A is a $60 case that includes 3x120mm fans
• The company has a new T30-140 fan that required 6 years of engineering to make

Table of Contents

• AutoTOC

Intro

We visited Phanteks’ suite at Computex 2025 and the company showed off several cases along with a fan that took the company roughly 6 years to make.

Editor's note: This was originally published on May 21, 2025 as a video. This content has been adapted to written format for this article and is unchanged from the original publication.

Credits

Host

Steve Burke

Camera, Video Editing

Mike Gaglione
Vitalii Makhnovets

Writing, Web Editing

Jimmy Thang

Phanteks Matrix Cases

We’ve talked about Phanteks’ X2 case in the past but the company was showing off its new Matrix version, which has matrix LEDs. The X2 Matrix has 900 LEDs in a 10x90 layout. It’s supposed to be about $30 to $40 more expensive than the base X2, which means it should end up around $200.  

The interesting thing about the case is that the LEDs wrap around the chassis. In terms of communication, the LEDs connect to the motherboard via USB 2.0 and use SATA for power. This allows Phanteks to bypass a WinRing 0 type situation. 

Another Matrix case had 600 of them in a 10x60 LED configuration and is supposed to be about $120. 

Phanteks also has software that allows you to reconfigure what the LEDs display. When we got to the company’s suite, it had been programmed to say, “Gamers Nexus here,” which was cool to see. 

We also saw that the LEDs can also be used to highlight CPU temperature. 

Phanteks G370A

Phanteks also showed off its G370A case, which is a $60 case that includes 3x120mm fans in the front coupled with a mesh front that offers 38% hole porosity. The company tells us that manufacturing typically offers around 25% porosity.  

It has a glass side panel and the back side panel of the case is just steel and has no ventilation. 

Taking a look at the placement of the front fans, we asked Phanteks why they weren’t higher on the case so the bottom fan could get more exposure to the bottom power supply shroud area and the answer the company gave us was simply clearance for a 360mm radiator at the top. 

There’s not a lot of room for the air coming into the shroud. Some of it will go through the cable pass-through if it’s empty. 

The back of the case features a drive mount.

XTM3

The company also showed off a Micro ATX case called the XTM3. It comes with 3 fans and is $70. For its front panel, it has a unique punch out for its fans. 

The top panel is part standard ventilation but it does have one side that provides less airflow, which covers where the PSU would exhaust out of. The side panel does have punch-outs for the PSU, however. We don’t test power supplies, though that may change in the future. Power supplies can take a lot of thermal abuse, however, so we’re not super concerned here.  

The case should be shipping in the next month or so and is 39.5 liters, which includes the feet. We appreciate that as not a lot of companies will factor that in. 

There’s also a lot of cable management depth on the back and the case also supports BTF. In addition, there’s a panel that clamps down all of the power supply cables. 

T30 Fan

Phanteks’ T30 fan took the company 6 years to make and is a 140mm fan. The company is competing with Noctua in the high-end fan space, but is going for a grey theme instead of brown. 

Phanteks CTO Tenzin Rongen Interview

Finally, we interviewed Phanteks CTO Tenzin Rongen to discuss technical details behind the company’s long-developed fans. Make sure to check it out in our video.