Leaked video exposes how industrial-scale Chinese factories are dismantling RTX 5090s by the thousands to fuel AI servers

If you are wondering why the GeForce RTX 5090, despite being one of the best graphics cards, has evaporated from retail shelves, the answer lies in China’s industrial conversion factories. A newly surfaced video reveals the staggering scale of the country’s grey-market AI operations, showing industrial workshops dismantling brand-new GeForce RTX 5090 graphics cards to repurpose them for the AI boom.

So, what exactly is a GeForce RTX 5090 doing in China when the graphics card is not even officially available there? The answer is simple. They are there to be transformed into AI workhorses. The recently leaked footage offers a glimpse inside these Chinese workshops, where skilled technicians meticulously desolder the pricey flagship’s GB202 silicon and GDDR7 memory chips. They then transplant the components into a dual-slot blower design tailored for server use.

The GeForce RTX 5090 blower graphics cards will ultimately end up in high-density server racks where they will become the backbone of massive AI compute clusters. The scale and efficiency of these operations are impressive, with production lines converting shipments of brand-new GeForce RTX 5090 graphics cards, from Nvidia's custom partner models to the chipmaker's highly coveted Founders Edition. After testing and validation, workers would repackage these modified GeForce RTX 5090 graphics cards and ship them to clients, likely data centers or AI labs.

Many of these Chinese factories are scattered throughout the country. The conversion process is massive in scale, and probably thousands of GeForce RTX 5090 graphics cards are being repurposed every day. Middlemen in these grey-market supply chains are constantly hunting for GeForce RTX 5090 stock to fuel these operations.

Nvidia has reportedly halted production of the GeForce RTX 5090 and is, in all likelihood, redirecting the valuable silicon to higher-margin professional GPUs like the RTX Pro 6000 Blackwell. At the same time, a vast network of Chinese conversion factories continues to operate at full speed. Redirected supply and aggressive grey-market recycling have nearly wiped out GeForce RTX 5090 stock from U.S. retailers.

Custom GeForce RTX 5090 graphics cards now start at an eye-watering $8,500. However, a new workaround has emerged to sidestep the stock shortage and inflated prices: prebuilt gaming systems. Sometimes these GeForce RTX 5090 prebuilts cost less than a standalone GeForce RTX 5090, while offering a fully assembled system with a manufacturer's warranty.

If you had told me a few months ago that buying an entire gaming system would be cheaper than a single high-end graphics card, I would have called you insane. Yet here we are. In today’s chaotic market, prebuilt systems often offer better value than standalone graphics cards.