Recently, Macau Customs has continued to crack down on "parallel trader" smuggling activities, seizing multiple cases involving RTX 5090 graphics cards and memory modules.
According to a report from Macau Customs, from September 11th to 17th,Customs intercepted 12 cases of illegal trafficking at Macau International Airport, the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macau Bridge Macau Port, and the Border Gate Port, with the total market value of goods amounting to approximately 1.51 million MOP, including 359 pairs of AirPods headphones and 2 RTX 5090 graphics cards.
Smugglers use a variety of concealment methods. Customs officers detected anomalies through machine-scanned images. In the outbound passenger inspection area at the Border Gate Port, they discovered individuals hiding old electronic products and suspected silver granules in their clothing and on various parts of their bodies, including large quantities of memory modules. In more extreme cases,some individuals attempted to cross the border by taping CPUs and memory modules to their legs.
The core reason why the RTX 5090 has become a target for smuggling is the skyrocketing price. Due to tight supply and AI-driven panic buying, the price of the RTX 5090 on US e-commerce platforms has surged to over $7,000 (approximately RMB 46,970), with some high-end non-reference models even being hyped up to $8,000 or higher. Keep in mind,The official suggested retail price for this graphics card was only $1,999, but the current market price is more than 3.5 times the original price.
The pressure of rising graphics card prices continues. According to Bobantang, AMD has notified channel partners that price increases for graphics cards will officially take effect in the global market starting October 1st, affecting models such as the RX 9000 series and the previous generation RX 7650 GRE.
Among them, the RX 9070 increased by 700 yuan to 6,299 yuan, and the RX 9060 XT 16G increased by 600 yuan to 4,899 yuan. The main reasons for the price hike are another approximately 10% rise in VRAM costs and increased chip foundry costs.
The memory market is equally frenzied. According to Jeongdong Choe, Senior Vice President of the Semiconductor Division at TechInsights, the memory price surge will continue for another 3 to 4 years.
Even more concerning is the rapid growth in AI storage demand. Jeongdong Choe pointed out, "The growth rate of AI storage demand is no longer the historical 1.2x or 1.4x; it has surged directly to 4-6x in the short term. Each manufacturer building only one or two new wafer fabs is simply insufficient to meet this demand."