Data centers in China are refurbishing and selling 48GB-NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090D to recoup cost of idling them

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 is no doubt one of the greatest pioneering products in the modern computing era, showcasing how powerful GPUs can lead ahead of CPUs for years to come.

And of course, this can lead to things like hoarders bagging tons of them for various uses such as large-scale AI research and model training, especially in China, where AI data centers are said to be sitting on piles of specific RTX 4090D cards with 48GB of VRAM.

Instead of letting them gather dust, they’re taking the cards apart, fixing them up, and reselling them as if they were brand new. According to Tom’s Hardware, following a report made by DigiTimes Asia, a few companies realized they could make way more money flipping these GPUs than by renting them out through things like GaaS platforms, but it would take years to break even, whereas selling gives them faster returns.

This all points to a bigger issue: China’s AI boom has left behind tons of idle infrastructure. For a data center to be profitable, it needs to run at over 70% capacity, but right now, usage rates are way below that, which is under 20%. That means a lot of hardware is just sitting unused. So to keep the lights on and pay off bank loans, some of these companies are offloading the excess gear.

On paper, the RTX 4090D is just as powerful as the standard 4090, and with this data center “special model” boasting twice the VRAM, this is kind of a banger deal considering the actual RTX PRO cards are much more expensive.

It’s unclear if the cards were actually used, but they still need some tweaking before they can be sold to regular consumers. Data centers usually convert them from fan-cooled to blower-style models, which are better in GPU-packed setups but way noisier and less efficient when used alone.

Given that the American government has continued to stifle powerful AI hardware exports over the years, with the NVIDIA H20 and AMD MI308 making it into the “black list” recently, it’s hard to say whether the new NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090D would be affected as well.

Still, dumping everything that you’re not using will always stop the bleeding before things go haywire.