THE CRUNCH

Photos shared by HKEPC show pallets of boxed GeForce RTX 5090 cards being unpacked at AI server assembly sites. The cards are standard retail units rather than NVIDIA's dedicated data centre accelerators. Industry analysts warned months ago that AI demand could push prices past $5,000, and listings now show the card fetching more than double its $1,999 launch price.

WHAT HAPPENS NEXT

NVIDIA has previously used Lite Hash Rate models to curb mining, but analysts warn the company may not apply similar restrictions to the standard RTX 5090 sold globally.