Chinese Modders Triple RTX 5090 VRAM to 96GB, Sell for Under $4,000

ByAlexey Bondarev September 12, 2026September 12, 2026

A manufacturer in Shenzhen is selling a modified Nvidia RTX 5090 with 96GB of VRAM on Alibaba for $3,888, triple the stock card’s 32GB at roughly 65% of its retail cost.

Shenzhen Suqiao Intelligent Technology lists the modified card at $3,888, confirmed by Tom’s Hardware and corroborated by TechPowerUp. The seller strips a retail RTX 5090 and swaps in higher-density memory modules, an unauthorized hardware modification Nvidia has never sanctioned.

Why Chinese Buyers Are Paying For More VRAM

The AI angle is the point. Buyers are not chasing gaming frame rates but cheap VRAM for running large language models locally. At 96GB, a single card can hold model weights that would otherwise require multiple GPUs or a costly Nvidia data-center part, a meaningful capacity threshold for anyone doing inference on a budget.

Forum threads on Guru3D describe an emerging cottage industry converting RTX 5090 cards into makeshift AI accelerators at scale, with the process reportedly becoming semi-automated in parts of Shenzhen.

A Workaround Born From Export Limits

The practice fits a pattern where buyers and resellers route around US export restrictions on advanced AI chips by re-engineering consumer gaming hardware instead. Modified cards with expanded memory offer a fraction of a data-center GPU’s bandwidth and reliability but at a steep discount, appealing to smaller labs and hobbyists priced out of official channels.

The spending tells the story, when official supply is blocked, Chinese buyers engineer around the constraint rather than wait. Capital flows toward whatever clears the capacity bottleneck, and right now that means soldered memory swaps on consumer cards, not procurement through sanctioned channels.

Buyer Beware

Reddit threads on r/LocalLLM and r/nvidia flag the listings as likely scams or high-failure-rate mods, warning that soldered memory swaps on a card never designed for 96GB risk instability, voided warranties and no support if the card fails. Nvidia has not commented on the Alibaba listings.