TECH NEWS – Over two years, smugglers have attempted to smuggle nearly $4 million worth of PC components, as the country’s import/export sanctions prevent them from legally accessing the latest technology.

PC Watch reported on officially reported cases, so much higher values of PC hardware may have been attempted—still, those caught often attempted to smuggle hardware into the country on a significant scale. There used to be a crypto-craze, with attempts to smuggle large quantities of Nvidia CMP 30HX into the party state.

The Nvidia CMP 30HX, 40HX, and 50HX are built on the Turing architecture with 12nm silicon. The 30HX is built on the TU116-100 GPU and the PG161 board and has 6 GB of memory. It has two slots, two fans, and an aluminum heatsink but no video output, so it is designed for crypto. In April 2021, the value of this card in the US was over $723. Two years ago, in April 2021, 300 of these cards were seized (we may have written about it). These were to have gone to crypto mining farms in China, but they have been banned in several provinces due to the high energy demand and the impact on digital currency. The total value of the cards seized at the time was close to $217,000, and as the current eBay price remains around ~$713, there is a good chance they are still being used now.

Last March, Chinese customs seized 5,840 video cards manufactured by XFX (we may have also written about it), but the company never officially admitted that their specifications and names were illegally mislabeled. It was the company’s way of trying to cheat on taxes by driving down the price of GPUs while pocketing more money from consumers at the same/higher price. The cards were worth about $3.15 million. After the seizure, the manufacturer’s website and T-Mall’s online platform (roughly a local eBay) became inaccessible, and these cards were also used for crypto purposes within the country.

Also, in March last year, a private individual tried to escape the authorities by stuffing 160 Intel Core i5-12600KP processors on his calves, waist, and stomach. He also had sixteen folding phones (in high demand then). Most of the CPUs were i5-12600KFs, which were worth $330 at the time, and the value of the processors was around $52,800, and Intel’s website still lists them between $290 and $300, with a value of the seized goods worth $46,400 to $48,000. At the end of last year, a Chinese woman pretended to be pregnant (but she was actually in her third trimester) but hid more than 200 Intel processors in her fake belly. Customs officials were struck by how comfortably she walked away despite the heavier stress on her back. They caught her and found 202 Intel Alder Lake CPUs and nine mobile phones. At the time, the range of products covered between $160 and $600, so the value of the contraband could be between approximately $32,320 and $12,200.

There have been three cases in the last month. One was busted by customs in Qingmao: he was walking in the lane where he had no product to declare but was carrying 84 Kingston M.2 NVMe SSDs hidden on the front shaft of his electric scooter. Based on the blurry images, they could be Kingston NV2 PCIe 4.0 NVME SSDs with storage capacities ranging from 250 GB to 2 TB (these are intended for laptops and smaller SFF PCs), with prices ranging from $22 to $100, and a value of between $1,848 and $8,400. A few days ago, a man had 239 Intel Core i5-13400F processors stashed on his legs, stomach, and waist. The black-clad man’s unusual gait tipped off the customs. Approximately $50,000 worth of goods were seized. Finally, at Shatoukauku customs (linking Shenzhen and Hong Kong), 360 processors and 100 SSDs were found in a five-seater car in the gearbox. Intel Core i3-13100 processors ($134-144) and Western Digital WD_Black SN770 SSDs (35-120, depending on storage space). Their total price range is between $51740 and $63840.

Before 2022, during the big crypto boom, the value of the seized products was $3 million 366900. Most video cards were also much more expensive at the time due to piracy, and their consumer value could be double that. Only in 2022 the US stopped shipments to China to prevent Chinese military technology development, and it was discovered that the Chinese government was buying consumer (not industrial) goods from Alibaba or eBay, for example. The total value of the seized goods could be between $177304 and $279284, and it is only three months away from 2023.

For now, it’s mainly Raptor Lake and Alder Lake processors, and we’ll be curious to see if AMD CPUs are attempting to be smuggled into China.

Source: WCCFTech