A report published October 29, 2026, by Gizmodo España said HKEPC had circulated images on October 23 showing RTX 5090 cards being dismantled in China for AI-server use. Gizmodo attributed the technical account to VideoCardz: technicians remove the original cooler and transfer the GB202 GPU and GDDR7 memory to compact server-oriented boards.
How the RTX 5090 conversion is described
Gizmodo said the images showed cards from several manufacturers, including NVIDIA Founders Edition models. The reported replacement boards use blower-style cooling, designed to push hot air out of the chassis and let cards sit closer together in a server.
NeoTeo previously covered the separate pricing story in its report on RTX 5090 prices in Europe.
Does the memory transfer increase capacity?
Gizmodo cited NVIDIA specifications listing 32 GB of GDDR7 for the original retail RTX 5090. That figure belongs to the original card. Moving its memory modules to another board does not by itself establish a VRAM increase.
What BIS export-control guidance covers
The U.S. Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) issued guidance on May 13, 2025, covering advanced-computing integrated circuits and related commodities within specified ECCNs, or export-control classification numbers. It describes licensing requirements for certain destinations and additional controls tied to particular end users, end uses, and parties’ knowledge. BIS also says parties must not proceed with a transaction when they know a violation has occurred, is about to occur, or is intended. Read the BIS guidance.
The guidance does not classify the RTX 5090 or determine that a specific conversion violated U.S. export controls. Applying its rules to a transaction depends on the item’s classification and the transaction’s circumstances, including destination, end user or end use, and what the parties knew.
