There's a lot going on with Nvidia at the moment. Along with the acquisition of UK chip manufacturer Arm being blocked by the FTC, and a series of GPUs on the horizon, which could be a sign that the company is looking to overshadow newcomers Intel who are about to enter its turf, the California-based conglomerate was the victim of a daring heist last year. After a smorgasbord of EVGA graphics cards were stolen in California, new developments say they may have been found at a retailer in Asia.
According to a recent report from Videocardz, the shipment of Nvidia graphics cards appear to have started showing up, after information points to a retail outlet in Vietnam having possession of them. It looks as though users have been reporting the sale of RTX 30 GPUs from this specific outlet, which seem to have been up for sale at reduced prices and with one month warranties on them. The cards are being identified through their serial numbers, with consumers being warned that the cards with these numbers would not be able to be registered.
The truck heist which lifted several Nvidia 30-series graphics cards occurred last October between California and San Francisco. At the time, EVGA confirmed that the products were priced between $330 and $1,960 which suggests that there would have been a mixture of high-end hardware and some entry-to-mid-range cards in the mix. A total value was not given, however.
While there was no mention of which specific cards were stolen, one user reported issues verifying serial numbers after purchasing two Nvidia RTX 3080 Ti cards. It's likely that most people buying the cards will not be aware of their origin points, lured in, instead, by the cheap prices, and so will be non-the-wiser to the truck heist. The report also does not say which retailer is responsible for having them, but has said that it's "not a small local retailer."
As the tech shortages rage on, Nvidia GPU cards being stolen in a heist only seem to have added fuel to the fire. It's already difficult enough for people to procure new graphics cards, or current gen consoles, so to have a shipment taken just makes the deficit that bit worse. At the time of writing, there's no word about what will happen with the Vietnamese supplier or what action will be taken. Though it goes without saying that a full investigation will likely be underway and the Nvidia products will probably be secured.
Source: Videocardz