One other amusing episode of Tech Smuggling Fails has hit the Hong Kong information wires. This time, some intrepid smugglers have been caught attempting to get 70 “excessive worth pc show playing cards” out of the territory, duty-free. What provides a novel taste to this newest smuggling try is that the GPUs have been hidden in a cargo which contained 280 kg (617 kilos) of reside lobsters (roughly 200 lobsters). It is not laid out in Hong Kong media stories, however The Register thinks the GPU and lobsters cargo was most likely caught going to mainland China.
Hong Kong Customs swooped on a van because it turned to cross the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macao Bridge. Apparently, the cargo of lobsters and GPUs had no related paperwork, however was valued by the authorities at round HK$600,000 ($76,500). It is not clear whether or not that’s the mixed worth of the cargo, or simply the headlining GPUs.
A picture posted by Hong Kong Customs, reproduced above, exhibits the proud haul of GPUs that was hidden among the many crustaceans. We expect the lobsters are considerably tastier than these graphics playing cards, as they look like older entry-level Quadro playing cards. The Register means that the desk filled with GPUs are Nvidia Quadro K2200 playing cards. These are Maxwell structure GPUs with 640 CUDA cores, supported by 4GB of GDDR5 on a 128-bit bus.
It’s a stretch by the authorities to confer with Quadro K2200 playing cards as “excessive worth,” as they have been launched in mid-2014 and are roughly corresponding to a GeForce GTX 750 Ti, and even older Radeon HD 7850, in efficiency. A optimistic side of those Quadro playing cards is that they function a compact single slot design, with a TDP of 68W, so can take energy solely from the PCIe slot.
The Hong Kong to mainland China route seems to be a favourite amongst tech smugglers, with the island territory boasting zero gross sales tax on items, whereas the speed on the mainland is as much as 13%. This enticing markup has tempted a number of ingenious, and loopy, makes an attempt to get HK purchased tech into the mainland with out being declared, and we now have famous some attention-grabbing examples over current months.
Our final report on tech smuggling into China highlighted an try to smuggle 6,000 microSD playing cards that have been fully enclosed inside a bicycle body. Equally, somebody tried to smuggle 84 M.2 SSDs inside a scooter body. Different failed smuggling try information, of curiosity to PC DIYers, contains one the place a person tried to smuggle 240 Intel Raptor Lake processors into China by taping them to his physique and legs. One other smuggler determined it was a good suggestion to cover 200 CPUs and 9 iPhones in a prosthetic stomach.