The Galax GeForce RTX 5090D HOF OC LAB shows up on eBay for mind-bending $5,500

Galax’s GeForce RTX 5090D HOF OC LAB edition has surfaced on eBay with price tags soaring around the $5,500 mark, making it one of the most expensive GB202-based Nvidia GPUs to be ever sold.
 

This 5090D variant is a Chinese-exclusive graphics card, intended to comply with U.S. export restrictions. The HOF edition, a premium variant, significantly outprices the flagship RTX 5090. The latter's 3rd party SKUs typically sell at around $3,000 at most US retailers, despite Nvidia’s stated MSRP of $2000 for the Founder’s Edition.

The pricing for this GPU is particularly surprising, considering that the RTX 5090D is a slightly cut-down version of the RTX 5090 when it comes to AI workload performance. It may, however, have to do more with supply limitations in mainland China that make the GPU an arguable ‘collectible’ status.

Shortages and subsequent price hikes for the RTX 5090D began when Nvidia discontinued the card in Q2 2025, citing tightening US export restrictions. Team Green opted to halt all RTX 5090D exports to China. At the same time, previously placed orders were “temporarily canceled” even as Chinese industry sources claimed that the RTX 5090D series was “actually finished and the graphics cards would not be available in the second quarter”.

The export-related discontinuation of the GPU created scarcity, especially for the limited-release Galax HOF OC LAB variant, which features a dual 16-pin power connector design that allows it to draw a theoretical 1,200 watts of power. Special BIOS revisions allow users to uncap the power limit for extreme overclocking, increasing power draw up to 2,000 watts.

The HOF OC LAB variant has also broken multiple benchmarks with overclocking enthusiasts achieving GPU frequencies of 3,650 MHz using liquid nitrogen. In 3D Mark Port Royal, the card holds a record of 47,469 points, Uniengine Superposition with 38,327 points, and GPUPI v3.3 with a completion record of 39.434 seconds.

The premium pricing is justified by the HOF OC LAB’s use of a 38-phase VRM design, 28 of which cater to the GPU itself. The GPU is built on a 12-layer PCB and offers the same memory configuration as the standard RTX 5090: 32 GB of GDDR7 memory running at 28 Gbps.

Where the RTX 5090D variant differs from the base RTX 5090 is AI performance, which was restricted from 3,352 to 2,375 AI TOPs, a reduction of 29.15%. This limitation was enforced to comply with U.S. export restrictions.

The RTX 5090D Galax’s HOF OC LAB edition’s current price reflects not only how expensive overclocking enthusiast-grade cards can be but also showcases how geopolitical realities can also affect gamers, enthusiasts, and non-AI performance users alike.