Scalpers demand north of $10,000 for the record-breaking MSI RTX 5090 Lightning Z GPU
Scalpers doing their thing at every GPU launch has become the norm for the 2020s. Poor supply and massive AI demand aside, limited-edition high-value products have long been the victim of price gouging, often preventing such products from reaching the hands of actual enthusiasts and gamers.
The MSI RTX 5090 Lightning Z is an absolute bonkers liquid-cooled GPU, and has already broken a plethora of world records, one of which even went horribly wrong and ended up killing the card itself. Priced at an eye-catching $5,090, the behemoth of a GPU packs roughly 10% more performance than the already very potent Nvidia GeForce RTX 5090.
Currently on eBay, multiple listings of the RTX 5090 Lightning Z have already gone live at ludicrous prices. The highest we have seen so far happens to be this one by e_spot61, who is asking for a very modest $14,900 for the $5,090 GPU. At the very least, the seller does appear to have a 100% positive rating.
Interestingly, plenty of other RTX 5090 Lightning Zs have also been listed at much lower prices, ranging from $6,800 to $8,000. It is unclear why anyone would pay twice as much for the same card, but the few $10k+ listings which we noticed are still live.
That said, considering how attractive the card is for overclockers, there may as well be plenty of enthusiasts who would gladly cough up such massive premiums for the card. With a modified BIOS option that allows the GPU to pull up to an incredible 2,500 watts, there is a lot of potential for overclocking - with equally potent cooling, of course.
As mentioned earlier, one overclocker even ended up breaking a Geekbench 5 record with the aforementioned BIOS setting - but ended up killing the GPU in the process.
Clearly, mere mortals like ourselves will likely be better off with something like an RTX 5070 Windforce from Gigabyte, which is currently available for $629 on Amazon. Hilariously enough, the Lightning Z surely makes the already-obscene GPU prices appear quite reasonable.
Source(s)
eBay
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