Hong Kong customs seize 300 NVIDIA CMP 30HX mining graphics cards

At MyDrivers, it has been reported that customs authorities in Hong Kong have seized a total of 300 custom-built NVIDIA mining graphics cards. The graphics cards are marked as contraband units and were allegedly destined for Chinese mining farms. To that end, however, it’s also important to note that China still has a ban against cryptocurrency mining operations in several provinces, so that could also explain why the seizure occurred.

Otherwise, there’s really no other logical reason for seizing such a large amount of GPUs. Chinese miners have also been the cause of severe power outages in Iran and have caused power spikes in Inner Mongolia as they try to somehow get around restrictions on mining imposed by their own country.

The cards themselves appear to be NVIDIA’s new CMP 30HX models, which feature a standard dual-slot and dual-fan design. The cards have no display outputs and feature a simple aluminum heatsink that is actively cooled by the fans. The direct sales costs of the graphics cards should be, if one believes the own network, well below 650 USD, if an appropriate quantity is ordered.

The 30HX cards are models from NVIDIA’s recently announced CMP series of graphics cards for mining cryptocurrencies, which began shipping in the first quarter of 2021. However, the graphics cards are only built to order, which in turn also means that binding orders have to be placed (and paid for) before these cards can be shipped to customers. This shipment of 300 CMP 30HX graphics cards ordered by mining farms in China has now been seized by Hong Kong customs authorities as a first.

We remember: the NVIDIA CMP 30HX, 40HX and 50HX are all still based on the Turing architecture in 12nm. The 50HX’s chip is based on the TU102 GPU-100 GPU and uses a board very similar to the RTX 2080 Ti’s PG150. The card has 10 GB of memory. The chip of the 40HX is based on the TU106-100 GPU and the PG161 board. The card has 8 GB of memory and the 30HX card is based on the TU116-100 as well as the PG161 board and has 6 GB of memory. The 30HX and 40HX have both already been confirmed by the driver update. The 50HX and 90HX are expected to be available in Q2. It will be launched on the market in the fourth quarter of this year.