If you’re someone who put in an order for a GeForce RTX 3090 from MSI, you’re probably going to have to wait for a while longer. While it’s bad enough that there’s an overwhelming demand and critical shortage of the card, the matter is now exacerbated by the fact that a group has robbed cargo boxes filled with RTX 3090s. Directly from the MSI China factory.
According to the Taiwanese PC and laptop brand, the robbers had reportedly stolen 40 cargo boxes worth of RTX 3090 graphics cards, with a total worth amounting to approximately US$336500 (~RM1.37 million), directly from its manufacturing plant in China. MSI has already notified the local authorities about the matter, but in an effort to expedite the retrieval process, it has also posted a reward of 100,000 Yuan (~RM62230) to anyone who has useful information regarding the stolen RTX 3090s.
MSI Chinese mainland factory was stolen, stolen 40 boxes RTX3090, the total value of 2200000RMB ……😓
MSI has been officially announced and informed to the police ,Reward of 100000 RMB for reporting effective information. pic.twitter.com/JWw8hOMioG— 夕惕若厉 (@GoFlying8) December 7, 2020
It is very likely that the robbery was an inside job, a point that MSI is leaning strong towards, especially since it says its security measures in and around the factory are pretty stringent, but clearly not airtight. To that end, the company says that it is willing to offer clemency to the ones that come forward and help locate the stolen graphics cards.
To reiterate, NVIDIA and its AiB partners are currently facing a gut-busting demand for the GeForce RTX 30 series and cards like the RTX 3090 are exceedingly rare because of that. On that sad point, it would make sense that the thieves would target the card, as they can then proceed to sell them off at prices far greater than its official market rate.
(Source: Tom’s Hardware)
