GPU Swapping Spree Halted After Suspected Thieves Lose Power During Esports Hotel Heist

Thanks to AI data center demand, reasonably-priced GPUs are still hard to come by. Maybe not, though, if you find the right seller and don't ask too many questions. Like maybe the two men accused of harvesting Nvidia RTX 5080s from in-room gaming PCs of esports hotel rooms in China, replacing them with less-powerful RTX 3060s, then reselling the stolen ones for around half their market value, according to VideoCardz.

The two might've gotten away with the alleged caper, but on July 18, they lost power to their room and requested to be moved to a different unit. Later, an electrician investigating the issue found pry marks on the room's gaming PC case. Staff soon discovered the GPUs had been replaced in both rooms.

Local police arrested the two in the Guangbutun computer district on July 20 with two unsold, apparently stolen GPUs still in their possession, wrote Tom's Hardware in its own story about the heist. The outlet says police reported the suspects had admitted to carrying out the same crime four other times, and adds that "the total loss reported from their GPU-swapping spree was 80,000 Yuan, or almost $12,000."

According to Tom's, other victimized hotels didn't catch on because the PCs "ran just fine, and there were no complaints from later customers, so there was no reason to inspect them up close."

Wes is a freelance writer (Freelance Wes, they call him) who has covered technology, gaming, and entertainment steadily since 2020 at Gizmodo, Tom's Hardware, Hardcore Gamer, and most recently, The Verge. Inside of him there are two wolves: one that thinks it wouldn't be so bad to start collecting game consoles again, and the other who also thinks this, but more strongly.