Limited Sale of RTX 5090 GPU
Priced at 2 Million KRW Locally, 5.5 Million KRW in Korea
"Covered the Cost of Attendance"
Attendees at NVIDIA's annual event 'GTC 2025' held in San Jose, USA, are enjoying the privilege of purchasing the latest GPU, the 'RTX 5090', at the regular price. Since it is very difficult to obtain this GPU in Korea, and even harder to get it at all, many say that the cost of their airfare to attend the event was covered by the savings from buying the GPU at a much lower price.
On the 19th (local time), Shin Jeong-gyu, CEO of AI company LabUp, shared a photo on his Facebook showing him cheering after purchasing the 'RTX 5090 FE' GPU at the GTC 2025 event.
According to NVIDIA's announcement, the selling price of the 5090 is $1,999. Even including taxes, the price is under 3 million KRW. The RTX 5090 FE is directly manufactured by NVIDIA. Therefore, unlike GPUs made by Taiwanese manufacturers, it is called the Founders Edition (FE).
According to NVIDIA's notice, at this event, each participant can purchase only one GPU, either the 5080 or the 5090. The total sales quantity is 1,000 units.
There is a story behind CEO Shin proudly showing off his purchase of the 5090. The 5090 is difficult to purchase not only in Korea but worldwide. Most AI developers find it hard to buy expensive GPUs like the H100 or B100, which cost tens of millions of won, so they hope to purchase the 5090, which can be used on a PC.
Even two months after its release, obtaining the 5090 requires passing fierce competition. In the US, where sales volume is relatively higher, people line up from early morning to buy the 5090. In Korea, due to the large number of buyers, sales outlets hold lotteries for raffle tickets and sell only to the winners. CEO Shin had previously revealed his struggles in trying to purchase the 5090.
The 5090 has significantly improved AI-related performance compared to the previous generation 4090. In particular, it has greatly increased the GPU memory, which is important when downloading and using large language models (LLM) on personal computers. GPUs with large memory capacity are essential to use the latest open-source AI such as DeepSeek, LLaMA, and Manus.
The 5090 is equipped with 32GB of DDR7 graphics memory, which is 8GB more than the 4090. Due to US export restrictions, the 5090 cannot be purchased in China.
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