WTF?! With their ever-increasing price and rarity, graphics cards are turning into the hardware equivalent of golden. Some thieves in China decided to take advantage of the current market place by stealing a load of cards from an unsuspecting cyberspace café, making off with nearly $viii,000 worth of property.

Chinese news outlet 浙样红TV (via Tom's Hardware) reports that six unspecified high-terminate graphics cards were taken in the heist. The café's possessor told police each one is worth around 7,000 yuan ($1,094), though he puts the full loss at 50,000 ($seven,812)—likely due to the motherboards being stolen as well, judging by the site's video.

The robbery was no simple middle-of-the-night nail and catch. I of the criminals start contacted the café's possessor about renting the premises, for which he used a fake ID. The perpetrator was likewise wearing a facemask because of the pandemic, pregnant the owner couldn't verify information technology was the same person on the ID card—and yes, asking him to remove the mask would probable have been prudent.

No wonder people steal them

Claiming a friend was coming for a gaming session, the thief asked the owner for a garbage purse then he'd leave the room, at which point the cards and motherboards were snatched. Disconnecting and removing seven mobos with the GPUs fastened in the fourth dimension it takes to collect a pocketbook is pretty impressive, to be honest.

The chip shortage, cryptominers, and scalpers have led the market to a state of affairs fifty-fifty worse than when Bitcoin saw its start surge at the end of 2022. BTC hit a then-record $xx,000, causing massive demand from miners that resulted in graphics card shortages and hugely inflated prices, something we're all familiar with. The electric current bug have resulted in chaotic scenes like these at retail outlets when restocks make it. Consumers are hoping the crisis will end soon, simply normality might non return until 2023.