Not that they were ever a great deal, but an RTX 5090 today costs upwards of $3,500 thanks to the global component shortage, even though they fell below $3,000 at the end of last year. That said, perhaps there are less conventional ways to acquire one if you really want to score a deal. Case in point: French retailer LDLC is selling broken RTX 5090s for about half of their new price, with no return policy.
The store has put up two separate pages for these non-functioning RTX 5090s. The first listing is more generic; it just says "[DEFECTIVE] NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090" with a list price of 1,499.95 Euros, or about $1,760. You'll get different variants depending on the inventory. The second listing is specifically for an MSI Ventus 3X OC variant of the RTX 5090, and it's marked at 1,699.95 Euros, which is almost $2,000.
LDLC is the most popular PC hardware vendor in France, and it's selling these RTX 5090s as "out of service" parts, which means they have no warranty coverage or support. The cards were tested to confirm they don't work, as they were previously damaged in transit. Therefore, the fault lies within impact-related injuries such as PCB breakage or deformation.
Despite their defective nature, the store says these GPUs include all the components on the PCB, such as the core and memory, which you can't take for granted these days. The vendor also makes it clear that these cards are intended for professionals who can either repair them or extract components for recycling. After all, you're still paying $1,700+ for what is essentially a paperweight at this point.
Since the damage is random, some units are bound to be easier to repair than others. For instance, if a card just has broken traces, that's a relatively quick fix for a proper workshop, and it can earn thousands by flipping the GPU afterward. Even if the entire core needs to be replaced with a donor part, there's still some profit to be made, considering just how valuable RTX 5090s are in the current AI boom.
As you'd expect, a vendor like LDLC likely won't want to accept liability for any repairs, so it's a win-win for all parties involved — assuming the customer's getting a good deal, too. We've covered some pretty intense RTX 5090 repair jobs before, but it's also important to stay vigilant when buying aftermarket parts.
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