Nvidia has begun canceling orders for RTX 5090 graphics cards placed before a recent price increase, according to a Reddit report. A buyer who ordered an Asus ROG Astral RTX 5090 for $4,429 (including tax) via Nvidia's marketplace had the order cancelled and was offered to repurchase at the new, higher price or lose the GPU. Nvidia blamed Asus for failing to notify them of the price change in time. The same Asus ROG card is now listed on Nvidia's official site for $4,929.99 pre-tax—a $500 (11.3%) increase placed after customer orders had already been confirmed.
While the RTX 5090 Founders Edition maintains an MSRP of $1,999, third-party pricing data shows the Asus ROG variant has climbed to $4,849.99 on Amazon, demonstrating how far custom variants have strayed from reference pricing. This follows reports of widespread price increases across major retailers including Best Buy and Amazon last week. The disparity reflects market conditions: memory costs have pushed manufacturing costs up, while AI-driven demand for accelerators has driven retail prices even higher, creating margin pressure across GPU inventory globally.
For production AI teams, the GPU market remains severely supply-constrained. The practice of canceling confirmed orders mid-fulfillment to capture higher margins signals how tight allocation is for cutting-edge silicon. Architects planning infrastructure should assume dynamic pricing and scarcity as structural features of the market through 2027; building redundancy across architectures or considering lease arrangements over outright purchases may buffer capex volatility.