Power & Sites · United States

Nvidia reportedly halts GeForce RTX 5090 production in favor of AI data center and professional GPUs

Credited to Tom's Hardware · tomshardware.com · 29m ago

Photograph · Tom's Hardware

Nvidia has reportedly ceased selling its GB202 graphics processors for consumer-grade GeForce RTX 5090-series add-in-boards (AIBs), including 'D' variants for the Chinese market, according to a leaked notice from an unknown factory cited by @hongxing2020, who tends to have insights into the graphics card market. Another prominent leaker @Zed__Wang confirmed the report and said that from now on the GB202 silicon will be exclusively used on data center and professional graphics cards.

"According to a notification from the factory, Nvidia will no longer manufacture any RTX 5090 models, including the D variants," a message cited by @hongxing2020 reads. "Going forward, the highest-end GeForce graphics card will be the RTX 5080 24GB, while the RTX 5080 16GB version will be discontinued. Please spread the word."

This is, of course, an unverified claim and not an official Nvidia announcement. We asked Nvidia for a comment, though the company has yet to respond. Typically, Nvidia does not comment on rumors.

While the information is strictly unofficial for now, the alleged decision would make considerable economic sense for Nvidia, as the company can sell GB202 processors on data center and professional graphics cards that cost substantially more than the GeForce RTX 5090. In fact, Nvidia's recently introduced RTX Pro 5500 features the same number of CUDA cores — 21,760 — as the GeForce RTX 5090, but comes with 84GB of GDDR7 memory instead of 32GB and targets considerably more lucrative professional visualization (ProViz) and AI applications. Meanwhile, the fully-fledged RTX 6000 Pro with 24,064 CUDA cores and 96 GB of memory can easily sell for $15,000.

By discontinuing GB202-based GeForce products, Nvidia could prevent its relatively inexpensive consumer graphics cards from competing with its own professional accelerators in the lucrative AI sector. Essentially, the company is redirecting its limited semiconductor manufacturing allocation toward higher-margin products without necessarily sacrificing its position in the gaming market, as neither the GeForce RTX 5080 nor RTX 5090 have direct rivals.

Even if Nvidia has indeed discontinued shipments of GB202 processors for consumer graphics cards, GeForce RTX 5090 boards are unlikely to disappear from the market overnight. Nvidia's add-in-board partners, distributors, and retailers likely have inventories of GPUs and finished graphics cards that could sustain availability for some time. However, if Nvidia no longer supplies GB202 processors for GeForce products, the availability of RTX 5090 cards will inevitably decline, which will affect prices of these AIBs.

Meanwhile, Nvidia could be preparing to refresh its GeForce RTX 50-series lineup. The company has long been rumored to be developing GeForce RTX 50 Super graphics cards, including an RTX 5080 Super with 24GB of GDDR7 memory, although their introduction has reportedly been postponed due to memory supply constraints. The rumored GeForce RTX 5080 24GB could therefore represent a revival of these plans, and with no more GeForce RTX 5090 32GB on the market, the new product will have better memory supply.

Nvidia is also developing its next-generation Rubin-based GeForce RTX 60-series GPUs, but recent rumors suggest that these products will not arrive until late 2027, or even 2028. Consequently, if the reports about the discontinuation of the GeForce RTX 5090 are accurate, Nvidia could leave the enthusiast gaming market without a GB202-class flagship for a considerable period, so if you are in the market for the absolute best graphics card, now is the time to get it.

Power & SitesUnited States

Cipher extends Barber Lake data center lease commitments to 20 years

Credited to Data Center Dynamics · datacenterdynamics.com1h ago

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Fluidstack and unnamed AI lab agree lengthy leases

AI data center company Cipher Digital has agreed deals with Fluidstack and an unnamed AI lab to lease space at the firm's Barber Lake data center campus in Colorado City, Texas, for the next 20 years.

The agreements, announced on September 25, amend AI cloud provider Fluidstack’s existing lease and secure a binding commitment from an unnamed AI lab to enter into a separate ten-year lease once Fluidstack’s term ends.

Cipher expects the additional commitment to generate around $5.2bn, raising total contracted revenue at Barber Lake from $3.8bn to more than $9bn, according to the announcement. The second lease will have substantially similar economic terms to Fluidstack’s agreement.

The company expects to deliver individual data halls between Q4 2026 and Q1 2027, with rent starting as each hall is handed over. Cipher attributed the revised schedule to design changes and evolving tenant requirements.

The amendment also sets out a cost-sharing arrangement. Cipher will absorb the first $359.3m of costs above the original budget. The tenant will reimburse half of further overruns through additional rent over the combined 20-year period, calculated to provide Cipher with a contracted return.

“Extending Barber Lake’s contracted life from 10 to 20 years and adding approximately $5.2 billion of contracted revenue reflects the enduring value of the infrastructure we're building,” said Tyler Page, Cipher Digital CEO.

Cipher’s original deal with Fluidstack in September 2025 covered 168MW of critical IT load. An expansion announced that November added 39MW, bringing the combined critical IT load to 207MW. Cipher said the expanded agreement covered the entire 300MW of capacity at Barber Lake.

Earlier disclosures targeted delivery of the initial 168MW phase by September 2026, followed by the additional 39MW phase by January 2027.

Original · Data Center Dynamics

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Fluidstack and unnamed AI lab agree lengthy leases

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Power & Sites · United States

Ukrainian drones strike largest data center in Russia, multiple parts of 1.4 million square foot campus knocked offline

Credited to Tom's Hardware · tomshardware.com · 2h ago

Photograph · Tom's Hardware

Hot on the heels of a Ukrainian drone strike on a Russian Yandex data center in Sasovo that caused a major outage, a Yandex facility in Kaluga has been struck in a similar fashion. The huge data center was so badly damaged that Russian state media admitted that multiple modules had been removed from service completely.

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United24 Media reports that the facility is located in Grabtsevo industrial park and was designed to be the largest Yandex data center in all of Russia. It only entered service in the second half of 2023, lasting three years before this incident.

The Kaluga data center is a sprawling complex that covers around 1.4 million square feet (130,000 square meters). It's so vast that its 63-megawatt power capacity is around 50% higher than some other data centers owned by Yandex. With more than 3,800 server racks, it's perhaps easy to see why it became a target for Ukraine's drone operators. If, of course, the facility was the intended target for the attack — something yet to be confirmed.

As for what all those server racks actually do, it's reported that Yandex's internal services are housed at the facility. It was ultimately built to allow Yandex to expand its cloud offering.

It's as yet unclear how this drone strike is affecting everyday Russians, but the previous Sasovo strike also impacted Yandex Cloud. At the time, users reported problems with Yandex Mail, Disk, Documents, Pay, and Market despite Yandex claiming that key services remained up and running.

Russian state media TASS confirmed the severity of the attack, saying that “Several modules of the Yandex data center in Kaluga have been completely taken out of operation as a result of a UAV attack, [Yandex] reports.”

This incident is just the latest in a run of attacks on digital infrastructure both in Russia and Ukraine. Russian missiles struck a Ukrainian facility earlier this month, taking the world's second-largest torrent tracker offline in the process.