Micro Center Asks RTX 5090 Buyers Not to Export
A Reddit buyer says the US retailer now makes customers sign a declaration promising the graphics card stays in the country, backed by an ID check.
Micro Center is reportedly asking customers who buy a gaming PC with an RTX 5090 inside to sign a declaration promising not to export the graphics card. The change was reported by a Reddit user, Krothic, who bought a Powerspec Ai90 prebuilt at the chain's Tustin, California store and was handed the form. A manager told the buyer that the anti-export policy had only taken effect a few days earlier. Customers are also asked to hand over a driver's licence to verify their identity, tying the purchase to a name.
The move follows American restrictions that already bar high-end GPUs from being exported to China, part of the wider contest over the AI race. Standalone RTX 5090 cards have become hard to find, with marketplace listings increasingly coming from sellers of questionable provenance, so a full prebuilt system can be an easier route to the hardware. The signed declaration states that the buyer is purchasing the product for their own legitimate personal or business use in the United States. If a card later turned up abroad, Micro Center could in theory trace it by serial number, though that gets complicated once a system is resold or handed on.
Tags
- pc
- hardware
Sources
Where this story ran: one outlet on 2 October 2026. The summary above is written by GamersGuild; the links go to the original reports.