World’s second-largest GPU maker flees China on cusp of RTX 5090 launch to avoid US sanctions — Zotac, Inno3D, and Manli bail amidst looming US GPU export controls

HKEPC reports that the Hong Kong-based PC partner will relocate the company and HQ to Singapore, creating PC Partner Singapore PTE Ltd. The company is also reportedly shifting its production facilities to Indonesia.

The recent PC Partner Group Limited (PCT) listing on the Singapore SGX stock exchange provides evidence of the former claim. However, HKEPC could only say that the China-to-Indonesia production shift was a rumor. Apparently, the company shifted its base and production in time for the launch of Nvidia’s GeForce RTX 5090 graphics cards, swerving any expected high-tech export controls imposed on China by the U.S. Department of Commerce.

The PC Partner name might not be very familiar to youngsters as components featuring the eponymous brand, founded in 1997, aren’t widespread in the West in the 2020s. However, some of us remember the firm’s accessibly priced motherboards from a few decades ago. PC Partner also previously produced Radeon reference graphics cards for AMD, so the company isn’t a lightweight by any means.

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In 2024, PC Partner is probably an even more important player in the PC components business, managing sub-brands such as Zotac, Inno3D, and Manli. These are all important PC graphics card players, although some aren’t very popular in the U.S. market. According to HKEPC, combining all of its brands makes PC Partner “the world’s second-largest graphics card manufacturer.”

The U.S. sanctions on powerful GPUs will have already hit PC Partner during the RTX 40-series era, and the firm seems to have decided it is a worthwhile use of time, effort, and money to uproot its operations ahead of the Nvidia GeForce RTX 50-series (Blackwell) onslaught completely.

Based in and operating from un-sanctioned territories, we will see plenty of Zotac-branded RTX 5090 graphics cards marketed here in the West and other friendly territories. With the performance uplifts expected across the RTX 50 family, it may even be the case that RTX 5080 products will be too advanced or powerful to swerve sanctions. Remember, the sanction specifications move, too. All this uncertainty should be eliminated for PC Partner’s business going forward.