What it sold for, not what it is listed at
Our read now includes verified sold prices alongside dealer asks, and they land lower. Used H100 clears our publishing bar for the first time, and prices above new. And used-grade A100 40GB has gone missing from the dealer channel.
The new-build and secondary tiers pull apart
Nvidia's August quarter was the loudest evidence yet that the new-build tier and the secondary tier have decoupled. Data center revenue came in at $89.0 billion, up 117 percent year over year, on total revenue of $96.2 billion, with the next quarter guided to $108 billion. In the same release Nvidia said the Vera Rubin platform is ramping into full production with racks running at partners, and that its outlook assumes no data center compute revenue from China at all. Two things follow for anyone buying hardware rather than capacity. Rubin is now competing with Blackwell for the new-build slot, which means Hopper is the generation that starts rotating out of fleets. And the export map is keeping the Hopper and Ampere supply that already exists inside the Western channel, where it competes for the same buyers. Our own read this month is less about the top of the market and more about what the bottom of it actually transacts at. For four issues we have published dealer asks and said, in the methodology note, that asks run above clearing prices. This month we can put a number on that instead of asserting it.
$908
the RTX 3090 secondary read, now set by verified sold prices rather than asks
/ Clustermelt
$32,290
used H100 PCIe 80GB, our first publishable used Hopper read, above the cheapest new asks
/ Clustermelt
74
Nvidia B300 servers that reached China on forged Taiwan paperwork
/ Taiwan prosecutors
Where the market is moving
The signals worth acting on this month, and what each one means if you are buying or selling.
The sold price shows up, and it is below the ask
Our secondary read for the RTX 4090 24GB moves to $2,350, in a $2,200 to $2,499.99 band, on the arrival of verified sold-transaction data rather than another listing. That sold figure sits below every dealer ask we hold on the card. The RTX 3090 24GB moves the same direction and further, to $908 in a $835 to $1,100 band, down from $1,050 last month. Nothing about the cards changed. What changed is that we are no longer reading the market only through what sellers are asking.
What it means
On consumer-class silicon, treat a dealer ask as the opening of a negotiation rather than the price. The gap is real and it is now measured. If you are selling into this tier, expect a buyer who has seen a clearing price.
Used H100 is quotable for the first time, and it prices above new
The H100 PCIe 80GB secondary read clears our bar this month at $32,290, in a $28,000 to $32,399 band. Two more Hopper reads crossed the same line: H100 NVL 94GB new at $34,050 and H200 NVL 141GB refurbished at $35,995. The awkward part is the one worth publishing. Our new-condition H100 PCIe reading sits at $29,500, below the used one. That is not a market fact about used cards being better than new. It is what a thin secondary channel looks like next to a new tier that still lists: the few used H100 that reach a dealer shelf are priced for scarcity, while new inventory is priced to move.
What it means
On H100 specifically, the secondary channel is not the cheaper channel right now. Cheaper H100 exists, but it comes off a decommissioning lot rather than a dealer page, which is a sourcing problem rather than a shopping problem.
Used-grade A100 40GB has left the dealer channel
We could not find a single qualifying used-grade A100 40GB listing anywhere in the reachable dealer channel this month, across repeated sweeps. The card is still widely stocked, but it is stocked as refurbished. So the published A100 PCIe 40GB read is a refurbished-grade read this month, at $8,800 in a $5,499.99 to $12,999 band, where last month it was a used-grade read at $5,750. We would rather state that plainly than let a grade change look like a price rise, because the number moved for a different reason than a buyer would assume.
What it means
If you are buying A100 40GB, budget refurbished pricing or source it out of a fleet retirement. If you are holding used-grade A100 40GB, you are holding something the public channel currently is not offering.
On Ampere, it is the new tier that is falling
The A40 48GB discount to new narrowed from 60 percent to 38 percent, and not one dollar of that came from the used side. Our used A40 read held flat at $4,699 while the cheapest new asks fell, taking the new central from $11,836.99 to $7,600. A30 refurbished moved the same way, down to $3,958. The Ampere new and refurbished tiers are compressing downward toward a used tier that has already found its floor.
H200 NVL
141GB
-9%
L40S
48GB
-24%
RTX 6000 Ada
48GB
-29%
L4
24GB
-31%
A40
48GB
-38%
RTX 4090
24GB
-44%
RTX 3090
24GB
-48%
A100 PCIe
80GB
-57%
How far each card's secondary price sits below new in this month's read. Shown for the cards whose new-side reading is solid enough to stand behind.
What it means
A narrowing discount is not always the used card appreciating. On these two it is the premium for buying new that is disappearing, which makes new and refurbished worth a second look on Ampere before defaulting to used.
The paperwork is still the product
On August 24 Taiwan's prosecutors indicted nine people, including an employee of Nvidia's Taiwan office and two at Super Micro's, over 130 Super Micro servers carrying Nvidia B300 chips. The paperwork claimed the servers were staying in Taiwan. Seventy-four of them reached China, routed through Indonesia and Japan, and customs intercepted the remaining 56 at the border. This is the second month running that the enforcement story is about documents rather than hardware, and it follows July's detentions in the same jurisdiction.
What it means
The hardware in these cases is genuine and the documents are not, which is precisely the failure a price check cannot catch. Ask where a lot came from before you ask what it costs.
The number is only worth what its provenance is
The judgment a listing aggregator cannot copy, and the reason a broker exists in a used market.
August's enforcement news said the quiet part again: the fraud in this market is documentary. On August 24 Taiwan's prosecutors indicted nine people, including an employee of Nvidia's Taiwan office and two at Super Micro's, over 130 Super Micro servers carrying Nvidia B300 chips. The paperwork claimed the servers were staying in Taiwan. Seventy-four reached China, routed through Indonesia and Japan, and customs intercepted the remaining 56 at the border. The hardware in that case was genuine; the documents were not, and the documents were the whole mechanism. Our own pass again set aside the tiers that price alone cannot vouch for: sub-floor listings on Hopper parts, China-sourced claims of new stock on export-controlled SKUs, and non-standard conversions that do not match a real catalog SKU. We also held back one clean European listing that would have cleared a thin group on its own, because landing it would have quietly reversed an earlier decision about how that vendor's tax-inclusive pricing is treated. A number that clears a bar by changing the rule is not a number.
Red flags on used GPU hardware
- An H100 or H200 priced well under the going floor. The discount is the tell, not the deal.
- A server whose only proof of origin is its own export paperwork. August's case ran on forged documents, not forged hardware.
- Used-grade A100 40GB offered from a public shelf. The channel is not currently carrying it, so ask where this one came from.
- An SXM module offered as a drop-in upgrade. Without the matching HGX baseboard it is not one.
- No serial, no warranty record, no test report. Provenance you cannot check is provenance you do not have.
The next ninety days
- 01
Whether verified sold data moves the datacenter-class cards the way it just moved the consumer-class ones. Sold prices are much harder to source on H100 and A100, which is exactly why the ask-to-sold gap on those parts is still an open question.
- 02
Whether used-grade A100 40GB comes back to the dealer channel, or whether the refurbished read is what that SKU looks like from now on.
- 03
Whether used H100 builds enough depth to break its inversion against new. One month of a used read above a new read is scarcity; three months would be a repricing.
- 04
Rubin's ramp turning into Hopper coming off fleets. Nvidia says racks are running at partners now, and the secondary consequence shows up one to two quarters later.
- 05
Export policy in both directions. With no China data center compute revenue in Nvidia's own outlook, the H200 that would have shipped under license stays in this channel.
- NVIDIA: second quarter fiscal 2027 results, Form 8-K (August 26, 2026)
- The Next Web: nine charged in Taiwan over 130 Nvidia B300 servers bound for China
- US Bureau of Industry and Security: revised license review policy for semiconductors exported to China
Price-direction figures for individual SKUs are drawn from independent secondary-market listing trackers and are directional. Every price in the Clustermelt read below is computed from our own observed market data.
The numbers
Current secondary prices for the cards in this issue's read, computed from observed dealer listings and supplier asks we collect ourselves. Free to read, and free to check us on.
Secondary-market prices for the SKUs we broker, used-grade and trustworthy supply only. We exclude the sub-floor listings that price alone cannot vouch for, so these are numbers you could actually transact against, not the lowest number on the internet.
H200 NVL
141GB
H100 PCIe
80GB
H100 NVL
94GB
L40S
48GB
RTX 6000 Ada
48GB
L4
24GB
RTX 4090
24GB
A100 PCIe
80GB
A100 SXM4
80GB
A100 PCIe
40GB
RTX A6000
48GB
A40
48GB
A30
24GB
RTX 3090
24GB
Informational only. Observed secondary-market estimates, not quotes, offers, or advice. Do not rely on these figures as the sole basis for a purchase.
These are ranges. Yours is a number.
The table above is the market. What you actually pay depends on quantity, condition, warranty and lead time. Send us the spec and we will price it against vetted supply, with provenance checked before it ever reaches you.
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