Russia dodges US sanction without flinching: its computer stores have the latest from Intel and NVIDIA

The outlook was not looking good for Russian computer stores. Shortly after the start of the Ukrainian war, which took place on February 24, 2022, the United States began to exercise tight control over companies that have the capacity to produce high integration semiconductors. Its purpose is to prevent the Russian Federation from getting hold of the most advanced chips on the market, produced by three of its largest technology companies: Intel, NVIDIA and AMD.

At the end of last December, an article in the Russian newspaper Kommersant He defended that the country led by Vladimir Putin was in a compromised situation as a result of the pressure that the Western alliance led by the United States was exerting on the chip market. From now on, TSMC would no longer manufacture Elbrús and Baikal processors, Russian-designed chips that could be used to replace Intel and AMD CPUs that were theoretically no longer reaching Russian stores.

In addition, to make things even more difficult for you, in mid-December China banned the export of its Loongson processors to Russia. The country led by Xi Jinping, again according to the Russian newspaper Kommersantuses these chips for military applications, but not because their performance is higher than that of Intel or AMD chips, but because have been conceived entirely in China. All these clues seem to indicate that Russia has it very difficult, but no. In reality, the US sanction is being much less effective than we can intuit if we stick to this news.

Russian stores have 13th generation Intel Core chips and GeForce RTX 40 to spare

In theory Intel, AMD and NVIDIA stopped supplying their CPUs and GPUs to Russia shortly after the start of the invasion of Ukraine to comply with the demands of the US government. Already at that time, we could foresee that it would be difficult for the United States to prevent Russia from continuing to supply itself through parallel channels, which are much more difficult to cut off, and also by relying on other countries with which it maintains close ties. We don’t know how he’s doing it, but what we do know for sure is that Russian computer stores are very well stocked.

Any Russian user who wants to buy a next-generation PC equipped with a 13th generation Intel Core microprocessor and a graphics card with an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 40 GPU today will not have the slightest problem getting it. The streets of Moscow and other Russian cities are well stocked with computer shops, and many of them they are so well provided like any comparable business in Madrid, Paris, Berlin or Los Angeles. And given the circumstances it is clear that the Russian government most likely has at its disposal the highly integrated processors from Intel, AMD and NVIDIA that it may need to develop its weapons capability.

Verifying what we are telling you is a piece of cake. Like Western companies, Russian computer stores allow their customers to buy their equipment over the Internet, so we can consult their catalog without any effort. Curiously, some of them do not have AMD solutions, and those that do tend to offer their clients Ryzen processors from the 3000 or 5000 series, and not from the 7000, which is the latest. However, when it comes to Intel and NVIDIA they have the latest of the latest, as I mentioned a few lines above.

One of these Russian stores is legionpc. In its catalog we can find modest desktop computers, but also state-of-the-art computers, such as the game 100613which has an Intel Core i9-13900KF processor and a GeForce RTX 4080 graphics card. Another similar equipment is the RG-469 of RapidComp, which bets on an Intel Core i7-13700KF CPU and a GeForce RTX 4070 Ti graphics card. Or the Max lumen of HyperPC, which can be configured in its most ambitious version with the latest components from these brands. In short, if the US wants to prevent Russia from having these Intel and NVIDIA chips it will have to apply much more.

HyperPC is one of the many Russian computer stores that have a computer offer comparable to that of any European or American establishment of this type.

Cover image: HyperPC

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