Chinese customs have seized a man trying to smuggle 239 processors valued at roughly $50,000 USD into mainland China, reports MyDrivers So far, this is the largest number of CPUs that one person has been caught trying to smuggle into the People’s Republic. 

A mainland passenger wearing loose black clothes entered mainland China through a ‘nothing to declare’ corridor and attracted the attention of customs officers with his abnormal look and bloated appearance. The officers decided to conduct a further investigation and discovered that the passenger wrapped adhesive tape around his waist, abdomen, and inner left and right thighs to conceal as many as 239 Intel Core i5-13400F processors. 

Intel’s Core i5-13400F CPUs are quite popular among gamers and enthusiasts as they pack ten cores in total, six high-performance Raptor Cove cores and four energy-efficient Gracement cores, yet are quite inexpensive at $210 at Amazon (opens in new tab) and Newegg (opens in new tab).

Smuggling PC hardware into mainland China seems to be a rather popular type of misconduct in the People’s Republic and also a profitable one, as we can guess based on the number of recent reports about failed smuggling attempts. 

Earlier this month, we reported about a man who attempted to sneak 84 Kingston-branded NVMe SSDs into China taped inside a scooter. About a year ago, a man was apprehended for attempting to smuggle 160 Intel CPUs across the border by taping them to his body. Similarly, in December, 2022, authorities discovered a woman who had concealed 202 Intel CPUs and nine iPhones inside a fake belly.