MSI is reportedly giving away RTX 5080 GPUs - but this improbable offer is not for you, sadly

A free NVIDIA RTX 5080 from MSI sounds like a too-good-to-be-true offer, but while it does seem to be genuine - as far as we can tell from the reports - it's certainly one of the strangest promotions we've ever seen, and not one you'll likely to be able to avail yourself of.

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You gotta catch 'em all, the snag being that they're all hiding away in very expensive Blackwell GPU boxes (Image Credit: MSI)

For starters, you'll need to live in Taiwan to be eligible, as MSI's offer is exclusive to that country.

If you live there, all you need to do is collect a set of MSI Dragon 'Lucky Around The World' figurines - there are 9 in total (well, actually 10, as there's a bonus 'secret edition' model). Sounds easy? Well, it very much isn't.

In fact, these model figures are only present in special 'launch editions' of MSI's Vanguard graphics cards - larger boxes that come with various collectibles, as VideoCardz reports.

These are limited editions of RTX 5070, RTX 5070 Ti, RTX 5080 and RTX 5090 GPUs, with only a thousand produced.

So, you'll need to buy a whole lot of MSI's Blackwell graphics cards to have a chance at completing the full set Dragon figurines. Although of course, you could always try to buy missing pieces from other GPU owners (or maybe even reviewers).

As VideoCardz points out, this whole affair only came to light because HKEPC picked up on someone posting on its forum looking to buy one of these figures for NT$4,000, because it was the last one of the set that they needed.

The tech site tells us that "MSI and Taiwan Original Price House are holding an event" and as mentioned, if you can amass a set of 9 different Dragons, the store will exchange that for an MSI GeForce RTX 5080 Vanguard graphics card.

Apparently five of those GPUs have been given away so far, but the offer only lasts so long, with it expiring on May 31, 2025.

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