[SMM Computing Power Daily] H200 Long-Term Contract and Short-Term Rental Price Spread Widened, 4090 Transaction Anchor at 7,200.

SMM, August 13:

H200 Pricing System Stratified: Long-Term Rent at 116,000 Yuan, Short-Term Rent at 120,000+ Yuan, Intermediary Prices Bid Up to 137,000 Yuan

SMM learned that a leading cloud service provider recently urgently sought eight H200 8-GPU servers, with a lease term of 1-2 years and could accept 2-3 month forward delivery. Channel-side sources reported that current external monthly rental quotes for newly deployed H200 servers stood at 116,000-117,000 yuan, corresponding to long-term contracts of 4-5 years. Market quotes for 1-2 year short-term lease resources had already risen above 120,000 yuan, while intermediary market quotes for similar resources were pushed to 137,000 yuan/unit/month. One intermediary quoted 117,000 yuan and required signing three intermediary agreements, taking a combined cut of 5,000 yuan/unit/month, so the actual landed price was about 112,000 yuan. This batch of newly deployed H200 servers was offered only as a whole 128-unit cluster lease and was not split for the time being. The supply side also confirmed that a newly deployed cluster from another channel was also quoted at 116,000 yuan/month, confirming the long-term contract price center. In addition, a computing cluster in east China released 32 units of spot H200 servers at a monthly rent of 128,000 yuan per unit, with a three-year fixed-price contract. Each unit is a Supermicro H200 with an HGX 8-GPU module, Intel 8558 processor, 32 × 64GB memory modules, a 960GB NVMe system disk, 2 × 3.84TB data disks, and 8 × single-port 400G NICs. H200 long-term and short-term lease price spreads were significant; intermediary premiums continued to erode seller profits; whole-cluster lease supply was dominant, and small-batch split-lease resources were scarce.

4090 Intermediary Asking Price at 8,500 Yuan, Market Transaction Anchor Still at 7,200 Yuan

A data center in Ningbo had 45 units of spot 4090 8-GPU servers, leased only as an entire batch, not split, and already delivered after networking. The terms included a one-year fixed-price contract, monthly payment for the current month's fee, and no deposit. Intermediaries quoted an external price of 8,500 yuan/unit/month. After confirmation, the source of this batch was a computing power service provider, and the party that released the information was an intermediary in the group. The source responded, "Asking prices are useless; only an actual transaction matters," meaning the 8,500 yuan was an intermediary asking price rather than the source's actual pricing. Over the same period, the actual transaction price for 4090 8-GPU servers in the Shanghai market was 7,200 yuan/unit/month; a few resources with expiring lease terms were quoted at 6,900 yuan for a quick sale, but were ultimately traded at 7,200 yuan. There was a clear price spread between intermediary asking prices and actual market transaction prices, and the 4090 market transaction anchor remained at the 7,200-yuan level.

Domestic Models and IDC Hosting: Atlas 800I A2 Monthly Rent at 26,000 Yuan, High-Power Cabinet Supply Expands in North China

A data center in North China released three Atlas 800I A2 (910B4 64G) server lease resources, at a monthly rent of 26,000 yuan per unit, with a minimum lease term of six months and one month's deposit plus one month's rent. This domestic Ascend-architecture model is suitable for large model training and inference. It was leased with a six-month lock-up and deposit-plus-first-month payment, reflecting the supplier's effort to balance price and liquidity. In the hosting segment, a high-power data center rated T3 or above in North China was newly brought online starting in August, launching high-power cabinet hosting services: 42U 7 kW cabinets at 6,300 yuan/month and 10 kW cabinets at 9,000 yuan/month, suitable for high-power computing equipment such as GPU servers. The expanded supply of high-power cabinets reflects relatively favorable market expectations in the North China IDC hosting segment.

A100 Series Sees First "Lease Futures" as Transaction Format Evolves Further

The A100 series saw the first "lease futures" transaction format, in which buyers and sellers lock in computing power supply and prices for a future point in advance. Previously, the market for the A series, the previous two generations of Nvidia server GPUs, was dominated by spot and long-term contract leases. The emergence of lease futures marks the evolution of computing power leasing toward commoditized pricing, and its price discovery and risk hedging functions are expected to gradually improve.

SMM Analysis: Today's information showed that the computing power market had three main themes. First, a tiered H200 pricing system took shape—long-term contracts at 116,000-128,000 yuan/unit/month served as the price center, short-term lease resources were marked up to 120,000 yuan or more, and intermediaries added another 10,000-20,000 yuan/unit/month of speculative room. Supply was mostly in 128-unit whole-cluster leases, and matching demand for eight-unit split leases was difficult, reflecting that high-end model supply was dominated by institutional whole-cluster leasing and lacked flexibility. Second, the 4090 market showed significant "asking price versus transaction price" divergence. The intermediary asking price of 8,500 yuan/unit/month in Ningbo coexisted with the 7,200-yuan transaction anchor in Shanghai. The source clearly stated that "asking prices are useless," indicating that actual transaction prices for entry-level models are determined by real supply and demand, intermediary premiums are difficult to realize, and the 7,200-yuan transaction level was cross-confirmed by multiple parties. Third, market transaction formats and supporting segments evolved simultaneously—A100 lease futures emerged for the first time, high-power cabinet supply expanded in North China, and domestic Ascend models entered the market with flexible half-year lock-ups. Computing power leasing is transitioning from single spot and long-term contract leasing to a commoditized market with multiple tenors and forms.