DRAM shortage fuels fake GPU scams as China-based fraudsters exploit the supply crisis — RTX 4080 GPU sold at cut price was actually an RTX 3060 mobile chip with fake VRAM

Comments

• Tippon@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  Is it just me or is Tom’s Hardware getting really shit lately? This is the third article I’ve seen where one person has been ripped off and their story is ‘The state of the industry! Scams everywhere! 😱’

  One of the others was someone who bought memory that had been swapped for metal weights, and Tom’s Hardware tried to claim that it was a new industry scam because of the price increases, and not a one off

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  • lath@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    They’re heavy into ai crap nowadays.

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• UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  In one case, the graphics card in question was the Gigabyte GeForce RTX 4080 16GB Aero OC, a custom variant of the GeForce RTX 4080 that retailed for around $1,199 at launch. The seller claimed the graphics card was not functional and wanted to offload it for just $143.50 on Xianyu, a popular second-hand marketplace in China.

  So this isn’t even an American retailer carrying bad cards? It’s a Chinese second-hand seller peddling admitted non-functional cards for refurbishment. I guess the general advice is good and knowing what to look out for is useful, but it feels niche.

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  • nyan@lemmy.cafe ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    You only need one piece of (timeless) advice regarding what to look for, really: if it looks too good to be true, it almost certainly is. Caveat emptor.

    Seriously, ending up with nothing is always a risk you run when buying something advertised as non-functional in the hope of fixing it or recovering any undamaged parts. The fact that the components on this card weren’t original is almost irrelevant, because the result would have been the same if they were authentic but damaged beyond recovery.

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    • tal@lemmy.today ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      You only need one piece of (timeless) advice regarding what to look for, really: if it looks too good to be true, it almost certainly is. Caveat emptor.

      I mean…normally, yes, but because the situation has been changing so radically in such a short period of time, it probably is possible to get some bonkers deals in various niches, because the market hasn’t stabilized yet.

      Like, a month and a half back, in early December, when prices had only been going up like crazy for a little while, I was posting some tiny retailers that still had RAM in stock at pre-price-increase rates that I could find on Google Shopping. IIRC the University of Virginia bookstore was one, as they didn’t check that purchasers were actually students. I warned that they’d probably be cleaned out as soon as scalpers got to them, and that if someone wanted memory, they should probably get it ASAP.

      That’s not to disagree with the point that @UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world is making, that this was awfully sketchy as a source, or your point that scavenging components off even a non-scam piece of secondhand non-functional hardware is risky. But in times of rapid change, it’s not impossible to find deals. In fact, it’s various parties doing so that cause prices to stabilize — anyone selling memory for way below market price is going to have scalpers grab it.

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  • Sims@lemmy.ml ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    The key point of the article is: “China-based fraudsters”, so ‘bad china’ ™, and the rest of the content was just an excuse for that purpose…

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    • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      Americans are going to be so fucked when the only companies producing consumer hardware at scale at labeled “Bad China Companies”.

      I remember people hating Japan and Korea back in the '80s, before Sony and Samsung killed Magnavox and strangled Phillips.

      I guess time is a flat circle

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    • Hadriscus@jlai.lu ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      This has been uncovered by Brother Zhang… who obviously has, uh… an anti-China agenda… 🙄

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  • SharkAttak@kbin.melroy.org ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    If they bought a second-hand chinese vga it's totally on them, honestly. It's like complaining the PS5 you bought out of a van behind McD for $100 it's just an empty box.

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• Laser@feddit.org ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  Scarcity breeds innovation /s

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