4 ms·

'Mindblowing' fake AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D chip investigated – buyers beware

106 points by doener 2y ago

alecsm 2y ago
I expected a real working clone of the Ryzen chip. Calling it mindblowing is a bit exaggerate since it's basically a piece of metal/plastic with no electronics in it.
- fluoridation 2y ago
  It is very unusual that someone would go to this much effort instead of using a real dead CPU or re-lasering a lower spec one.
  - Animats 2y ago
    Yes. Repeat business will be zero. The seller can't sell very many before they have to shut down and go into hiding. Yet it takes a lot of cost and effort to set this up. As a scam business plan, it's not a good one.
    - imglorp 2y ago
      That's exactly the Amazon scammer business model. They can have a new store with a new name in seconds and be back in business with none of that pesky customer service and other accountability.
    - bangaladore 2y ago
      With a chinese manufacturer, I think you could probably make about 100 of these for less than a few thousand bucks easily. With all the cost in the cnc'd heat spreaders. Maybe 100 for < 1k.
  - userbinator 2y ago
    Indeed, remarked CPUs have been a known scam for decades by now. At least those will somewhat work and delay the arousal of suspicion, while this is an instant fail. Perhaps this was made for warranty fraud?
  - magicalhippo 2y ago
    Recently saw some interesting AMD Ryzen motherboards with integrated Zen4 laptop CPU on AliExpress. Then I saw one of the sellers had a note that the processor would not show model number, so you had to look up the serial number to determine model, and it'd benchmark 10% slower. Totally not rejects...
- transcriptase 2y ago
  Same. Was immediately worried since I bought a 7800x3d for a “too good to be true” price off Aliexpress earlier in the year that works flawlessly and appears to be the real deal.
  - NotACop182 2y ago
    Did you benchmark it? Could be an old chip relasered to fool consumer
    - Tuna-Fish 2y ago
      7800X3D is really easy to verify because you can just check the cache amount. 7800X3D is the cheapest chip that fits into AM5 and has the 96MB L3.
      - contingencies 2y ago
        lscpu |grep ^L3
    - sunshowers 2y ago
      Aliexpress is legit, they'll usually be "tray"/OEM CPUs but there's no reason to assume that they're fake.
      - Eduard 2y ago
        > Aliexpress is legit That's way too positive. Aliexpress is loaded with counterfeit products as well.
      - userbinator 2y ago
        There are also plenty of used CPUs of older models, but those tend to be fine since they don't really die unless abused (or are certain Intel 13th and 14th gen models...) and were probably run at stock settings for the few years the server it was in was warrantied for before being sent to recycling (creating tons of unnecessary waste, but good to see people have figured out how to encourage reuse while also profiting from it.) I've also purchased used pre-Rowhammer RAM from there, and it was perfect too.
- ClassyJacket 2y ago
  I was going to say - I didn't think it was plausible that anyone had the capability to manufacture competitive chips, without the world knowing their foundry exists. Would have been funny if it was real, but was actually a 486, or something. Probably not possible due to motherboard compatibility\pin configurations or something, but still.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
- urbandw311er 2y ago
  “Mindblowing” is in there as click bait. It would be great if we can remove it from the HN title.
  - boneitis 2y ago
    I'm not an overclocking enthusiast, but my read on it is that it's mindblowing for reasons alluded to in a sibling thread and enclosed in quotes to reference the video creator's remark on the extreme, almost nonsensical measures taken (though understandable in hindsight) to spoof the hardware[0]. [0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L7C_x5EI-fQ&t=7m40s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L7C_x5EI-fQ&t=7m40s
shantara 2y ago
Bought on OLX, which is an Eastern/Central European version of Craigslist. Not a place that you should be buying expensive electronics without considering a possibility that you’re being scammed
minkles 2y ago
That’s quite a bit of effort gone into a plausible looking fake. As always buy from a reputable seller. There are few real bargains out there. It’s usually less interesting on the EE side where you’ll get something that looks like an expensive opamp but turns out to be an LM358. It might even partially work in circuit!
userbinator 2y ago
They certainly have been getting more convincing. I still remember this crude attempt 14 years ago: https://www.overclockers.com/forums/threads/reported-fake-intel-cpu-sold-at-newegg-first-build-ever-i7-920.636484/ https://www.overclockers.com/forums/threads/reported-fake-in...
- scrlk 2y ago
  Not a CPU, but I remember Nvidia being the source of many jokes back in the day for their Fermi mock up using wood screws: https://bit-tech.net/news/tech/graphics/fermi-card-on-stage-wasn-t-real/1/ https://bit-tech.net/news/tech/graphics/fermi-card-on-stage-...
echoangle 2y ago
Why would you go that far to make a fake? If the buyer can’t do a chargeback, you can just ship a rock, and if they can, how does shipping something that’s obviously broken help you prevent a chargeback? I don’t get it.
- chrisfosterelli 2y ago
  Plausible deniability? I feel like sending a literal rock puts a banner on it for being a scam but something that looks like the chip although doesn't function leaves lots of room to argue & misdirect: the issue is elsewhere with the receiver's computer setup, it was installed incorrectly, a legitimate CPU was sent but was damaged in transit or by the user and has no warranty, etc. The vast majority of buyers do not have the ability to open up the CPU and tell what they're looking at. OLX presumably does not want outright scams but also doesn't want to put any effort into warranty, returns, customer service, etc. You mostly just have to make it murky enough I would guess.
  - echoangle 2y ago
    I still don’t understand how they make any money from this, who wouldn’t immediately dispute the purchase if they put the CPU in their PC and it doesn’t boot? As a customer, I don’t really care what happened to the product before if it arrives and it’s broken. I ask for a return and if the seller gives me trouble, I do a dispute with PayPal and get my money back. I don’t even have to diagnose the issue.
    - brudgers 2y ago
      If a purchase is not through a credit card network, there is not a general process for disputing a charge.
      - imtringued 2y ago
        It's called PayPal.
ksec 2y ago
We are in 2024 and somehow people still falls for the same scam as they did 30 years ago. But I guess it is good these stories get reposted and hopefully more people are aware of it.
- cocodill 2y ago
  I remember people buying bricks in a VCR box at the flea market in the early nineties. Scam works no matter what time it is.
throwaway48476 2y ago
Business moves at the speed of trust. Such low trust society practices haem everyone.
tonetegeatinst 2y ago
I bet you could do this by the following and I would hazard a guess that they do something like the following. 1. Buy a real CPU 2. Measure where the layout of pins are, the different parts visible to the naked eye, and then rip the top off to draw up a CAD file. 3. Use a cheap desktop mill to mass produce a bunch of the top metal pieces, buy any small resistor part you might need. 4. Get a PCB design that mimicks the CPU layout with contacts on bottom that look realistic enough. 5 assemble your fake metal piece, any visable nockoff component, to the cheap PCB. 6. Do a fraud where a good CPU is purchased from a company not likely to disassemble the CPU and might write it off as a DOA chip or a damaged in shipping. Return the fake CPU in the box/system, and you just got a free CPU you could resell on the black market or sell to sanctioned parties. This is stupid because of the effort needed to make a fake chip and your betting your life in jail no one does a decent inspection. Hell you need to laser etch the CPU to match whatever legit thing your stealing, so many ways to get caught.
- BizarroLand 2y ago
  Sure, but like, crank out 10 of them, sell for $300USD each, grab your $3k and run. If you're living in a poor economic location, it could make sense. That could be a few months living money for a few days of work.
kens 2y ago
A few years ago I bought an 8086 chip on eBay and it turned out to be fake, a random logic array chip relabeled as an 8086. It made for interesting die photos at least. It hardly seems worthwhile for someone to fake a chip that gets sold for $3.80. https://www.righto.com/2020/08/inside-counterfeit-8086-processor.html https://www.righto.com/2020/08/inside-counterfeit-8086-proce...
- userbinator 2y ago
  Those scammers who will sell you a chip with whatever you wanted printed on it probably profit the most from "collectors" who don't ever try to verify what they actually have.
jowdones 2y ago
OLX is basically a second hand flea market. Only form of protection you have is the price: should be so low as to not hurt you much in case the product is defective and seller ghosts you. I never had a problem and bought many things on it, most expensive a ZX Spectrum clone with CP/M and floppy drive for 400 euro. My brother bought a couple of brand new smartphones for like 50% discount and they were genuine. It works more often than not but there's always the risk.
Beijinger 2y ago
Maybe a small batch that was never meant to be used by scammers. For exhibition at trade fairs of for photographs? Then one dude might have thought, why not try to sell them, make a quick buck.

106 points by doener 2y ago

I expected a real working clone of the Ryzen chip. Calling it mindblowing is a bit exaggerate since it's basically a piece of metal/plastic with no electronics in it.

fluoridation 2y ago
It is very unusual that someone would go to this much effort instead of using a real dead CPU or re-lasering a lower spec one.
- Animats 2y ago
  Yes. Repeat business will be zero. The seller can't sell very many before they have to shut down and go into hiding. Yet it takes a lot of cost and effort to set this up. As a scam business plan, it's not a good one.
  - imglorp 2y ago
    That's exactly the Amazon scammer business model. They can have a new store with a new name in seconds and be back in business with none of that pesky customer service and other accountability.
  - bangaladore 2y ago
    With a chinese manufacturer, I think you could probably make about 100 of these for less than a few thousand bucks easily. With all the cost in the cnc'd heat spreaders. Maybe 100 for < 1k.
- userbinator 2y ago
  Indeed, remarked CPUs have been a known scam for decades by now. At least those will somewhat work and delay the arousal of suspicion, while this is an instant fail. Perhaps this was made for warranty fraud?
- magicalhippo 2y ago
  Recently saw some interesting AMD Ryzen motherboards with integrated Zen4 laptop CPU on AliExpress. Then I saw one of the sellers had a note that the processor would not show model number, so you had to look up the serial number to determine model, and it'd benchmark 10% slower. Totally not rejects...
transcriptase 2y ago
Same. Was immediately worried since I bought a 7800x3d for a “too good to be true” price off Aliexpress earlier in the year that works flawlessly and appears to be the real deal.
- NotACop182 2y ago
  Did you benchmark it? Could be an old chip relasered to fool consumer
  - Tuna-Fish 2y ago
    7800X3D is really easy to verify because you can just check the cache amount. 7800X3D is the cheapest chip that fits into AM5 and has the 96MB L3.
    - contingencies 2y ago
      lscpu |grep ^L3
  - sunshowers 2y ago
    Aliexpress is legit, they'll usually be "tray"/OEM CPUs but there's no reason to assume that they're fake.
    - Eduard 2y ago
      > Aliexpress is legit That's way too positive. Aliexpress is loaded with counterfeit products as well.
    - userbinator 2y ago
      There are also plenty of used CPUs of older models, but those tend to be fine since they don't really die unless abused (or are certain Intel 13th and 14th gen models...) and were probably run at stock settings for the few years the server it was in was warrantied for before being sent to recycling (creating tons of unnecessary waste, but good to see people have figured out how to encourage reuse while also profiting from it.) I've also purchased used pre-Rowhammer RAM from there, and it was perfect too.
ClassyJacket 2y ago
I was going to say - I didn't think it was plausible that anyone had the capability to manufacture competitive chips, without the world knowing their foundry exists. Would have been funny if it was real, but was actually a 486, or something. Probably not possible due to motherboard compatibility\pin configurations or something, but still.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
urbandw311er 2y ago
“Mindblowing” is in there as click bait. It would be great if we can remove it from the HN title.
- boneitis 2y ago
  I'm not an overclocking enthusiast, but my read on it is that it's mindblowing for reasons alluded to in a sibling thread and enclosed in quotes to reference the video creator's remark on the extreme, almost nonsensical measures taken (though understandable in hindsight) to spoof the hardware[0]. [0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L7C_x5EI-fQ&t=7m40s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L7C_x5EI-fQ&t=7m40s

shantara 2y ago

Bought on OLX, which is an Eastern/Central European version of Craigslist. Not a place that you should be buying expensive electronics without considering a possibility that you’re being scammed

minkles 2y ago

That’s quite a bit of effort gone into a plausible looking fake. As always buy from a reputable seller. There are few real bargains out there. It’s usually less interesting on the EE side where you’ll get something that looks like an expensive opamp but turns out to be an LM358. It might even partially work in circuit!

userbinator 2y ago

They certainly have been getting more convincing. I still remember this crude attempt 14 years ago: https://www.overclockers.com/forums/threads/reported-fake-intel-cpu-sold-at-newegg-first-build-ever-i7-920.636484/ https://www.overclockers.com/forums/threads/reported-fake-in...

scrlk 2y ago
Not a CPU, but I remember Nvidia being the source of many jokes back in the day for their Fermi mock up using wood screws: https://bit-tech.net/news/tech/graphics/fermi-card-on-stage-wasn-t-real/1/ https://bit-tech.net/news/tech/graphics/fermi-card-on-stage-...

echoangle 2y ago

Why would you go that far to make a fake? If the buyer can’t do a chargeback, you can just ship a rock, and if they can, how does shipping something that’s obviously broken help you prevent a chargeback? I don’t get it.

chrisfosterelli 2y ago
Plausible deniability? I feel like sending a literal rock puts a banner on it for being a scam but something that looks like the chip although doesn't function leaves lots of room to argue & misdirect: the issue is elsewhere with the receiver's computer setup, it was installed incorrectly, a legitimate CPU was sent but was damaged in transit or by the user and has no warranty, etc. The vast majority of buyers do not have the ability to open up the CPU and tell what they're looking at. OLX presumably does not want outright scams but also doesn't want to put any effort into warranty, returns, customer service, etc. You mostly just have to make it murky enough I would guess.
- echoangle 2y ago
  I still don’t understand how they make any money from this, who wouldn’t immediately dispute the purchase if they put the CPU in their PC and it doesn’t boot? As a customer, I don’t really care what happened to the product before if it arrives and it’s broken. I ask for a return and if the seller gives me trouble, I do a dispute with PayPal and get my money back. I don’t even have to diagnose the issue.
  - brudgers 2y ago
    If a purchase is not through a credit card network, there is not a general process for disputing a charge.
    - imtringued 2y ago
      It's called PayPal.

ksec 2y ago

We are in 2024 and somehow people still falls for the same scam as they did 30 years ago. But I guess it is good these stories get reposted and hopefully more people are aware of it.

cocodill 2y ago
I remember people buying bricks in a VCR box at the flea market in the early nineties. Scam works no matter what time it is.

throwaway48476 2y ago

Business moves at the speed of trust. Such low trust society practices haem everyone.

tonetegeatinst 2y ago

I bet you could do this by the following and I would hazard a guess that they do something like the following. 1. Buy a real CPU 2. Measure where the layout of pins are, the different parts visible to the naked eye, and then rip the top off to draw up a CAD file. 3. Use a cheap desktop mill to mass produce a bunch of the top metal pieces, buy any small resistor part you might need. 4. Get a PCB design that mimicks the CPU layout with contacts on bottom that look realistic enough. 5 assemble your fake metal piece, any visable nockoff component, to the cheap PCB. 6. Do a fraud where a good CPU is purchased from a company not likely to disassemble the CPU and might write it off as a DOA chip or a damaged in shipping. Return the fake CPU in the box/system, and you just got a free CPU you could resell on the black market or sell to sanctioned parties. This is stupid because of the effort needed to make a fake chip and your betting your life in jail no one does a decent inspection. Hell you need to laser etch the CPU to match whatever legit thing your stealing, so many ways to get caught.

BizarroLand 2y ago
Sure, but like, crank out 10 of them, sell for $300USD each, grab your $3k and run. If you're living in a poor economic location, it could make sense. That could be a few months living money for a few days of work.

kens 2y ago

A few years ago I bought an 8086 chip on eBay and it turned out to be fake, a random logic array chip relabeled as an 8086. It made for interesting die photos at least. It hardly seems worthwhile for someone to fake a chip that gets sold for $3.80. https://www.righto.com/2020/08/inside-counterfeit-8086-processor.html https://www.righto.com/2020/08/inside-counterfeit-8086-proce...

userbinator 2y ago
Those scammers who will sell you a chip with whatever you wanted printed on it probably profit the most from "collectors" who don't ever try to verify what they actually have.

jowdones 2y ago

OLX is basically a second hand flea market. Only form of protection you have is the price: should be so low as to not hurt you much in case the product is defective and seller ghosts you. I never had a problem and bought many things on it, most expensive a ZX Spectrum clone with CP/M and floppy drive for 400 euro. My brother bought a couple of brand new smartphones for like 50% discount and they were genuine. It works more often than not but there's always the risk.

Beijinger 2y ago

Maybe a small batch that was never meant to be used by scammers. For exhibition at trade fairs of for photographs? Then one dude might have thought, why not try to sell them, make a quick buck.