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It appears that a Redditor purchased an MSI RTX 5090 Ventus 3X from Amazon, only to find no tamper seal on one of the screws at the back. Upon further investigation, it was discovered that the GPU chip and VRAM had been ripped from the printed circuit board (PCB). This incident highlights yet another case of fake GeForce RTX 5090 GPUs being supplied.
Due to an official ban in China, these GPUs often enter the country through smuggling. The demand for these GPUs, especially for AI applications, is high in Chinese markets. As a result, some Chinese labs have been reported to extract and reuse the GPU dies and VRAM chips from RTX 5090s.
In this case, Reddit user u/Nice-Screen-4193 bought his new GPU directly from Amazon FR, “sold and shipped by Amazon.” However, he noticed that one of the screws lacked a tamper seal, indicating that the GPU had been opened prior to delivery. Using a flashlight, he inspected underneath the heatsink and found no memory chips under the thermal pads.
After disassembling the GPU, it was confirmed that not only were the memory chips missing, but the entire GPU substrate was gone as well. Only the soldering points remained on the PCB.
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This situation is reminiscent of reports where thousands of RTX 5090 GPUs are reportedly being transformed into AI GPUs in Chinese labs by extracting and reusing their components. It seems that even GPUs sold by Amazon may not be immune to such fraud, underscoring how widespread this issue has become.
The news source for this incident is a Reddit post titled “Received a new MSI 5090 from Amazon FR; GPU die and VRAM ripped off,” where the user detailed their experience.
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What was the main issue found when the Redditor disassembled his newly purchased GPU from Amazon?
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