Serving tech lovers for over 25 years.
TechSpot suggests tech analysis and suggestions you can rely on.
WTF?! Counterfeiters are constantly searching for brand-new methods to fool unwary purchasers. Most just recently, popular tech YouTuber Der8auer shined a light on one such rip-off including a phony variation of AMD’s Ryzen 7 7800X3D processor, exposing simply how far these silicon forgers can go. It had an empty PCB and phony heatspreaders, removing it of any genuine worth.
The legend started when a lover believed he had actually scored a significant offer on the effective video gaming CPU through OLX (a Facebook marketplace-like platform)– an authentic 7800X3D for EUR300, which is a good discount rate off the normal market price. The enjoyment rapidly turned to discouragement when the chip showed entirely non-functional upon setup.
Fortunately for him, Der8auer actioned in and compensated him the complete rate of a genuine processor. The overclocking professional had larger strategies than simply charity. He in fact obtained the chip for an extensive analysis and tried to expose the fraudsters’ techniques.
Even before getting the physical item, Der8auer observed some glaring disparities from the seller’s pictures alone. The chip’s color was off, with too bluish a shade compared to the green tint of genuine AMD silicon.
Another apparent free gift for him was that the capacitors surrounding the incorporated heat spreader were missing out on glue. While this glue isn’t present on the non-X3D versions of the chip, it undoubtedly exists on the 7800X3D, so its absence on the latter methods something is off.
As soon as the fake 7800X3D got here, Der8auer’s suspicions were validated– and after that some. Beyond the incorrect colors and absence of glue, he discovered the chip’s printed circuit board was considerably thinner than AMD’s specification, at simply 0.964 mm. This suggested the socket’s packing system could not protect the phony processor with appropriate pressure. Inspecting the heatspreader’s laser etchings exposed a lot more variations undetectable to the naked eye.
It was clear this wasn’t an AMD item, no matter how encouraging it at first appeared.
The last unmasking came when Der8auer delidded the processor, exposing its utter absence of any real silicon passes away below. Instead of genuine CPU cores, the counterfeiters had actually merely made a rectangle-shaped bump on the heatspreader’s underside to simulate the appearance of processors’ passes away. The bundle was simply an empty board.
Concluding, Der8auer confessed the PCB design, capacitor positioning, and total product packaging were remarkably well-executed. Those persuading components were negated by the phony’s glaring physical imperfections. Then once again, these distinctions might not be quickly recognizable by the layperson looking to merely plug the chip into the socket without inspecting it too much.
When it comes to why fraudsters selected the Ryzen 7800X3D over the typical Nvidia flagship GPU, the chip is probably among the very best video gaming CPUs on the marketplace with exceptional efficiency and power effectiveness, as we kept in mind in our evaluation.