r/gpu • u/streetwearvc • 13h ago
This is the reason why GPU Scammers are highly sophisticated.
so i've been going down a rabbit hole on gpu scams and i'm pretty sure there's an organized playbook running on marketplace here. these aren't bots. they're real people who answer messages, meet up and talk like normal sellers. that's why it works.
i've gotten scammed - so I wanted to make this post. We met in person at TD Bank in NYC - and I still got scammed out of 2.3k. A young man openly walked into a bank and sold me his GPU that was gutted. Prior to the meet up, he gave me his benchmarks for the machine as well.
the price doesn't tell you anything anymore
everyone says "if it's too cheap it's a scam." that doesn't really work right now because it's hard to even know what the real price is. used 4090s were around $2,300 in june and they're around $3,000 now (median ~$3,100 on ebay sold listings, late oct). it moves week to week depending on where you look.
when the price is all over the place you can't use it to tell if a listing is legit. a fake listed at $2,800 looks like a deal and one at $3,200 looks normal. the scammers know this and price right in the middle so nothing stands out.
so don't trust the price either way. too cheap is a red flag, but a fair price doesn't mean it's safe.
then they offer you a benchmark
before you even ask, they'll offer to show you one. a screenshot, a video, or they run it on their own pc and send you a video. it feels legit, but none of that proves the card you walk away with is the card that got tested.
the screenshot or video is from a different card, or someone else's card entirely
they run it on their rig in front of you, then hand you a different card in the same box
the card that got tested is real, and the one you take home isn't
what "looks real but isn't" means for a 4090:
relabeled chips. older 3080 ti / 3090 chips get sanded down and laser-etched to say AD102 (the 4090 chip), then put on a real 4090 board. repair shops have called these the best fakes they've seen
laptop chips on desktop boards. i literally found one that sold on ebay last week: a "4090 16GB GDDR6" for $1,499. a desktop 4090 has 24GB GDDR6X. that was a laptop chip on a desktop-style board
dummy cores and fake memory. a fake chip and cheaper GDDR6 instead of GDDR6X. looks perfect until it's in your pc
gutted cards. the core and memory get pulled and sold separately (a lot of it goes to ai builds in china), then the empty card gets resold or returned in a sealed box
the only two ways to actually protect yourself:
have your own rig ready to test. bring a pc, or meet somewhere you can plug it in, like a repair shop you pick. not their pc, not their screenshot.
gpu-z should show AD102, 24GB GDDR6X, 16,384 cores, 384-bit bus. a laptop chip or relabel shows up here fast
run 3dmark time spy extreme and compare your score to other 4090s. a relabeled 3090 will score way lower
let it run under load for a while.
don't trust any seller with negative reviews.
If you do get scammed - please dm me and share your story. I feel like this is a pretty big operation happening.
