A video by Russian GPU repair specialist Vik-Off recently posted a video of the lengths scammers have gone and are willing to go with fake GPUs, while also showing how scary good they are getting at passing off fake RTX 4090 GPUs as the real deal.
Step One: Making Verification Difficult
One of the fake RTX 4090 cards that Vik-Off got came from a customer who had supposedly purchased it for 30,000 rubles, which is about RM1,440. The card was being sold as a “repair project”, which is slang for cards that could potentially be restored to working order, provided you have the technical know-how to do so.
Of course, the seller cum scammer of the fake RTX 4090 made it all the more difficult for them to determine its authenticity by selling it as a bare-naked PCB; they have no cooling solution attached to it, which makes it difficult for the buyer to verify if it actually works.
Step Two: Devil In The Details
At this stage, you’re probably thinking that this sort of scam is nothing new, and you’d be right, even if you were to get in close and look at the finer details. And that’s the problem: Vik-Off said that the counterfeits were so carefully assembled to resemble an RTX 4090 board, even they’d have problems identifying it as a glance. Even the “GPU core” was soldered in place using a Ball Grid Array (BGA), instead of the typical slapping some glue to hold it in place.
It wasn’t until Vik-Off began removing the components on the card that they were able to come to the conclusion that the customer had been duped. The GPU substrate colour, surface reflections, and lettering were off, and when they desoldered the GPU core, they found that the contact area did not resemble anything similar to a functional processor. Not only that, but the solder mask also began to deteriorate during cleaning. In short: there was no evidence of an actual RTX 4090 silicon.
It didn’t end with the GPU die either. Upon further inspection, Vik-Off also discovered that the VRAM around the core were GDDR6, instead of GDDR6X modules that are paired with an RTX 4090.
Vik-Off told Videocardz that they weren’t able to fully establish the origins of these fake GPUs, but they suspect that they could be coming from a factory in China. Typically, a repair project GPU such as this RTX 4090 would sell for around 280,000 rubles (~RM13,443), so it’s easy to see why some modders and tinkerers would be drawn in to the undeniably enticing price tag of these fakes.
(Source: Vik-Off via YouTube, Videocardz)
