Buyer of $1,600 second-hand RTX 4090 reveals it has no GPU, lacking VRAM chips

Facepalm: Imagine paying $1,660 for an RTX 4090 pics card most effective to find out it become missing some important additives, along with its GPU and numerous VRAM chips. That nightmare situation was a reality for one Hong Kong gamer, who purchased Nvidia's purchaser flagship on the second-hand marketplace.

The unfortunate Mr. Hong offered the RTX 4090 from the Carousell on line 2nd-hand market at the start of the month, writes HKEPC. He paid HK$13,000 for the card, round $1,660, a reassuringly pricey amount that made the item seem less likely to be a scam.

The card's list confirmed photos of its lighting fixtures outcomes activated. Mr. Hong met the seller in individual, that's typically appeared as the safer alternative when carrying out those types of transactions, and visually showed that the cardboard was the one from the pix, at which factor he handed over the cash.

The lousy truth handiest began to show itself when the purchaser got domestic and set up the RTX 4090. The card's RGB lighting did light up, but it appears they have been the handiest element that labored; the fans did not spin and there was no output to the connected display.

Hong decided to take the card to a nearby restore store to peer if the problem might be remedied. Unfortunately, it changed into located that the 4090's GPU become missing. Several of its VRAM chips had also been removed, and those that had been left appeared to had been stuck to thermal pads.

The sufferer could not contact the vendor of the card. He get in contact with the police, who advised him that second-hand transactions in which one celebration had vanished were tough to observe up, so the case might no longer be investigated.

It's in all likelihood that the scavenged RTX 4090 came from one of the Chinese factories that had been buying the playing cards in bulk earlier than they were banned in the usa. These factories stripped them of their fundamental additives, and reused the components in specific forums with blower-style coolers so that they can be offered to Chinese AI firms desperate for accelerators limited by US sanctions. We heard on the time that the leftover components from the original playing cards had been being bought, although we never imagined a few had been being happened as operating RTX 4090s.

The moral of the tale, of route, is to be greater vigilant while buying 2d-hand hardware, specially while it's as expensive as an RTX 4090. But even buying additives from professional sellers can include risks. Just ask the individual that offered an RTX 4090 from Newegg and become sent a container filled with weights. Or the Amazon consumer who become sent a putty-crammed faux snap shots card.