New scare gone: Amazon scammer appears to have removed an $889 AMD chip, grafted it onto an old Intel chip, and gotten it through return inspection.

The AMD Ryzen 9 9950X3D2 is not a cheap chip.

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I've never been stung by Amazon, but I've heard enough stories to be concerned. Amazon can take refunds and re-list them as new products if they fail inspection, which can open the door for fraudsters if something slips through inspection. And it's the stories about this happening with expensive parts that really fascinate me, like what seems to have happened to one Redditor with an incredibly expensive AMD Ryzen 9 9950X3D2.

The image they shared shows that it's supposed to be two Ryzen 9 9950X3D2 chips, but they look different. The pin layout is different on the bottom, and on the top there's a distinct lack of lugs protruding from under the integrated heat spreader (IHS).

Those familiar with AMD chips will know that the lack of a capacitor on top is a giveaway that it's not actually a new Ryzen chip under the IHS - these caps or surface mount device (SMD) components are never in the middle and never on the bottom. So, another bonus is that the underside of the fake chip has all the SMD gubbins in the center, which is a feature of Intel chips, not AMD.

What most likely happened here, as the reddit comment above says, is someone probably removed a Ryzen 9 9950X3D2 and put an older Intel CPU under the Ryzen IHS. The smudge/wearing of text on top of the fake chip probably occurred during the removal process.

For someone who doesn't know much about processors and components, this might be a little hard to tell since Intel chips have been rectangular instead of square for a while now. Someone glancing at a chip without knowing the pin and cap situation might see the nomenclature, the eight IHS outputs, and the square shape and think it's fine.

One would hope that inspections would usually find something like this, but if you know anything about AMD and Intel chips, the differences aren't very subtle.

We've seen Amazon scams like this before, like Memory. This particular case with a fake Ryzen chip is no small thing considering how expensive the 9950X3D2 is. It currently sells for $889 on Amazon. I would hate for this to happen to any processor I buy, especially one that costs $1000. I hope Amazon sorts it out for the Redditor.

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Jacob put his hands on a gaming computer for the first time when he was about 12 years old. He quickly realized that the local computer repair shop had ripped him off with his build and vowed to never let another soul build his rig again. With this vow, Yaqub the hardware addict was born. Since then, Jacob has led a double life as a hardware geek, semi-philosophical professional, first working as a hardware writer for PCGamesN in 2020, then working on a PhD in philosophy for a few years while working for sites like TechRadar, Pocket-lint, Pocket-lint, and Pocket-lint. Eventually, he gave up the brutal mercenary life and joined the world's #1 PC gaming site full-time. He assures us that it is definitely not a carnal thing.

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