[ad_1]
Facepalm: Think about paying $1,660 for an RTX 4090 graphics card solely to find it was lacking some important elements, together with its GPU and a number of other VRAM chips. That nightmare state of affairs was a actuality for one Hong Kong gamer, who bought Nvidia’s shopper flagship on the second-hand market.
The unlucky Mr. Hong purchased the RTX 4090 from the Carousell on-line second-hand market at first of the month, writes HKEPC. He paid HK$13,000 for the cardboard, round $1,660, a reassuringly costly quantity that made the merchandise seem much less more likely to be a rip-off.
The cardboard’s itemizing confirmed images of its lighting results activated. Mr. Hong met the vendor in particular person, which is usually thought to be the safer possibility when finishing up these types of transactions, and visually confirmed that the cardboard was the one from the images, at which level he handed over the cash.
The terrible fact solely began to disclose itself when the customer acquired dwelling and put in the RTX 4090. The cardboard’s RGB lights did illuminate, but it surely appears they had been the one part that labored; the followers did not spin and there was no output to the connected show.
Hong determined to take the cardboard to a neighborhood restore store to see if the issue might be remedied. Sadly, it was found that the 4090’s GPU was lacking. A number of of its VRAM chips had additionally been eliminated, and those who had been left appeared to have been caught to thermal pads.
The sufferer couldn’t contact the vendor of the cardboard. He get in contact with the police, who advised him that second-hand transactions the place one social gathering had vanished had been tough to comply with up, so the case wouldn’t be investigated.
It is doubtless that the scavenged RTX 4090 got here from one of many Chinese language factories that had been shopping for the playing cards in bulk earlier than they had been banned within the nation. These factories stripped them of their essential elements, and reused the components in numerous boards with blower-style coolers to allow them to be offered to Chinese language AI companies determined for accelerators restricted by US sanctions. We heard on the time that the leftover components from the unique playing cards had been being offered, although we by no means imagined some had been being handed off as working RTX 4090s.
The ethical of the story, after all, is to be further vigilant when shopping for second-hand {hardware}, particularly when it is as costly as an RTX 4090. However even buying elements from respected sellers can include dangers. Simply ask the one that purchased an RTX 4090 from Newegg and was despatched a field stuffed with weights. Or the Amazon purchaser who was despatched a putty-filled pretend graphics card.
[ad_2]
Source link
