The insanely powerful Nvidia RTX 4090 graphics cards are currently being sold without GPUs by scammers online. That’s right: Nvidia’s pricey video card is being sold without its central component.
Even with the more powerful Nvidia RTX 4000 SUPER cards revealed during CES 2024, the expensive 4090 is one of the most sought after GPUs on the market. However, this also means it’s being hyper-targeted by scammers.
Via HKEPC, an unaware customer purchased a counterfeit Nvidia RTX 4090 without a GPU block for $13,000HK, the equivalent of US$1,660. While looking identical to the standard graphics card on the outside, the inside lacked the actual components required to work.
The scam Nvidia RTX 4090 featured working lights, allowing the card to look legit when it was initially plugged in. However, once noticing the lack of fan movement, the scam victim realised that something was wrong.
Inside the scam graphics card, barely any internal components have been left attached. Alongside the lack of fans, the entire processor block has been removed, as well as a majority of the internal VRAM memory. While some memory is still left inside the useless GPU, it’s not exactly much of a plus for the scam victims.
Via VideoCardz, Chinese police have decided not to look for the scammers behind the horrid swindle. However, with the struggles of acquiring the Nvidia RTX 4000 Series graphics cards in Chinese territories, the scam is expected to continue in the region for the foreseeable future. It seems that Nvidia cards are the most affected by scammers in China, not AMD or Intel GPUs.
For more graphics cards news, check out the reveal of the AMD Radeon RX 7600 XT GPU and its official specifications.