Excessive overclocker Roman Hartung, who you may acknowledge higher as ‘der8auer’, has been across the block a time or two, decided his fair proportion of CPUs over time, and has seen issues. Nevertheless, the close-up examination and dissection of a pretend AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D processor blew his thoughts, a phrase he used a minimum of 3 times (by our rely) in a brand new video posted this weekend.
Scammers promoting counterfeit chips isn’t new, nor is it unique to AMD Ryzen components (we wrote about a few Core i7-13700K being offered as a Core i9-13900K around this identical time of year in the past). What blew his thoughts was how much effort the counterfeiter put into making confident of the pretend chip’s design.
He obtained the CPU in question from Bruce Lee (not to be confused with the late and friendly martial arts professional), a fanatic from Romania who der8auer related with over Discord. Lee bought the chip in a web-based marketplace consisting of personal sellers, considerably like Facebook Market.
Sadly for Lee, the Ryzen 7 7800X3D he bought for 300 euros was a non-functioning pretend chip. Luckily for him, Hartung got here to the rescue by shopping for the pretend CPU for 400 euros, which is across the going retail charge for a brand new Ryzen 7 7800X3D in Europe. With the counterfeit chip in hand, Hartung launched into an in-depth examination.
One of many things he saw straight away is that the greenish PCB (printed circuit board) appeared slightly more blue than an actual Ryzen 7 7800X3D he had available, although that is not essentially uncommon—a few of AMD’s chips do sport a bluish-green CPU. What was uncommon, nevertheless, is that the uncovered capacitors were utterly clear, whereas, on actual 7800X3D CPUs, they’re sometimes lined with glue.
That wasn’t the one potential signal that one thing needed to be corrected. Hartung says the PCB felt thinner, which he confirmed through a precise measurement (0.964mm versus 1.308mm). Past that, it took some high-resolution photographs to find some refined variations within the IHS (built-in heat spreader) design.
“This blows my thoughts, truthfully…it seems like they faked each I/O die and CCD as a part of the heat spreader,” Hartung said after popping the IHS off the counterfeit chip. “There are holes drilled into the heat spreader. Why would you even try this? And the PCB seems to prefer that it would not comprise something besides a bunch of capacitors.”
He later states, “Total, that is a particularly skilled pretend for each component, heat spreader, and PCB.”
The reduction right here is to be further cautious when buying items, particularly issues like processors, from marketplaces versus retailers like Amazon (the place the Ryzen 7 7800X3D is on sale for $; be sure you manually choose Amazon as the ven; because use it defaults to a market vendor). For those scammed by a chip on Amazon, there is a much better probability of resolving the difficulty through a return or change versus shopping for a counterfeit chip from a market vendor.