Retailer ships RTX 5090 with missing GPU and memory chips to customer — defaced GPU took over a year to ship

Another day, and another victim has been scammed out of an RTX 5090, this time from Amazon in France. Nice-Screen-4193 on the PCMasterRace subreddit shared their story of how they ordered an MSI RTX 5090 directly from Amazon, only to receive a non-functioning RTX 5090 with a missing GPU core and memory modules.

The Redditor revealed that they ordered an MSI RTX 5090 graphics card directly from Amazon in France in July 2024. The graphics card came directly from Amazon and was not listed under a third-party seller.

After waiting over a year, they finally received the RTX 5090 they ordered. The box was allegedly perfectly sealed with no signs of tampering. However, once the GPU was inspected, the redditor discovered the four screws surrounding the GPU core had been stripped. Additionally, the gold finger on the bottom allegedly appeared dull and used, suggesting to them that the GPU had been used and not new.

The redditor hooked up the "used" RTX 5090 to his setup, and lo and behold, the GPU failed to power up, with not even a single fan spinning. The GPU's power failure ultimately led the Redditor to inspect the GPU's internals with a flashlight, revealing that the RTX 5090 was missing a core and GDDR7 memory modules.

The Redditors' demise reveals that even official GPU listings on Amazon are not safe from thieves and scammers. The RTX 5090 inventory was likely hijacked in transit before reaching Amazon's warehouses, which would leave Amazon with virtually no means to determine whether its GPU inventory has been compromised or not. This is especially the case if the boxes appear untampered, as was the case with this latest report.

Thanks to sky-high demand caused by the AI boom, Nvidia's flagship GPUs over the past three generations have been at the forefront of non-stop attacks from scammers, thieves, and scalpers trying to capitalize on the high prices that Nvidia's flagship GPUs command. We've seen everything from RTX 4090 inventory being sold with RTX 3090s inside, to RTX 5090 packages being filled with macaroni, rice, and an obsolete GPU tucked in.

Another GPU scam that has become popular among scammers involves removing the GPU core and memory entirely from retail graphics cards. By doing this, the scammers can flip the GPU core and memory modules for a profit or retrofit another graphics card with the stolen components. The latter has become popular in China, where RTX 5090 dies and GDDR7 memory modules are being transplanted onto slimmer blower-style graphics cards compatible with AI servers.

Not all of these Frankenstined RTX 5090s are using stolen components, but at least some of them likely are.

Follow Tom's Hardware on Google News to get our up-to-date news, analysis, and reviews in your feeds. Make sure to click the Follow button.