Amazon Ships Defaced RTX 5090 GPU to Customer: A Tale of AI-Driven Demand and Supply Chain Fraud

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 and still managed to get an 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. from 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 looked dull and used, suggesting to them that the GPU was 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 so much as a single fan spinning. The GPU's power failure finally led to the Redditor peeking under the hood at the insides of the GPU with a flashlight and discovering the RTX 5090 was completely missing a GPU core and GDDR7 memory modules. The Redditors' demise reveals that even official GPU listings on Amazon are not safe from thieves and scammers. It is very likely that RTX 5090 inventory was hijacked in transit before reaching Amazon's warehouses, which would give Amazon virtually no identifiers to tell whether its GPU inventory has been hijacked 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 helm of non-stop attacks from scammers, thieves, and scalpers trying to take advantage of the sky-high prices 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 with scammers is to remove the GPU core and memory altogether 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 frakenstined RTX 5090s are using stolen components, but it is very likely that at least some of them are using stolen components.

User Receives Fake MSI RTX 5090 With GPU And VRAM Chips Torn Off PCB; Another Incident Of Fake GPUs Being Supplied To Amazon

It appears that the GPU might have been sent to one of those Chinese Labs, where they rip the GPU and VRAM chips from the RTX 5090s. Once again, we are witnessing the supply of Fake GeForce RTX 5090 GPUs. It shouldn't be surprising since we have seen and reported such fraud multiple times, but this one looks somewhat familiar with what we reported recently. The GeForce RTX 5090 has a huge demand, particularly for AI in Chinese markets. Due to an official ban in the country, the only way the GPU gets there is by smuggling. This Redditor seems to be a victim of such fraud, as his GPU didn't have the components, which are usually ripped from the PCB in China. Reddit user u/Nice-Screen-4193 says that he bought a brand new GPU from Amazon FR, "sold and shipped by Amazon", not just by any third-party seller. However, he became skeptical when he saw no tamper seal on one of the screws at the back. This means the GPU was opened before. The user still tried to give it a go before investigating further and reported a non-operational state of the GPU. He also states that the PCIe gold finger was looking dull and used. Using a flashlight, he was able to peek underneath the heatsink to find no memory chips under the thermal pads. So, after the disassembly, it was confirmed that not only was it missing the memory chips, but the entire GPU substrate was gone as well. What remained were just the soldering points on the PCB. This is a classic fraud, which could be linked to the Chinese labs where thousands of RTX 5090 go under transformation. They remove the GPU die and the VRAM chips to solder on another custom PCB for deployment in the AI servers. It appears that the empty GPU was sent back in the supply chain cleverly, and ended up with the Reddit user. So, apparently, not even the GPUs, which are sold and shipped by Amazon, are safe from such fraud, but it also shows how common it is. The GeForce RTX 5090 reportedly doesn't have any problems in being smuggled to China, and while it's one thing to see RTX 5090 being converted into AI GPUs, it's even a more serious problem to see fake RTX 5090s getting back into the supply chain.