Fake RTX 4090s Keep Showing Up in Repair Shops With Entirely Different GPU chips

Buying a second-hand graphics card is always fraught with some danger, but until recently you didn't have to worry that the card you get might have an entirely different GPU soldered to its PCB. A number of RTX 4090s have shown up at a repair shop in a batch of used graphics cards, with older GPUs that have been laser-engraved with RTX 4090 details.

Usually, when you buy a second-hand graphics card, the worst you can expect to face is an empty box or a GPU that was used for cryptocurrency mining, so it doesn't have a lot of life left in it. But hardware modifications that make it hard to spot the scam are much rarer. They've appeared in greater numbers since the start of the year, though, as Nvidia's short supply of new cards drove up GPU prices across the board.

In this instance ...