Beware: scammers are selling RTX 4090 cards without GPUs, counterfeit RTX 4090s on the loose

NVIDIA's flagship GeForce RTX 4090 graphics card is now a scam for some customers, with HKEPC reporting that a new scam in the second hand market has turned up... counterfeit GeForce RTX 4090 graphics cards.

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NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 graphics card, without the GPU (source: HKEPC)

The expensive and very fast GeForce RTX 4090 had at least one person spending $13,000 HK ($1660 USD or so) on a GeForce RTX 4090 that was... fake. The card looked fine, with the scammer showing off original photos of the graphics card with its RGB lights working and all.

But, once the card was received... that's when the person knew they were scammed. The fans didn't work, and get this: the GPU was missing. Yeah, the AD102 GPU that powers the GeForce RTX 4090 itself was gone. $1660 flushed down the toilet, as the buy has an expensive RTX 4090 that simply doesn't, and will never work.

The scammer seems to have left some of the memory modules behind, but others were stuck to thermal pads, which isn't what you want with an expensive purchase. Police didn't bother with the case, which left the buyer without an avenue to get their money back. HKEPC is reporting the news of the counterfeit GeForce RTX 4090 graphics card in the hops that people don't fall for these (expensive) tricks again.

It's expected that whoever ripped the GeForce RTX 4090 apart used the spare parts -- the AD102 GPU and GDDR6X memory modules -- on an AI card that is filling Chinese AI farms across the country. But, if you're in China where the GeForce RTX 4090 is totally banned, and want one, I guess you're going to find it a little harder from here on out.

There's the GeForce RTX 4090D and RTX 4080 SUPER for those markets, which shouldn't be too far away now. At least they'll come with an actual GPU inside.