The buyer received the Ryzen 9 9950X3D2 in a sealed box. After opening it, he found that it had been switched into an unknown Intel product that had been polished.

Abstract:

A Reddit user said that when he purchased the second AMD Ryzen 9 9950X3D2 Dual Edition processor from Amazon, he discovered that there were obvious differences in the appearance of the old and new chips. Both are sold and delivered by Amazon. The packages are sealed when received, and the logo on the top looks the same; but there is a large area without gold contacts in the center of the bottom of the newly purchased chip, and the layout is completely different from the normal AM5 processor.

The bottom of this high-end processor is abnormal, raising suspicions of "return and replacement." Reddit users speculated that the counterfeiter may have removed the top cover of the genuine product, reinstalled it on an old Intel processor, and then put the fake chip back into the box and returned it; the product may then be sold again as new. Some netizens believe that the capacitor layout at the bottom of the chip is more like an Intel package, and the text on the top is also blurred and appears to be reprinted. However, there is currently no evidence to confirm which Intel chip is inside, nor whether the chip can work; "someone removed the cover and transplanted the top cover" is still a speculation based on photos.

Ryzen 9 9950X3D2 is a high-end desktop processor launched by AMD in April this year. It uses Zen 5 architecture, has 16 cores and 32 threads, a maximum acceleration frequency of 5.6GHz and a total cache of 208MB. The official recommended price is US$899. Both chipsets are equipped with second-generation 3D V-Cache, which is the main selling point of this product and also makes the loss caused by returns and exchanges considerable.

This incident currently comes from a public post by a single buyer, and Amazon and AMD have not yet responded. It reminds consumers that sealed packaging does not completely prove that the hardware in the box has not been replaced; after receiving the expensive CPU, you can first photograph the unboxing process and check the chip top cover, bottom contacts and logos against the official product photos before installing it.