Buy an RTX 4090 for 1,500 yuan. When you take it apart, you can see that the GPU core is made of plastic.

A new type of fake RTX 4090 graphics card has emerged in the domestic second-hand market. The GPU core is directly imitated with plastic, the video memory is all scrap, and the entire card does not have any usable core components.According to a video posted by "Brother Zhang who repairs graphics cards", a buyer purchased a supposedly damaged RTX 4090 for 1,500 yuan.

After disassembly, it was found that although the AD102-300-A1 core mark on the PCB looks decent, if you look closely, you can find flaws. The "30" date code in the mark means production in 2030, which is obviously impossible for the RTX 4090 that will be launched in 2022.

In addition, the lower left corner lacks the QR code that a genuine card should have, and the layout of the surrounding components does not match the real card. The most important thing is that the central die area is not a silicon wafer at all, but plastic with fake marks.

The video memory particles are all scrap chips, which are only used to make the PCB look complete and do not have any functions. This means that this card has no usable GPU core and no usable GDDR6X video memory. It is essentially a carefully disguised scrap board.

Fake RTX 4090 cards are nothing new. There have been cases of fake RTX 4090 cards using the GA102 core modification of RTX 3080/3090, but those at least have real chips.

This time, the use of plastic to impersonate the GPU core minimizes the cost of counterfeiting, which also means that buyers may not be able to spot it at a glance even if they dismantle the radiator for inspection.