Either AMD is now selling Intel CPUs or seals are cheap to buy by scamers
Another Amazon CPU order has reportedly turned into a return-scam case. A buyer says they ordered an AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D, but the sealed retail box contained an Intel Core i9-10900K instead.
The report comes from a Facebook hardware group and was later covered by TweakTown. The buyer wrote: “Wait a second that’s not a 9800x3d,” adding that Amazon support required “4 layers of AI” before a human agent arranged a replacement. The final comment was at least slightly better: “At least I got a 10900k out of it.”
Not exactly an AM5 upgrade
The two processors are easy to tell apart. The Ryzen 7 9800X3D is an AM5 processor with 8 Zen 5 cores and 3D V-Cache. The Intel Core i9-10900K is a 10-core Comet Lake-S processor for the LGA1200 platform, released years before AM5 existed.
Source: Facebook
This means the replacement chip was not just the wrong model. It was from a different vendor, different socket and different platform. It would not work in any AM5 motherboard bought for a Ryzen 7 9800X3D system. How did anyone put a different CPU into a sealed box?
The good news is that AMD now puts a small window so such scams are easy to notice. Intel does not have anything like this in place, but it appears that Intel CPUs are much less prone to scams these days given that Intel is hardly in teh top10 CPU sales on Amazon.
Not the first time
As you might recall, we had a similar story last year. Reviewer bought a Ryzen 7 9800X3D from Amazon Germany and received an old AMD FX-4100 in a sealed box. That case was easier to spot through the box window because the fake chip had a poor-quality label.
Source: Facebook
