Scammers are now installing GA106 GPUs in disguise on RTX 4080 cards
Brother Zhang describes a new scam on the Chinese Goofish second-hand platform. Zhang runs a GPU repair shop and received a card from a customer who bought a GeForce RTX 4080 listing that looked too cheap to ignore.
The card arrived with a damaged PCIe connector and a cracked PCB, which can make a graphics card effectively dead. Repair shops see physical damage often, and a successful fix would still make the purchase worthwhile, so Zhang opened the card and started basic voltage and continuity checks.
Source: Brother Zhang
Early signs did not look normal. Several screws were already loose, and measurements around the power rails looked inconsistent. Zhang also hit an open circuit on clock-related checks, which usually points to a board with deeper issues.
Once the cooler was off, the real problem showed up. The GPU package was visibly misaligned, and there was heavy solder and flux residue around the memory area. Some memory packages also looked crooked, and the memory rail read as shorted, which matches parts that were placed poorly or swapped.
Source: Brother Zhang
The die itself appeared to be re-marked. The engraving suggested an AD103-class GPU, but the package layout did not match an RTX 4080 reference, and Zhang concluded the silicon was an Ampere-era GA106 laptop-class chip with a fake label. Zhang also suspected the memory was either fake or scrap, and that the original core and GDDR6X had already been pulled as donor parts.
In the end, Zhang told the customer the card was not repairable because the core and memory were not genuine RTX 4080 parts. That customer paid 1,000 RMB, which is about $144 at current exchange rates.
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