Buyer’s NVIDIA RTX 4090 GPU Turns Out To Be A 4080 & Completely Useless, China Repurposes RTX 4090M & 4080M For Desktops

NVIDIA's GeForce RTX 40 GPUs are being repurposed in a range of ways with some repurposing mobility dies for desktops & others simply scamming people online.

Third-party changes made in GPUs are a common tactic adopted by modders or sometimes scammers in the markets to either experiment with something new or leverage an ordinary consumer by selling counterfeit products to them. We recently reported scammers advertising GeForce RTX 4090s at low prices and unsurprisingly, the GPUs turned out empty from the inside. Similarly, a new sort of "scam" has been discovered by the experts from North West Repair, where an Amazon-bought GPU turned out to be a counterfeit one, that too with a fried PCB & an entirely different chip.

North West Repair received an ASUS ROG Strix GeForce RTX 4090 from a consumer, who disclosed that the graphics card had a minor fault, at least what he was told. When the experts dissected the GPU, they found out that the onboard GPU was a replaced one, and had the AD103-300-A1 marked on it, which is used in the GeForce RTX 4080.

Not only this, but it seems like the seller did some experiments with the GPU itself, which is why it was "weirdly" assembled, with melted power connectors and a cracked PCB as well. What came as a "minor fix" to North West Repair turned out to be something much different, & rather an unusual case, especially considering that it was bought from a US marketplace.

Not all GPU modding incidents are ill-intentioned, but in another case, a Chinese firm has reportedly designed desktop cards, that feature repurposed NVIDIA GeForce RTX 40 mobility GPUs onboard, along with a design that is completely an unofficial one, and interesting at the same time. While there isn't any reason to integrate mobile GPUs into desktops, one possibility is that doing so doesn't have any constraints, and is something much easier for an expert, since mobile chips have lower TDPs and less thermal requirements as well, hence the GPU designing part becomes easier as well.

In this case, Chinese sellers on Goofish are selling the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090M and the GeForce RTX 4080M mobile GPUs into rather weirdly designed white and purple GPUs. In terms of performance, you would expect a huge drop when compared to desktop counterparts, since the GeForce RTX 4090M features 16 GB memory, which is a great reduction from 24 GB. However, the Chinese listings put the "modified" GPUs on par with NVIDIA's GeForce RTX 4070 and RTX 4070 Ti, hence the comparison becomes fair to some extent.

In terms of the pricing, the GeForce RTX 4090M desktop GPU is going for a shocking 13,800 yuan or around $1900 US, but this is most likely a bogus listing. However, the GeForce RTX 4080M desktop is selling for around 4000 yuan or $555 US which makes it an interesting offer. Regardless of the price, we won't advise our consumers to opt for any of these variants, since they don't come with any warranties and it is highly likely that they will cause problems for you in the longer run.

To be safe from any sort of scams within the PC industry, we advise users to opt for official sources for their PC components with trusted retailers with a good reputation in the markets.

News Sources: Tom's Hardware, Videocardz