Amazon being used to flog fake AMD Ryzen CPUs

Amazon being used to flog fake or substandard goods? It's unheard of...

Amazon's is being used to offload fake AMD Ryzen microprocessors on unsuspecting customers, according to reports, with buyers receiving tarted-up Intel Celeron CPUs rather than the very-much more powerful microprocessor they had been expecting.

This isn't the first time such a scam has happened, but according to PC Gamer there have been several incidents recently where customers ordering Ryzen 7 1700 CPUs on Amazon have received an Intel Celeron instead.

Disgruntled punters have taken to Reddit to moan about it, with users 'sh00ter999', and 'Yae_Ko' having fallen victim to the apparent scam.

At first glance, it appears that the customer has received the AMD chip they ordered, but on closer inspection, it becomes clear that the Ryzen branding is nothing more than a transparent sticker.

The chips, which apparently have shipped in shonky packaging, also have a land grid array (LGA) design rather than the pin grid array (PGA) design the current Ryzen chips actually sport, and come bundled with the wrong heat sink.

It's unclear exactly what is happening, but reports claim that Amazon is selling products that have been returned, with the original buyer switching out the processor for an old Intel Celeron chip before returning it. Provided the weight and appearance were close enough to the real thing to fool Amazon, the scammer is bagging themselves a free Ryzen CPU.

"This is the downside to Amazon's co-mingled inventory model," one Reddit user speculates. "It's super-efficient so long as all the players are honest. But it's easy for a dishonest retailer to sneak counterfeit goods into the pile."

Amazon has yet to comment but is reportedly offering those affected a full refund and a gift card to make up for the ballsup.

AMD last week announced details for its powerful consumer and workstation Ryzen 'Threadripper' processors. The 12-core Threadripper 1920X, which comes with a 3.5GHz base speed that can boost to 4.0GHz, will launch for $799, while the 16-core Threadripper 1950X, which has a base speed of 3.4GHz, will fetch $999.

Just buy them from Novatech, Ebuyer, Overclockers, Scan or even PC World or Maplin (!) rather than Amazon if you want to be sure of receiving a legit one.