We've seen a wide variety of fake GPUs end up on Tom's Hardware, including entirely hollow ones that don't have a die to begin with. Now, scammers have found a new trick to make the con more believable — they're selling graphics cards with dies made out of plastic. That's what happened with Brother Zhang, a well-known Chinese hardware shop owner, who came across a used, broken RTX 4090 purchased for roughly $222.

As expected, you're receiving a dud for that price, and it's usually a gamble these vendors are willing to take in order to repair the GPU and flip it for profit. Or, in this case, produce educational content for spreading awareness. At first, the PCB inside the graphics card looked normal, but upon closer inspection, the die already had irregular markings. It said it's an "AD102-300-A1" die, which is what the RTX 4090 actually uses.

However, the "TW 3043E2" above it indicates the card was somehow manufactured in 2030, which is not possible unless you're a time traveler. There was no QR code engraved at the corner of the die either. All the componentry surrounding the chip also didn't look authentic, as if it had been replaced. When the technician touched the core, it felt unusually smooth, and, sure enough, it turned out to be plastic; there was no silicon inside.

The VRAM wasn't made out of plastic, which is a real possibility, but all the chips were "scrap" and only put there to fill up the PCB. So, neither the GPU nor the GDDR6X memory was real. Brother Zhang essentially got a $200 paperweight that looks kind of cool if you're a hardware geek. Thankfully, this card didn't belong to any customer, and the fact that it ended up with a repair shop means it can serve as a precautionary tale.

Always remain vigilant when making secondhand purchases, especially for expensive parts like a graphics card. In this day and age, just benchmarking a GPU isn't enough because scammers have been known to swap RTX 4090 dies for RTX 3090 or 3080 silicon. If a deal looks too good to be true, it more than likely is. Unless you can open up the card to check its PCB, make sure to tally the benchmark results with the performance you see for it online.

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Hassam Nasir is a die-hard hardware enthusiast with years of experience as a tech editor and writer, focusing on detailed CPU comparisons and general hardware news. When he’s not working, you’ll find him bending tubes for his ever-evolving custom water-loop gaming rig or benchmarking the latest CPUs and GPUs just for fun.