- There's nothing quite like new hardware. The smell, the feeling, the... How did this happen? Not only is this completely
the wrong model of CPU, it doesn't even fit in the motherboard that it's supposed to. I mean, you did everything right. You knew the secondhand back alley deal from Craigslist Joe was a bad idea and you bought it from a reputable store, only to get the wrong thing anyway. At least, that's what happened if your Reddit user _murzeus_, who alleges that the Ryzen 5 3600 that they bought from Best Buy is so fake that installing it would
damage your system. But how bad could it really be? To find out, we contacted _murzeus_ and actually bought the chip off of them so we could test it for ourselves. You know what's not a risk though? Trying out our sponsor, GlassWire. Are you having poor
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LINUS at the link below. (upbeat music) On the surface, everything about _murzeus_'s
CPU seemed normal. The box was sealed, the product intact, and the laser markings on the IHS clearly said, "Ryzen 3600." Even the included sticker was right. So far, so good, then, right? Well, no. It appears that _murzeus_ may
have fallen victim to a scam that has been around as long
as I've been making videos. Back in 2010, I actually
covered a similar incident where a Newegg customer
received what appears to be a heat sink-shaped piece of plaster with a picture of a CPU fan glued to it, along with a picture of a CPU. So the idea here then is pretty simple. The thief somehow gets
access to an individual box or even a full carton of product, swaps the valuable stuff out with something convincing enough to fool an inattentive warehouse worker, stashes the carton at
the bottom of the pile, and flips the real CPUs
and coolers on eBay. By the time customers start complaining, the scammer has probably
moved on to their next grift. But, here's the thing. There's no plaster here. And, I mean, this is a real
enough looking CPU, isn't it? How bad could it be? Ah. To find out, we must look closelier. (gentle electronic music) For starters, the culprit appears
to have left a fingerprint on the bottom of the
pre-applied thermal compound. But we don't have a forensic lab, so that's not gonna do
us a whole lot of good. Let's take a closer look
at the chip itself then. Here is a real Ryzen 5 3600. And if you look, you'll
notice that our fake one actually doesn't have nearly as many pins on the bottom of it. Not only that but there's
some little gaps in the pins. See that? They are in
completely different spaces. These scammers clearly
don't pay as much attention to the fine details as we do in our merch. Like this CPU shirt at lttstore.com. But taking a closer look
at our imposter 3600. Well, what is it then? Some of you might recognize
the old AM3 layout, which means that this could very well be a genuine AMD processor,
just an older one. So what exactly is it then? Does it even work? To find out, we dusted off our old Crosshair V Formula motherboard and some DDR3 memory and
threw on an RTX 2060 SUPER because just how bad could
the bottleneck be, right? That heatsink won't work. That's AM4. Thermal compound on here. It's a $200 CPU. Don't wanna damage it, anything like that? (fan whooshing) Ooh. Full speed fan spin on the GPU. Not a great sign for your
CPU actually working. (fan whirring) Ow. Shaved the finger hairs off. This is not what we were
expecting to happen. Actually, we had it up
and running yesterday. Ran Cinebench, "Counter-Strike." Holy crap. It's back alive. I don't have the heat sink attached. It turned on. Hold on. Hold on, I wanna get... Oh, okay. I pulled a classic troubleshooting step. When you're having an issue
with a cable or a connection, don't just reseat it,
reseat it a few times. 'Cause what that can do is it can actually scratch any corrosion or, ouch, oxidation off of the surface of the contacts and it can make it so
there'll be more conductive. So I put the CPU in and
out a whole bunch of times and (claps) oh, wow. Whoa, what a deal? What a bargain. We got us an Athlon II X2 B22 CPU. And the 11-year-old processor. (laughs) I mean, this thing's
almost old enough to drive. Cinebench. Let's find out how
it... Oh wow. (laughing) Did you see that? Now, Windows 10 search is
a steaming pile of garbage but that was something else. Okay. Oh, Lordy, you put
Cinebench R20 on here? Oh, that's not gonna be a good experience. I mean, that was just opening a folder. Is this an SSD? This is an SSD. This is a Crucial BX. I mean, it's not a fast
SSD, but, good Lord, that felt hard drive-like. Oh! Oh, oh, oh, oh (claps) This makes sense. This makes sense. Not only is this a very old
CPU, but look at these temps. We were running at 88 degrees
with the Tj. Max of 90. This thing is probably thermal throttling. Never mind probably, we
can see it dropping down to 800 megahertz here from time to time. Wait, hold on. Is it? Is it running? Yeah. It's mounted on there. Oh, there it goes. There it goes. There it goes. That takes about half an hour to complete. So I won't be sitting here staring at it. The score has 162. We ran this beforehand. And to put that in context, the Cinebench bench database
has a Ryzen 7 1700X eight-core that gets 3,455. That's first-gen Ryzen. So this is like maybe
1/20 of the performance that we should have gotten if we're lucky. Let's play some video games. "CS:GO!" More like "CS:Wait." "CS:," come on! Okay. All right. Oh, man, this is rough 'cause
I'm gonna play with bots which actually puts
additional load on the CPU. Sorry, you poor CPU. Now, if all I was trying to
do was use Microsoft Office or whatever, totally fine. But I would expect to pay
$200 for the entire computer and monitor, not just the CPU. That's the problem. Oh, boy. Well, I don't know if
runs is the right word. It's more of a jogging-like
experience. (laughing) Duh, duh, duh, duh, duh! Oh, wow. Look at that. They gunned that guy down. Oh, reload. Did you see how long it took to start that reloading animation after it stopped actually firing? Headshot again! Look at this. Got my auto-aim on here. Got my hacks. Athlon II hacks. I think it's time to stop. And, you, whoever you are
switching CPUs out, shame on you. It's time for you to stop. But you won't stop, will you? We've seen multiple anecdotes of people receiving the incorrect CPU with the heat spreader swapped so it looks like the
right one, just like this. And let's show you guys
how this scam works. First, you need to obtain
an old, crappy CPU. Kind of like this. Then you're gonna need a deliding tool. We're using this one from their der8auer. Well, I guess you don't
really need a deliding tool, it just makes it easier. If you have a razor blade or
a vise and a lot of patience, you can remove your IHS that way. IHS is short for heat spreader. Really? So whatever the last thing
in the frame buffer was, it's still outputting it. This has no CPU in it,
ladies and gentlemen. Hold on, now I'm... (computer keyboard tapping) (computer mouse clicking) We're just gonna leave that there. Ah, shoot, this isn't the
version of the deliding tool that (clearing throat)
formerly works with AMD CPUs but we're gonna go for it anyway. You could see the bolt doesn't reach 'cause it doesn't go over... Anyway, the point is, I'm
just gonna try and do this by- - [Alex] We have a vise right
there! What are you doing? - I'm doing it the manly way. - [Alex] If only you had a vise. (laughs) - (grunts) Okay. Argh! (grunts) Hold on. Okay, you know what? There's a vise here. - [Alex] Take the (indistinct) out. - See you later. Okay. Da, da, da. - [Alex] Did you see your
nice little handle there? - And it's gone. Something to note is that yours might not
come off this easily, and I would not recommend
deliding AMD CPUs that have soldered IHS's because the odds of getting
a performance improvement are low and the odds of damaging it are significantly higher. Of course, this one has clearly
already been delided once, so it popped right off. And you can see right here
that these clearly don't match. Our CPU has a single dye. And our IHS actually has, you can see where they scraped
the existing solder off, both the CPU die and the
IO chip, which are separate in AMD Ryzen CPUs. Oh, yeah. To their credit though,
they did go and put some, admittedly, very crappy, dry
flaky thermal compound on this. Which sort of raises the question, why? (laughs) Why go to all this work when you could just
ship a hunk of plaster? Well, there are a few reasons for that. First and foremost, it's
harder for a warehouse worker to identify the problem packages this way. Every single unit would need to be pulled and either carefully
inspected or even hand-tested. Also, as we discussed in our
fake AliExpress GPU video, if the product works, at least a little, it can buy the scammer some time while the customer attempts to
troubleshoot the fake device. On marketplaces with third-party
sellers, for example, that can delay the shutdown of their store allowing them to make
more money in the meantime before they have to start over. Those graphics cards worked enough to at least boot into
Windows, for example, which might buy them a week of going back and forth with the customer. "Oh, did you try new drivers?"
et cetera, et cetera. Now, as for this CPU? Well, I would say that it's
possible an unwitting victim might try to force it into an AM4 socket, bending the pins in the process. If they didn't know better, they might think that they
were guilty of destroying it rather than realizing that
they had gotten a fake product. I mean, I wrote that earlier, but I don't even know if I buy it. I actually just don't really understand why they bothered putting
all this work into it. You know what? I wonder if it's
like a criminal code thing? Where wherever they're from, maybe if you ship the wrong thing, as opposed to just a brick,
it's like you could... Yeah. There's plausible
deniability or something like that. It's gotta be something like that. 'Cause this is a
not-insignificant amount of work. The good news is that because
AMD is PGA or pin grid array, the risk to your motherboard and the rest of your
components is minimal. And given that an Athlon X2 these days is worth about five to $10,
it's not much of a loss. But, if this was an Intel product and you had tried to install it without realizing the problem, you could easily have
damaged your motherboard. And nobody wants the
headache of explaining why they should be allowed to return their motherboard with bent pins when they are already trying
to return their fake CPU. So with all that out the way, while we know that _murzeus_ ended up with a scam CPU from Best Buy, what we don't know is how. Let's talk through the possibilities. I can say with confidence that
Best Buy, the organization, had nothing to do with this. These kinds of incidents can have devastating negative PR effects. And realistically, they're
going to have to ship a working CPU to the customer eventually. So why bother putting in all this work? Beyond that? Well, it's hard to say. A worker at Best Buy's
distributor? That's possible. But security in those places
tends to be crazy tight. So I doubt it. A Best Buy retail employee?
That's another possibility. Theft from retail workers
is a significant problem. I remember this team at NCIX
that worked together, actually. A customer would come in,
walk around the store, browse for a bit, interact with the staff. And then after a little while, an employee, who was an
associate, obviously, would call out a bogus ticket number, and then the customer would
walk up to the counter, take a bag of hardware, and
walk right out the door. I mean, everyone's busy. You don't notice the gear missing until the monthly count or whatever. So it's really hard to pick
up on something like that. Especially when the security
footage looks so normal. And especially if that rogue employee eventually returned the
thing back to the shelf, but in an altered state. What about a courier? That's possible. Couriers do have unsupervised
access to packages, but the outer carton is often shipped with tamper-proof tape. And they're almost always
under video surveillance, as controversial as that
particular issue might be. On top of it, opening someone else's mail is a federal offense in the U.S. and probably not worth the 200 bucks that they stand to make here. I'd say a more realistic
scenario is a previous customer might've bought the chip,
swapped out the real one, packed it back up nicely,
and returned it to Best Buy, who put it back on the shelf thinking everything looked okay. Which kind of leads us to a couple more uncomfortable possibilities. _murzeus_ lives in Sri Lanka. Best Buy doesn't ship to Sri Lanka. So, actually, the CPU was shipped to _murzeus_'s brother in
Maryland, who then forwarded it. Now, I don't know the guy, and I wouldn't accuse
him of any wrongdoing, but since we're talking
about possibilities it is technically possible that his brother was involved in this. And while we're at it, it's also possible that _murzeus_ is in on it. If that were the case, though, I don't think a refund from
Best Buy was really the agenda, because if so, why bother
shipping it to Sri Lanka first? It is possible, however, that they wanted some Reddit clout and this seemed like an easy
way to stir up some outrage. I have no reason to believe
that's what happened. And if I did, I wouldn't
have given _murzeus_ $200 to buy a new CPU and give me this one. But I've seen much more
appalling stunts than that. So maybe I'm just cynical,
but it is possible. (CPU clatters) You know what else is possible? Telling you about our sponsor. Ting Mobile sponsored today's video and has new rates that
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like a box of chocolates. (laughing) You never know
what you're gonna get. If you guys had fun with this video, make sure you check out our "Testing Out Mystery Chinese CPUs" video. Or actually, you might also enjoy our fake GPUs from AliExpress. That's a good one too. We'll
have those linked down below.
My bet is a customer bought a real one, swapped it out, then returned it. Those Best Buy employees won't know the difference, and I doubt a knowledgeable tech user would look beyond what's printed on the IHS.
I've been burned by this type of scam before. Got a brand new $200 Corsair K100 keyboard, only to find it was replaced by a used $50 Corsair K55. I realized something was up when the box was missing the tamper tape. Brought it back to get a correct product, but still pisses me off people do this and it actually works...
The only thing that baffles me is why would anyone go through all the trouble to make this work for a 3600; I'd understand a 3950X, but not a 3600.
This is a lot of work just to put a fake on an AM3 chipset which would have immediately thrown up problems when someone try to install it on an AM4 board expecting it to fit
RYZSUS
Some of you may remember this, but many years ago Best Buy initially had a 14-day return/100% refund policy (might've been 30 days, can't recall) on all the software sold in the store. You could go into the store on the weekends for a couple of months and the lines were 50 yards long at multiple cash registers--not mostly buying customers, but mostly people bringing back the software they bought during the week to get a refund. You could see the jewel cases in their hands. It didn't take Best Buy long to realize that most of their customers were copying/installing the software at home and then returning it for a full refund. And so...the policy of full refunds for software just because you didn't like it/couldn't use it perished at Best Buy. You can still return software today after a week or two, but only if the original packaging is undisturbed and unopened (and a handy shrink wrap machine at home won't be much help I hear...;))
It's true--people will lie, cheat, and steal, if given the chance. The store was trying to do something nice for the local people and wound up making thieves out of them. If people find a way to cheat the system they will rationalize that they "deserve it" just because the store was stupid enough to trust them to be good citizens. Sad commentary on human nature. It was from customer dishonesty that restocking fees were born, imo.
This is actually insane... taking it one step further... buy used/returned newer gen amd chips from retailers, do the ihs switching thing with an old amd chip and complain to the retailer yourself and you might get so lucky that you get sent a whole new cpu instead of money back because they might believe the guy who first returned the amd chip might have done the ihs switching.
In short, you start out with an old amd cpu and potentially end up with two new cpus. Flip the one with the right ihs, use the one with the wrong ihs.
In addition to all this... I dont get why the singalese/tamil dude didnt report this to best buy... They will have the history of that particular products previous orders/owners...
I remember a while back there was a small group of people like maybe three people who would go into various stores like best buy, target, WalMart, etc and buy ipads
Only thing is that they would weight the box first then open the box, take the iPad and charger out then fill the box with rocks to the exact weight they had measured before and shrink wrapped it back to make it look like exactly like how it would brand new.
They would then drive a different store and have one of them return it and since it looked closed the store would take it back and they got a full refund.
They were caught at a best buy when the moment they returned it a customer wanted to buy one so the associate just grabbed the "new" one that was returned, customer opened it in his car and then stormed back into the store. The van they were in was caught on camera and all best buy locations were notified, they were caught same day.
So it doesn't surprise me that someone went to the effort to do a swap out. Employees at any store cannot open a brand new/unopened return or else the store loses money
Something similar happened back in the late 90s when I worked for Sears. Someone bought a Mac Performa with a PowerPC chip of some model. That's when apple didn't change how the computers looked much. They got the new computer, put their old Motorola 68040 chip system in the box and because the systems were physically th same size, the styrofoam fit. The returns person didn't look closely. Had they done that, they would have seen the model number differently and should have hooked it up when the customer said the old computer was in the box.
I was an employee at the time and I found out about this when I was cleaning out the computer section of the warehouse. I told the manager. We couldn't sell it, so I bought it for $200 or something low. When I got it home, I found all of the customers information and financial records on QuickBooks.
If only the returns employee had bothered to question it.
I wonder if he ordered it from a "market" seller (has a blue icon on listing)? Avoid those if possible, Walmart also has tons of things from third party sellers and they're incredibly inconsistent. I ordered a monitor swing arm from Best Buy and I later noticed it was from a market seller, didn't think anything of it but I never received it so I contacted BB and they refunded me and probably removed that seller.