- I just bought this $2,000 CPU for 428 bucks, brand new. (sniffs) Smells like a
scam, and walks like a scam. Might even talk like a scam. Hello, I'm a little scam. But I assure you, this is very real. A high performance. This CPU has 18-cores chip that you can actually buy right now for less than a quarter
of its sticker price. And there's tons of them available. So what are these, why are they so cheap, and where on Earth did they come from? And who's our sponsor? ORIGIN PC laptops can be customized with 11th-gen Intel core processors and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 30 Series graphics. They're backed by their 24/7 support team, and you can check them out at the link in the video description. (upbeat electronic music) When we first stumbled upon
these Intel Extreme Edition CPUs for sale at mindbogglingly-cheap prices, my brain jumped to three possibilities. One, these could be B-stock
units that were returned to a retailer or system integrator. So they're working, but not brand new. Two, they could've been pulled from decommissioned workstations as part of a large
organization's hardware refresh. Or three, and this is a classic eBay scam, these are actually engineering or qualifying sample chips
being sold as retail. And that one's a big problem, because A, they are technically still
the stolen property of Intel, and B, they often have performance
and compatibility issues. But, after further investigation, otherwise known as actually
reading the eBay listing, these are advertised
as seller refurbished, which lines up pretty
well with my theories, except that wait, what? 100% not used, not repaired, not engineering sample. (chuckling) See ya later,
theories. It was nice knowing ya. I mean, it looks too good to be true, but these guys have all
kinds of chips available, and every single one of their ads lists these CPUs in the same fashion. So I started to think,
"Maybe they're real." I mean, look, they even come
with a one-year warranty! All right, Strong Exuberant
Electronics HK CO Limited, I'll play ball. So I blew $1,000 on not one, not two, but three of these chips,
all in the name of science. After all, if I ordered one, and I got a working one,
that could be a fluke. But three, that's a pattern. You guys know I do this all
for you, right? (chuckles) "But Linus, cheap eBay
CPUs are nothing special." I know, I know, it's the
motherboards for these things that tend to kill the deal. But not for these. The thing is, the chips
I'm holding are a 7940X and 7980XE, 14 and 18 cores, respectively. They are formally discontinued, but Intel's matching X299 Chipset is still an active product, which means that motherboard
supply for these things hasn't actually dried up yet. And because of that, if
you want to save a buck, there are pages and pages
of compatible boards on eBay for as little as around $200. That is not bad, compared to
a decent B550, or X570 board, especially when you consider that Extreme Edition HEDT boards tend to come with a lot
more standard features. But just a second. From the outside, not
one of our three CPUs appears to have been mounted in a socket for any appreciable amount of time. These earlier 14-nanometer chips, notably Skylake, used thinner substrates that had a tendency to bend at the corners after spending even a few
months mounted in a socket. We don't see any of that. And there aren't any telltale
pressure or abrasion marks on the IHS from being
held down in the socket, or from having thermal compound on them. Except there's one small thing. Consistent with the eBay ad description, there are scratches and dings
all over all three of them, including at the edges of the substrate, and in between the pads. In all my years assembling PCs for NCIX and Linus Tech Tips videos, I haven't seen this kind
of superficial damage on a brand-new chip. It's just weird. Of course, I'm not gonna
care about any of that, if it works, which is hardly
a guarantee at this point. I mean, it's not like
I haven't been scammed buying DOA CPUs on eBay before. That's why I always buy
my CPUs in pillow form, (pillow thumps) from LTTstore.com. You ready for the moment of truth? Here we go. Yes! (keyboard clacking) There we go, 7980XE. (quiet upbeat electronic music) 7940X, that's two for two! Bam. Exactly as expected. So, all three of these work as though I pulled them
out of a retail package, kicked them around on
the floor a little bit, and then chucked them into a motherboard. No temperature or stability issues. And they're even running
the correct clock speeds. And they report retail steppings in diagnostic applications like CPU-Z. That's a big one, by the way, because Intel uses flags like this that are built right into the CPU to permanently mark engineering
or qualifying samples, so that even if a scammer were to swap out the
integrated heat spreader, you still wouldn't be able to hide it. I mean, even performance is
identical to the retail chips that we already had on hand
from, once upon a time, before our threadripper
gave the people's elbow to Intel's entire HEDT lineup. (thumps desk) Now, some of
you are probably asking, "Could they be fake, or imitation,
non-genuine Intel CPUs?" And the answer is, no, actually. The reason that Intel and AMD can charge so much for these products is that no one else can make them. Even multi-decade-long attempts to reach this level of
performance, in China and Russia, are only now starting to
approach the same playing field. And getting your counterfeit chip, that you somehow miraculously built, to report as an Intel one, and then miraculously work in
an Intel socket motherboard, (scoffs) good luck. So where are they coming from? Well, as strange as it sounds, the only realistic answer is,
they're coming from Intel. And there's a couple of ways that something like this could happen. One possibility is that
they're just plain leftovers that haven't sold in four years. I doubt it, but it is possible. Another is that Intel
could have excess capacity at one of its 14-nanometer fabs, and rather than shutting it down, they found it was better
to make these things and flip them to resellers
and developing markets at a deep discount. Intel will save some cost by not bothering with fancy packaging, support, and warranty coverage, and that gets passed
along to the end user. That sort of thing isn't unheard of. And those discount parts
making their way onto eBay isn't unheard of either. So, I lean towards the second hypothesis, because you guys might have noticed, we bought one 14-core,
and then two 18-cores. What's up with that? Here's the thing. We actually placed an order
for three different chips. One of those 18-cores was
supposed to be a 16-core 7960X, but the seller fulfilled
it with an 18-core, saying they were still waiting
for more stock to come in. Wait, more stock to come in? So, if stock is still flowing, and it has to be coming from Intel, then they gotta still be making them. Of course, just because the retail price is formally $2,000 for this thing, that doesn't mean anything. Intel rarely actually cuts the price of their top-of-the-line products, because they'd rather
just discontinue them, so they can maintain that perception that Extreme Editions
are really expensive, and they're for ballers only. So, the question becomes,
at $400, should you buy one? Well, if all you're doing is gaming, the answer is an unequivocal no. You're better off with a used Ryzen 3000, or Ryzen 5000, if you can afford it. But if you do anything other than gaming, well, now the answer gets a
little bit more interesting. Considering core counts alone, these things absolutely
crush any Ryzen 3000 or 5000 Series competitor, for the money. But it's also not quite that simple. They lack some of the latest features, like PCI Express gen four. And this older, 14-nanometer
silicon is gonna struggle to keep up with AMD's
state-of-the-art seven-nanometer. You'll notice this especially on the higher-core-count models, which are gonna have much
worse all-core clock speeds. However, if you've got a workload that benefits from a many-core CPU, a brand-new 3950X 16-core on eBay costs $660 on average. That is substantially more than
we're paying for an 18-core. And if you drop down to the 14-core 7940X, which, by the way, will
be better for gaming, thanks to its higher boost clocks, you're paying just over half the price from our new BFFs on eBay. And remember, these X299 platform chips have another potentially huge advantage. They have a whack-load
more PCI express lanes than AMD's consumer platform. So let's say you wanted
to build a NAS for Plex with Ryzen 3000. Well, if you want GPU transcoding, and you want a whack of storage, you could end up running
into an IO bottleneck, or even running out of PCI
express slots to plug stuff into. What about an editing rig that needs a capture
card, and fast networking? Or what about a home lab,
or a split gaming setup, like we've shown before,
using virtualization to run multiple guest operating systems? I mean, seriously, guys, bottom line, for a professional, or an
enthusiast on a budget, these chips are a steal, and they're real. That's the deal. Now I feel like telling you
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coupon for just a dollar, as well as getting 25% off, once the earbuds launch in early July. If you guys enjoyed this video,
you might also enjoy the one where one of our viewers got scammed buying a fake CPU from Best Buy, and sent it to us for a post-mortem. It was very enlightening. (pillow thumps repeatedly)
(upbeat electronic music)
but will it run windows 11?? :P