It wasn't a not a rebadged old chip, or a dodgy refurb, but a proper empty shell. No CCD, no IO die, no solder, not even a slice of silicon. The heat spreader as faked to look like the real thing, and the packaging was spot on. Even the weight was close enough to fool most folks.

It was bought as new from Amazon, likely returned by a scammer and then resold to some poor mug as factory-fresh. It is a classic return fraud, and a reminder that even the world’s biggest retailers are still falling for the same old tricks.

Gamers Nexus found the deception only after delidding it and shoving it under a microscope. The chip was just a blank PCB with a fake indentation under the IHS, supposedly mimicking the shape of a real die.

There were red flags, but you’d have to be looking hard. It was about seven or eight grams lighter than it should be, the PCB numbers didn’t match, component layouts were wrong, the matrix code didn’t scan, and the engraving was sloppy. In short, it was amateur work hiding behind professional packaging.

AMD’s four-step verification process clearly isn’t up to the job. It doesn’t offer a quick online serial number lookup, just a lumbering support form that’s no good for immediate checks.

Gamers Nexus recommends weighing your chips, scanning those codes, and checking for mismatched serials. But unless you’re pulling out microscopes and delidding tools, most of this won’t help until it’s too late.

With fakes getting better and retail controls not keeping up, punters are stuck hoping their next CPU isn’t a paperweight with a heat spreader.