Redditor orders MSI RTX 5090 VENTUS 3X from Amazon, notices GPU + GDDR7 chips are missing

Another day, another fake RTX 5090 out in the wild with a Redditor ordering an MSI GeForce RTX 5090 VENTUS 3X graphics card from Amazon France, sold and shipped by Amazon (not a third-party seller) but once it arrived, he noticed that the GPU and VRAM chips were missing from the PCB.

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The user said that at first "everything seemed normal", the Amazon box and tape were "perfectly sealed", but the moment he opened the GPU box and tried to check the back of the GPU, he said he noticed "no tamper seal". All four screws on the back of the GPU core had "clearly been taken out before" and that "two of them were almost completely stripped" and "that's when I realized: something's seriously off".

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The Redditor then checked the gold finger which he said looked dull and used, at this point he said he was thinking "this is NOT a new GPU", so he hooked it up to his PC just to be sure... no fan spin, no display output, totally dead. He took a closer look and the memory chips under the thermal pads were missing. He used a flashlight to look inside and found the GPU core itself was missing.

He said that he double and triple checked before buying his RTX 5090 that it was shipped from Amazon to try "avoid those nightmare stories where people get a 5090 box filled with pasta". He explained that the MSI French website even lists Amazon as an authorized reseller, but still ended up with a very expensive paperweight.

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The Redditor explained on his post that even "sold by Amazon" isn't always safe these days, and he was told by Amazon support that "any product might have defects". He writes: "Bro, that's like buying a new car and finding out there's no engine. It's the kind of situation that's both infuriating and hilarious -- like I'm mad, but can't stop laughing at how absurd it is".