After buying a high-priced CPU online, someone had it swapped out. We’ve reported this kind of news before—old models being passed off as new—but this case is a bit outrageous. An overseas netizen bought AMD’s flagship processor, the Ryzen 9 9950X3D2 Dual Edition, directly from Amazon and received brand-new packaging with the box seals still intact, looking as if it had never been opened. The CPU’s top cover was indeed marked AMD Ryzen 9 9950X3D2, but after flipping it over, he found it didn’t look like an AM5 processor. After asking online, he discovered he had been scammed, and the substrate under the CPU was also suspected to come from an old processor from a rival camp, not AMD.
Image source: Reddit via Wccftech
Bought a fake Ryzen 9 9950X3D2 from Amazon first-party! The seal was intact, but when flipped over, it suspiciously appeared to be an Intel processor.
According to a report by foreign media outlet Wccftech, Reddit user danthebigboss posted in r/watercooling that they bought two Ryzen 9 9950X3D2 Dual Edition processors from Amazon US, one after the other. Both were listed as sold and shipped by Amazon.com, and the outer box seals were intact when they arrived. The first one they bought was completely normal, but the more recently purchased one has a large area on the bottom with no gold contacts, and the difference is very obvious when it is placed next to the first one.
The Ryzen 9 9950X3D2 Dual Edition is the Zen 5 flagship AMD launched on April 22 this year, with a suggested price of $899, 16 cores and 32 threads, and a maximum clock speed of 5.6GHz. The “Dual” in the name means both CCDs have 3D V-Cache stacked on them, so the total L3 cache reaches 192MB, making it the most expensive CPU currently on AMD’s mainstream desktop platform.
When he posted, he wasn’t thinking it was a scam—he was just wondering whether there were two different versions of the AMD 9950X3D2 Dual:
兩顆明明是同一款處理器，但接觸主機板的那一面看起來差非常多。有人看過這種情況嗎？……底部金色接點完整的那顆是早期買的，金色接點少了一大塊的是最近買的。
Two different versions of AMD 9950x3d2 Dual?
byu/danthebigboss inwatercooling
Soon after, other netizens, after looking at the photos, quickly noticed that the second unit did not look at all like an AMD AM5 processor, and AMD had never released any “second version” of the 9950X3D2, so it was very likely that it had been swapped out.
The contact design on the bottom of AMD and Intel CPUs is very different.
AMD’s AM5 platform uses the LGA 1718 socket, with the pins on the motherboard, so the bottom of the CPU is densely packed with gold contacts that cover almost the entire back. Also, because the back is already filled with contacts, the capacitors on AM5 processors are placed on the front side—that is, the small components visible in the several cutouts around the metal heat spreader.
Intel’s desktop processors are exactly the opposite. On older platforms like LGA1151, the center of the back of the CPU has an area with no contact pads, used for placing SMD components such as capacitors, so when you turn it over, there is a small island-like component area in the middle, with the contact pads arranged around the perimeter.
This also means that this Ryzen 9 9950X3D2 Dual Edition, which is suspected of having been swapped, looks like AMD on top but is actually Intel when flipped over.
As for which Intel processor is actually underneath, VideoCardz and some users speculate that it may be an older LGA1151-platform CPU—roughly a 6th- to 9th-gen Core-era product—but the exact model cannot be confirmed from the photo alone.
Although the scam of swapping heat spreaders has existed for a long time, it has always involved CPUs of the same brand—for example, removing the heat spreader from a new AMD processor and installing it on the substrate of an older AMD processor.
Previously, fake Ryzen 7 9800X3D processors that reached the market could still be identified by the lettering on the integrated heat spreader or the positions of the SMD components on the front. This time, however, the heat spreader itself was transplanted from a genuine unit, so when viewed through the transparent window in the packaging, it looks exactly like the real thing—only turning it over to the back gives it away.
As computer components remain in short supply and prices keep rising, related scam cases on Amazon are increasingly common. Products like the 9950X3D2, the most expensive mainstream desktop processor, are naturally even more likely to become targets, similar to the situation with the RTX 5090.
Although this hasn’t been seen in Taiwan yet, when buying computer components online, it’s still advisable to be extra careful; if possible, it’s best to record a video while unboxing as evidence.
Source: KOCPC Chinese