DRAM shortage fuels fake GPU scams as China-based fraudsters exploit the supply crisis — RTX 4080 GPU sold at cut price was actually an RTX 3060 mobile chip with fake VRAM

Fake GeForce RTX 4080 graphics card.

The ongoing DRAM shortage has driven the best graphics card prices to new heights for gamers and also created a perfect storm for fraud. In a revealing YouTube video, Brother Zhang, a renowned graphics card technician in China, exposes how scammers are using the old switcheroo tactic on Nvidia’s last-generation GeForce RTX 40-series (codename Ada Lovelace) graphics cards to scam unsuspecting buyers in the second-hand market.

In one case, the graphics card in question was the Gigabyte GeForce RTX 4080 16GB Aero OC, a custom variant of the GeForce RTX 4080 that retailed for around $1,199 at launch. The seller claimed the graphics card was not functional and wanted to offload it for just $143.50 on Xianyu, a popular second-hand marketplace in China. The suspiciously low price, approximately 12% of the graphics card’s original retail value, would raise a red flag among potential buyers.