Counterfeit Nvidia GTX 1080 Ti Cards Out in The Wild

We should start that what you see in the video above is not a joke, it is real and what we got with an order of GTX 1080 Ti video cards from a reputable European online retailer. Three seemingly brand new Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080 Ti video cards ended up with surprising contents, scrap metal instead of the GPUs we expected to find inside. The video cards seemed like brand new and unopened, they were GTX 1080 Ti Founders Edition from Gigabyte, all boxes packed with a nylon and with stickers on the boxes as you can see on the video. Yet when you open them up you end up with a surprising content and definitely what you would expect to find inside the box of such an expensive GPU…

Some supplier on somebody on the supply chain has apparently made quite the effort to make these as aside from packaging the boxes to make them seem like new, the contents was made to be the exact same weight as the original box with a real card inside. Obviously the retailer does not open the boxes to check if they contain the correct item, but they can easily weight the boxes and confirm if there is something wrong or not without opening the box. The actual video cards will find their place on eBay or any other place for selling them or maybe they will get used for mining.

Putting pieces of scrap metal with additional lead weight and packaging them in a way that they will not make strange noises when handing the box, some effort to make a counterfeit Nvidia GTX 1080 Ti. Then repackaging the whole thing and shipping it to the seller that in turn sends it to customers and in the end you get an angry customer that is no way happy with what he gets instead of the GPU he expected and paid for.

You may find different prices of scrap metal inside the box, but each one is well made in order to avoid possible suspicion of an issue like metal parts hitting and making strange noises or the package being too light or too heavy.

Of course buying from a reputable retailer will get your problem with the scrap metal instead of GPUs resolved with some extra headaches and time, so nothing too serious besides the bad surprise. Regardless if you are buying GPUs for mining or for gaming, just be careful that you do not buy online from places where returning the items if you end up with a problem like ours will not be an issue.