A repair shop found a fake RTX 4080 with a different GPU inside, sold cheaply on Goofish. Learn about the risks of buying graphics cards secondhand.
© Brother Zhang
A new case of graphics card fraud has been recorded on the Chinese secondhand goods platform Goofish. A repair shop owner, known as Brother Zhang, encountered a counterfeit GeForce RTX 4080 that contained a completely different graphics processing unit inside.
The card was purchased by a customer at a suspiciously low price—around 1,000 yuan, or roughly $144. Externally, the device looked like an RTX 4080, but initial inspection revealed alarming signs: a damaged PCIe connector, a crack on the printed circuit board, and loose screws indicating tampering.
Basic diagnostics showed mismatches in power circuits and clock signals. After removing the cooling system, the situation became clear: there were visible traces of soldering and flux around the memory chips, the chips themselves were unevenly placed, and the memory power line was in a short-circuit state.
The key discovery came during the GPU inspection. Despite the AD103 marking, which is used in the GeForce RTX 4080, the package layout and contact pads did not match the reference chip. Based on these clues, Zhang concluded that a remarking had occurred, with a GA106—a mobile GPU from the Ampere era used in laptops—installed inside.
It appears that the original core and GDDR6X memory were likely extracted beforehand and used as donor components, replaced with either defective or fake chips. Repairing such a graphics card proved impossible, as the technician informed the owner.
This incident serves as another reminder of the risks involved in buying expensive graphics cards on the secondary market, especially at suspiciously low prices. Even outwardly intact packaging and markings do not guarantee the authenticity of the components.