Sellers on AliExpress are trying to deceive buyers by disguising memory modules on graphics cards of the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 20 series by painting them. In the past, users had issues with GPUs based on the Turing architecture, and they suspected that the Micron memory was to blame. This suspicion grew stronger when the company replaced the Micron memory with Samsung GDDR6 memory modules for the GPUs. Sellers seem to be concerned that customers may avoid buying the Micron-based cards, and therefore they are covering up logos and information that would help distinguish them.
When the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 Ti graphics card was first released, users observed the appearance of screen artifacts, and some users’ GPUs stopped functioning altogether. Following these reports, NVIDIA released the same GPUs but with Samsung GDDR6 memory instead of the Micron series, without any explanation about why the memory was changed. NVIDIA only acknowledged the higher rate of defects in some of the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 Ti Founders Edition GPUs and did not attribute the problem specifically to the Micron memory.
The issue with the Micron chips was not definitively proven to be the cause of the problem, as similar issues were also reported with the Samsung chips. Since the initial reports and investigations, the notion that the Micron chips were solely responsible for the problem has been dismissed.
Paulo Gomes, a YouTube content creator and tech specialist, has recently uncovered that third-party resellers are painting over some GPUs used for crypto mining to make them appear newer. In his latest video, he exposes that AliExpress is selling graphics cards (specifically, NVIDIA RTX 20 series cards) that have been painted over to conceal the fact that they use Micron brand memory modules. The cards are advertised as having 9XB77 D9WCW memory chips.
However, after carefully removing the thermal adhesive, Gomes discovered that the memory on these cards was actually the 8RA77 D9WCW, which was part of the initial batch of defective GPUs. Some of the memory modules were also labeled as the 8PA77 variant.
It is unclear what the seller’s motives are for hiding information from consumers, or whether AliExpress plans to take action against the seller. However, the website has a history of allowing sellers to offer faulty or misrepresented products. In addition, there has been a recent trend among crypto miners to paint memory modules on heavily used graphics cards in order to deceive customers.