A customer spent 30,000 rubles (approximately $350) to purchase a bare PCB sold as a "repairable RTX 4090." Russian GPU repair technician Vik-On disassembled and inspected the board, discovering that both the GPU package and memory chips were counterfeit, making it impossible to restore the card to a working RTX 4090. The bare board lacked a cooling system, making it difficult to verify its condition through normal operation during the transaction.
Vik-On stated that the counterfeit components replicated the RTX 4090's labels, chip shape, surface markings, and materials around the processor, with the GPU soldered onto the board via a ball grid array. The technicians first noticed anomalies from the substrate color, surface reflections, and lettering; after removing the package, they found its contact areas differed from those of a functional processor, and the solder mask deteriorated during cleaning. There was no usable RTX 4090 chip inside the package.
The memory chips also mimicked the original manufacturer's markings, initially making them difficult even for repair technicians to distinguish. After disassembly, they determined that the chips appeared to be GDDR6, whereas the RTX 4090 uses GDDR6X. The technicians suspect the circuit board's design may be closer to that of an RTX 3090 Ti, but have not yet reached a definitive conclusion.
The customer claimed the seller indicated there were five or six similar graphics cards available, though this quantity has not been verified. A working RTX 4090 currently sells for approximately 240,000 rubles locally; in contrast, this bare board, sold for 30,000 rubles, ultimately proved unrepairable.