WEBVTT

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so I want to buy a GPU let's say a GTX 1660 how is this the top page of results

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on newegg.com I mean seriously who is

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sirona MIL C manie 51 risk canology I

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haven't even heard of half of these Brands and Amazon is flooded with them

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too I mean the prices look great we're talking as much as 40% off of a

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recognized brand and they're still shipped by Newegg but the last time I

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checked NVIDIA isn't selling gpus at a discount so what are they refurbished

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crypto gpus are they outright scams like we've covered in the past where the

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company pops up defrauds a bunch of customers then vanishes only to appear

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again under a new equally random name in

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either case with such prominent placement on reputable websites Shoppers

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could easily be enticed by the savings and choose one of these over a more

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established br brand which I don't know

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might not be such a bad thing unless it's a scam I was determined to get to

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the bottom of this so I tasked our Labs team with buying and testing as many of

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these Rando gpus as they were comfortable with and what they

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discovered well let's just say the answers aren't as straightforward as

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for me to react to the packaging here but some of these are too funny to

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ignore this one is upside down if you turn it around this is just a low

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resolution ripoff of NVIDIA's old Founders Edition packaging along those

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same lines keny's artwork is original but these talking points are absolutely

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ancient 3D Vision this GPU doesn't support SLI and in spite of being one of

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the two Brands I do recognize here this isn't exactly confidence inspiring I

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have so many questions right now but one thing we know for sure is that based on

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the featured status of these gpus they must be as profitable for New Egg as

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selling a more expensive card from a premier brand but how could that be well

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here's the thing shipped by New Egg isn't the same thing as sold by Newegg

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like many other online retailers these days newegg.com is actually a

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marketplace now that allows other businesses to sell items through their

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platform New Egg collects and distributes payments manages

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Communications between buyers and sellers and perhaps most importantly

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trades on their position as a known entity effectively lending their

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credibility to little sellers that you've never heard of some marketplaces

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also offer warehousing shipping and even customer support so that sellers don't

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need to maintain their own facilities or staff the fees that these marketplaces

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charge for these services quickly add up to more than the profit that they would

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earn by selling the same product themselves want proof look no further

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than our sample search we go sold by New Egg W we're literally three of the more

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than 15 results are actually sold by New

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Egg themselves and I'm not counting this

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same card but with a game bundle now obviously New Egg still wants to move

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their own stock out of the warehouse before it gets too old so those three

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list things do appear toward the start of the results but this is nothing like

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the old days when they would stock loads of gpus from all the major manufacturers

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to ensure a consistent customer experience in total then we ordered

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eight cards from these unfamiliar Brands as usual we're going to have them Linked

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In the video description below but I would watch the rest of the video before

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you run out and buy them you see in spite of our search being GTX 1660 we

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ended up with only one of those since New Egg mostly returned results for 1660

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supers and also this lowprofile 1650 so

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we picked that up as well just to see what was going on with that of these

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cards most of them arrived as quickly as you would expect with the exception

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being this 1660 super from Elsa that

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took so long to arrive that we actually opened a support case looking for a

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refund it did get here but not in time

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for the full test Gauntlet since it was actually only a few hours ago that might

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not matter though as it turns out more on that later our first stage was the

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physical inspection the lab's team checked the cards over for signs of

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where with special attention paid to the PCIe connectors the fan bearings and the

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thermal pads along with a quick evaluation of other factors like heat

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sink design and overall cleanliness based on that physical examination we

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found that there were only three cards here that we can confidently say are new

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those are the 1660 supers from yes and

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milc along with our 1650 from from

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sirona these all show no signs of previous use they have good strong fan

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bearings and nice new thermal pads the 1660 supers both included warranty cards

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and the 1650 even had a surprisingly good installation manual in the box now

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I had a quick look at the Elsa before we started filming and I didn't see any

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obvious signs of where but it wasn't looked over by the Labs team so take

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that for what it is as for the rest of them it turns out that none of these are

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quite what they claim to be first off we've got the kology 1660 super that

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appears to be a totally different design from the corn brand one that we ordered

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though we did spot the same canology stickers on the corn product page make

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of that what you will but maybe it doesn't matter because the Labs believes

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that this card may have been refurbished due to wear on the PCIe pins oily

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residue from the thermal pads and what seems to be some uneven wear in the fan

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bearings next we've got a pair of cards from manna jie a base model 1660 and a

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1660 super the base 1660 in particular

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has some concerning indicators this sticker here above the PCIe connector

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for example is yellowed and starting to

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fade compared to the other sticker that's on the back of the card there's

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also wear to the PCIe pins and most importantly it looks exactly like the

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iafe GTX 1660 from colorful a brand that

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I have heard of before except they've what maybe pulled off the back plate and

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put new stickers on the fans man's second attempt isn't much better either

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this 1660 super shows similar signs of wear and wait a second this looks

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exactly like the Elsa these two cards

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are completely identical even down to the positioning of the QC sticker on the

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back of the cards they're even stamped for the same month these may have come

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out of the exact same badge and even

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more incriminating both of them happen to look an awful lot like a Galax GTX

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1660 super that we found over on Tech PowerUp though with a much lower cost

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heatsink design Under The Identical plastic shroud last up we've got this

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1660 super from 51 risk it too shows

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signs of lightwear but 51 risk unlike

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the others actually acknowledges this with a note about it in their manual

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stating that the wear on the card is due to their extensive testing processes

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seems a little sus especially given that the cooling setup is almost identical to

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the base model manui 1660 that we looked at a moment ago just with different

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coloring on the Shroud or rather a lack of it so I'm willing to bet that like

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the manie colorful is the actual manufacturer of this card in summary

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then three of our eight cards are almost certainly brand new one is probably

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brand new and of the other four the sellers appear to have simply slapped

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their logos onto a possibly refurbished

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cart made by someone else and in some cases didn't even manage to get the

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brand on the site consistent with the sticker on the cardart now it's time to

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pop these into a machine and see what software can tell us about their

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origin and yeah not a lot of these

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fields change as we scroll through our 1660 supers they're all clocked at 1530

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MHz with 1785 MHz boost and other than the BIOS version the variables seem to

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be pretty much the brand of the RAM and the subvendor where we get MSI which

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makes sense that's our control card along with a mix of colorful Galaxy and

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generic NVIDIA this combined with our mismatched BIOS versions seems to

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confirm our refurb and Rebrand hypothesis for the cards from manaji 51

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risk and kinology now to be clear a generic identifier isn't suspicious on

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its own Elsa for example has been around for a long time and appears to contract

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their manufacturing out to Other Board makers which might explain their

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non-unique designs of course for many buyers anyway this is all irrelevant and

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the only thing that matters is performance I mean who cares what stickers on it right so we tested every

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card again except the Elsa along with two controls an MSI 1660 super and this

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ASUS 1650 with a careful eye for any

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observed anomalies surprisingly in gaming the 1660 supers were very

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consistent across the board with only the milc lagging slightly behind the

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rest of the pack the manui 1660 meanwhile remember that's the rebadged

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colorful was also just about able to keep up with the supers a pretty good

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showing but the sorria 1650 ended up

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performing considerably worse than our ASUS control though that kind of makes

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sense if you consider how much less power it drew power consumption for our

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1660 supers meanwhile was quite consistent which makes sense given their

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performance moving on the spc.org productivity tests we ran showed similar

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results with the 1660 supers being very consistent with each other and our

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control and only the mulc lagging behind

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while our manui 1660 does an admirable job trying to keep up with the supers

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and once again the sir HRA 1650 is

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underwhelming in the test that it managed to complete and just straight up

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fails to complete the solid works test so wherever they're getting these gpus

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from they're legit they're made by NVIDIA you can't counterfeit that which

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raises the question well why not buy them then to answer we devised a final

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test where we reached out to each seller with a simple support request and we

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were pleasantly surprised to get fast helpful responses from each and every

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one of them that's obviously not a guarantee that you're going to get proper warranty support 11 and a half

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months down the road but I'm a bit too honest to just pry capacitors off these

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things with my noct to Edition LTT screw driver to see how they deal with a dead

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card by the way sign up for a stock notification on this thing now at LTT

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store.com with the average price of a 1660 super from Brands like ASUS MSI and

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Gigabyte hovering around $250 then are these lesser known Brands

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worth the risk I mean I'm not going to give an outright thumbs up to any of the

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ones that appear to be just slapping a sticker on someone else's possibly used

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product so that rules out manaji 51 risk

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and corn SL kology whoever you are

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leaving us with yes Sira and milie S ya

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1650 underperforms and is priced higher

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than some of the 1660 supers so unless you absolutely need a half height single

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slot card that's a big fat nope and of the two that remained milc did

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underperform a bit but costs far less

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while yes performed as expected includes cute stickers but comes at a higher

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price these guys have also been around for at least 20 years though which gives

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us some confidence that they'll be around to support us if something goes

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wrong however all that said with more trans transparency around the

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refurbished status of these other cards almost everything we saw today was a

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pretty okay value at the prices that they're charging you just have to decide

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