WEBVTT

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I just bought this $2,000 CPU for 428

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bucks brand

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new it smells like a scam it walks like

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a scam might even talk like a scam hello I'm a little scam but I assure you this

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is very real a high performance this CPU

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has 18 course chip that you can actually

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buy right now for less than a quarter of its sticker price and there's tons of

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them avail able so what are these why

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are they so cheap and where on Earth did they come

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from and who's our sponsor origin PC

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laptops can be customized with 11th gen Intel core processors and NVIDIA GeForce

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RTX 30 series Graphics they're backed by their 24/7 support team and you can

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check them out at the link in the video

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description when we first stumbled upon these Intel extreme Edition CPUs for

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sale at mind-bogglingly cheap prices my brain jumped to three possibilities one

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these could be bck units that were returned to a retailer or system

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integrator so they're working but not brand new two they could have been

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pulled from decommissioned workstations as part of a large organization's

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Hardware refresh or three this is a

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classic eBay scam these are actually engineering or qualifying sample chips

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being sold as retail and that one's a

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big problem because a they are technically still the stolen property of

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Intel and B they often have performance and compatibility

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issues but after further investigation

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otherwise known as actually reading the eBay listing these are advertised as

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seller refurbished which lines up pretty well

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with my theories except that wait what

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100% not used not repaired not

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engineering sample see you later theories was nice knowing you I mean it

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looks too good to be true but these guys have all kinds of chips available and

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every single one of their ads lists these CPUs in the same fashion so I

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started to think maybe they're real I

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mean look they even come with a one-year warranty all right strong exuberant

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Electronics HK Co limited I'll play ball

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so I blew a, on not one not two but three of these

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chips all in the name of science after

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all if I ordered one and I got a working one that could be a fluke but three

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that's a pattern you guys know I do this all for you right but lonus cheap eBay

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CPUs are nothing special I know I know

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it's the motherboards for these things that tend to kill the deal but not for

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these the thing is the chips I'm holding

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are a 79 4X and 7980 XC 14 and 18 cores

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respectively they are formally discontinued but Intel's matching x299

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chipset is still an active product which

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means that motherboard supply for these things hasn't actually dried up yet and

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because of that if you want to save a buck there are pages and pages of

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compatible boards on eBay for as little as around

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$200 that is not bad compared to a

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decent b550 or x570 board especially

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when you consider that extreme Edition HDT boards tend to come with a lot more

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standard features but just a second from the outside not one of our three CPUs

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appears to have been mounted in a socket for any appreciable amount of time these

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earlier 14 nmet chips notably Skylink used thinner substrates that had a

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tendency to bend at the corners after spending even a few months mounted in a

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socket we don't see any of that and there aren't any Telltale pressure or

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abrasion marks on the IHS from being held down in the socket or from having

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thermal compound on them except there's one small thing consistent with the eBay

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ad description there are scratches and dings all over all three of them

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including at the edges of the substrate and in between the pads in all my years

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assembling PCS for NC and Linus Tech

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tips videos I haven't seen this kind of superficial damage on a brand new chip

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it's just weird of course I'm not going to care about any of that if it works

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which is hardly a guarantee at this point I mean it's not like I haven't

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been scammed buying DOA CPUs on eBay before that's why I always buy my CPUs

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in pillow form from LTT

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store.com you ready for the Moment of Truth here we

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go yes

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there we go

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7980xe 7940x that's two for

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two bam exactly as expected so all three

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of these work as though I pulled them out of a retail package kicked them

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around on the floor a little bit and then Chuck them into a motherboard no

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temperature or stability issues and they're even running the correct clock

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speeds and they report ret steppings in

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diagnostic applications like CPU Z that's a big one by the way because

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Intel uses Flags like this that are built right into the CPU to permanently

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Mark engineering or qualifying samples so that even if a scammer were to swap

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out the integrated heat spreader you still wouldn't be able to hide it I mean

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even performance is identical to the retail chips that we already had on hand

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from Once Upon a Time before Threadripper gave the people's elbow to

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Intel's entire HT lineup now some of you are probably

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asking could they be fake or imitation

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non genuine Intel CPUs and the answer is

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no actually the reason that Intel and AMD can charge so much for these

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products is that no one else can make them even multi- deade long attempts to

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reach this level of performance in China and Russia are only now starting to

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approach the same playing field and getting your counterfeit chip that you

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somehow miraculously built to report as an Intel one and then miraculously work

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in an Intel socket motherboard good luck so where are they

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coming from well as strange as it sounds

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the only realistic answer is they're coming from Intel and there's a couple

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of ways that something like this could happen one possibility is that they're

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just plain leftovers that haven't sold in 4 years I doubt it but it is possible

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another is that Intel could have excess capacity at one of its 14 nmet Fabs and

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rather than shutting it down they found it was better to make these things and

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flip them to resellers and developing markets at a deep discount Intel saves

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some cost by not bothering with fancy packaging support and warranty coverage

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and that gets passed along to the end user that sort of thing isn't unheard of

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and those discount Parts making their way onto eBay isn't unheard of either so

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I lean towards the second hypothesis because you guys might have noticed we

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bought one 14 core and then two 18 cores

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what's up with that here's the thing we actually placed an order for three

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different chips one of those 18 cores was supposed to be a 16 core

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7960x but the seller fulfilled it with an 18 core saying they were still

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waiting for more stock to come in wait

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more stock to come in so if stock is

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still flowing and it has to be coming from

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Intel then they got to still be making them of course just because the retail

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price is formally $22,000 for this thing

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that doesn't mean anything Intel rarely

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actually cuts the price of their top-of-the-line products because they'd

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rather just discontinue them so they can maintain that perception that extreme

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additions are really expensive and they're for Ballers only so the question

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becomes at $400 should you buy

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one well if all you're doing is gaming

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the answer is an unequivocal no you're better off with a

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used ryzen 3,000 or ryzen 5,000 if you

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can afford it but if you do anything other than

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gaming well now the answer gets a little

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bit more interesting considering core counts alone these things absolutely

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Crush any ryzen 3000 or 5000 series

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competitor for the money but it's also not quite that simple they lack some of

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the latest features like PCI Express Gen 4 and this older 14 NM silicon is going

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to struggle to keep up with AMD's state-of-the-art 7 nmet you'll notice

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this especially on the higher core count models which are going to have much

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worse allc core clock speeds however if you've got a workload

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that benefits from a any core CPU a brand new 3950x 16 core on eBay cost

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$660 on average that is substantially

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more than we're paying for an 18 core

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and if you drop down to the 14 core 7940x which by the way will be better

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for gaming thanks to its higher boost clocks you're paying just over half the

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price from our new BFFs on eBay and remember these x299 platform chips have

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another potentially huge Advantage they have a whack load more PCI Express Lanes

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than AMD's consumer platform so let's say you wanted to build a Nas for Plex

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with ryzen 3000 well if you want GPU

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transcoding and you want a whack of storage you could end up running into an

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IO bottleneck or even running out of PCI Express slots to plug stuff into what

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about an editing rig that needs a capture card and fast networking or what

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about a home lab or a split gaming setup like we've shown before using

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virtualization to run multiple guest operating systems I mean seriously guys

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bottom line for a professional or an Enthusiast on a budget these chips are a

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steal and they're real that's the deal now I feel like

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might also enjoy the one where one of our viewers got scammed buying a fake

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CPU from Best Buy and sent it to us for a postmortem it was very enlightening

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h