Amazon flooded with fake 9800X3D listings for $199: don’t fall for it
Beware of scam listings on Amazon this Black Friday
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With the 9800X3D’s blazing success, Amazon has experienced a mass flood of fake listings in the run-up to Black Friday. This is a particularly volatile time of year, especially for those who want the best deals. It’s easy for someone not as well-versed in standard prices to be tripped up by these fake listings.
These 9800X3D listings seem botted, as the descriptions read some whacky specifications, such as LGA 995 and 8 32nds cache. One thing is for sure: these are not the official listings for the processor. Multiple descriptions will likely differentiate each listing from Amazon, which usually only allows one product page per product. This seems to be a way around that.
The seller for all these listings alternates between Lingmengj and Huangwenjie12334, which, if you haven’t guessed yet, isn’t AMD. It’s best to only buy products through trusted sellers or the manufacturer, where possible.
The 9800X3D is probably the hottest CPU we have ever seen, boasting some of the best gaming performance, so it’s easy to jump at the chance to pick one up for $200. But not so fast.
Here’s an example of an obviously faked or botted description; another way (if you’re into computers), you can tell that the listings are fake. Sometimes Amazon information isn’t that accurate, but it at least doesn’t straight to make things up. We have the correct specifications on our 9800X3D review if you are interested. But to recap:
| Component | Ryzen 7 9800X3D |
|---|---|
| Cores | 8 |
| Threads | 16 |
| Base frequency | 4.7 GHz |
| Boost frequency | up to 5.2 GHz |
| Memory speed | 5600 MT/s |
| PCI Express lanes | 24 (Gen 5) |
| L2 cache | 1 MB (per core) |
| L3 cache | 96 MB (shared) |
| TDP / PPT | 120W / 162W |
| Process size | 4 nm |
| Core architecture | Zen 5 |
| Socket | AM5 (compatible with X870, X670, B650, A620) |
As you can tell, the 9800X3D is definitely not an LGA 1156 CPU (released in 2011 and belongs to the Intel platform) and is most certainly not on the Amiga 500 platform. We Googled what the Amiga was, and it seems to be a brand of PCs created by Commodore in the mid-80s, which is pretty interesting.
Where is the real 9800X3D listing?
This is the real listing and ASIN for the real 9800X3D listing. Although the product is currently out of stock, it is sold by AMD and has the correct product information in its description. You need to be really careful, particularly on Amazon, of scam listings, particularly around Black Friday, when “too-good-to-be-true” prices are somewhat acceptable during this huge sales period.
Final Word
Black Friday is probably one of the biggest sales events of the year, so there’s likely to be one or two scams floating around. The best thing to do is to check if the seller is legitimate and buy with a credit card or PayPal, which provides an extra layer of protection against scams. Of course, the best protection is prevention, so a keen eye will save you from a lot of potential hassle.
