Update, 29. Januar: The creator of the auction saw our article on this and the second, identical offer now terminated prematurely. He also added the following addition to the description:
Since GAMESTAR readers do not understand that only the original air cooler and a box are up for auction here, I would like to ask those who can read and understand it to contact me directly if they need the fan.
Ebay has yet to respond.
Sad but true: If you get Nvidia’s Geforce RTX 3080 with an RRP of 759 dollars for 1,300 dollars, you have achieved a relatively good price in view of the very difficult situation on the graphics card market. But if you only get a fan instead of a graphics card for this money, then something has gone seriously wrong.
This is exactly what happened to a buyer on Ebay who probably didn’t look properly in the hope of getting a good price. However, it must be said that the structure of the Ebay offer
This is only the original heatsink with the original packaging! The card is not part of this auction!!.
There are also not only Ebay auctions that you should avoid, but also new graphics cards like the RX 6500 XT. You can find out more about this in the following column:
more on the subject
Perhaps the worst graphics card release ever
The problem with the auction in question begins with the fact that, as can be seen in the screenshot below, the first picture is the for transport purposes
sent original packaging of the graphics card can be seen. The title ASUS TUF RTX 3080 original cooler with OVP
explicitly names the product offered, but it could also be understood that the card is sold with its original cooler.
Not right in the picture
The second picture shows the unhelpful back of the packaging, after which the cooler can be seen from two different sides. But even these views are deceptive at first glance, because the actual circuit board of the graphics card, including the chip and the like, can hardly be seen between the cooler construction anyway.
So you can see in the third picture that neither the PCI Express connection at the bottom nor the side bar with the video connections such as DisplayPort and HDMI are there, but only if you pay attention to these details.
The following comparison illustrates the very small difference to similar photos with the entire graphics card instead of just the cooler construction. The picture on the left comes from the Ebay campaign and only shows the cooler, in the picture on the right we have installed a photo of the back of the GPU at the same place instead:
So far no money has flowed
The auction ended successfully with a price of 1,300 dollars, but the seller has not yet seen the money. We know that about him because we contacted him without first identifying ourselves. According to the seller’s statements to us, the buyer is in the south of France, has no Ebay rating and does not respond to messages. Accordingly, he has not yet paid the 1,300 dollars.
That’s why the seller decided to list the item again – but with an identical structure, description text and pictures. The highest bid is currently only 20.50 dollars, but the auction will run until Sunday noon. If it were really an RTX 3080, 1,300 dollars would basically be a very good price, as our look at the recent price development and the importance of the mining crash shows:
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GPU Prices: Is the Mining Crash a Reason for Hope?
We have already contacted Ebay to rate this at least ambiguous offer and its structure and will update this article if we receive an answer. It should be clear, however, that no one is seriously bidding on a four-figure graphics card fan for less than a tenth of that unless they mistakenly assume they are bidding on a complete graphics card instead.
Could it also have happened to you that you took this offer for the sale of a graphics card? And do you think the seller is in a gray area here because he basically names and shows what’s on offer, or should he be more explicit and show that it’s a fan and not a graphics card? Feel free to write it in the comments!