0:14 “hello! I’m a little scam” I totally fell down and lost it 🤣

Everyone's gansta, until the eBay i9 shows up as an Intel Core i8 in Task Manager

CSGO Players: "Is Linus AFK again" "He is doing another benchmark for his video"

I feel like the real sponsor of this video is the eBay seller.

2.3 million views later that eBay seller is driving a Rolls-Royce wraith right now.

HK seller: *checks address* ... Linus...."Send the real ones to this address" 😉

disappointed linus didn't lick the CPU saying it tastes like a scam Holy s*it didn't expect this to blow up, thanks for the likes

Linus: "Ton of them available..." . . EBay: Sold Out

Linus: “There are a ton of them“ Ebay: Nope, you won’t get me

Sratches all over on the CPUs? They are special, pre-dropped editions :D

Well there goes the cheap pricing and availability

i'm focusing on the "small scratches and dents" part of this whole thing for this theory: Back when i was working building washing machines and fridges, if one of these had one of these imperfections on the visual part of it, it would cost more to disassemble it and change the part than selling it around half price (being not listed, of course). I don't know how can this apply to the processor, how hard it is to replace the lid, or how much time and effort it would take, but this is the first thing that came into my mind. The chips are still being made, and some here and there will come non-perfect for retail selling.

Those are actually "Bad Order" from Intel. Someone from the inside, damaged it intentionally then they can sell it at low cost for consumers to enjoy. I don't mind, as long its working but they are pretty old ~ 🐭

"There's tons of them available" Scalpers: you mean there *were* tons*

How the chips got scratched, wrong answers only: The factory ran out of air hockey pucks

Thanks, Linus! Last January I bought an Alienware R11 RTX 3080, I opted for the Intel Core i7 which saved me about $600 compared to the Core i9 option. I've been assembling my own PC gaming rigs since 1987 and this was only my second pre-built desktop since then. Both were Alienware PCs too. I wanted an RTX3080 but due to COVID and scalpers, they were only available for about 3X the retail cost. I bought an entire gaming rig from Alienware for about $500 more than what eBay was selling the RTX3080 for last January!

The price of this cpu after this video: *Quintuples*

"You can buy it right now!" This item is no longer available.

I appreciate this video. I have wanted to try out one of these XE processors and now can actually afford one!

7:07 "All these squares make a circle"

2 hours after video ended "This listing has ended." Thanks, Linus.

Have a feeling the scratches are part of why they're so cheap. Can't sell a $2000 chip with exterior imperfections...

Thanks fellow Lower Mainlander, I had to look around but I found a New, in the box, i9-9900X for $460 Canadian, all in. Found it in Europe. Already had an ASUS ROG X299-E Board.

I just got a 7800X from this seller, it works perfectly fine. I'm writing this at the moment with it overclocked to 4.7ghz on a X299 Micro I picked up for $100 when EVGA was clearing them out. It does pretty nicely for itself in Solidworks, especially with the quad-channel memory.

The damage seems consistent with what in the firearms ammunition world is known as "Factory seconds", where there is superficial damage and blemishes caused by mishaps on the assembly line/ packaging conveyor, but everything still functions correctly so it is shipped out at a lower (but still profitable) price.

5:19 "Kicked em around the floor a little bit" That is expected from The Sandal King.

Probably leftovers from tray orders. I've experienced tray ordering and it usually datacenters or office buildings full of CAD engineers. When ordering server processor upgrades or workstation upgrades by the tray it is usually done in bulk by companies with massive staff and multiple branch offices. They are usually distributed in tray form and not accounted for on a per chip basis and extras end up laying around on tech benches. This is the most likely scenario and would explain the scratches. It could also be from decommissioned server hardware, and those don't normally use standard type mounting hardware.

Well, that's good news. I've been still gaming and photoshopping on a rig I built starting in 2012... i-7 4 core. It's been solid and made lots of moves across country, but had a few card updates along the way. It's not going to cut it for my next project/ gaming plans. I'll have to check out some of these more recent old models to see if building a solid rig for under a grand with components that would have cost as much as a car new is possible now.

I love these weird finds way more than normal builds lol

About a year ago I bought a "brand new sealed in box" 6850K from an ebay seller who was very clear that the chip was not under warranty. But when I checked with Intel, they said it was under warranty and did an RMA when the chip turned out to be a dud. When I told the seller, he got really mad probably because he was shipping them from China where Intel was selling them brand new. He probably didn't want Intel to find out what he was doing.

love the kitchen set. You should shoot in it more often

I keep clicking and watching your videos from start to finish, even though I have no idea what you're talking about I enjoy watching you talk about it.

*checks eBay 1hr after video launches* ...and their all gone to resellers or prices are inflated. 2021 vibes.

Since Microsoft is telling they would make anything below 8 series obsolete, intel is letting their inventory loose.

Your fascinating skills of deduction and observation, as well as the manner in which you work, that draws us in. ... You are a detective, and arguably one of the most enduring person This is the best you tube video I ever watched

I have just bought a Dell R620, 128Gb RAM, 6 x 1TB SAS drives, and 2 x E5-2690 v2 for £90 - all "seller refurbished". They were all new in box. Great for a homelab. In this case, it is going in a data-centre as a build server. All in all, an excellent buy.

Ahh, yes. Intel, the budget oriented option.

Pre-scratched chips would save Linus a lot of time. He wouldn't even have to drop them!

Linus: "We stumbled upon" Also Linus: "PAID LINK HERE"

Dude I was totally about to buy one of these from the same seller on ebay, but I went with a used cheaper variant. As I am just trying to keep my X99 alive until alder lake is released. I can't believe you made this video $$$$

If this was a scam, Linus would be like: "This is the third time i've been scammed, BY EBAY!"

i deal with a lot of bulk and weird cpus often, and can say the small dings and marks all over the chip and even in spots that are bizarre, are because at some point in it's life, for some reason, they were all "thrown into a box/bin/something" together without care for if they were damaged. whatever reason this is could be many, but the intention was for them to be disposed of or recycled, and somehow someone came along and found a way to keep them, and knew most of them could still work, and flipped them. they were free for the seller, or mostly so.

They are probably from a waste treatment facility. I knew someone that worked in one when Currys merged with PC World in the UK (mid to late 2016 saw 134 stores close due to merging) and they dumped all of their excess stock and ex-display models due to lack of room. They also get a decent tax write off when they are sent to a treatment centre. All in all we ended up with nearly 2TB of ECC Buffered DDR3 (16GB modules), approximately 50 i5 3330's, several complete desktops (quite a few fairly new i5 and i7 units), loads of 22/24" ex display monitors, and 3 servers that were running dual 6 core/12 thread Xeons. There were also several 65" signage displays of which we grabbed just the one (they are crazy heavy). I think we ended up making around £10k selling that lot, all of which was destined to be scrapped for minimal metal and gold value when it ALL worked. Yes, not a single part was dead. The only thing we didn't get was hard drives as they were physically destroyed before arrival. We did however end up with half a dozen Intel 180GB 2.5" SSDs that were somehow overlooked. They were completely blank though which is fairly quick and easy to do with an SSD.

6:22 I remember the VIA Nano, a great and cheap CPU, which could even beat Intel Atoms in the early 2010s. It was mainly used in Thin Clients and low-budget office PCs.

Gonna need a "the verge" amount of thermal paste to fill in those dings and scratches

This dude just got a ton of free advertising

its insane the influence you guys have on the tech market lol

5:37 I have my own thesis to that. They fell of the back of a truck. Would explain the scratches even though they weren't mounted anywhere. Maybe they were very briefly to ensure they work

I really do wonder how the chips got scratched and dinged up like that 🤔

The world is on chip shortages due to pandemic and increasing demand for chips, SoC, etc. Meanwhile this cpu exist with that price tag lol

The 7980 has a cumulative benchmark / Sysmark of close to 30 000. Thats insane for the money. As a video processor or renderbox its well worth the money.

4:47 Got To Take A Moment To Appreciate That Perfect Pillow Throw Didn't Knock The CPU Cooler Over..

I've been running one of these "scratch 'n' dent" chips in my main VFIO workstation for a few months. I wanted to do a 2970WX or 2990WX build but used parts were cost-prohibitive and X399 motherboards with good reviews are few and far between. If you need lots of cores, memory bandwidth, and PCIe lanes, it's hard to beat! I only paid $319 for my 7960X before tax and shipping but I'm sure prices are going to skyrocket now.

"......these chips are a steal, and they are real, that's the deal. Now I feel....." Ah! The writer's choice of words is so satisfying and rhyming, like JAKE really deserves a shout-out now!!!

Hey person scrolling through the comments right now, you'll probably never see me ever again because I'm only 1 of the billions people out there, but all I wanted to say was, I hope you have a wonderful day. Don't let anyone or anything bring you down. You're special in your own way and don't let anyone or anything take the feeling of being special away from you. Love

My theory is that they are chips that were damaged in shipping and returned before they were used and Intel sold them off

Wasn’t in the market for a CPU, but now I might be.

I have a spare X299 motherboard, I'm tempted!

I have an engineering sample Xeon in my build. Those performance and compatibility issues are very real.

I used to work in a factory making steering gears. The compani I'd basically (though not technically) owned by Toyota and the lines I worked on make steering gears for Toyota. The company doesn't officially make any parts for anybody other than the car manufacturers, even their service parts are sold to the the car manufacturers to be used at the dealerships for recall and service replacement purposes (though the company I worked for had only had 1 recall in almost 30 years). Well I added up how many likes the one Toyota plant had and how many cars one line could push out in an 8 hour period... around 72 per line if they were running flawlessly. So in the ballpark of about 350-450 cars per 8 hours realistically. And Toyota had weekends off. Not union but basically union, they didn't work weekends. We worked almost every weekend for almost 2 years and out production demand was 600/8hrs. So the numbers didn't add up. Well after a little asking around someone said that if Toyota encounters a minor blemish that will not effect the performance or integrity or safety of the gear, many times, instead of going a quality/performance report, jumping through all the hoops, sending it back to us and sending us a bill for their production loss and their engineering team tearing the thing apart; many times they would take it off, grind off the company logos and sell it to one of the bargain bin companies that sell replacement steering gears to the autoparts stores. Also, even though there wasn't a high demand for our steering gears because it was rate that any failed, still the autoparts stores needed gears to sell (especially for the older models and stuff that isn't really made anymore, such as manual gears and column steering assymblies) so... Basically, these gears need to be on the market for end consumers to buy, but technically we're the only ones who can make them and replacement parts for them, unless Toyota opened a contract with another manufacturer but then would have to get approval from us, Yada yada..Yada... to avoid a big headache and potential legal battles, basically the company I worked for would sell excess gears to Big Box Bargain Distributor A who would take them, grind off our companies Logo and put them in their own box, and Toyota woukd act like they didnt know. Sure we wouldn't make NEARLY (not even half) as much on them as compared to selling to Toyota. But, keep in mind, they need only about 1200/day abd 5 days a week (6000/wk). So the slave house I worked for could slave drive their workers for 95/pph 6-7 days a week and any extra is gravy money. These very same CPUs in the video would be even cheaper yet if Intel acid washed the etching off the CPUs and sent them out like that. They could still be marketed as the same product but with no warranty or anything involved. But they're smart. They know they can get more per each if they leave the etching on. Pretty much the only reason why the company I used to work for would send the gears somewhere that would remove the logo and sell it under another brand is liability. There's little risk and liability with a CPU, they're faulty all the time, in fact the cheap factory thermal compound in them almost garuantees that a customer will be coming back in a little over years for a new one when it burns out (leave it up to leGal Bits (anagram for the former CEO of intel) to carefully implement just a small degree of planned obsolescence to ensure a returned customer. However when it comes to steering gears there's no way to know when and where it will fail or whom it will injur or kill when it does. Part of why I took my job and quality so seriously. So fir a steering gear company you want to keep your name off it, if it isn't technically and officially from you. So in summary, it doesn't surprise me that they are new and legitimate.

Also the fact the 18 core chip is “not good enough” for Windows 11 😂

Love my 7940X! Sure, binned chip and paid a lot more than $450 a couple years ago but it's certainly no slouch for processing and doing all the things! Awesome that you're able to find basically EoL parts still being sold for the cheap though.

that little controller fidget-toy must really work...I've been seeing that thing in almost every Linus-featured video for a long time, but I'm only now NOTICING it. where can I get one?

Great video bro! 7 months later every i9 7980x is now scalper owned! Lol 😆 Of course for sale for 80percent higher!

Absolutely no mention how these are now "not windows 11 supported" by microsoft

Spends over $400,- on a single part. Linus: why is this so cheap!?

My main pc is still X299 based, rocking an overclocked i9-10980XE with 64 GB of tuned DDR4-3800 RAM and an RTX 3090. Yes, the power consumption is very high under full load but aside from that I'm super happy with the system.

FYI... I just now saw this video. But your sponsor Soundcore Life P3 Wireless Earbuds;;; I but a set last month and sound absolutely amazing!!!! Just wanted folks to know they are worth the price.

"and there's tons of them available" except the seller removed all the cpu listings 🤦‍♂️

I bought that CPU Pillow and my cats LOVE it. My cats literally queue up to lie down on that pillow. As soon as one moves to drink/eat, the second one gets on there. There is no other pillow they love so much.

Can y'all make a vid on mouse pad cleaning and show the different ways. Peripherals never get cleaned as much as they should and an overview guide would be nice. thanks

So I bought one of these from the exact same bay listing. The 18 cores were all gone but I bought one of the 14 core chips. For the motherboard I got a Gigabyte X299 UD4 pro because it supports hackintosh due to the fact that I needed a dedicated Logic Pro computer that was real fast and stable. I also purchased a noctua nh-u12s cpu cooler since you have youtube videos on those (although I want to get another fan for it so it’s getting blasted on both sides) 32 gigs of ram one 500 gig nvram (I’m going to get another TB one) and an older Nvidia GTX card that supports OSX Mojave and up. Suffice to say it works GREAT and the whole build was a bit over $1,500 (my friend gave me the video card) I will be posting a video of the entire build soon.

This video was released an hour ago. Of the CPUs listed in the description, the first one is out of stock with 95 units sold, the second has 22 sold in the last hour, and the last one has 6 sold in the last hour.

0:14 “Hello! I’m a little scam!” - _Linus Ventriloquist Tips_

Ended up buying one of these things for shits. Ordered the 14C/28T, received a 7960X 16C/32T instead due to availability! It's perfect, works like a dream, and have had no problems with it at all. Paired it with an evga x299 micro and now it's in my Plex server. Damn good video haha

I dont have my own desktop or laptop but i love watching your content! I will try to buy my own too soon. Godbless :)

"Refurbished" "100% not used" Contradiction, much?

Who else needs more fire tech tips in their lives

I got one of these a few months ago. A 7900X for under $300, brand new basically (though advertised as refurb) and a used X299 mobo in pristine condition for $150. It ran on 4.7 GHz all core with -1 AVX2 offset (and a much bigger AVX512 offset, because it's crazy) and adaptive voltage flawlessly. I had to adjust almost nothing. Kept it cooled just barely by a 360 AIO. Quad channel RAM was amazing and offset some of the latency issues of Intel's "Mesh" thing (slower cache/uncore which introduces crazy latency) but not enough. But, response time overall (like mouse input lag and app switching while gaming) was very quick and nice, even if it couldn't hit the pure performance numbers of a normal chip. I actually liked playing FPS on that one more than my much faster 9900K PC. After the experiment, I resold it for about what I got it and passed it on. The delidded and liquid metal applied ones seem like a really great project to take on. You can probably push crazy speeds/voltages through those.

10:33 I guess you convinced me to buy them for the nas

Everyone's gansta, until the Microsoft tell you, Your CPU dose't support windows 11

Don't forget the fact that these cpus have more security flaws, that will never be patched.

10:30 TO 10:40 What a damn good rhyme! Loved it.

bro i love how LTT always has more than one sponsors in each video even tho LTT posts one vid every day

Goes to show how quickly technology moves along, that chips priced $2000 not too long ago can go for a fifth the sticker price now.

In 2021, the question is no longer: "Will it run Crysis". The question is: "Will it run Windows 11?" :p

I just bought what I thought was a i7-920xm according to physical appearance. After bench marking turns out it is a highly modified i7-740qm, throttled and over cached flash to show up as a i7-820qm, plus some changes to the cpu bios.

I still run 7980xe at 4.5ghz on all core handle everything. PCI e lanes are great having so many got a 3090, ASUS m.2 x4 expansion card and also usb 3.2 expansion card.

Looks like stock that has been put away in a drawer and forgotten about till someone found it doing an inventory.

4:14 That damage on the chips is probably someone working at intel, knows that if the chip is superficially damaged it probably gets written off and disposed. Then they just go swoop them up.

i bought one of these 7940x chips 2nd hand from somebody who got one thanks to this vidoe, for china prices, was a great buy... been loving this thing with arc :D

I managed to snag an "old" Dell Precision 5820 with an X299 board, 32GB RAM and an i9 7900X for 400€. I could easily upgrade (at very low cost) to an i9 7980XE (by reselling the old one) and upgrade to an i9 10980XE down the line. Turned that PC into a Hackintosh for work and these chips are the shit. For what I need, they're perfect. No need for PCIE 4.0, but instead high core count and native support for MacOS - no Ryzen hacks required and Docker fully working.

if i had to take a wild guess, they are actually used, and are coming out of china's crypto mining farms. they were either used for mining monero, or they were used in 12+ gpu rigs. timing coincides to well with china's crack down on mining.

Many years ago, a small computer shop I worked for got about 100 pentium III socket 370 processors, for like $25 a piece. All the packaging was gone, and they were in plastic clamshells in trash bags. Apparently the shipping container they were in was damaged, leaked, and the shipper's insurance covered the whole container. And then the contents were salvaged and sold by the dock workers. Maybe it's something like that?

I used to work for a company and we had to do some shady shit over the years.. One example was when we had to spend weeks replacing stickers on used RAM, repack and clean them and sell them as new back on the market.

4:49 this is the kind of moment you watch more than once, just for the pleasure of a laugh

When you find Intel Core I10 on Amazon for Cortana.

Thumbnail: 'Core i9 Extreme 80% Off' - Must be fake That's like back in the Conroe days when everyone would just OC their ~$200 CPU to the X6800 levels and save hundreds of dollars.

I think these are coming from machines that were used to mine Monero during the last couple of years. If you look on crypto forums these are the kind of chips that they use since they were somehow able to source them cheap. Most likely they were bought direct from Intel in bulk and Intel were happy to sell them because they were a hard sell anyway. After the last halving, which was March this year, plus the general drop in crypto prices most of these Monero mining farms would have been decommissioned and the chips sold off.

The best public way's to close the function of the focus of computer compartmentalized parts was the by passage message similarities to the collection of sensory proportions of yourself or your group with the function of the fluctuation of your feelings through which the motherboard would be your sensory system (this is a project that doesn't want to use a creation from somebody that has to help on situations of people trying to learn other way's) and in the focus of groups grouping could function the collection of emotions in the conveerance of electricity and the end focuses collecting your thoughts how it's a waste of time and then collect over your stuff with your personal points and you could get to a proponent point or a pretelling of proliferated future projections.