The new 4090 appears inactive.
The new 4090 appears inactive.
I recently acquired a Gigabyte windforce v2 4090 from Facebook marketplace. The seller still used the included power adapter and mentioned it was inexpensive, so I bought just one. I wanted something compatible directly with my PSU, so I only needed to connect two 8-pin cables. When I switched everything out this morning, the 4090 seemed completely unresponsive—no output and no fan activity. I attempted various fixes, re-seating it around ten times, even replacing the power supply at Best Buy with a new 12V cable. Still nothing changed. The VGA light on the motherboard is illuminated. Here are the details: PSU models tried: Corsair RM1200e and RM1000x CPU: i9 13900K RAM: GIGABYTE Z790 AORUS Elite AX GPU: My 2080 FE worked fine; the new one is a Gigabyte 4090 Windforce v2. OS: Windows 10 64-bit.
It looks unusual. If the seller had purchased a new card requiring an adaptor, it should have been included. Advising you to buy it yourself raises some concerns. I haven’t heard of anyone removing a GPU package to deceive others. This seems complex and unlikely, especially since the GPU wouldn’t be useful without it. It probably means the card is dead, unless the buyer hadn’t tested it first.
It’s starting to happen more often. We’re probably getting one every week on the forum here too. Mostly, people buy a bunch of 4090s in the US, carefully desoldering them from VRAM and GPUs. They then send these to places like China to bypass import restrictions on high-end cards. Because these boards look good, sellers post them on marketplaces like eBay, but they price them a bit lower—around a few hundred less—to avoid raising suspicion. Once someone buys it and discovers it doesn’t work, they’ll try selling it at a public place.