Cases of fraud in second-hand stores are nothing new. However, when you buy something new from Amazon, you don’t expect to receive something completely different. That’s exactly what happened to a Reddit user who tried to buy an RTX 5080 graphics card.
The customer ordered the RTX 5080 directly from Amazon, but when he opened the package, he realized right away that it wasn’t the GPU he expected — even though it looked similar at first glance.
The Buyer Found a Fake RTX 5080 Inside the Box
According to his post on Imgur, the buyer shared photos showing what he received. While many details appeared normal, the PCIe power connector raised suspicion. Instead of having the 16-pin connector used on NVIDIA’s high-end RTX 5080, the card only had 8 pins — a connector type that NVIDIA stopped using after the RTX 5060 Ti.
When he inspected the card more closely, it became clear that it was actually an ASUS Prime RTX 5060 Ti 16 GB, disguised to look like an RTX 5080. Stickers and the outer shell had been altered to mimic the design of the more expensive model. The deception worked — at least until it reached the final buyer.
On Reddit, users speculated that this could be the result of a “switch scam.” They believe a previous buyer might have purchased both the RTX 5060 Ti and the RTX 5080, swapped them, and then returned the cheaper card inside the RTX 5080 box to Amazon to get a refund.
If that’s the case, Amazon likely failed to inspect the returned item before reselling it — something that has been criticized before.
The “good” news is that the Reddit user documented everything from the moment he opened the package. This should make it easier for him to get a refund or replacement from Amazon. For now, he hasn’t shared an update, but it’s likely that customer service will resolve the issue soon.
