How many people even register their graphics card (or really anything else) online on the manufacturer's website? And considering it is impossible for people to buy cards from legit sources, what exactly do you expect them to do?
If 20 years ago a cyberpunk author pitched a story to me about thieves that steal a truckload full of AI-grade processors in order to profit off a digital gold rush I'd say "cool story bro but it doesn't make sense technically"
How does this work though?<p>If I would buy a card on eBay for example, I paid for it, install it and during registration I learn it is stolen, am I just basically f-ed? I mean, will anyone reimburse me the money I paid for it?<p>I would assume EVGA won't (since it was stolen from them), police won't, seller won't, eBay will say that it is between me and the seller.<p>How something like that gets resolved?
Warranty checker link taken from comments on the site:<p><a href="https://www.evga.com/warranty/check.asp" rel="nofollow">https://www.evga.com/warranty/check.asp</a><p>Check serial number before forking over payment. Safe to assume they will not offer warrantees for the affected items.
You know you're old when you see "EVGA" and "Graphics Cards" in the same sentence and EGA/VGA is the thing that pops into your mind first:<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enhanced_Graphics_Adapter" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enhanced_Graphics_Adapter</a>
Honestly I’m surprised that they cant just be remotely disabled. I’m not advocating for this feature by the way. I’m just surprised that it’s not a thing.
> It is a criminal and civil offense to “buy or receive” property that has been stolen. Cal. Penal Code section 496(a).<p>I would really hope there is a "knowingly" qualifier on that.
Convenient for the criminals that there's a safe and easy way to launder expensive hardware into currency, without even needing to move it.<p>What a lovely system we've created, and what lovely incentives.
Funny enough, I'm getting this message:<p>Access Denied
You don't have permission to access "<a href="http://forums.evga.com/Notice-of-Stolen-EVGA-GeForce-RTX-30Series-Graphics-Cards-m3490851.aspx" rel="nofollow">http://forums.evga.com/Notice-of-Stolen-EVGA-GeForce-RTX-30S...</a>" on this server.
This seems like a nasty move from EVGA to shift the downside onto whoever ends up unknowingly buying these cards on eBay. It’s weird, they normally seem like a company with a decent customer focus, and it’s not like this move is going to make any difference to their loss from the shipment, it just screws customers.
EVGA's warranty explicitly grants warranty transfer to second owners with proof of the transaction. Denying this for stolen cards isn't very customer friendly when the vast majority of cards are (legally) hoarded and sold by scalpers to customers who have no way of knowing it's stolen.<p>Especially considering that EVGA or whoever owned the cards when they were shipped will undoubtedly be insured and get paid on the cards regardless.
The thieves who stole the trailer truck stand to make quite a bit of money.<p>The internal storage space of a large trailer truck is ~50ft long × ~8ft wide × ~9ft high, give or take.<p>The box containing each RTX 30xx card is at most ~1ft × ~0.5ft × ~0.5ft, give or take.<p>Assuming the stolen trailer truck could be packed end-to-end and floor-to-ceiling with cards, there could have been up to (50÷1.0)×(8÷0.5)×(9÷0.5) = 14,400 cards inside the trailer. That's the upper limit on how many cards were stolen.<p>EVGA RTX 30xx cards retail between $1000 and $3000 <i>each</i>, depending on the model.<p>Even if I'm off by a factor of 10× on the number of cards, we're talking about <i>a fortune</i>.
I'm also wondering the duality of the statement:<p>* It is a criminal and civil offense to “buy or receive” property that has been stolen. Cal. Penal Code section 496(a).<p>* If you are able to successfully register your product and see it under My Products, then your product is NOT affected by this notice, you can also check the serial number at the EVGA Warranty Check page to see if it is affected.<p>Sounds to me like, if you bought a card in some shop, and you're in good faith, but you check by registering, then you risk turning yourself in for a crime you didn't know you committed, from there, you cannot do anything to amend the situation since you already committed the crime.<p>Fuck laws.
Instead of accusing the buyers who might unknowingly buy these cards, how about cover your losses using insurances? How about calling the police? Maybe paying more to buy a better insurance next time or hiring a government with better funded police or more efficient justice system?
I call this a dick move on EVGA's side, mainly harming consumers. I'm pretty certain they have insurance for incidents of this kind (theft), limiting the financial impact for them.