Is this political BS or seller BS?

[Sirgeorge]

I'm looking at used threadripper chips on eBay and noticing a lot of "made in china" on them (titles as well as on the chips themselves). Normally, I'd use that as a red flag to stay away for a higher end item but the whole "let's pretend Taiwan isn't it's own country" thing came to mind and now I gotta know the truth. Is this political BS (China forcing the international community to treat Taiwan as something it isn't, a Chinese province, and that ending up on the actual dies themselves as "made in China") or is this seller BS (a seller selling knockoff goods). Anyone know the answer to this one?

[emosun]

Nobody selling pc hardware successfully is heavily leaning to one side of politics in their listings. You may be reading too much into either a typo or someone just reading online that the chips were made in china and sticking it in the listing

[Middcore]

5 minutes ago, Sirgeorge said:

I'm looking at used threadripper chips on eBay and noticing a lot of "made in china" on them (titles as well as on the chips themselves). Normally, I'd use that as a red flag to stay away for a higher end item but the whole "let's pretend Taiwan isn't it's own country" thing came to mind and now I gotta know the truth. Is this political BS (China forcing the international community to treat Taiwan as something it isn't, a Chinese province, and that ending up on the actual dies themselves as "made in China") or is this seller BS (a seller selling knockoff goods). Anyone know the answer to this one?

I just searched for Threadripper on eBay and scrolled through a couple pages of results and I don't see a single one that says "made in China."

 

Are you seeing ones where it says "from China" because that's where the seller is located and it will ship from? 

[Sirgeorge]

11 hours ago, emosun said:

Nobody selling pc hardware successfully is heavily leaning to one side of politics in their listings. You may be reading too much into either a typo or someone just reading online that the chips were made in china and sticking it in the listing

11 hours ago, Middcore said:

I just searched for Threadripper on eBay and scrolled through a couple pages of results and I don't see a single one that says "made in China."

 

Are you seeing ones where it says "from China" because that's where the seller is located and it will ship from? 

To address both of your points. Here is a listing's picture that has on the chip itself printed "made in china": 

 

Beyond that, my question is if this is a knockoff made on the mainland of China and then sold as a fake or if this is a proper TSMC made chip that has "made in china" because TSMC and AMD and everyone else didn't want the CCP to get in a twist and so pretended that Taiwan was China. More generally, is it typical for made in Taiwan chips to say they're made in China? Tl;DR, is this chip made on the mainland or on Taiwan?

[YoungBlade]

4 hours ago, Sirgeorge said:

To address both of your points. Here is a listing's picture that has on the chip itself printed "made in china": 

 

Beyond that, my question is if this is a knockoff made on the mainland of China and then sold as a fake or if this is a proper TSMC made chip that has "made in china" because TSMC and AMD and everyone else didn't want the CCP to get in a twist and so pretended that Taiwan was China. More generally, is it typical for made in Taiwan chips to say they're made in China? Tl;DR, is this chip made on the mainland or on Taiwan?

As far as I know, the whole CPU is typically assembled either in Malaysia or China for AMD. They put together all the chiplets and put on the IHS in those facilities.

 

However, the fact that you link a 1000 series chip as the example is telling.

 

No, nothing from that CPU has anything to do with Taiwan. The silicon, in this case, is not made in Taiwan, because TSMC is not involved. Likely, the silicon there was made in America, as that's where GlobalFoundries has their 14nm facilities. The GF German facility has 12nm, and that's where Ryzen 2000 silicon was made. TSMC didn't get involved until the 3000 series.

[Sirgeorge]

8 hours ago, YoungBlade said:

As far as I know, the whole CPU is typically assembled either in Malaysia or China for AMD. They put together all the chiplets and put on the IHS in those facilities.

 

However, the fact that you link a 1000 series chip as the example is telling.

 

No, nothing from that CPU has anything to do with Taiwan. The silicon, in this case, is not made in Taiwan, because TSMC is not involved. Likely, the silicon there was made in America, as that's where GlobalFoundries has their 14nm facilities. The GF German facility has 12nm, and that's where Ryzen 2000 silicon was made. TSMC didn't get involved until the 3000 series.

Ah, wonderful. So I shouldn't worry about a chip like this one?

[YoungBlade]

1 minute ago, Sirgeorge said:

Ah, wonderful. So I shouldn't worry about a chip like this one?

Buying from random people on the Internet always has a risk to it, but having the CPU say "Made in China" is not cause for concern in this case, no.

 

Here's GN's review. It says "Made in China" on those CPUs.