Been looking at AliExpress as they have some interesting cards kicking about, like the Soyo brand 580’s. But it’s impossible to tell which stores are legit, as everyone piggybacks off of the same stock images.
Talked about it with another user on Reddit a while back, and the things to be mindful of is basically if you’re sent a used GPU, or a new one. Which involves checking the firmware, taking it apart to look at components, or even more nerdy things I couldn’t find any info on.
What’s the rub? I’ve bought a few things before from there (used Haswell Xeon, cheap and nasty X99 motherboard, some Chinese brand DDR3 RAM), and didn’t have any bad experiences. Got what I paid for. But GPUs are a bit more than throwaway money in cost.
My understanding is that the Asian market 580’s have fewer cores and lower clock speeds than western market 580’s. You can find them on Amazon so it probably isn’t worth getting that particular card from Aliexpress.
One indicator is how long the store has been open. If it’s less then 1 year, be mindful, scammers use throwaway names for their store fronts. But when it’s trading for over 5 years, it’s probably legit. In any case, YMMV!
There is another safeguard: pay via credit card. Should you have a conflict, call the CC issuer for a refund/payback. Make sure you have documented said conflict with Aliexpress (raise the refund issue with Aliexpress first, before talking to the CC company). So far, I’ve had to request refunds only a few times in the past decade and all issues were resolved in my favour. Each time I could prove to Aliexpress the product I got (or didn’t get at all) was not what I ordered.