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The Chinese brand Chuwi, known for producing budget-friendly laptops, has been accused of misleading consumers by equipping its CoreBook X models with outdated Ryzen processors.

Despite utilizing older Ryzen chips, the company advertised its laptops with significantly newer CPUs. This revelation came to light following numerous complaints from CoreBook X users on Reddit, leading to an investigation by journalists at Notebookcheck.

The Ryzen 5 7430U processor is designed with 6 cores and 12 threads featuring Zen 3 architecture, whereas the Ryzen 5 5500U, while also having 6 cores, relies on the previous Zen 2 architecture, offering only half the L3 cache and lower clock speeds.

Previously, it was reported that a scam involving the RTX 5090 for $999 affected 42 people, with the seller sending waist bags instead of graphics cards. Prior to this, fraudsters were selling counterfeit NVIDIA RTX 4090s with Ampere GPUs.

It is suspected that Chuwi may have altered the firmware to falsify processor identification. Within the CoreBook X firmware, as well as in Windows and diagnostic tools like CPU-Z and HWiNFO64, the CPU was listed as a Ryzen 5 7430U. However, a teardown by Notebookcheck revealed a chip marked with the code OPN 100-000000375, identifying it as a Ryzen 5 5500U.

The similarities between both processors could easily deceive consumers. The lesser L3 cache and reduced clock speeds indicated that the Ryzen 5 7430U’s claimed specifications were inaccurate. The Ryzen 5 5500U is approximately 7% slower than the Ryzen 5 7430U. Given that the CoreBook X operates on single-channel memory, the performance gap extends to 10%, a difference that might go unnoticed by the average user.

Chuwi has neither confirmed nor denied these allegations, attributing them to varying production batches and inventory issues beyond the company’s control. Nonetheless, the brand has stated that it is taking the matter seriously and conducting an internal investigation.

Consumers deserve to receive what they pay for, and failing to deliver constitutes fraud. The archived CoreBook X page shows that Chuwi marketed the laptop as the “CoreBook X 7430U,” prominently featuring the Ryzen 5 7430U in all promotional content. Currently, the company markets the laptop as the “CoreBook X Ryzen 5,” yet the URL retains the original model name. The company has updated the processor specifications to Ryzen 5 with six cores and 12 threads, with a boost frequency of up to 4.3 GHz, omitting a specific mention of the Ryzen 5 7430U but still listing its boost clock speed.

A Reddit user hit the jackpot by paying Amazon $100 for returned goods and received DDR5 memory valued at $8000.

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