What started out as just another gamer finding their brand new graphics card missing and replaced in the box by some random piece of junk, has turned into a potentially big headache for Zotac and a compromised Chinese factory shipping not-RTX 5090s out the front door.
Late last week one redditor posted about their poor luck in having been sold a brand new Zotac RTX 5090 Solid OC card from a new Micro Center store in Santa Clara, only to get it home some four hours later to discover that their dream GPU was, in fact, "3 crossbody backpacks inside rather than my 5090."
UPDATE: The “scam” Zotac 5090 with backpacks inside from r/Microcenter
The inevitable regret at not having opened the box in store or at least captured the unboxing on video was washed away the following day when they returned to the store where staff had actually seen their reddit post already and had found 31 other boxed up backpacks within Zotac RTX 5090 packaging.
The second update post details the follow up trip and thanks the staff at the Santa Clara Micro Center for their efforts and the speed with which they replaced the OP's graphics card.
Videocardz followed up with Micro Center and was told that while they had tracked it back to their supplier they now believed the Zotac cards in question were "compromised at the Zotac China factory before they even shipped to the US."
That immediately makes this a far more worrisome story than just a single user getting shipped a brick inside a GPU box. The fact that a single store has discovered 32 missing RTX 5090s doesn't make me think that's an isolated incident, being just a problem with one delivery for one shop.
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I've been to that Zotac China factory in Shenzhen and it's a big ol' facility. I wouldn't be surprised to hear of more missing Zotac GPUs in the next month—surely more than just 32 cards would have been replaced in a shipment bound for the US if it really was an issue at source.
That [[link]] would mean it's potentially far more than just $92,800 worth of Nvidia graphics cards missing from retail boxes, and I can almost hear the sounds of box cutters ripping into Zotac GPU packaging across retailers all over the country searching through their stock rooms.
I've reached out to Zotac for comment and will update on its assessment of the scale of the problem if we hear back.
And if you're picking up a Zotac card in the near future I'd recommend either opening it in-store or taking some video of you opening up the box just to be safe. Not all retail stores are going to be as accommodating as [[link]] the Micro Center staff seemed to have been this time.