Watch out – RAM rip-offs are now in vogue, so here's how to avoid falling for high-end memory scams

RAM flimflams on the rise

22 Dec 2025, 12:04 · TechRadar

News By Darren Allan published 22 December 2025

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Buyers are running into RAM scams due to the price of high-end kits
There are reported cases of DDR5 RAM sticks being swapped out for inferior products
These scenarios may be scammers gaming the returns system, but whatever the case, there's a crucial step you can take to protect yourself

With the price of RAM increasing so fast it's dizzying, in an unsurprising turn of events, scammers are trying to take advantage of the new and frankly ridiculous premiums that system memory is commanding.

Guru of 3D flagged up an incident whereby somebody purportedly purchased Corsair Vengeance DDR5 RAM sticks from Amazon, only to find out that the memory which arrived was DDR4 (which is quite a bit slower and cheaper).

And last week, VideoCardz reported a similar (but worse) scenario whereby a buyer of RAM from Amazon in Spain found an Adata XPG DDR5 kit actually contained DDR or DDR2 (positively ancient) system memory.

In the former case, it was a more sophisticated case of fraud where the modules had been replaced with the older RAM, though in the latter incident, the scammer had simply slapped a fake sticker that said DDR5 RAM on the very old memory sticks.

It's not clear what the outcome was in the second case yet, but in the first one, where the DDR4 modules were switched in, Amazon has actioned a replacement (as a refund wasn't much good, seeing as the price of the product had spiked again since the purchase).

Note that these were products bought directly from Amazon (and shipped by the retailer), not a third-party seller. So how come they are fake, then? What generally happens in these cases is the scammer buys the genuine product from Amazon, and files a return, switching the fake RAM in, and keeping the real sticks for themselves.

This should be picked up by Amazon, of course, but in these cases, the retailer may have somehow missed, or not properly checked, the return – hence it was sold again to some unfortunate soul, or that's the best-guess theory.

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