Newegg: Get your fake Intel CPUs here

Can you say "quality control"? If so, you're one up on online retailer Newegg, caught selling bogus Intel i7-920 processors

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This story is just too wild to ignore: It seems Newegg has quite a bit of old egg on its face this week after it shipped customers "counterfeit" Intel CPUs that were more like movie props than actual working electronics.

Last week, a Newegg customer ordered an Intel Core i7-920 CPU, which retails for $288.99 at the site. But what he got was more than a little different.

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IDG News' Sumner Lemon puts it rather drolly:

The fake processor, sold as a standalone or "boxed" chip, came with an instruction manual comprised of blank pages. In addition, [a] sticker on the outside of the box misspelled the word "socket" as "sochet" and other words on the box were spelled incorrectly -- subtle but clear indications that the contents inside were not genuine.

Subtle but clear -- you betcha.

Actually, it gets better (or worse, depending on your perspective). According to photographs posted at the HardOCP forums where the story originally surfaced, the "chip" came with a "heat sink" that was simply a blob of molded plastic. The CPU fan, visible through a cutout in the box's packaging, was a decal glued to the "heat sink." In other words, it was a picture of a fan, not an actual fan. The "chip" itself appears to be a piece of tin with perforations where you'd normally find circuits.