Newegg fires supplier of "demo CPUs" -

HardOCP has received hard information from supplier Newegg about shipments of fake Intel Core i7-920CPUs.

Newegg, in a statement to HardOCP, said that a supplier called IPEX mistakenly shipped it demo units. It said that it had since found out that the CPUs were fake and it's terminated its relationship with the supplier.

Newegg said D&H Distributing was not the vendor that supplied it with the Core i7 920s.

HardOCP said that it wanted to apologise to D&H Distributing for naming it as the distributor that supplied the CPU. "HardOCP was simply reporting the information that we believed to be accurate. We would never speculate on something of this nature, as there is nothing for us to gain by misinforming our readers."

Yesterday, Intel said that it had "been made aware" of counterfeit i7 920 packages. It is working to find out how many there are and where they are being sold.

"Buyers should contact their place of purchase for a replacement, and/or should contact their local law enforcement agency if the place of purchase refuses to help."

Intel, hopefully, will now be able to discover how many of these fake CPUs are out there. If there's a major counterfeiting ring behind the scam, there are likely to be many more than a few thousand of the "demo boxes" out in the wild.