Chinese Parts

[bd139]

Smoke comes out of all of them equally when I'm let at them.

[Tomorokoshi]

Wouldn't have thought it was worthwhile, they have to shift vast quantities and also have access to the machinery to mass produce these items which just increases their chances of getting caught whereas copying another completed populated circuit board could be done as a cottage industry and therefore must reduced chances of being discovered.

This is from 2009. Not sure how things have changed since then:
http://www.asq.org/asd/2009/03/compliance/counterfeit-parts.pdf

[Specmaster]

Wouldn't have thought it was worthwhile, they have to shift vast quantities and also have access to the machinery to mass produce these items which just increases their chances of getting caught whereas copying another completed populated circuit board could be done as a cottage industry and therefore must reduced chances of being discovered.

This is from 2009. Not sure how things have changed since then:
http://www.asq.org/asd/2009/03/compliance/counterfeit-parts.pdf

Having seen this I stand corrected, but is this counterfeiting or just recycling after being extracted, cleaned up and tested to make sure they aren't dead and faking their age?

[wraper]

Having seen this I stand corrected, but is this counterfeiting or just recycling after being extracted, cleaned up and tested to make sure they aren't dead and faking their age?

Unlikely that they will be tested. Also expect they will be sanded, blacktopped and remarked with different datecode and probably grade/model if there is some similar part they need to "produce".

This particularly makes buying half decent GPU chips for repairs a tough task as there are no legit channels. Most of what is sold are remarked old chips with issues, often with originally different suffix which makes it even worse as often those are not directly compatible. Tried sourcing them myself multiple times until decided to not bother with such repairs, waste of money and loss of respectability.

[Specmaster]

Just stumbled across this interesting video.

[bd139]

Got a whole strip of AD8307’s arrive yesterday from China. Soldered one on to one of my boards in dev in lieu of a £10 one from RS. Over entire sweep from 10-400MHz it reports same power as the £10 job. So:

RS - £10 each
China - £0.279 each

Hmm.