Looking to buy a new hba since the first one had enough daisy-chained expanders and the bandwidth just isn’t enough.
Checking on ebay, I see that there are lots of Chinese sellers offering 9211-8i or equivalents for less than half the price I paid for the first one at theartofserver.
One seller has a 40k+ ratings with a 99%+ positive feedback, which got me thinking if the cards they are selling are genuine refurbished cards or counterfeit? I’d be glad to get some feedback if you got a card from one of these sellers.
Should I take my chance or not take any risks trying to save 25-30 bucks? I’d choose the latter, but if you got any experience about the aforementioned cards, I’d love to hear it.
Extra question: I see that there are two versions(?) of cards selling under the 9211-8i name. One’s ports are on the right side of the heatsink, far from the bracket (I have this one), and the other one has ports near the bracket, marked port 1 and port0 from left to right. Are these both genuine or is the latter one counterfeit?
China has lots of data centers that surplus out old equipment too - I’m sure they have their fair share of legit old pulls to sell off.
China also processes a lot of e-waste from around the world - I’m sure globally there were many millions of those cards sold. I’m sure they just pull and resell anything that’s in demand.
That said, they also produce fake chips (or pulled / relabeled chips) and sell them for $5 in single quantities on ebay too - buying anything from China is a crapshoot. Even from the same seller/store but ordered placed at different times, one time you might get legit stuff, the next time you might get garbage.
The good thing about ebay is you can always get a refund if it’s “not as described” - especially so if it’s counterfeit.
I see, thank you for your answer. I guess if I get a fake one I can just refund it, but it’ll just lose me ~2 weeks.