When purchasing an AMD processor, customers received an additional 16 GB of RAM for free. However, the online shop made an embarrassing mistake during this campaign because the CPU and RAM are not technically compatible with each other.
Online shops repeatedly advertise discounts and promotions to attract buyers. A PC retailer made an embarrassing mistake when a hardware bundle appeared in his shop.
The free RAM that came with the AMD processor was not compatible and therefore useless for buyers. But there are also cases in which everything technically fits together and the installation of RAM fails for other reasons.
PC retailer embarrasses itself with useless hardware bundle
What kind of bundle was that? The online shop Newegg wanted to give its customers a small gift. Buyers of an AMD Ryzen 5 7600X processor received 16 GB of RAM as a free bonus for a short time.
What at first sounds like a great deal turned out to be an embarrassing mistake on the part of the PC retailer upon closer inspection. The bundle of CPU and RAM did not technically fit together.
Why is the hardware incompatible? The Ryzen 5 7600X comes from AMD’s current 7000 CPU series. In order to use a processor from this generation, you need an AM5 mainboard and matching DDR5 RAM.
Unfortunately, the free 16 GB of RAM was modules in DDR4 format. These can only be used on the previous AM4 platform in conjunction with AMD 5000 series processors.
DDR4 modules, which can be responsible for strange errors in the PC, do not fit on AM5 boards due to their design. DDR5 modules do not fit on AM4 boards.
A mixed operation of hardware from both generations together is therefore not technically possible. Unsuspecting buyers who would have been happy about the free storage at first would have noticed the problem when they tried to install the hardware.
Why did the error occur? The text for the promotion was probably typed manually. Either the employee made a mistake or simply didn’t know any better. The campaign has since ended and there is no longer any evidence of it.
If you look at the custom PC builder on the online shop page, when selecting an AMD Ryzen 5 7600X processor, only DDR5 RAM is suggested for a complete system. The embarrassing mistake really seemed to be limited to just one action.
From an online shop that sells PC hardware, you would normally expect that all components fit together when using pre-packaged offers. This should especially apply to promotions where customers get something for free, so that it doesn’t backfire. If you don’t want to buy a complete system and would rather do it yourself, there are a few things you should pay attention to: 5 beginner mistakes that you should avoid when assembling a new gaming PC