Samsung issues warning about fake SSDs in Europe — as the PC crisis sparks a massive slump in CPU sales

• More fake Samsung SSDs have been uncovered, and the drive maker has said it's 'taking consistent action against such counterfeits'
• At the same time, CPU sales are seemingly in a major slump, the worst seen in a decade, we're told
• With the PC component crisis just getting more intense, there is hope for some relief later this year – but the way it'll be realized isn't very comforting

As the PC component crisis intensifies, with CPU sales now apparently in a serious slump, we've had another warning about fake Samsung SSDs as scammers try to capitalize on expensive higher-end drives.

First off, let's look at the SSD nastiness, with German tech site ComputerBase reporting (via VideoCardz) that an Austrian buyer had the misfortune to receive two Samsung 990 Pro SSDs from a retailer that have both been confirmed to be fakes.

While the packaging of the 1TB drives looked authentic enough, and didn't ring any alarm bells, inspection of the SSDs did, as they had a blue circuit board (rather than the black color Samsung uses). They also used the wrong SSD controller (a Realtek model rather than a Pascal controller).

The real sign that something was very wrong, though, was the fact that these solid-state drives didn't work at all. (Unlike better fakes, which work, and can even appear to be the correct model when installed in a PC if you don't engage in anything other than a cursory inspection).

When Samsung was told about this incident by ComputerBase, the company provided a statement that read: "Samsung takes such reports about counterfeit memory products very seriously. We are taking consistent action against the distribution of such counterfeits.

"We recommend purchasing Samsung storage media exclusively through the Samsung Online Shop or authorized retailers. Consumers can also use the Samsung Magician software to verify that their product is genuine."

With the price of CPUs creeping up, maybe we'll also need to be wary of an uptick in processor fakes (such as the counterfeit Ryzen 9800X3D chips we've seen palmed off on unsuspecting consumers in the past).

More broadly, is it the case that pricier processors, and the squeeze from the memory crisis in general, are killing sales of desktop silicon? Apparently, this is indeed happening, as mentioned at the outset.

PC Gamer reports that TechEpiphany, who regularly posts figures from major German retailer Mindfactory, shared some recent data on X showing that processor sales have fallen sharply in the last three weeks (after being in something of a slump across the whole of March). It's mainly AMD Ryzen sales that have dropped actually – though that's partly a function of Intel sales numbers already being a great deal less at the start of 2026 – and it's an eye-opening slump.

Based on that data, and other sales figures drawn from the likes of Amazon, TechEpiphany posted on X that: "In 10 years of tracking retail CPU (and related) sales, I have never seen such a steep decline."

Analysis: an 11.5-level crisis

Saying that this is the single biggest slump which TechEpiphany has witnessed in the last decade is quite a statement regarding CPU sales. When asked 'on a scale of 1-10, how done are we?' in a follow-up post on X, TechEpiphany replied that we're at '11.5' currently.

Are processor prices really rising that steeply? Well, following rumors of major price increases late last year, they are going up, certainly, as there's a CPU shortage which is getting more serious.

However, this isn't just about processors in a bubble, but the entire custom PC market. With the prices of all components going up, and particularly RAM along with storage, building a computer from scratch – or looking at a substantial upgrade to a new motherboard platform for an existing system – has become a ridiculously pricey affair.

So, people just aren't doing that, and this is going to depress CPU sales, and indeed all components – not just the memory side of the equation, where the price hikes have been truly astronomical.

Counterfeit products being increasingly wheeled out as scammers try to profiteer from these high prices isn't going to help the situation, either. It's not great news that fake Samsung SSDs have now reached Europe, after an increase in Japan was already observed – though at least this latest bout of fakery wasn't as sophisticated as previously seen.

There's one hope here, namely that these stupidly high prices – and the PC market in general getting out of hand – is indeed resulting in a refusal to buy from consumers (as apparently seen with CPUs, but also RAM recently, too). That in itself could rebalance the supply and demand seesaw to some extent, and lead to prices falling. And as PC Gamer also spotted, MediaTek is tentatively predicting a more optimistic pricing trajectory for RAM in the second half of 2026 based on this kind of theorizing.

MediaTek's SVP and head of global sales, Eric Fischer, recently told analyst firm Counterpoint: "We're super cautious, maybe cautiously optimistic about the second half [of 2026], about where it goes because, at some point the prices are going to have an impact on the consumer's ability to spend – whether it's notebooks or [other] consumer products."

This is a sentiment we've heard elsewhere, but it isn't really all that comforting that the best hope for the RAM crisis to slacken its grip on our wallets is that pricing simply gets so high that people point-blank refuse to spend. But, here we are, and this is seemingly what it's come to...

The best laptops for all budgets

➡️ Read our full guide to the best laptops
1. Best overall:
Apple MacBook Air 13-inch M5
2. Best budget:
Apple MacBook Neo
3. Best Windows 11 laptop
Microsoft Surface Laptop 13-inch
4. Best thin and light:
Lenovo Yoga Slim 9i
5. Best Ultrabook
Asus Zenbook S 16

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