Seagate Technology Holdings plc, a leading innovator of mass-capacity data storage, announced its sustainability collaboration with e-commerce site eBay. The agreement establishes Seagate's official storefront on eBay as a direct channel for consumers to access factory-recertified hard drives as part of the Seagate Circularity Program.

As a founding member of the Circular Drive Initiative—a partnership of global leaders in digital storage, data centers, sustainability, and blockchain collaborating to reduce e-waste—Seagate is committed to enabling the secure reuse of storage devices and reducing hard drive shredding. Hard drive shredding entails breaking down a hard drive into tiny pieces so that data cannot be recovered. As rare earth materials contained in those parts cannot be reused, hard drive shredding harms the environment and is not a sustainable practice.

Last week, AMD's Ryzen 8000GE desktop APU lineup appeared online—four lower power (TDP of 35 W) SKUs are set to join the already released 65 W TDP AM5 "Hawk Point" family. GucksTV has acquired a flagship 8000GE model, albeit in engineering sample form—a Hong Kong-based Ebay Store lists "AMD Ryzen 7 8700GE ES Tray" processors. At the time of writing only one unit remains in stock, priced at $298.99 with the option for free international delivery. The "hugohk" shop appears to specialize in supplying all sorts of Team Red engineering sample CPUs. GucksTV's German language video review pitches the Ryzen 7 8700GE engineering sample against the finalized retail release Ryzen 7 8700 APU.

AMD has not made any official release date announcements regarding the leaked Ryzen 8000GE range, but VideoCardz believes that "expectations are high that these variants will hit the market soon through system integrators." The GucksTV comparison video shows that: "On average, the single-core of 8700GE performance drops by 5%, while multi-core is 17% below 8700G. For graphics, that's a 23% average drop in performance while requiring 52% less power." The reviewer noted that his engineering sample was not allowing access to memory OC profiles, until a motherboard BIOS update was implemented (most likely via Beta firmware)—granting 6400 MT/s instead of the normal JEDEC rate of 5200 MT/s. The test platform utilized an ASRock A620I Lightning WiFi Mini-ITX mainboard—finalized Ryzen 7 8700GE APUs could be ideal candidates for usage in quiet/low temperature compact form factor systems.

A brave soul has listed an unreleased Razer Viper V3 HyperSpeed wireless gaming mouse on Ebay and included some close-up shots of the unboxed peripheral—a MouseReview subreddit post brought attention to this product leak yesterday. The seller is located in Springfield, Virginia and was charging $169.00 (buy it now) for an "open box" product. The Ebay listing seems to have attracted a buyer, but the mouse has likely passed through a couple of hands prior to the online exchange.

One of the subreddit commenters claims that they know the buyer and backstory behind their acquiring of a pre-launch Razer gaming accessory—they allege that a sponsored player participating in a Blast CS:GO tournament was willing to part ways with a sample/preview unit (presumably a stealthy transaction). Specifications and features have not been divulged, but leaked photos indicate that the Viper V3 HyperSpeed sports an outer shell aesthetic similar to the DeathAdder V3 PRO's design. HyperSpeed models tend to offer better value for money - when compared to top-flight PRO gaming mice - with more mid-range specifications. The photos from the Ebay listing suggest that this particular Viper continues the series tradition of featuring a removable battery compartment.

An Ebay merchant has made a very bold and brave maneuver within the last day or two - notorious hardware tipster harukaze5719 pointed out the seller's listing of an unreleased Intel 14th generation processor earlier today. The OneClickWarehouse store (established back in 2005) operates out of Ogden, Utah and seems to be a reasonably legit outfit thanks to an overall 99.6% positive feedback rating, despite their selling of apparently pre-release semiconductor tech. The item in question is titled "Meteor Lake P 6C+8A+GT2 X7 4CAB4V B A Mobility CPU14th Gen," with two examples being available for sale (at the time of writing) at $999 a pop.

This Meteor Lake CPU appears to be a mobile (MTL-P) variant, the "P" designation apparently points to utilization in ultra-thin and lightweight laptops. The Ebay-sourced info indicates a presence of six performance cores and eight efficiency cores which aligns with previously leaked details about the upcoming SKU lineup. Two low-powered E-cores sit within its SoC tile (aka chiplet), resulting in a total of 16 cores (22-threads). Several hardware news outlets in attendance at Computex 2023 have reported on an Intel demonstration unit - this laptop sports a Meteor Lake P-series processor with a similar core configuration to the ones listed for sale by OneClickWarehouse.

As covered on TPU yesterday - Newegg has recently reduced the asking price for AMD's flagship desktop Ryzen 9 7950X3D processor to $629.99. The $70 discount below MSRP represents a 10% saving for keen customers looking to upgrade to some of the best enthusiast silicon available at the moment, but this offer is only available via Newegg's Ebay store. The e-tailer has also (at some point today) rolled out the same percentage cut for the step-down model - Ryzen 9 7900X3D - which brings its price down to $539.99 (originally $599.99) according to the updated Ebay listing.

The 12-core Ryzen 9 7900X3D CPU seems to offer less value in terms of cost per core/thread when compared to its more powerful 16-core sibling ($40/$20) - when taking the (likely temporary) Newegg price cut into account, resulting in a per core price of almost bang on $45 ($22.50 per thread). AMD's Ryzen 9 7900X3D processor has not been reviewed by TPU, but the general consensus seems to be that it gets ignored due to its occupying of the unfavorable middle-ground between the more capable 7900X3D and naturally cheaper 8-core Ryzen 7 7800X3D. The latter has yet to be discounted (across the North American hardware market), so it is possible that Newegg is trying to encourage an uptake of the really expensive models with its latest price offers.

Newegg is selling AMD's top-of-the-range Ryzen 9 7950X3D CPU for $629.99 - so $70 below the usual asking price in the USA - although buyers will have to venture onto the e-tailer's Ebay store in order to pick up some fancy 16-core silicon action, Newegg's main site lists the CPU for the regular sum of $699.99. This weekend's sudden discount represents the lowest ever price for Ryzen 9 7950X3D only two months into its product lifespan. According to Ebay's tracking stats (for this particular product page) only four units have sold in the past 24 hours, and that a "limited quantity" of AMD Ryzen 9 7950X3D CPUs are available to purchase.

TPU's February review of this processor was filled with praise (plus awards: Editor's Choice & Innovation), but the high asking price was a point of contention. This weekend's (likely temporary) discount now gives the potential buyer a little bit of extra value - with the CPU's per core price dropping just under $40, and per thread cost being slightly south of $20. AMD's Ryzen 7000X3D series has been through a bumpy batch since late April - some owners have reported hardware burnouts and AMD is currently working on fixes. Buyer perception could have been affected by recent publicity, so it is possible that Newegg is attempting to get some surplus stock out of the door.

Valve's Steam Deck announcement took the gaming world by storm last week, as the announcement of a Valve-designed portable gaming console packing an AMD Zen 2 CPU with RDNA2 cores set collective imaginations on fire. However, as is the case for any recent gaming hardware launches, expect the Steam Deck to be hard to come by - demand for a mainstream portable, Switch-like console that promises to enable AAA-gaming on the go is apparently sky-high, despite the fact that some portable devices exploring the same concept have been available for a while now, such as the AYA Neo (which even packs two extra Zen 2 cores) and the Intel-based One XPlayer.

As is the case for any recent hardware launch that garners enough mainstream attention (looking at you, current-gen GPUs and consoles), a lopsided demand-supply ratio is a playground for unscrupulous types looking to make a profit at the expense of other people's impatience. And it sure is happening already - eBay listings for "pre-order confirmed" Steam Deck variants are already being set at €4,324 (roughly $4,989) - though we'd say they're tentatively set at that ludicrous pricing. It seems that the current median asking price sits around the $900 mark for the 512 GB SSD-equipped variant. Tentative or not, this just goes to show that the new normal is for launched products to be actively gauged for scalping practices - more now than ever before.

Recently, it has been brought to light that a particular seller on Ebay was selling price-hiked MSI RTX 30-series graphics cards - such as the RTX 3080 Gaming X Trio - well over MSRP ($1,359 for an RTX 3080, compared to NVIDIA's $699 and MSI's $799). A more attentive look at the seller, identified as Starlit Partner, reveals that they carried only MSI-manufactured SKUs for NVIDIA's RTX 30-series, and was selling them, in most cases, as sealed and brand new. Now, scalping of NVIDIA's latest graphics card series has been thoroughly covered here on TechPowerUp; however, suspicions of ties between Starlit Partner and MSI itself, and the suggestion that this was a coordinated move in order to sell RTX 30-series inventory at marked-up pricing, deserves a longer appraisal.

As soon as the suspicion was posted in the Internet, some users donned their detective cloaks and went digging for more information, and confirmed the ties to MSI. However, MSI has already issued a statement on the issue, clarifying the scenario we were faced with. Indeed, MSI has ties to Starlit Partner, as they themselves acknowledge - the later is an individual sales subsidiary working under MSI. However, MSI further explains in the statement that Starlit Partner is tasked with the sale of refurbished items and excess inventory - and that they should never have had access to NVIDIA's RTX-30 series graphics cards in the first place. MSI launched an investigation that confirmed an error in inventory allocation allowed Starlit Partner to access inventory they shouldn't have had access to (without clarifying the error).

The Independent has conducted an investigative report into the underwold's usage of Fortnite as a venue for money laundering. This likely won't come as a surprise - Fortnite has pretty lax acquisition restrictions for its in-game content and V-bucks, and the world's most popular multiplayer game moves millions of players through its servers daily. with such a deep pool of likely buyers for anything Fortnite at under Fortnite-store pricing, the stage is set for an almost untraceable money laundering scheme.

Ahead of their launch, industry partners with engineering samples (ES) of unreleased processors make a killing on Ebay. The same was true for one lucky user of a Core i7-6950X ten-core processor ES. Listed for auction on Ebay, the chip sold for $1,950. High-resolution pictures of the chip reveal that it could ship with a core clock speed of 3.00 GHz, which is not surprising considering how low Intel has been clocking its high core-count chips to respect 140W TDP, over the past few generations. The i7-6950X is based on Intel's 14 nm "Broadwell-E" silicon, and will be compatible with existing socket LGA2011v3 (X99 chipset) motherboards, with BIOS updates, when it hits the shelves later this month. Intel's policy on engineering samples, which its partners agree to before receiving samples, states that engineering samples issued by the company, are its property.

A lucky bloke who managed to score an engineering sample of AMD's upcoming Radeon HD 7990 sought to make a quick buck by auctioning it on Ebay. An opening bid of $0.99, and 36 bids (ATP) later, the auction has reached the $1,125 mark. The engineering sample is said to ship with clock speeds of 950 MHz core, and 6.00 GHz memory. The dual-GPU graphics cards ships with two fully-loaded AMD "Tahiti" GPUs, with 2048 stream processors each, and a 384-bit memory interface holding 3 GB of GDDR5 memory, each. If anything the Ebay listing gave us some gorgeous pictures of the beast.

In what is turning out to be the mother of all tech acquisitions, Microsoft is working towards acquiring IP telephony giant Skype Technologies for nearly US $8 billion, the deal could be announced later today, according to the Wall Street Journal. The Skype acquisition will give Microsoft increased traction in the consumer market, as part of the company's efforts to provide more web-based convergence services. The deal could be the most significant development after Bing, a polished successor of MSN Search.

Skype is the company that propagated web-based telephony, which threatened to make conventional telephony obsolete. Founded in 2003, the company has 663 million registered users, including 8.8 million with paid accounts. In 2005, it was sold to Ebay for $2.6 billion, after which Ebay sold 70% of its shares to private investors by 2009. Microsoft is in the foray to acquire the company and its debt in a deal that can see up to $8.5 billion changing hands.

Most of you surely know how trading on eBay works: the buyer buys something the seller is selling, and they both leave each other feedback based on their experience. If one of them stiffed the other, the feedback will reflect that, providing a nice layer of protection. However, eBay is planning on relinquishing that protection. It would seem as though some pesky buyers abused the system, and left negative feedback where none was necessary. Now, to prevent future problems, eBay is planning on eliminating the negative and neutral feedback altogether. In a quest to be politically correct and universally pleasing, eBay has taken up the mentality "if you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all". This has left both buyers and sellers in a uproar, claiming that there is very little protection if a sale fails to come through.

eBay has acquired ViA-Online GmbH, the German auction management software developer that operates Afterbuy.com. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. The addition of Afterbuy gives eBay the ability to employ professional trading on its German site and other online marketplaces. In return, aligning itself with eBay lets Afterbuy, which focused on selling items related to business management, tap the e-commerce expertise and resources of eBay. Afterbuy will continue to operate under its current brand name and will remain in Krefeld, Germany.

Although the Xbox 360 Elite isn't officially set to launch until 29th of this month, the first console has already appeared on eBay. Assuming it's genuine, this console was purchased in California from a Target store, and anyone wishing to bid on the item (currently standing at $800) can receive it on 24th April - if they're willing to pay the $99 delivery charge of course. So far, there are no figures on how many consoles will be available at launch, but retailers such as Circuit City have already sold out of their initial allocations, so they may prove difficult to get hold of. For anyone who's desperate to get their hands on the new version of this console can bid for it here.Source: DailyTech

Update: the console has now bee sold for $5,100 US

Anyone who owns old video games and tries to sell them usually gets a nasty surprise. Amazon/E-bay/retailers all buy used games at depressingly low prices, and there's little or nothing gamers can do about this. Enter 'Infinite Continues'. This start-up site promises to be the E-bay of games. A user, who registers for free, posts a list of all the games they have available for trade, and a wish-list of games they want. Infinite Continues then helps other users find those games, and lets the two users set up a trade. Shipping is taken care of by the traders. Like virtually all trade/auction sites, traders are rated based on how good they are at trading. The site has been in beta testing for over six months. Please check it out, you might find a way to get all those new games you want while getting rid of all the old ones you never play anymore.

While eBay is upgrading their interface it got severe security problems underneath which it tries to cover up. Firemeg, a blog dedicated to eBay watching, has a rather comprehensive report about the latest doings of Vladuz, a Romanian hacker. Vladuz, who's intention it is to reveal the security issues, broke into the Trust & Safety board at eBay.com and posted "information of fifteen different eBay members, including social security numbers, credit card numbers, bank account and routing numbers, ATM PIN numbers, mother's maiden names, driver's license numbers, as well as home addresses and full contact information". It took the persons in charge nearly an hour before everything was deleted. But Vladuz was not beaten, he posted all the information again on 12 different subforums again.
As I already wrote, this is not the only thing Vladuz has done so far. At the end of February he was active in the eBay forums using a so called 'pinkliner' account, an account which got Administrator's rights. eBay, in order to appease the nervous public, said he just got aware of 'some' account login. But the real dubious thing is that the name of this account was "vladuzsgi" - what a coincidence...

Ebay has decided for an improvement in its rating system for sellers and buyers. In addition to the standard positive, neutral and negative ratings, Feedback 2.0, as the service is called, will also provide four additional categories which buyers can individually rate sellers on called Detailed Seller Ratings (DSRs).The five new categories are: Item as described, Communication, Shipping time and Shipping and handling charges. Buyers will be able to rate sellers on a 5-star rating scale on each category.

eBay plans to roll out Feedback 2.0 in Australia, Belgium, France, India, Ireland, Italy, Poland and the United Kingdom within the next few days. Feedback 2.0 will be launched in the United States this spring.

Internet auction giant eBay has officially stopped allowing auctions of virtual property. This means that people hoping to sell currency or characters in an online game will have to look somewhere else. This is actually simply the enforcement of a policy that's been around since eBay's inception.

The seller must be the owner of the underlying intellectual property, or authorized to distribute it by the intellectual property owner.

As an example of this policy in action, World of Warcraft currency is technically Blizzard's, so you cannot sell it on eBay.