Saturday, October 3rd 2026
Used Ryzen 7 5800X3D Gets Buyer Locked Out of Valorant Due to Previous Owner's Cheating
Buying a used Ryzen 7 5800X3D CPU has apparently locked its new owner out of Valorant. Reddit user After-Cartoonist-196 posted on r/PCBaumeister that they bought the chip through the German classifieds site Kleinanzeigen and have owned it since September 21. The CPU apparently works fine. However, Valorant kicked them out at launch, even though the game ran normally on their previous processor. Riot support reportedly told them the CPU's ID was blacklisted in Vanguard on August 12 because the previous owner had cheated. The user also claims their motherboard and storage drive got flagged, and that support refused to lift the ban. However, Riot's head of anti-cheat, Phillip Koskinas, responded on X and disputed part of that. Here's what he posted:
By that timeline, this chip should work in Valorant again by mid-December. We still don't know how Vanguard tells one 5800X3D from another, since a CPU doesn't report a unique serial number to Windows. The firmware TPM inside the processor is the likely answer, since Vanguard's on-demand mode requires TPM 2.0 and Secure Boot. Riot hasn't confirmed the method. AMD relaunched the 5800X3D at $350 in June, so plenty of AM4 owners are eyeing used ones right now. Unfortunately, there's no apparent way to check the chip for a ban before buying it.
Sources:
Reddit, Heise, Phillip Koskinas on X
Hardware bans last 4 months maximum, they apply only to the game cheats were detected in, and we don't ban "everything else" when we match one component. Support will give you the time remaining on request. If it were up to me, we'd have soul bans that followed them into hell.
42 Comments on Used Ryzen 7 5800X3D Gets Buyer Locked Out of Valorant Due to Previous Owner's Cheating
Reading 1984 is like reading the past. Orwell had only analog Technology to create the totalitarian dystopia, but that is very limited in nature.
A digital totalitarian dystopia, empowered by AI on the other hand, is unlimited.
Just compare an LG Smart TV with the telescreen Orwell described.
Rufus USB
All possible with CPUs from Nehalem/K10 onward. Those have the POPCNT instruction present that Win11 (24H2) absolutely requires (no work-arounds or patches) or even older CPUs would work as well. I guess there's another nuance: K10 has POPCNT but lacks SSE4.2, which Windows also checks. Luckily there7s a tool called POP4.2 that patches that kernel check and gets 26H2 running on Phenom chips.
Without all that spy-junk all you really lose is Microsoft version of hard drive encryption and I think you have to type a password in manually if you want to use Bitlocker - so, essentially nothing!
We take blood and urine samples from professional athletes, and everyone thinks that's normal. In this case, it's just a way for the game developer to ban cheaters.
Making a direct comparison to 1984 book on this specific topic is a bit much.