Chinese cheap laptop company ‘swaps’ CPUs

Notebookcheck said they discovered a problem on the Chuwi CoreBook X laptop model when experiencing and evaluating the product. In the advertisement, the manufacturer said to use the AMD Ryzen 5 7430U chip. On the system interface, the machine also displays similar parameters. The manufacturer even intervened more deeply in the firmware, causing reliable diagnostic tools such as CPU-Z and HWiNFO64 to produce Ryzen 5 7430U results.

However, reviewers had their doubts when testing CoreBook At this point, the reviewer decided to disassemble the device and discovered that inside was a Ryzen 5 5500U (code Lucienne).

Ryzen 5 5500U is also the same 6-core, 12-thread chip, but uses Zen 2 execution core, lower parameter L2/L3 cache, clocked at 2.1 GHz, maximum 4 GHz. Ryzen 5 5500U is 7% slower than Ryzen 5 7430U. On CoreBook X, the performance gap is even wider at 10% due to single-channel memory holding back.

The parameters of both are quite similar, so most users are easily fooled. “Users may not notice and easily ignore them unless they are intentionally looking for inconsistencies,” Notebookcheck comment. “However, customers must always receive what they paid for, and manufacturers who use the trick of swapping old products should be condemned.”

Chuwi did not deny the accusations. The company cited “different production batches” and “out of control circulating inventory” to explain the problem, saying it was “taking the matter seriously” and had launched an internal investigation. Currently, Chuwi also changed the ad “CoreBook X 7430U” to “CoreBook X Ryzen 5”, but the link to the product page remains the same.

Theo Tom’s HardwareChuwi’s answer is not satisfactory. “It is understandable that low-cost device manufacturers have to use old components if there is a shortage of supply. However, they should notify customers instead of silently hiding the mistake,” this page commented.

In Vietnam, Chuwi used to sell the CoreBook

Chuwi is a consumer electronics company founded in 2004 and headquartered in Shenzhen. Initially, they started their business with mobile music devices, then expanded to personal computers and cooperated with major technology partners such as Intel, Microsoft, MediaTek, Google, Intel.

Thanks to its global sales strategy via e-commerce platforms such as Amazon, AliExpress or eBay, Chuwi has gradually become a familiar “cheap price – decent configuration” computer brand in the technology community. However, the company was also involved in a number of scandals, such as not having the necessary Technical Compliance Certificate (TCC) for the 5 GHz band but still selling products in Japan in 2023, or selling tablets used in education of poor quality in Tokushima Prefecture in 2024.