German Valorant Player Gets Banned After Installing Used Ryzen 7 5800X3D CPU
Updated
Updated · PCWorld · Oct 2
German Valorant Player Gets Banned After Installing Used Ryzen 7 5800X3D CPU
3 articles · Updated · PCWorld · Oct 2
Summary
A German Valorant player said Riot's Vanguard anti-cheat instantly banned their account after they installed a secondhand Ryzen 7 5800X3D that otherwise worked normally.
The reported trigger was a hardware blacklist left by a previous owner who had allegedly cheated, with modern anti-cheat systems able to tag individual components rather than just accounts or IP addresses.
Riot support allegedly refused to reverse the ban, and the player said Vanguard also blacklisted other parts in the system, including the motherboard and storage.
Vanguard runs with deep system access and requires Secure Boot and TPM, making hardware-level identification possible even though companies do not disclose exactly which parts they track.
Such cases appear rare, but the story highlights a growing risk in the booming used PC-parts market: buyers have no practical way to know whether a component was previously flagged.