Buying a used CPU saved a German PC gamer a few euros — and locked them out of Valorant. A Reddit user going by After-Cartoonist-196 shared their story on r/PCBaumeister: they bought a secondhand Ryzen 7 5800X3D through the German classifieds site Kleinanzeigen and have had it in their PC since September 21. The chip works fine. The problem is what its previous owner did with it.
Valorant kicked the player out at launch — even though the game ran normally with their previous processor. Riot support, the user says, told them their CPU’s ID was blacklisted in Vanguard, the game’s anticheat: “I was told that my CPU ID/serial number is blacklisted in the Vanguard system; it had been hit with a hardware ban on August 12th because the previous owner apparently used it to cheat in Valorant.”
In a follow-up comment, the user says they were told that even swapping in another CPU wouldn’t help, as the rest of their parts had been similarly flagged — though Riot disputes that claim.
Riot Responds
Riot’s head of anticheat, Phillip Koskinas, responded on X and pushed back on part of the story. “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,” Koskinas wrote — before adding: “If it were up to me, we’d have soul bans that followed them into hell.”
By Riot’s four-month timeline, the chip should work in Valorant again by mid-December — four months after the August 12 ban.
How Does Vanguard Tell One 5800X3D From Another?
That’s the open question. A CPU doesn’t report a unique serial number to Windows, so exactly how Vanguard identifies one specific Ryzen 7 5800X3D is unclear. The likely answer is the firmware TPM inside the processor, since Vanguard’s on-demand mode requires TPM 2.0 and Secure Boot — though Riot hasn’t confirmed the method.
It’s an awkward combination for buyers. AMD relaunched the 5800X3D at $350 in June, so plenty of AM4 owners are eyeing used chips right now — and there’s no apparent way to check whether a secondhand CPU carries a Vanguard ban before you buy it.