AI-rewritten: This is a summary of an article from Tom’s Hardware, rewritten by AI (Qwen, running locally) to make it easier to read. The facts come from the original article – read it for the full story.

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A German gamer purchased a used AMD Ryzen 7 5800X3D processor on September 21, 2026, and was immediately banned from the game Valorant upon launching it. Although the computer functioned normally for general use, the anti-cheat engine Vanguard flagged the hardware because its previous owner had been detected cheating in the game. Riot Games confirmed that this specific CPU was blacklisted on August 12, 2026, due to that prior violation.

Riot customer service informed the buyer that they cannot reverse the ban, which stems from the unique hardware ID (HWID) of the processor. While Riot stated that bans enforced by Vanguard last for a maximum of four months and are specific to certain games, other anti-cheat systems like BattleEye enforce permanent global bans. Additionally, Easy Anti-Cheat can ban users across all titles using its system, whereas Vanguard only matches one component on the deny list rather than the entire PC configuration.

This situation highlights significant risks for buyers of second-hand computer parts. Unlike software issues, there is currently no way to check if a CPU or GPU carries an existing anti-cheat ban before purchase. Even if the previous owner denies cheating, an unlucky buyer may face temporary exclusion from games until the ban expires or they replace the hardware and create a new account.