News Should You Buy a Used Graphics Card?

[JarredWaltonGPU]

Right now proof of work GPU miners are scrambling looking for other "potentially profitable" cryptocurrencies to mine other than Bitcoin and Ethereum. Possible candidates are Ethereum classic, ravencoin, etc. I don't think any other coin is suddenly going to jack up in price too quickly and It'll take a significant amount of time for all these coins to get to the level of success of ETH and BTC. Mining ETH is looking measly $1-2 only. If they decide to keep mining, they may possibly operate at a tight margin or a loss. Definitely miners are pushed against the wall right now.

Depends on the GPU. RTX 3090 will do maybe $7 per day, RTX 3080 around $5.50, RTX 3070/3060 Ti are about $3.50 — and that goes for the RX 6800/6800 XT/6900 XT as well. Even RTX 2060 Super through 2080 Super are all $2.75 or so per day. But considering the prices right now, none of those are good deals for gaming or mining. Break even on Ethereum mining (or any other coin) would be at least 250 days at current rates, and could easily end up being more than a year. Short of a big jump in crypto pricing, mining with GPUs really isn't a great investment right now. But you could always HODL! That worked out so well for those GameStop "investors," right? ;-)

 

[vinay2070]

Well, I purchased a crypto mined GTX 1080 for cheap at 2/5th the cost of a new card back when the First crypto bubble blew. When I recieved the card I felt bad. The entire heat sink was oxidised, the fan made a light noise at 10% speeds. I was about to return, but seller on the forums told me to try it for a week and glad I did. It still cooled the card as good as new, it still booseted better than new, its stilll my daily driver. I have set the fan curve is MSI after burner to skip the 10% to 15% fan speeds and only kick in if the GPU is at 50C and it has all been working fine touchwood. And I havent even replaced the thermal paste till date and I dont see a reason as it runs cool. But to to be frank, I dont game much, so I havent taxed the GPU as much as most gamers do, so there is that. It might be that I might have gotten lucky or it might be so that its OK to have such a GPU. YMMV. Will I risk again? I dont know. Maybe if I get a good seller and at a good price, I might.

 

[fevanson]

Buying a used mining gpu is usually fine, most cryptocurrency hash algorithms are memory heavy anyways, the core usually stays cool, however I would still buy one within the warrantee (sometimes when you rma it, they replace the thermal pads/paste for you!). The performance loss is mostly from overused thermal pads/paste, if you replace the pads/paste and clean the heatsink it usually restores all of the performance loss. Miners usually run the cards at constant load 24/7 anyways which is better then turning a modern day microprocessor on and off 100000 times.

 

[jeremyj_83]

Easier said then done when you sit on 8 ys old gtx 660

I'm sitting in the same boat with my R9 285 from 2015.

 

[InvalidError]

Miners ruined the gpu market for the rest of us, so miners should take their mining cards to the grave.
Even if "some" of those cards are still good

The vast majority of those cards are likely still perfectly fine with a simple refurb and reflash to factory BIOS. After all, there is no profit to be made from GPUs dying prematurely and people who do crypto-mining on a professional basis are in it for maximum overall gains, especially now that it takes 300+ days to just break even..

We are talking millions of cards for commercial crypto-mining farms. Even if you refuse to buy any of those GPUs for yourself, millions more GPUs flooding the used market are still going to go a long way towards depressing retail prices from all the people who do not share your inhibition.

I don't put used components in my own main PC either unless they are my own older components. I'm still rooting for the used crypto-mining GPU flood to crash retail prices. With some luck, I won't need to pay more for a fresh RTX3050 or RX6600 than what I think their rightful prices should be.

 

[mac_angel]

How about buying a used card that's listed as LHR?
I have/had a Gigabyte Aorus RTX 3090 (only gaming, no mining). It crapped out. I tried to send it to Gigabyte in the US (I'm in Canada), twice for warranty return. I got the warranty return approved and all, but both times when I tried to ship it back, customs wanted to talk to Gigabyte about the return, and Gigabyte refused to talk to customs. The second time it was shipped, it was actually Gigabyte that was setting up everything. They had UPS pick it up, etc. But when it reached the boarder, customs wanted to talk to Gigabyte about it again. Gigabyte wouldn't talk to them, so the card was sent back to me yet again. Now I'm stuck in sorting out legal BS (and way too many of these companies are doing this sort of thing, including Corsair), and going from gaming on a 3090 to a 1060 6GB. I've been on the fence about buying a used card from Facebook Marketplace, and happy about the prices coming down. I've noticed a few are showing boxes of the GPUs being LHR. I'd definitely make sure the serial # on the card match the box before buying, but I'd think that LHR cards wouldn't be as bad as normal ones.

 

[InvalidError]

How about buying a used card that's listed as LHR?

If it is a first-gen LHR, those have been "broken" since the 2020 driver leak. For the LHR generation that came after that, there had been a 70% unlock for over a year. Now, we have a 90+% LHR unlock.

Also keep in mind that LHR only affects Dagger-based crypto. Before LHR got broken, miners simply ran ETH as the main currency and something else to fill up the GPU.

 

[AgentBirdnest]

Are there any benchmarks showing the difference between a brand new card, and one that has been mined on for a year or two?
I think fevanson and InvalidError are right that the cards would probably be fine with a bit of basic maintenance... but admittedly, I'm just going off of anecdotal evidence. I'd love to see some concrete facts.

 

[JarredWaltonGPU]

Are there any benchmarks showing the difference between a brand new card, and one that has been mined on for a year or two?
I think fevanson and InvalidError are right that the cards would probably be fine with a bit of basic maintenance... but admittedly, I'm just going off of anecdotal evidence. I'd love to see some concrete facts.

I haven't tested it lately, but basically if you have a dusty card or one with worn out thermal materials, you'll often lose 10% or more performance. Servicing the card by cleaning and reapplying thermal paste usually fixes the problem.

 

[InvalidError]

Are there any benchmarks showing the difference between a brand new card, and one that has been mined on for a year or two?

Thought this was only a few months ago, been almost a year...

View: https://youtu.be/hKqVvXTanzI


A GPU manufacturer telling people they lose 10%/year on GPU performance from crypto-mining? What a surprise from people who have a vested interest in depressing the used market since they only make a profit on first sales.

 

[AgentBirdnest]

Thought this was only a few months ago, been almost a year...

Perfect! Thanks for that video.

Personally, I'm keeping an eye out for a used card. I'm hoping that we'll see a similar panic selloff in-between the announcement and the launch of RTX 40; after Jensen hypes up the claimed performance, but before third party reviews bring everyone back to reality. Similar to what happened when RTX 30 was announced, and people started selling their 20-series cards for insanely cheap.
I'm mostly worried about being scammed. Jarred raised a lot of good points about that in his article. But also ways to avoid it.

 

[GuimarX]

Just because a card was mining 24/7 doesn't mean it's about to die, but you should still approach with caution.

Should You Buy a Used Graphics Card? : Read more

I Build Passively cooled systems, If I want a factory GPU that is passively cooled faster than a GT1030 used is the only way to go. I just got a Palit Kalmx Gt1050ti for a system that will be an HTPC/ Light gaming and Photoshop/Video editor. These cards are not usually run to hard due to the lack of the fan (not the compute unit of a server). The 4GB 1050ti was the price of a new GT1030 (2gb DDr5).

 

[escksu]

Well, its all about $$$. Nobody would need to buy a used one if they can well afford a new one. Keyword is "well". Quite often, you may want the card but doesn't want to fork out the $$$ so you will get a used one in order to save money. If you are filthy rich, you wouldn't bother.