Gadgetory

okay it is raining rather alright outside some of you here's something weird I'm gonna blame mother nature this is a question a few others in YouTube have tried to answer in the past and I understand why it keeps coming up because there's really no solid answer should you buy a graphics card you suspect was used for mining we've got several variables to consider and I'm gonna cut straight to the point in this video so the first thing you need to do is look at a graphics card like a mini computer we've got the GPU essentially a small motherboard underneath soldered Ram a dedicated cooling system rear i/o and ports on both power and data transfer all of this results in I've been a pretty expensive card you could spend anywhere from like 10 bucks to $10,000 on one in the new market but cards depreciate pretty fast and a lot of this is tied to the fact that people don't trust used hardware especially used graphics cards especially if they were used for mining I mean can I blame you you got no idea how the card was treated was it casually gaming or 24/7 mining what all should you consider when you target the use market and come across a card that looks super suspect if you think it was used for mining here's what I advise you do first make sure you're shopping on trustworthy websites I recommend eBay for starters that's just a good place to get familiar with the buying and selling of components by our protection guarantee on eBay is definitely a good thing it's saving more than once Amazon's also pretty ok as is Newegg but the problem with these sites is that you can't verify the integrity of anything so the card could have got awful coil line a fan could be dead more on that later it could also be running super hot and that would be super out of the ordinary so you're taking a risk every purchase comes with a bit of that but used components especially that's why people keep the tinfoil hats on and again I don't really blame you it's your money you choose how to spend it but you know only websites that publicize a strong money-back guarantee are the ones I would dabble with the exception of this is like a site similar to Craigslist where you'd actually get to meet the seller in person and possibly inspect the component firsthand just make sure you're extra careful and bring a friend if you absolutely need to go inside someone's house which is probably what you'll have to do if your goal is to see the card working right in a system before buying it's just it's kind of sketchy when it gets personal now let's throw out a hypothetical let's say you meet this person in an office and notice they've got a mining farm pimped out in the closet and the car Dee's trying to sell you is identical to the ones running in that closet yes start sweating right you don't want to be awkward and leave without asking questions so understandably you pop the question was this card used for mining there's really no way you'll know unless they confess or you see it pulled from the farm firsthand and this is the case with online sellers as well right it's one gamble so if you can verify that the card works then you're off to a good start and that's obviously I think the first concern people have when they buy used my next recommended course of action would be to tear the card apart especially if the card several years old and out of warranty a lot of Pasco cards come with three year warranties which means buying them used at this point may mean you won't be able to send it in for repair free of charge this is another aspect of the use market of which the buyer should be aware not too many people talk about it but it is something you should consider if the warrant is void I encourage you to disassemble it if it's not for anything else other than that replace the GPS thermal compound it probably needs a replacement after about two or three years you can also take this opportunity to remove dust and ensure that thermal pads are present and in good condition if you notice any bulging caps or leaky resistors this may be a sign that the board is on the brink of failure and it's been running very hot for very long amounts of time you'll never really know until it happens again you just kind of kind of prepare for these things I researched far and wide and across dozens of forums I came to the conclusion that graphics card fans probably fail more than anything else and it kind of makes sense I mean they're really the only moving parts of the entire graphics card system and are stressed beyond belief when things get toasty as such I advise only buying used cards whose fans are easily replaceable many so tech fans for example can be found here on Amazon on the cheap these here asus strix fans a bit more expensive but get the point so it all comes down to what you think will be easier to replace in the long run I don't have a huge sample size from which to draw any serious conclusions here and I mean there be there's so much data out there to even gather and form a conclusion around so I'd be willing to bet though a majority of mining cards will see their fans fail before anything else which is a good thing if you're willing to take the risk and make the quick swap also a lot of miners will just run the fans at 100% rpm the entire time the cards are mining just to make sure that the cards stay cool and another thing miners have been known to undervolt to their cards to maximize margin since mining is resource intensive and requires large amounts of power over long amounts of time many will choose to undervolt by say 10% and reap the benefits of only a 5% reduction and effective hashing it's just an example but hopefully point so despite many of these mining cards running 24/7 or at least cyclically right many of them are running more efficiently as a result and don't reach those toasty 100 degrees Celsius t-junctions as often as you might think that in most modern carts throttle themselves anyway so I wouldn't be too worried about the cars overheating unless the room is horribly ventilated or something but even then the cards would still probably shut off the whole system would shut off before anything overheated on a relatively new card so you can imagine a car let's say running on cruise control for several days apart from stopping for gas which is the obvious nothing about such a journey should be too taxing for the car I mean mpg is usually pretty good on the highway temperatures are usually in check because you're just running it one or two thousand rpm or maybe not 1000 rpms but you know it's a steady just approach to travel and that's kind of how I think about mining it's probably doing it more justice than it deserves but mining is like cruise control for graphics cards I mean yeah they're running 24/7 and they're working pretty hard but if they're under volted and the fan curves are ramped all the way up these cards aren't getting very hot and I don't really see too much wrong with that and the grand scheme of things unless of course they've been running for 10 years straight at which point yeah avoid that thing and like we said earlier people ramp up fan speeds and undervolt which means that the lifespan of the card is actually increased by quite a bit now on the contrary car is used for gaming are like cars that only run in the city they stop and go a lot and often accelerate quickly to attain desired speeds in the short amount of time they have worst mpg they get very hot quickly and then cool down just as fast because it's stop go stop go I know this isn't a perfect analogy but I hope it gets you thinking about the differences in usage right I mean graphics cards used for gaming are idling or they're being used pretty hard and they're reaching I mean temperatures usually that require the cards to throttle their own frequencies so you can look at that multiple ways but like I said I just want you to think about it I'm really indifferent to this idea that mining makes cards perform worse in the long run or decreases the lifespan dramatically cards don't just randomly die usually like I said it's a fan or something along those lines how many GPUs do you know just stop working like the GPUs or CPUs for that matter so I think there are other aspects of the board to take into consideration not necessarily most expensive component and if you send this in and let's see it's an msi card msi is pretty good usually about their RMA processes and we'll even honor warranties outside of their two or three-year periods they may charge you I don't know 40 bucks to replace a couple fans or to replace a few caps on the board usually it's not the entire board of the GPU itself that needs to be replaced I totally understand if that's nothing you want to deal with right you just want peace of mind you want to buy new I get it but for the people who are on the fence about buying used this is stuff you should consider and to TYIN in my last point you got to feel out the seller who you're buying from and what I mean by that is this he or she is forthcoming right honest appears genuine overall you probably don't have too much to worry about that was a huge gust of wind even if the card was mined with so this will be easier to do when dealing in person obviously but you can still manage online ask questions you may let you do that you can gauge answers by their tones points of hesitation word choices I mean it's your job right to ask these questions you're the buyer this is due diligence this is the definition of it before you commit you've got a question if you don't and you also fail to inspect the card either prior to purchase or immediately after receiving it's your own fault that's why many websites promote 714 or 30-day return policies it's your chance to decide if you're happy with the product and to verify that it is actually as advertised and I've got to say that I honestly have no problem buying used even when I suspect the cards in question have been mined with a few of my gtx 280s i suspected were mined with because the seller was actually selling it four of them I don't assume any people who have just 4G text and ad sling around they were all the same model but I didn't care I got him for 300 bucks and she takes 1080 Sulphur still four hundred dollars today maybe more than that in some places so I saw does a good deal those cards work fine if they didn't work out of the box when I bought them I'd file a claim or I'd message the seller directly and we'd work on the refund again buyer protection guarantee it's there to protect the buyer from sellers who are trying to scam you or who might mislead you into buying a product you didn't know wasn't functioning correctly I've also gotten several maxwell cards from ebay 90 to TI's 970 kind of detail in this video here all from eBay and even found a few great deals on our X cards for good measure a rule of thumb though is to stick with Maxwell or earlier in a MIDI aside and minimize your risk of mining exposure right so newer cards are more efficient and thus more desirable in the eyes of miners they're trying to save money maximize profit but that said it's difficult to turn down an RX 570 for a hundred bucks especially when the picture is revealed just how clean it really was even if you suspect it was mining you know I just don't see it as a justifiable reason to avoid such a good deal especially if the card still works now a lot of this obviously is my opinion it's totally just based on my own experience with the used market so if anything I'm just trying to convince you that you should consider the used market in the future I'm not telling you should buy used over new especially if it was mine with I know that's a gamble you know to what extent it's a gamble it just depends it's found a card to card basis but if your goal is to save money I think it's worth a shot I will close though by saying that I'm not the only one who has an opinion on this obviously many other tech tubers especially out there have voiced their concerns either been against this or for this you can find videos to two prominent tech tubers link below for now though I'm going to sign off and let you guys listen to them so I'll leave your feedback down below always sure to check out the the comments section for sure thumbs up thumbs down you know what to do click that red subscribe button if you feelin special I'll catch you in the next one this is science studio thanks for learning with us and I hope you guys enjoy what you're about hear from to friends of mine I feel that they're screwing people I think that since these mining cards are almost used to the point of non-existence there should be something out there a law something that says you know these cards should meaning be acknowledged as hey this card was used in mining you know almost kind of like an industrial type standard because let's think about it if a person takes the card and they're mining with the car they're not gaming isn't that industrial you know because you're using something to make financial game to an industry you're buying a bunch of video cards killing the gamers on prices and yet you're trying to resell those cards afterwards maybe for a little cheaper but if these cards are virtually almost all going to fail very fast they're completely ripping people off and I'd say the majority vote would go to yes I would buy a used gram scale on my invention I let me explain why because a lot of people who buy mining graphs cards will be setting the fan speeds to 100% but they'll also be dropping the TDP power limits to around 80% sometimes even less and now with that your grass card essential of these graphs cards that are mining could be your graphics card because you could be buying it for a really good price these graphics cards essentially have been run underpowered so they're not generating as much heat so heat kills components we know this but also overclocking as well over vaulting if these things are being under vaulted underpowered and they're running at fifty five to six degrees all day every day they're running under that safety spec they're running really well so they'll be absolutely fine