anyone buy a high end gpu from a mining rig? got screwed, or was happy?

[inquisitor1]

saw a few people sell their cards from etherium mining. says non LHR. didnt know a thing about lhr till a few days ago. yea im not in the know of hardware. how bad can it be?

Im not a heavy gamer, but im guessing components may have been beaten. vrm, capcitors etc. but does it always mean "dont touch" ? ive held each gpu I had for at least 8 years. and they work fine. im sure mining is like 8 years in1.

guy is selling a 3080 pheonix 10gb for $285. says you can come over and stress test it no problem.

arent these higher end card good quality to handle heavy work?

just curious and keeping options open as I look for a gpu to upgrade rx590.

 

[P4-630]

Best is to buy them of a street vendor by Kilograms in China..

 

[Apocalypsee]

I bought Dell RTX 3080 10GB used for mining before. Heatsink is rusted. It lasted about a year and a half before it died, from what I checked one of the PCIE 8-pin is shorted.

 

[inquisitor1]

I bought Dell RTX 3080 10GB used for mining before. Heatsink is rusted. It lasted about a year and a half before it died, from what I checked one of the PCIE 8-pin is shorted.

shame. I take apart my gpus apart right before summertime. winter it runs without any issues in the cold. blow it out with a blower every 6 months. +/-

I regoop repad, I use caig pro gold. use a toothbrush to scrub the whole board. and obviously spray down the cooler. abou an hours work. my 9800gtx still runs. I also make sure to clean behind the fans where it spins. there it can fail with the turning area. spray the hell out if it with caig pro gold.

JUst saw some videos regarding purchasing mining cards. seems ok. ask the seller, stress test, maybe buy new fans for it. also spray down the pci slot on the mb and the power connections. obviously let it dry before assembly.

"should" be ok.

is furmark the better program to stress test a gpu? 5-10 minutes is enough?

 

[evernessince]

I've purchased a lot of former mining cards on the cheap. $80 RX 580s prior to the pandemic and gave them out as gifts to people who wouldn't be able to afford a GPU of that power otherwise.

I've had one mining card fail after about 3-4 years of use (not on me, it was one I bought for someone else). In all I'd say that's a good track record given the quantity purchased. The failure rate has been lower then that of new cards I've purchased although it's not a statistically significant enough quantity for either to draw actual failure rate conclusions.

I did have one mining card that had bad memory out of the box but that was a easy return.

The primary problem I see for mining cards is fan bearings going bad. Not too hard to replace them usually though. Cards used for mining are almost always cleaner than cards used for gaming. IMO seeing a dirty mining card is a red flag that the miner didn't take care of their cards and I probably wouldn't buy mining cards from a vendor that just let their products run in nu-monitored conditions for months while dust gathered. Particularly when mining cards can be used in locations where there is less protection swings in temperature / humidity.

Caps do have a finite life and a well maintained mining card will have less remaining life as compared to a well maintained card used for gaming. Key word is well maintined.

I bought Dell RTX 3080 10GB used for mining before. Heatsink is rusted. It lasted about a year and a half before it died, from what I checked one of the PCIE 8-pin is shorted.

Rust on the heatsink likely indicates either the card was exposed to excessive humidity or salty air (was housed near a body of salt water and was exposed to the wind). I would have returned that card the instant I saw it.

 

[ir_cow]

The few pre mined cards. I bought barely worked. Both RX 580, GTX 1080 come to mind as comon turds sold on ebay. For AMD is was always a memory issue and on Nvidia is it was a core clock problem. Solved by down clocking. It's been a while but I'm pretty sure I sold the RX 580 and gave away the ,GTX 1080.

Didn't matter though, it was extremely cheap. Now I know from first hand experience buying these minging cards to just not. Unless it's like 1/10th the price of retail, probably won't last another year.

 

[RootinTootinPootin]

The only gripe I had, was just the price, even though it was mined hardcore the price is still what it was like brand new before, so far my sister loves it and still games well today.

 

[Hyderz]

i got my gtx1070ti from a miner... went home check the bios.... the guy didnt even bios flash it... still running today, the gpu was purchased back in 2017

 

[Zach_01]

saw a few people sell their cards from etherium mining. says non LHR. didnt know a thing about lhr till a few days ago. yea im not in the know of hardware. how bad can it be?

Im not a heavy gamer, but im guessing components may have been beaten. vrm, capcitors etc. but does it always mean "dont touch" ? ive held each gpu I had for at least 8 years. and they work fine. im sure mining is like 8 years in1.

guy is selling a 3080 pheonix 10gb for $285. says you can come over and stress test it no problem.

arent these higher end card good quality to handle heavy work?

just curious and keeping options open as I look for a gpu to upgrade rx590.

Doesn't non LHR card means that the BIOS could be specifically mining configured?

LHR cards prevent the modification of VBIOS?

 

[inquisitor1]

@evernessince
thanks for the feedback. this is great info. gets me excited that its a possibly to find something in decent order.

The few pre mined cards. I bought barely worked. Both RX 580, GTX 1080 come to mind as comon turds sold on ebay. For AMD is was always a memory issue and on Nvidia is it was a core clock problem. Solved by down clocking. It's been a while but I'm pretty sure I sold the RX 580 and gave away the ,GTX 1080.

Didn't matter though, it was extremely cheap. Now I know from first hand experience buying these minging cards to just not. Unless it's like 1/10th the price of retail, probably won't last another year.

yea, its my worry to try ebay. ive bought a few expensive lenses from ebay, but there is no one here selling on ebay and Id pay crazy customs fees which includes tons of junk fees and I dont use ebay much today. theyve gotten to be a bad experience for me since the pandemic

if I can be there, maybe bring my pc, install and run it with furmark and see temps are under 70, ill be happy.

Doesn't non LHR card means that the BIOS could be specifically mining configured?

LHR cards prevent the modification of VBIOS?

I think lhr is the limiting version. and non lhr is not limited and can be mined.

did I write it wrong?

btw, what the hel happened to the mining world? is it a thing now? what happened to bitcoin? now etherium?

 

[TumbleGeorge]

guy is selling a 3080 pheonix 10gb for $285

4 years mining $85 is much good price. If card works.

 

[Zach_01]

btw, what the hel happened to the mining world? is it a thing now? what happened to bitcoin? now etherium?

Doing well... lol
Bitcoin mining still going on, but dont know on what devices is best
Ethereum I think has switched from "proof of work" to "proof of stake" ...so no mining (?)

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[inquisitor1]

Doing well... lol
Bitcoin mining still going on, but dont know on what devices is best
Ethereum I think has switched from "proof of work" to "proof of stake" ...so no mining (?)

View attachment 361570

View attachment 361571

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coinmarketcap.com

thanks for that. interesting. I know nothing about that world

 

[Tahagomizer]

I was mining, had a bunch of 3080s. The good ones, before nVidia started with LHR rubbish and completely obliterated the market for gamers. All of them repasted and repadded, since the factory thermal pads were killing those cards. Three years mining 24/7/365, managed to sell most of them when the price of pre-LHR cards got stupid high. To my knowledge none of the ones I sold broke, in fact I use the last one at this very moment.
It absolutely depends on how the card was treated. Some people just threw their rigs wherever and didn't maintain them at all, some took pride in doing their part annoying the self-righteous fools. In fairness, the worst, most disgusting hardware I have ever seen comes from "normal users" who smoke and do who-knows-what in the same room. I would take a gamble on a mining card rather than buy anything from a smoker

 

[eidairaman1]

I was mining, had a bunch of 3080s. The good ones, before nVidia started with LHR rubbish and completely obliterated the market for gamers. All of them repasted and repadded, since the factory thermal pads were killing those cards. Three years mining 24/7/365, managed to sell most of them when the price of pre-LHR cards got stupid high. To my knowledge none of the ones I sold broke, in fact I use the last one at this very moment.
It absolutely depends on how the card was treated. Some people just threw their rigs wherever and didn't maintain them at all, some took pride in doing their part annoying the self-righteous fools. In fairness, the worst, most disgusting hardware I have ever seen comes from "normal users" who smoke and do who-knows-what in the same room. I would take a gamble on a mining card rather than buy anything from a smoker

I wouldn't gamble with any of them, too many are broken and many deceivers trying to dump abused parts.

I bought Dell RTX 3080 10GB used for mining before. Heatsink is rusted. It lasted about a year and a half before it died, from what I checked one of the PCIE 8-pin is shorted.

See what im getting at, nope is my answer

 

[Solaris17]

I wouldn't gamble with any of them, too many are broken and many deceivers trying to dump abused parts.

Same, the miners that ARENT scooping them with shovels and are looking for a legit return on there investment because there %coin of choice% failed are smart enough to change thermal pads and repaste them, but the cards were rode hard and put away wet. Count me out.

 

[GerKNG]

as long as it's not a GPU that runs extremely hot (3090s with the VRAM cooking on the backside of the PCB) mining Hardware is mostly fine. it's far less load than any game.
i have a 3090 with glued on heatsinks on the back that mined for far more than 12000 Hours non stop and it still works perfectly fine.

 

[POGE]

AFAIK mining on GPUs is kinda over in 2024. Eth is proof of stake and bitcoin has been ASIC only for ages

 

[inquisitor1]

I remember when richard simmons came on the scene. explosive energy. rip

 

[cvaldes]

AFAIK mining on GPUs is kinda over in 2024. Eth is proof of stake and bitcoin has been ASIC only for ages

It was over in 2022 and ETH miners dumped all their worthless GPUs on a market that was starving for graphics cards.

Back then, maybe 2/3 of the TPU graphics card forum threads were from some poor slobs who were hunting for a replacement BIOS for their newly acquired used GPU that wasn't performing correctly.

And tech new sites had plenty of articles about used mining GPUs being sold by weight, covered in nasty corrosion or cleverly cleaned up to hide abuse. Many of the miners didn't take care of their equipment, they shoved them into cheap facilities with no A/C (because air conditioning is expensive). They expected to use the card until it died.

Electricity cost inflation -- driven both by the pandemic as well as gas pipeline interruptions from Russia -- pretty much eliminated the profitability of all other cryptotoken mining with GPUs.

Unless there is a clear and guaranteed refund policy for a used GPU, you'd have to be clinically insane to buy a used GPU in 2024 from an unknown source with zero trust history.

But hey, it's not my money. Feel free to give it a go. But please do take a look at the TechPowerUp GPU forums from a couple years ago and witness the constant stream of trainwreck threads from that era. I put in a lot of effort in that period avoiding the GPU forums in general. The worst threads had subject lines like "please help" Slightly better titled threads were "need BIOS for Dodgy Bros. FML 420 Super XT". But they were all threads about used malfunctioning cards with unknown provenance (i.e. mining).

 

[grammar_phreak]

Back in late 2018 I bought a couple EVGA GTX 1080ti cards that were used in mining rigs. They're still running but they don't see too much use these days. Also, I bought a number of Polaris cards that I had little problem with. With the Polaris cards, I had to reflash the BIOS and repaste them.

Almost a couple years ago I bought an Asus TUF RTX 3080 (non-LHR) that worked for a while but it died a few months ago. I suspect it was used for mining. I need to send that one in for repair.

What I am cautious about is GDDR6x running so hot. ETHASH and a few of those other algorithms used VRAM quite heavily and some miners did not pay attention to VRAM temperatures. Not all miners were on top of things with optimizing, like everyone assumes they did.

 

[cvaldes]

What I am cautious about is GDDR6x running so hot. ETHASH and a few of those other algorithms used VRAM quite heavily and some miners did not pay attention to VRAM temperatures. Not all miners were on top of things with optimizing, like everyone assumes they did.

Assuming that every miner babied their gear is an insanely unrealistic assumption.

The miners were doing it for the money. Any thought of maintenance or better environment meant more costs. That means less profit. I'm sure a big percentage of miners just said "the hell with it, I'm running with these cards into the ground and getting more when they die."

 

[Ruru]

Nope. Never even thought about that to be honest.

Toy money miners fuck up always the vbios from a gamer's perspective and that sucks to have to revert those cards.

 

[eidairaman1]

Nope. Never even thought about that to be honest.

Toy money miners fuck up always the vbios from a gamer's perspective and that sucks to have to revert those cards.

Its friggin unending on that front, i mainly see cards that are 1002 6FDF 1002 0B31 now

 

[inquisitor1]

But hey, it's not my money

pfew, I was nervous there for a second I might have bought a bad card with your money.