Flooding in Sichuan China Results in Massive Mining Equipment Damage

[xkm1948]

Ever wondered where the GPU has been sold to? Apparently mining in one of those Chinese mining factories.

And then comes the flood

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1012933600621223936

And the aftermath:

Just look at those damaged Vega56/64! Holy hell!


Maybe some cheap and sketchy Vega cards will start flooding eBay very soon.

https://translate.google.com/transl...om/thread-1875025-1-1.html&edit-text=&act=url

 

[Laurijan]

those metalboxes are probable some sort of 500$ a piece antminer devices

 

[dorsetknob]

Maybe some cheap and sketchy Vega cards will start flooding eBay very soon.

You punned before i could

 

[FreedomEclipse]

Expect another card shortage while they rebuild and replace the dead cards

 

[Frick]

Saw the title in Recent posts, thought it was about actual mining, was dissapointed.

 

[silentbogo]

Time to get an ultrasonic bath and start practicing liquid damage repair on videocards...

 

[jboydgolfer]

Flooding in Sichuan China Results in Massive Mining Equipment Damage

Still angry with miners

Saw the title in Recent posts, thought it was about actual mining, was dissapointed.

you thought there was going to be an article/thread about ore/mineral mining on techpowerup?

Do you ever see threads about Ram speed & think its about fast running horned animals?

 

[Bones]

Maybe some cheap and sketchy Vega cards will start flooding eBay very soon.

https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&js=y&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&u=https://www.chiphell.com/thread-1875025-1-1.html&edit-text=&act=url

Flooding fleabay with flooded cards - Nice.
You can bet they were powered up when the flood hit and it killed a good many of them at least, possibly all.

One more scam to watch for, selling these as if they are in perfect condition and nothing ever happened to them with prices well above what they'd really be worth.
I don't care, if I see some of these I'm not buying them.

I woudn't be suprised if ordering one new from the egg and other outlets some of these don't get "Slipped" in the supply stream of these like whats happened with Intel CPUs before, except these will be genuinely flooded cards instead of fakes.
If these are new enough that vendors are still selling them, then could be another thing to look out for, esp if listed as a refurb.

And have to agree, could be another mining rush complete with more aggressive/sneaky mining schemes for us to block if we can.

 

[Vayra86]

Karma is a bitch innit

 

[xkm1948]

Hey Nvidia can dump their surplus GPU right to these miners! Problem solved and we can have 1180 right away! Win-win for everyone!

 

[Frick]

you thought there was going to be an article/thread about ore/mineral mining on techpowerup?

One can dream.

 

[robot zombie]

My initial reaction was just "Ahhh hawhaww... NOOOOOO"

Just... PILES of completely wasted components. That's just kinda sad man, so much waste there. Just an insane amount of expensive electronics made from finite resources. Doesn't matter what they were being used for, that still sucks. And then they all have to be replaced, which is going to hurt something somewhere. This company will probably be okay - they'll just continue doing what they do at a loss for a while. If anybody is really hurt by things like this, it's the same people who've always suffered because of mining. One huge mining op now has to consume twice as many cards.

Hope all of that doesn't just wind up in a landfill somewhere. I really don't care either way about mining - there's good and bad there, but massive e-waste is bad for everyone. That kind of liquid damage isn't even suitable for legitimate GPU repair... ...nobody wants flushed components soldered onto their precious GPUs... ...especially not for what it costs to have someone microsolder a couple of chips/capacitors on the board. God forbid someone pulls some ceramic capacitors from a flooded board. Shame because I bet a lot of those components aren't even bad. And from a repair perspective, it's a lot easier to pull the exact component off of a donor board and solder it onto the fixed board than it is to flip through a little booklet and go back and forth looking for the right part... ...saves the repair person time and thus money on the repair cost.

Maybe in China, where you can easily walk into a store that is literally wall-to-wall bins of surface-mount components, chips, mosfets, whatever, there's a market for a bunch of flooded GPU's... ...I really just don't know, man. That's sad.

 

[jboydgolfer]

I wonder if power was cut to the farm before the flooding reached it. If so there maybe a possibility they could dry them out and fire them back up

Soon , the remaining suckers who still regularly shop on ebay will Be complaining about buying "leaky" gpu's

 

[hat]

That's a damn lot of dead hardware. Mining... love it or hate it, I can't help but think these guys were a bit irresponsible. If I had that kind of hardware, I'd try to protect my investment a little better... the article says "flood" not "tidal wave", I'm sure if they put their shit up a few feet the flooding damage wouldn't have been so bad. Also, floods usually don't come out of nowhere. It usually takes heavy rainfall over a long period to cause flooding. Short of a scenario like... they are at the bottom of the hill when the local dam suddenly burst, they should have had warning of a flood well enough in advance.

As far as how it may affect them, and mining in general, I'm not sure. One would think with such a dent in the total hashing power, the rest of us might see a little more rewards coming our way, but I've yet to see anything like that. With the market being as poor as it is right now, I'm not sure they'd be ready to replace all that hardware, either...

 

[xkm1948]

That's a damn lot of dead hardware. Mining... love it or hate it, I can't help but think these guys were a bit irresponsible. If I had that kind of hardware, I'd try to protect my investment a little better... the article says "flood" not "tidal wave", I'm sure if they put their shit up a few feet the flooding damage wouldn't have been so bad. Also, floods usually don't come out of nowhere. It usually takes heavy rainfall over a long period to cause flooding. Short of a scenario like... they are at the bottom of the hill when the local dam suddenly burst, they should have had warning of a flood well enough in advance.

As far as how it may affect them, and mining in general, I'm not sure. One would think with such a dent in the total hashing power, the rest of us might see a little more rewards coming our way, but I've yet to see anything like that. With the market being as poor as it is right now, I'm not sure they'd be ready to replace all that hardware, either...

I remember reading somewhere that these people would steal electricity from near-by hydro-power stations. They probably don't wanna put their stuff up too far away from the source of electricity production.

Anyway I would say don't buy any GPU from eBay for a while. Who knows when they are gonna hit the fleabay.

 

[Hood]

Expect another card shortage while they rebuild and replace the dead cards

Hopefully these can be replaced with ASICs, and not GPUs. ASICs are more efficient and cost-effective, so if they can afford to replace all that hardware, it make sense to do it right.

 

[xkm1948]

Hopefully these can be replaced with ASICs, and not GPUs. ASICs are more efficient and cost-effective, so if they can afford to replace all that hardware, it make sense to do it right.

GPUs are a lot more resilient to algorithm changes so I bet these miners will always try to get their hands on GPUs. Unless you know crypto currecny becomes complete trash in terms of value.

 

[hat]

I remember reading somewhere that these people would steal electricity from near-by hydro-power stations. They probably don't wanna put their stuff up too far away from the source of electricity production.

Anyway I would say don't buy any GPU from eBay for a while. Who knows when they are gonna hit the fleabay.

Those people got some balls then. I wouldn't dare try stealing electricity directly from a plant. How would you? Even if you were Solid Snake, they'd still notice some huge unaccounted for power draw?

Hopefully these can be replaced with ASICs, and not GPUs. ASICs are more efficient and cost-effective, so if they can afford to replace all that hardware, it make sense to do it right.

Meh... most ASICs I've seen are only capable of mining Bitcoin or Litecoin. There was talk of an Ethereum ASIC, but it seemed disappointing in terms of its performance. GPUs can run anything, running an ASIC is like putting all your eggs in one basket. Anybody that has that Ethereum ASIC right now is screwed if Ethereum tanks...

 

[AsRock]

Flooding fleabay with flooded cards - Nice.
You can bet they were powered up when the flood hit and it killed a good many of them at least, possibly all.

One more scam to watch for, selling these as if they are in perfect condition and nothing ever happened to them with prices well above what they'd really be worth.
I don't care, if I see some of these I'm not buying them.

I woudn't be suprised if ordering one new from the egg and other outlets some of these don't get "Slipped" in the supply stream of these like whats happened with Intel CPUs before, except these will be genuinely flooded cards instead of fakes.
If these are new enough that vendors are still selling them, then could be another thing to look out for, esp if listed as a refurb.

And have to agree, could be another mining rush complete with more aggressive/sneaky mining schemes for us to block if we can.

But i bet you would not turn down the opportunity to take the shit home find out though ?.

EDIT: if any thing like the US and it's left out like that, those cards would not be in that picture as i would of taken them already .

 

[Nuckles56]

Well I also assumed that it was going to be a real mine that got flooded (one that supplied rare earth metals), so that the prices of all PC components could have a 25% or more price increase now that most things are coming back down again.

 

[robot zombie]

EDIT: if any thing like the US and it's left out like that, those cards would not be in that picture as i would of taken them already .

Hey, between a couple dozen cards and several days of total work hours you may just get one working card out of em!

 

[AsRock]

Yup, nothing like trail and error even more so if it's free.

 

[robot zombie]

Well when you think about the cost of one vs the time it takes to fix it, it might actually even out hah.

 

[TheoneandonlyMrK]

Hey, between a couple dozen cards and several days of total work hours you may just get one working card out of em!

Once the flood hit the power would have blown out, most will be fine if cleaned up then dried thoroughly.

 

[robot zombie]

Once the flood hit the power would have blown out, most will be fine if cleaned up then dried thoroughly.

Probably. I don't know if I'd be that optimistic about it though. I'd expect a few things to short to ground pretty much instantly if they were left running when shtf. Depends on whether or not the power actually went before the cards got soaked, which it very well could have. In that case it's just a matter of cleaning the corrosion off.