# Flooding in Sichuan China Results in Massive Mining Equipment Damage



## xkm1948 (Jun 30, 2018)

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


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## Laurijan (Jun 30, 2018)

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


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## dorsetknob (Jun 30, 2018)

xkm1948 said:


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


You punned before i could


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## FreedomEclipse (Jun 30, 2018)

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


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## Frick (Jun 30, 2018)

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


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## silentbogo (Jun 30, 2018)

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


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## jboydgolfer (Jun 30, 2018)

*Flooding in Sichuan China Results in Massive Mining Equipment Damage*


*



*

Still angry with miners



Frick said:


> 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?


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## Bones (Jun 30, 2018)

xkm1948 said:


> 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.


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## Vayra86 (Jun 30, 2018)

Karma is a bitch innit


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## xkm1948 (Jun 30, 2018)

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


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## Frick (Jun 30, 2018)

jboydgolfer said:


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



One can dream.


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## robot zombie (Jun 30, 2018)

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.


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## jboydgolfer (Jun 30, 2018)

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


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## hat (Jun 30, 2018)

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...


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## xkm1948 (Jun 30, 2018)

hat said:


> 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.


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## Hood (Jun 30, 2018)

FreedomEclipse said:


> 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.


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## xkm1948 (Jun 30, 2018)

Hood said:


> 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.


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## hat (Jun 30, 2018)

xkm1948 said:


> 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?



Hood said:


> 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...


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## AsRock (Jun 30, 2018)

Bones said:


> 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.
> ...




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 .


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## Nuckles56 (Jun 30, 2018)

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.


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## robot zombie (Jun 30, 2018)

AsRock said:


> 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!


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## AsRock (Jun 30, 2018)

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


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## robot zombie (Jul 1, 2018)

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


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## TheoneandonlyMrK (Jul 1, 2018)

robot zombie said:


> 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.


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## robot zombie (Jul 1, 2018)

theoneandonlymrk said:


> 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.


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## FordGT90Concept (Jul 1, 2018)

xkm1948 said:


> 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.


Kind of already is.  There's probably millions of dollars worth of hardware there and reinvesting it in cryptocurrency when there's no guarantee the market will ever rebound seems like a terrible idea to me.  My guess is they're going to try to recoup their costs by selling the cards and move on to a different business.


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## Caring1 (Jul 1, 2018)

FordGT90Concept said:


> Kind of already is.  There's probably millions of dollars worth of hardware there and reinvesting it in cryptocurrency when there's no guarantee the market will ever rebound seems like a terrible idea to me.  My guess is they're going to try to recoup their costs by selling the cards and move on to a different business.


Makes me wonder where they found the money to set all that up, it doesn't look like an affluent area.
Perhaps now they will have to go back to extortion, bribery and racketeering.


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## hat (Jul 1, 2018)

Caring1 said:


> Makes me wonder where they found the money to set all that up, it doesn't look like an affluent area.
> Perhaps now they will have to go back to extortion, bribery and racketeering.


I often wonder that myself. Just who is buying these cards by the pallet? Nevermind all the supporting hardware. I've managed two GTX1070s myself but that much was a bit of a stretch...


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## AsRock (Jul 1, 2018)

Red_Machine said:


> View attachment 103325



HA, i cannot say that i care either, never know they might of planed it for insurance claim, although don't know if that's possible over their.  Lets face it they might of made their money back already.

But yeah feel the same way, been wanting to upgrade my wife's PC for a good while now, and not paying the still crazy prices.


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## xkm1948 (Jul 1, 2018)

Caring1 said:


> Makes me wonder where they found the money to set all that up, it doesn't look like an affluent area.
> Perhaps now they will have to go back to extortion, bribery and racketeering.




These are not the owners. The owners themselves are super rich to begin with. They probably intentionally set those coin farms in remote areas where the labor cost is extremely low and the electricty cost is also super low.  Everything is cheaper if done in rural areas.











Makes me think of the comic


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## jboydgolfer (Jul 1, 2018)

xkm1948 said:


> Makes me think of the comic



 The Joker part of me makes me think, "that's a clever comic", each time I see it.

 The nerd in me makes me think, "there's no GPU with a corsair logo on the back-plate"


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## xkm1948 (Jul 1, 2018)

jboydgolfer said:


> The Joker part of me makes me think, "that's a clever comic", each time I see it.
> 
> The nerd in me makes me think, "there's no GPU with a corsair logo on the back-plate"



Because Corsair was jealous of the thicc margins the graphic card companies were getting thanks to the mining craze.


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## Caring1 (Jul 1, 2018)

jboydgolfer said:


> The nerd in me makes me think, "there's no GPU with a corsair logo on the back-plate"


Maybe because that isn't the back plate you see in the comic, it's the front shroud.


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## okidna (Jul 1, 2018)

jboydgolfer said:


> The nerd in me makes me think, "there's no GPU with a corsair logo on the back-plate"



There's a partnership between MSI and Corsair to put Corsair's AIO GPU liquid cooling MSI graphic cards called *Hydro GFX*.


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## Bones (Jul 1, 2018)

AsRock said:


> 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 .


Yes I would leave them - Too much potential for one of these to cause damage to a system you'd try to run it with. 
Most of the time if it's dead it's dead BUT sometimes it's HOW it died that matters too. 

As an example normally if a CPU dies that's it, just does nothing. Had one die sometime ago that turned into a board killer, lost an Ultra D board because of it. It had quit and a MOSFET had blown in the board it died in so I went to test it in another one to see if it was hurt or not - Blew that board clear to hell.


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## jboydgolfer (Jul 1, 2018)

Actually, that's a sapphire nitro backplate, w/ a corsair logo.


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## Caring1 (Jul 1, 2018)

Umm, no.
It's an MSI Seahawk. 1080Ti.


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## TheoneandonlyMrK (Jul 1, 2018)

robot zombie said:


> 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.


don't get me wrong i would'nt want to buy one or have that happen to me but it has, I had a filter dessolve and block my loop plus i once got algy growth blockage due to a stupid ass idea i got for a reservoir,, both ended badly for my pc, especially one rx 580, but it lives despite refusing to work for a few days .
It got stripped, alcohol washed and dried and re-tim'd and has been fine since, cant say the same about the crosshair V formula it was in yet, its 24pin atx connector melted(I got giddy and managed to fit and run 5 rx 580s without Risers(dohh)), im going to try fixing it soon, i've got a cable on the way ill straight solder to it.


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## hat (Jul 2, 2018)

I wouldn't mind buying a used mining card, but not a... flooded card. Not unless that was already disclosed in the deal and the hardware was cheap enough to make me take a risk on it.



theoneandonlymrk said:


> don't get me wrong i would'nt want to buy one or have that happen to me but it has, I had a filter dessolve and block my loop plus i once got algy growth blockage due to a stupid ass idea i got for a reservoir,, both ended badly for my pc, especially one rx 580, but it lives despite refusing to work for a few days .
> It got stripped, alcohol washed and dried and re-tim'd and has been fine since, cant say the same about the crosshair V formula it was in yet, its 24pin atx connector melted(I got giddy and managed to fit and run 5 rx 580s without Risers(dohh)), im going to try fixing it soon, i've got a cable on the way ill straight solder to it.



What's the damage look like? I did similar myself with my 2 1070s on this H67 board. It just melted the connector (both the 24-pin PSU end and the plug on the board) a little bit, and toasted the +12v wires a little. All I did to fix it was clean it up with a brush, some scraping with a toothpick, and I cannibalized some wires from the end of a cable for a modular PSU I had laying around. I tore my 24 pin apart and twisted those on and plugged it all back up, works fine almost a year later. I still don't have risers, but I've since set my power target to 80% from 100% knocking off about 60w from the load, and I have a house fan blowing in my case at all times.


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## robot zombie (Jul 2, 2018)

Geez man I guess those connectors can take a beating. I'd consider myself lucky. Sounds like things coulda gone a lot worse for you guys  That's some serious current!

As far as those cards go, I would buy a decent quantity of non-working ones sold at a below donor prices. They gotta sell those things as scrap though. You're doing them a favor. If I'm lucky one of them just needs to borrow a little from the others and be cleaned up good to work again. Board repair isn't exactly cheap to have done, but if it's just soldering a few components, then it might still be a good chunk cheaper than going used. And hey... ...if they're just completely totaled then maybe I can just make some of those nifty keychains from the dies. Might even turn a profit if I sell them!  Not worth much at that point, even if the chips themselves are good. How many donor boards with only bad dies to house them are there out there? People with skill/equipment to reball and resolder? And again, soaked parts anyway so no respectable repair outfit wants em.

In china, maybe. Here, doubt it.

I dunno, the more I think about it... ...it is one thing to spill liquid on a board, but it's another thing entirely to have everything completely immersed in dirty water for an unspecified period of time. The corrosion miiiight be beyond that of more typical liquid damage such as a liquid cooler leak or a spill. Gotta think about how long they would've been immersed. pH of the water. And how long did they sit there, wet, dirty, and exposed to the open air before they got scooped up. How warm is it where they sat outside? You know its humid as hell. How warm have the storage conditions been? Were they ever even dried off? Every hour spent sitting in that condition counts. Those cards have gotta be naaaaasssty nasty. Or at least, a lot of them are probably beyond saving. Even if you do have enough good enough components, I imagine you'll be doing at least some scraping out of traces, soldering on leads where contacts are gone, and a ton of resoldering all of those corroded joints... ...I think of that and I see just a hellish gauntlet of tedium. One card would probably take days of constant work just to maybe almost function. It might be faster to just start pulling all of the worst components off and getting working ones on before you even get to troubleshooting the rest.

I bet you'd be lucky to find someone who'd do it for ANY amount of money. Maybe I'm exaggerating. Maybe they're okay. But maybe they're the K2 of board repair. Seven levels of hell.


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## hat (Jul 2, 2018)

@robot zombie 

I'm not sure exactly what happened. The thing that puts me off about it is the fact that GTX1070 is spec'd at 150w max power draw, which is what the 8 pin pci-e power connector is supposed to provide, yet they still pulled so much power from the slots that they burned up the 24 pin atx connector...

Someone mentioned it could have been a high resistance connection. I'm not sure exactly how that could have happened, but it's possible the issue only appeared when I started mining with two 1070s, a bit more demanding than a single 660Ti.


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## dorsetknob (Jul 2, 2018)

Wonder if they kept the Original retail packaging for these cards


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## RejZoR (Jul 2, 2018)

I wonder how many people bought used GPU's in recent time and how many will in near future. I never bought anything used because you never know wtf you'll get and with mining, it was even more apparent. Now there will be hundreds and thousands of cards that were flooded, washed and cleaned and sold. Yay to the mining. The most useless shit humanity think of in recent years.


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## Athlonite (Jul 2, 2018)

HAHA Fuck them and the mining GPU they rode in on they're the reason we can't have nice things at MSRP so again I say SCREW THEM


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## dorsetknob (Jul 2, 2018)

With the price of New Cards i expect there were quite a few who Bought Used
Buying used is not a problem (in the past) but Now it looks to be risky   unless its from a known source and preferably local
Internet Buys in the current market = to much risk


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## TheoneandonlyMrK (Jul 2, 2018)

hat said:


> I wouldn't mind buying a used mining card, but not a... flooded card. Not unless that was already disclosed in the deal and the hardware was cheap enough to make me take a risk on it.
> 
> 
> 
> What's the damage look like? I did similar myself with my 2 1070s on this H67 board. It just melted the connector (both the 24-pin PSU end and the plug on the board) a little bit, and toasted the +12v wires a little. All I did to fix it was clean it up with a brush, some scraping with a toothpick, and I cannibalized some wires from the end of a cable for a modular PSU I had laying around. I tore my 24 pin apart and twisted those on and plugged it all back up, works fine almost a year later. I still don't have risers, but I've since set my power target to 80% from 100% knocking off about 60w from the load, and I have a house fan blowing in my case at all times.


It's not clean able, most of the plastic melted, im going to solder an atx cable permanently to it, other than that the board looks ok but time will tell. Cheers for the hopeful reply, i needed that the atx cable arrives today.


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## KLMR (Jul 2, 2018)

I'm still on X58 chip because the prices.

People is angry about miners, but those prices are true consequences of a free market, something we like when prices drop only: not when people is fired or relocated or when macro corps have to be rescued to avoid national bankrupts.
I don't see the same level of rage against RAM prices. f.e. HP is asking for 1000USD for 32GB of DDR4 (yes ECC, but 2666, maybe a 3 years old tech?). Or 4250USD for 128GB.
If prices of RAM had keep its trend since 2009-2010 now we all could have 256GB or 512GB. So instead of RAM drive we have exotic optanes, high priced nvme, etc.

The point is, I would like more poeple redirect their rage/anger about prices against RAM manufacturers not chinise miners.


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## RejZoR (Jul 2, 2018)

Free market is when you can actually buy a graphic card... When someone is taking all the shipments before they even hit the retail, that's not free market. And as a result, anything used has retarded inflated prices because it's all unobtainable.


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## xkm1948 (Jul 3, 2018)

More pictures coming in along with some Google translated Chinese news.

Appartently 70% of the world total crypto mining industry are in Sichuan, China. From the picture it seems the miner are already trying to clean up the GPU and turn them loose on 2nd hand markets. So yeah, watch out for sketchy GPU deals on eBay.












https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&js=y&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&u=http://news.mydrivers.com/1/582/582987.htm&edit-text=&act=url


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## hat (Jul 3, 2018)

If they do indeed try to sell them off like that... wow, that's really shady. That flood couldn't have happened in a better place. Especially if they were stealing the electricity in the first place. 

That article does mention, as I suspected, "continuous rainstorms"... surely steps could have been taken to protect all that equipment from flooding damage...

This reeks of fail on so many levels.


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## R-T-B (Jul 3, 2018)

I mean, most of the pictures show ASICs, not GPUs, FWIW.


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## robot zombie (Jul 3, 2018)

Lol are they seriously scrubbing the parts down over big buckets of muddy water?

That's the kinda of stuff you hear people joke about like "LOL Chinese crap." It's just this image that people have in their heads of China for no real reason... ...like they don't KNOW it to be true, it's just kind of there by default social indoctrination. You think to yourself "...but it's not REALLY like that, right?" It's not supposed to be real, man! Reality is amazing. I can't man.


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## xkm1948 (Jul 3, 2018)

R-T-B said:


> I mean, most of the pictures show ASICs, not GPUs, FWIW.



I think they only photographed one of the BTC mines. Alternative coin mines using GPU are probably adjacent to this


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## Bones (Jul 3, 2018)

hat said:


> If they do indeed try to sell them off like that... wow, that's really shady. That flood couldn't have happened in a better place. Especially if they were stealing the electricity in the first place.
> 
> That article does mention, as I suspected, "continuous rainstorms"... surely steps could have been taken to protect all that equipment from flooding damage...
> 
> This reeks of fail on so many levels.



I said earlier to be on the lookout for these to pop up on places like Fleabay and they will before long - In fact I can assure you they will. 

If they have no problem with stealing electricity, they'd certainly have no problem taking money away from you too with a scam. Doesn't matter what some would think otherwise, what THEY think is what matters about doing the scams.

Be careful guys.


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## jboydgolfer (Jul 3, 2018)

Caring1 said:


> Umm, no.
> It's an MSI Seahawk. 1080Ti.View attachment 103329


Incorrect

its clearly a sapphire, with a water Mod


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## hat (Jul 3, 2018)

R-T-B said:


> I mean, most of the pictures show ASICs, not GPUs, FWIW.


I see that (which also explains that BTC nosedive graph), but I keep hearing mention of GPUs...

Odd how the price of BTC seems to have risen in the face of this, though...


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## robot zombie (Jul 3, 2018)

hat said:


> I see that (which also explains that BTC nosedive graph), but I keep hearing mention of GPUs...
> 
> Odd how the price of BTC seems to have risen in the face of this, though...


Well, you can see what look like a few stacks of blower cards in the first few pictures. I suppose where you see a handful at the site of a huge mining op site, you assume there are many more. That and people probably just care more about the GPU miners. ASIC miners aren't cutting into stuff we want, after all.

I find that kind of interesting, how mining becomes morally wrong when you use GPU's. But ASIC... ...bah who cares about Bitcoin they aren't hurting us!

Like, I get the outrage - it is frustrating to try and get even mid-level right now, but it's not so simple as GPU miners ruined the market. A new demand came in and the market didn't react well. They just want what we all want. And suppliers just want to sell as much stock as they can at a profit that they can grow off of.

I can kind of understand why vendors might take advantage of the increased demand to charge more. Besides, without any more cards, they are not easier to get because the price is lower - they're even harder to find when more people can access them! The same number of cards sell either way. Difference with a lower price is just that a different, smaller market (enthusiast) gets more of them for less profit than the larger markets would deliver.

It doesn't make sense to do this as a business. The rest of the time they are operating, they are making no money on graphics cards. Operating a business costs money every single day. Every day you're not making that money, you're still eating costs. So they charge more to make up for not having constant volume moving. You can either go low-volume/high-margin or high-volume/low-margin. If the supply ain't there, the margin has to be higher relative to demand. Lowering the prices with demand so high might be better now, but a whole lot worse than it is now, later. Possibly for a very long time. If suppliers don't make their money, they can't, well... supply things. It's hard to picture, but I think they really are trying to supply as much of the market as possible, now and in the long run... ...by trying right now to get into a position to make and move more product in the end. Scaling takes starter money. The more they make now, the sooner more cards come.

I don't know if it's always right but I get that this is just how it works. And on the supply end, successfully executing production runs take a ton of time, planning, and money. Chip manufacturers have to be careful. It's a huge risk to assume that a boom will stick around while they try to anticipate how much to produce to catch supply back up. IF the people who put them into cards don't want to buy everything they have, they lose money. Same with the companies who make the cards. If they don't sell those chips Nvidia and AMD make their money, but _they_ don't. In the long run they both lose. Can't sell their cards and can't buy more chips. It really is iffy to assume the market will be there by the time shipments actually roll out. Just getting the things to the market is not a straightforward process. And there's no going back... ...it's just this insanely convoluted balancing act. I don't envy any of those people's jobs, man.

Overshoot and you wind up with a ton of cards you now have to sell at a lower price just to get rid of. That can be a huge margin loss. EVGA can probably attest to this about now. They seem to have too many cards atm. Undershoot and you won't have the budget to scale up production and maximize profits, plus everyone thinks you're evil money grubbers for failing to supply the full demand and charging a huge premium, when really you're mostly just trying to stay in the game long-term and not lose money or opportunities. Maybe at times they have been, but I really doubt it's all a big evil conspiracy. Of course some will take advantage...

Point is... ...there are a lot of easy ways to really ruin things for a lot of people, both the market and the suppliers. It's not miner's faults for wanting their GPU's and doing whatever they can to get them, nor is it entirely the suppliers faults for misjudging the market and doing whatever they can to produce and move as much volume as is fiscally possible. Squeaky wheel gets the grease. The largest market sector gets primary attention. Enthusiasts are not the largest by any stretch. And honestly with the way things are now, I bet GPU mining could die tomorrow and it'd be a long time before anything changed.

Then of course there's the memory shortage, which is a whole nother deal.

Saw a few people talking about the mining GPU issues. Wanted to chime in. I'm no expert on this stuff, just kinda some base-level observations. This business isn't simple or easy.

I AM happy to see what seem to be some really shady miners get some poetic justice. But remember, cockroaches thrive in the worst environments.


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## eidairaman1 (Jul 3, 2018)

KLMR said:


> I'm still on X58 chip because the prices.
> 
> People is angry about miners, but those prices are true consequences of a free market, something we like when prices drop only: not when people is fired or relocated or when macro corps have to be rescued to avoid national bankrupts.
> I don't see the same level of rage against RAM prices. f.e. HP is asking for 1000USD for 32GB of DDR4 (yes ECC, but 2666, maybe a 3 years old tech?). Or 4250USD for 128GB.
> ...



Muppet?


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## R-T-B (Jul 3, 2018)

xkm1948 said:


> I think they only photographed one of the BTC mines. Alternative coin mines using GPU are probably adjacent to this



I don't think many serious mines are using GPUs in China (ASICs are more profitable and most are made there), but you could be right.


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