Crypto Miners Paint GDDR Memory Chips to Hide Wear and Tear

[caroline!]

The raw toxicity and unchained hatred in this thread is simply amazing. Keep it up guys, it's easy to talk when you're born with a silver spoon in your mouth.

 

[TumbleGeorge]

I have a feeling that people with interest are speaking out in favor of the cards with which it was mined. Whether they are miners or resellers with a commodity in stock that they intend to push on the naive, I have no idea.

 

[nja]

Gddr6x runs quite hot to begin with, and since mining cards were run 24/7 with the vram overclocked with a decent percentage of them running close to, or at, 110c where it starts to degrade beyond that, which is close to the self-destruct temperature of 120c, I don't see how you can say it's not risky. With that in mind, I bought a used mining 3080 last october for $450 from a highly rated seller on ebay fully prepared to return it if anything didn't seem right. As soon as I got it I ran stress tests on it and the vram stayed under 90c no matter how hard I tortured it so the guy took precautions, especially since it's a dell 3080 which are actually great cards if you use the thermal paste trick to keep the vram cool which the guy did, and the vram runs extremely hot if you don't, so he took care of it. So if you practice due diligence you can get a great used mining card for cheap, but there's no way in hell you can say it's not risky.

I don't know anyone with a mining rig who did not replace pads and paste to go sub 80.
Gaming scenarios make the g6x run as hot.
Then we should never buy used?

 

[droopyRO]

How on earth do you tell if a card from eBay has had a paint job? Or try going to someone's house who's advert you saw on Craigslist and ask them to take the cooler off to inspect the ram and gpu.
In 30 year selling I've never been asked or wanted to see the chips but if asked to see working and tested before purchase I am happy to.

Did you watch that video ? Buy from Ebay or meet at the sellers place. If something goes wrong, Ebay has you covered, or you can go to the guy's place and ask for your money back. If that dose not work then the Police is your next stop. But like i said, you have to learn how to read people, adds and what to look out for when buying second hand hardware. Also forums in your area are great for the SH market.

 

[Jism]

Contrary to what many seem to believe, electrical components do not have feelings, they dont protest going to work, and they dont get tired. These components have a rated service temperature range, and a rated life within that range. If you dont run them outside of those ranges it is fine. I dont know of any miners at least on the hobbyist level that pushed their hardware to the limits. Uptime was king, nobody wanted to be constantly fiddling with unstable overclocks or configs. Every miner out there was willing to and did trade off a tiny bit of hashrate for stability.

You know that once you OC DDR memory (GDDR5 etc) it will produce errors on the long run. With most miners a few hundreds of ECC errors where "fine" and in gaming it would actually cost performance. I wonder what happens with memory that runs consistent with ECC errors on the long run. Its not what it is designed for.

 

[R-T-B]

I read a report elsewhere that suggested a recent batch of faililng AMD 6900's was likely sourced from mining stock that had sat in damp warehouse conditions. I'm pretty sure the hobby miners tried to look after their cards but on the industrial scale, I doubt it very much.

This.

And I've said this countless times, this is and will always be false.

Cards that were mined on had their memory overclocked to hell at voltages out of spec and have been running like that 24/7 for months or years. That is a very different use case compared to a card that has been used to game on.

If you can keep it cool that should matter none. The problem is many industrial farms didn't care.

 

[TheDeeGee]

And people laugh at me for buying a brand new 4070 Ti.

The second hand GPU market can't trusted the next 5 years, if not 10 years. All thanks to these mining scumbags.

 

[Count von Schwalbe]

If you can keep it cool that should matter none. The problem is many industrial farms didn't care

And the likelihood of a mining card being from a mining farm is extremely high.

 

[WorringlyIndifferent]

And I've said this countless times, this is and will always be false.

Cards that were mined on had their memory overclocked to hell at voltages out of spec and have been running like that 24/7 for months or years. That is a very different use case compared to a card that has been used to game on.

Voltages *under* spec. It's evident that you don't know much about mining and are just shoving your anger onto miners.

Don't buy a used card if you don't want to, but if someone tells you a 30-series or prior GPU wasn't mined on, they're lying. And you have no way of knowing one way or the other.

if you practice due diligence you can get a great used mining card for cheap, but there's no way in hell you can say it's not risky.

I guess I should prefaced it with that. *If* you do your due diligence, there's very little risk. If you don't know anything about computers or their components, then yes, you should probably stay away from buying used.

I have a feeling that people with interest are speaking out in favor of the cards with which it was mined. Whether they are miners or resellers with a commodity in stock that they intend to push on the naive, I have no idea.

I've long since sold all my cards. It doesn't matter how upset you get about this, nothing will change the fact that "mined on" cards are a safer buy than getting them from a gamer. Or even an average PC user, for that matter. It's just a pet peeve of mine in the PC space when people who have absolutely no idea what they're talking about chime in with completely uninformed opinions, that they only have out of bitterness and not any real concern. Poking holes straight through that is fun and easy.

 

[InVasMani]

Surprise 24/7 full load usage isn't good for the GPU's core, memory, VRM's, PCB, fans, ect...imagine that mined GPU' aren't the cream puffs miner's tried to distort people into believing.

 

[WorringlyIndifferent]

You know that once you OC DDR memory (GDDR5 etc) it will produce errors on the long run. With most miners a few hundreds of ECC errors where "fine" and in gaming it would actually cost performance. I wonder what happens with memory that runs consistent with ECC errors on the long run. Its not what it is designed for.

You think that running a chip at a safe voltage but unstable overclock will cause damage?

Please explain to me how that works. This could be revolutionary information for the semiconductor industry.

 

[Steevo]

The raw toxicity and unchained hatred in this thread is simply amazing. Keep it up guys, it's easy to talk when you're born with a silver spoon in your mouth.

No silver spoon here, in fact I came from being homeless as a teen to being successful with hard work. I didn’t screw anyone to get here, and have made things better for my kids and family. But we have a crypto plant less than 40 miles away that consumes more energy than the small town it’s next to and provides no benefit except to possibly enrich its investors.

Bitcoin Miner Marathon’s Loss Widened as Coin Prices Tumbled

www.bloomberg.com

They are using 280 Million watts of power in Texas now, supposed to be run from clean wind power….. it’s a waste and will only hurt communities who have the most need.

 

[Jism]

You think that running a chip at a safe voltage but unstable overclock will cause damage?

Lets not confuse a GPU running beyond spec vs GDDR6(x) memory that is left to produce errors (as Mining can take a few hundreds of errors a second) and usually above 100 degrees constant temp.

Yeah i'd like to see any long term effects of that.

 

[noel_fs]

I've said it before countless times, but "mined on" GPUs are exactly identical to ones that have been gamed on. There is no detectable difference - you have literally no way of knowing. The reason you have no way of knowing is because mining doesn't do anything different than any other use of a graphics card. The only thing that *might* matter is that fan bearings tend to wear out much faster (in terms of years of service) because they're running essentially 24/7. Everything else in the graphics card is exactly the same as new, same reliability - actually higher, since failure rates on new cards are highest right after purchase due to them not having been tested for sustained (days to weeks) periods.

I've bought cards that had clearly been mined on in a shed and were filthy. A few with actual water damage or rust on the coolers. You know the worst thing that happened? I had to replace some fans. I had multiple RX 480/580s that were mined on literally almost constantly for 7+ years and are now in service in other PCs. All of them still work.

This whole "mined GPUs are risky" thing is bitterness from people who didn't mine. Oops, I said it. It was annoying for me too, which is why I started mining. I would much, MUCH rather buy a used card from another miner than from a gamer. Miners were overwhelmingly doing it for profit, which means you need to keep your equipment in good working order. The average gamer doesn't even begin to know or care about PC maintenance.

Mining GPUs are fine. Don't buy them from China or overseas, obviously, but if you're in the US, Canada, western Europe, etc then the only thing you have to worry about is *possibly* replacing fans. Most cards that aren't from Zotac don't even require that much. Zotac cards pretty much guarantee the need for fan replacement, so keep that in mind. If replacing fans or thermal paste scares you, guess what: your only method of being certain a GPU hasn't been mined on is if you buy new. There is no way to tell, there is no physical evidence, and nothing stopping anyone from lying to you and saying "oh yeah for sure this card was never mined on, totally."

this guy has pretty much the right take

someone that knows what they are doing when mining will give you a much better card than a new one from factory in terms of reliability, without considering dust and possible fan wear of course.

most mining cards run undervolted so the die dragradation is gonna be close to zero starting from the fact that at stock voltages the degradation is already negligible, also the vrm caps as long as there is some air flow and stay @95c will last towards 15 years easily

people probably buying the cheapest of the cheapest from god knows where and blaming it on mining, when in reality the card probably wasnt even used for mining, most likely were used on asian "gaming cafes" with awful PSU, horrible case airflow, high ambient temperatures etc. Of course it wont last long, likely 3 years and 4 at most and they will just "reflow" it a couple times and then sell it to the first dummy that takes it for some money.

and im not here defending mining, despite it

Surprise 24/7 full load usage isn't good for the GPU's core, memory, VRM's, PCB, fans, ect...imagine that mined GPU' aren't the cream puffs miner's tried to distort people into believing.

GPU's core, memory, VRM's, PCB, fans, ect dont care for how long they run, only the conditions.

 

[Jism]

Capacitors do have a certain lifespan, shorter when run hot, longer when run cooled.

 

[Arkz]

This sounds more like a few miners have done this, out of the millions of them.
I'd be more concerned with all the nooby miners that ran cards on default clocks, vcore, and fanspeeds, and let them cook.

Although look at the 3080. I remember gamers complaining when the VRAM was hitting 105'C and throttling. They say it's in spec but I imagine that effecting the lifespan a fair bit. So basically any second hand card is a risk.

I remember mine hitting 96'C both gaming and mining. Swapped out the crappy chewing gum looking stuff NV fitted, with Gelid Extreme pads and it dropped to 82'C mining and gaming. Though it did also raise the core temp by a few degrees too.

 

[Dr. Dro]

Ah, yes, miners always run their cards undervolted, optimized, under constant load and even with an AC, totally not a mere tool for a quick profit

Also bitcoin is not a ponzi, NFTs are not a scam, and crypto in general is not a fraud, much less a fad or craze.

I dunno I only have one word to describe what I feel and I guess that is "contempt"

Are the chips non-functional or degraded in anyway? My statement can and was meant to apply to the original post as well.

You tell me, dude. Hardware which is heat discolored and has physical packaging damaged from heat and current is totally in perfect shape or working order yeah! Might even work for 15 minutes underclocked before it croaks. True bargain!

 

[Jism]

You gotta be dumb not to optimize it's voltage/frequency curve. If you run a mining rig of at least 8 cards, you would be saving 50w on avg per card which equals to 400W of savings an hour. Thats like saving half of a toaster in power requirement.

 

[Dr. Dro]

The raw toxicity and unchained hatred in this thread is simply amazing. Keep it up guys, it's easy to talk when you're born with a silver spoon in your mouth.

Speaking strictly for myself, after what cryptocurrency did to the GPU market and its ruinous, predatory effect on things that matter to me, I can have only toxicity and unchained hatred towards it. I have no interest in speculation with fake "money", and never had. We still feel the effects of the boundless greed and supply strain that non-gamers caused in the tech market as a whole by buying 30+ gaming cards for mining.

Not to mention cards that could have gotten people thousands of hours of creativity or entertainment, or used for noble purposes such as protein folding for cancer research were practically spent on generating some fake wealth digital token to fuel the largest ponzi in history. Sounds like an excellent deal to me, just imagine if you fed the hashing power of the Ethereum network at its height into folding at home instead. What a waste.

I think the most wholesome story I've ever heard about crypto speculation is that someone managed to make enough to pay for their daughter's tuition once. Which may also be the most noble use of this ponzi if anything... I still hate it.

 

[Solaris17]

Silver lining. If they are going to these lengths now, its entirely possible they are feeling more of a squeeze from the apprehensive second hand market.

Before it just wasn't selling, now they are investing time into them. Good. I hope they waste more time, I hope they sit longer. Until they are too out moded to be useful. I want these "investments" to sit as long as humanly possible in the upper left shelf of their closet. Depreciating.

 

[Sabotaged_Enigma]

That's no new news. Back in the GTX 10 days, a lot of renewed cards must have been like this.

 

[JAB Creations]

Look at the profiles and the post count of the pro-used, some of them have very low post counts, that should give people an idea of where they're coming in from.

I'm surprised so many tech new outlets forgot about crypto hashers using freaking pressure-washers to make the cards look new. Then one hasher in/around Germany sells pressured washed cards, doesn't dry them on top of that and then suddenly AMD is demonized by half the tech places that don't ask difficult questions like, "Hm, only one repair shop on the entire planet is reporting this!"

And they're called crypto hashers, because they're generating hashes. If they were crypo "miners" they'd have a 20 pound pick axe and would be doing actual work contributing to society instead of driving up electricity costs.

I hope they waste more time, I hope they sit longer. Until they are too out moded to be useful. I want these "investments" to sit as long as humanly possible in the upper left shelf of their closet. Depreciating.

Hey, thems some nice clamps!

 

[InVasMani]

lmao I hadn't heard of that one time to go pressure wash my GPU that can't and won't cause any possible damage...

 

[JAB Creations]

lmao I hadn't heard of that one time to go pressure wash my GPU that can't and won't cause any possible damage...

The stupid is real:

https://www.google.com/search?q=crypto+miners+pressure+washing+video+cards

Also they're crypto hashers as the cards are used to generate hashes whereas an actual miner uses a 20 pound pick axe and does actual work contributing to society. I used the "miners" in the search because otherwise the results would be skewed because people don't know how to English!

 

[Ferrum Master]

IMHO it is all FAKE news... another journalism hype about nothing.

I guess no one has seen how cards look like coming from RMA channels. Someone saw few and makes an article... great.