Crypto Miners Paint GDDR Memory Chips to Hide Wear and Tear

[Broken Processor]

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.

What would the police do? It's a civil matter you could try county court but most items are sold as seen unless warranty is stated by seller. Even if the item is new try going to the police it's still a civil matter unless fraud but even then they will just hand you a reference number.

 

[TumbleGeorge]

I will never trust a crypto miner no matter what he swears. The goal of miners has always been to "mine" as much as possible, in as little time as possible, before increasing of the computational complexity or various other costs become involved, which reduce the profitability of "mining". Such people who are engaged in an activity that is already declared illegal in some countries tend to lie more than other people.

 

[Vya Domus]

Voltages *under* spec.

You missed the "overclocked to hell" bit, most cards run close to the the maximum allowed temps for memory as is out of the box, you run them overlocked non stop for months and there is no way that wont damage at least some of them. You're simply lying when you say there is no difference between mining on a card and gaming on it, no surprise you make such a claim as a miner.

I'll remind you that we're on thread about miners painting memory chips, it's crazy you're arguing about this.

but if someone tells you a 30-series or prior GPU wasn't mined on, they're lying.

I know, which is why I wouldn't buy one nor would I tell anyone to do so. But strange, why would miners lie about it if you claim it makes no difference ? Weird.

 

[ExcuseMeWtf]

Literal scam by miner scum. It's not enough they got their cards on preferentially in shortages, they still have to scam others making cards look like they haven't been worn out the way they were.

NFTs are not a scam

False. NFTs promise to have a non-fungible object of some value, whereas most of them are worthless crap. This fulfills definition of scam as well.

 

[noname00]

I bought a card used for mining more than 3 years ago, and it still works perfectly. BUT it is an RX580 and I paid $80 for it.
I also bought ~4 years ago a GTX1080ti, with warranty, for ~$550, that did not work, sent it back and bought a new RTX2080.

As a peace of mind - I won't buy any graphics card without at least 6 months of warranty and full box, specially a mining card.

 

[masterdeejay]

Badly reflowed and baked GPU and vram?
How it is related to miners? These are dead parts and failed cheap unprofessional repairs, don't matter it is from mining or gaming.
You can't bake a vram like this if you use it in controlled mining environment. (24/7 constant temperature, custom bios, fan profile etc)
But cards can fail, and sometimes baking it helps (but just for hours or days). But there is a professional way to repair those cards (reballing, gpu or vram replace)
I used a lot of nvidia tesla cards that work 24/7 for 5-6y and none any of the parts are discolored.
So i think these pictures fake, these components are baked with external tools not with mining.
24/7 constant temperature fixed fan (let say 60-70C) is much better than few hours daily gaming (20 to 90 or even higher). Like with cars, 100k mileage in city is much worse condition than 200k on highway only. A professional miner cares with their tools.
I dont want to protect the miners, but i have experience with 24/7 running hardwares.

 

[InVasMani]

Mining card for sale "like new" slightly used pressure washed with new paint job.

 

[Yraggul666]

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.

Listen here missy you're too easily amazed, allow me to amaze you even further.
See those specs? They're real. Nobody gave those to me.
See the pic? It's real too. Nobody gave those to me either.
When my father lived we almost killed each other a few times and he died an alcoholic; my mother was a teacher for almost 40 years and has under 400Eur pension;
all that being true and said, you probably wouldn't be amazed where i'd suggest you shove a silver spoon if you ever found one somewhere.

And yeah, i hope they all grow old with their GPUs on their shelves and i'm stopping here 'cause if i "uncahin my hatred and raw toxicity" aka speak my mind i'll be banned from this forum.

P.S: don't worry missy, i'm still in pretty ok shape, i can keep it up no problem, but thank you very much for the good thoughts.

 

[Dr. Dro]

False. NFTs promise to have a non-fungible object of some value, whereas most of them are worthless crap. This fulfills definition of scam as well.

If you're referring to my post I was being violently sarcastic, if that wasn't obvious enough

Badly reflowed and baked GPU and vram?
How it is related to miners? These are dead parts and failed cheap unprofessional repairs, don't matter it is from mining or gaming.
You can't bake a vram like this if you use it in controlled mining environment. (24/7 constant temperature, custom bios, fan profile etc)
But cards can fail, and sometimes baking it helps (but just for hours or days). But there is a professional way to repair those cards (reballing, gpu or vram replace)
I used a lot of nvidia tesla cards that work 24/7 for 5-6y and none any of the parts are discolored.
So i think these pictures fake, these components are baked with external tools not with mining.
24/7 constant temperature fixed fan (let say 60-70C) is much better than few hours daily gaming (20 to 90 or even higher). Like with cars, 100k mileage in city is much worse condition than 200k on highway only. A professional miner cares with their tools.
I dont want to protect the miners, but i have experience with 24/7 running hardwares.

Your critical mistake is treating GPUs as a desirable item to which you care for and conduct proper maintenance, not as a tool, aka an expendable asset. For you, gamer, with your limited budget and tech acumen, this is the case. For a miner? Not really.

No one mining for profit on a large scale operation took the time to carefully optimize and review cards one by one for the most efficient operation, this is costly and in addition to that a time waste, because miners are racing against the difficulty clock to maximize profits.

This isn't fake and it's not the first time mining refuse has been peddled to unsuspecting gamers, this slop has been pushed for quite a while now, initially through mining parts being recycled into low quality PCBs and sold as new through unlicensed Chinese manufacturers. It's intensely prevalent with Radeon RX 400/500 series GPUs.

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.


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.

I've never mined on my RTX 3090. I wasn't about to torture the most expensive piece of hardware I had ever purchased at the time to make some fake money at a rate it'd never pay for itself. But due to this I can't even get a nice price on it anymore. No one believes me when I say I hadn't, especially considered its a launch day card.

I assure you my GPU is in better physical condition than any miner slop you could ever show me, even those run in these fantasy undervolted conditions with AC on 24/7 and regularly revised cards (read: AC bill plus downtime miners for profit would never ever expend). Spare us all...

 

[AusWolf]

As much as I'm speaking against my habit of turning hardware over quite rapidly due to my insatiable curiosity, my general advice will be: don't buy used.

As for me, I'll just get into the habit of buying stuff less frequently (it's too expensive anyway), and repurposing my used stuff instead of selling.

I will never trust a crypto miner no matter what he swears. The goal of miners has always been to "mine" as much as possible, in as little time as possible, before increasing of the computational complexity or various other costs become involved, which reduce the profitability of "mining". Such people who are engaged in an activity that is already declared illegal in some countries tend to lie more than other people.

Especially people who believe in fake money that is not legal tender. People like that either have something to hide from their government, or just read far too many conspiracy theories. I'm not saying that real money is good, crypto is bad. All I'm saying is that I find it extremely unbelievable that any decentralized currency with no guarantee is in better hands than my British Pounds in the bank (which is proven by recent events).

 

[bogmali]

Last warning, stick to the topic and not your "personal" bias against Crypto.

 

[droopyRO]

What would the police do? It's a civil matter you could try county court but most items are sold as seen unless warranty is stated by seller. Even if the item is new try going to the police it's still a civil matter unless fraud but even then they will just hand you a reference number.

That is the last resort, i never been scammed like that, so that it requires the po-po. If you dislike the second hand market so much, then quit smoking, drinking, eating out, going out with your friends and buy a new PC component. Or quit PC gaming, AMD, Nvidia, Intel are not your friends, the only thing they care for is money and you would too if you were in their shoes

 

[RegaeRevaeb]

This headline should end with a colon followed by "reports" for accuracy. When I first saw it I got my pitchfork out to find all the crypto miners ;-)

 

[Dr. Dro]

This headline should end with a colon followed by "reports" for accuracy. When I first saw it I got my pitchfork out to find all the crypto miners ;-)

I speak the language of the videos used as a source, and if you ask me, it's perfectly accurate as it is, the only thing missing is the context from the country's market reality and I am all too happy to provide.

Cryptocurrency has basically completely subsided in our country - and miners have been getting increasingly bold and desperate to shift their expensive gear right as there's a strong rejection of used high-end GPUs specifically due to mining damage in our unfriendly climate. Hence, the whole situation at hand. It's greatly affected the used market - if I tried to sell my TUF OC 3090 today, I could ask *maybe* 5,999 BRL on it (somewhat north of $1000 USD), and it'd be a tough sell for what would be remarkably little money in Brazil (despite seeming like an astoundingly great deal for the seller from an American POV, a 3090 should be selling for $600 USD in America for most cases today) - I would be able to sell it because my card is pristine, factory-sealed with the warranty seal, and I have the box, receipt/proof of purchase, warranty card and everything intact for its new owner... after the MercadoLibre marketplace's commission I'd have maybe 5k on hand - this would not be enough to purchase an RTX 4070 Ti to replace it, these sell in the local market for around 7,299 to 8,499 (ROG Strix model, which is what i'd purchase at a minimum) - that's why *I* gave up on selling my card.

This has been going on for some time - last year, Afox (which doesn't seem to hold an AMD AIB license) got caught redhanded by the same media outlet selling Radeon RX 580s built out of recycled PCBs, most of them with RX 470/470D/570/580 2048SP (China-only SKUs) variants of Polaris dies, many of which had visible heat damage such as discolored substrate and/or yellowed epoxy due to being worked to the extreme for very prolonged periods of time - these are obviously being harvested from mining waste boards and slapped onto a low quality, recycle PCB, then sold full price through retail channels here. At the height of the GPU crisis, these RX 580s were actually being sold for almost $1000 USD locally. It actually resulted in some hysteria and even got the law involved - though they appear to have settled amicably. If you're interested:

The sources are trustworthy - TecLab is huge in Brazil - Ronaldo is a former overclocking champion employed by Galax and his channel is not any different in nature from, say, der8auer's. His channel has over 250,000 subscribers. The other guy, Paulo Gomes (featured on Iskandar's channel), owns a high-end lab and is one of the two trustworthy technicians which can fix a graphics card in the country, the other being Burti from Harteck tecnologia. They're known to work with GPU companies' RMA departments.

I'm not against the idea of recycling, it could potentially reduce e-waste if done correctly and honestly (though I personally would never trust such a heavily used processor - I own an EVGA GTX 780 which was heavily used by its previous owner and it resets at random unless I heavily underclock it), but these could never, ever be sold in the retail channel as brand new products carrying AMD's brand. They should be cheap and sold on the down low, and that's something I respect on Aliexpress brands that sell exclusively through their stores such as Veineda - they never claimed to be all-new hardware or distribute them to the general retail channel in an attempt to pass as a licensed card intended for the end-user DIY market.

 

[ThrashZone]

Hi,
Yeah I'm still waiting for nvidia's adopt a miners card again

 

[RegaeRevaeb]

I speak the language of the videos used as a source, and if you ask me, it's perfectly accurate as it is, the only thing missing is the context from the country's market reality and I am all too happy to provide.

Cryptocurrency has basically completely subsided in our country - and miners have been getting increasingly bold and desperate to shift their expensive gear right as there's a strong rejection of used high-end GPUs specifically due to mining damage in our unfriendly climate. Hence, the whole situation at hand. It's greatly affected the used market - if I tried to sell my TUF OC 3090 today, I could ask *maybe* 5,999 BRL on it (somewhat north of $1000 USD), and it'd be a tough sell for what would be remarkably little money in Brazil (despite seeming like an astoundingly great deal for the seller from an American POV, a 3090 should be selling for $600 USD in America for most cases today) - I would be able to sell it because my card is pristine, factory-sealed with the warranty seal, and I have the box, receipt/proof of purchase, warranty card and everything intact for its new owner... after the MercadoLibre marketplace's commission I'd have maybe 5k on hand - this would not be enough to purchase an RTX 4070 Ti to replace it, these sell in the local market for around 7,299 to 8,499 (ROG Strix model, which is what i'd purchase at a minimum) - that's why *I* gave up on selling my card.

This has been going on for some time - last year, Afox (which doesn't seem to hold an AMD AIB license) got caught redhanded by the same media outlet selling Radeon RX 580s built out of recycled PCBs, most of them with RX 470/470D/570/580 2048SP (China-only SKUs) variants of Polaris dies, many of which had visible heat damage such as discolored substrate and/or yellowed epoxy due to being worked to the extreme for very prolonged periods of time - these are obviously being harvested from mining waste boards and slapped onto a low quality, recycle PCB, then sold full price through retail channels here. At the height of the GPU crisis, these RX 580s were actually being sold for almost $1000 USD locally. It actually resulted in some hysteria and even got the law involved - though they appear to have settled amicably. If you're interested:

The sources are trustworthy - TecLab is huge in Brazil - Ronaldo is a former overclocking champion employed by Galax and his channel is not any different in nature from, say, der8auer's. His channel has over 250,000 subscribers. The other guy, Paulo Gomes (featured on Iskandar's channel), owns a high-end lab and is one of the two trustworthy technicians which can fix a graphics card in the country, the other being Burti from Harteck tecnologia. They're known to work with GPU companies' RMA departments.

I'm not against the idea of recycling, it could potentially reduce e-waste if done correctly and honestly (though I personally would never trust such a heavily used processor - I own an EVGA GTX 780 which was heavily used by its previous owner and it resets at random unless I heavily underclock it), but these could never, ever be sold in the retail channel as brand new products carrying AMD's brand. They should be cheap and sold on the down low, and that's something I respect on Aliexpress brands that sell exclusively through their stores such as Veineda - they never claimed to be all-new hardware or distribute them to the general retail channel in an attempt to pass as a licensed card intended for the end-user DIY market.

You misunderstood me. My point was only that in English the headline suffers some lack of clarity because it could literally be read that every single person/user/etc. was performing the action -- or of fence here if you will.

I was being cheeky (as a bona fide former reporter and editor) about the writing of the head and not the content or sources. In news reporting, attribution goes hand in hand with clarity.

 

[tony359]

from the video it seems the ‘paint’ also includes the label of the chip.
I find unlikely that a miner suddenly has the ability of reproducing the text printed on a memory chip to hide a little yellowing to be honest.

 

[TumbleGeorge]

from the video it seems the ‘paint’ also includes the label of the chip.
I find unlikely that a miner suddenly has the ability of reproducing the text printed on a memory chip to hide a little yellowing to be honest.

Painting seems to be wrong. They must be using diluted acid to clean yellow corrosion.

 

[Broken Processor]

That is the last resort, i never been scammed like that, so that it requires the po-po. If you dislike the second hand market so much, then quit smoking, drinking, eating out, going out with your friends and buy a new PC component. Or quit PC gaming, AMD, Nvidia, Intel are not your friends, the only thing they care for is money and you would too if you were in their shoes.

Learn to read and follow conversation's I never said I was scammed like that or that I only buy second hand and I'm typically a seller of used. But I will be more used because buying new seems to be getting taken for a ride or being a early adapter test pilot as lots are discovering this gen with cables setting cards on fire, fault vapour chambers, getting your ram to work or cooling the furnace that is your flagship cpu . Finally if someone drinks or smokes it's none of you bloody business.

 

[R-T-B]

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

Did not deny it.

 

[MrNobodyHD]

GPUs should get some kind of logging system, that shows a app ID for previous apps run in the hardware for this exact reason. geforce control panel have a hardware log with all info about the GPU and last used info