Manufactures Warrenty on components, the next kick in the teeth for us?

[TrojanWhore]

There's a difference between a gamer who mines and an actual miner, which is what the article in the OP is about -- the cards in question don't even have display outputs.

If you scroll to the bottom of the article it lists several MSI cards including ventus models, not just mining specific, granted it does seem to be Russian variants listed!

 

[HangTime]

The type of person to buy a mining specific card will have a lot of cards mining at once, chances are when one inevitably dies they'd just slap a new one onto the rack and bin the old, the time and effort of RMA just wouldn't be worth the hassle.

Surely with the shortage of cards it would be worth the hassle though, given all the hassle they seem to go to to get hold of cards (bots, ebay, alert systems, overpaying etc etc)? If it's so profitable why do they have random spare cards just lying around instead of being put to work?

 

[AiiR]

In over 20 years of working in IT and building computer hardware, I have never, ever seen a CPU "fail" through normal use. Nor have I seen one DOA.

I've seen dead CPUs due to bent pins or damage during installation, damage during de-lidding attempts even with no visible external damage, overclocking/overvolting too high.

Just saying.

GPUs.... yeah they go bad a lot more.

Me too, but then a GPU is a giant PCB too, I would guess that is why.

 

[JediFragger]

Have to agree with @jaybee , never had a cpu die on me or one I've installed correctly in the many many systems I've built for peeps over the last 20+ years.

(Oh wait, I cracked an AMD Duron core once when they used to be exposed, bit too much pressure when installing the heatsink!!! )

 

[Grim5]

M

I just came across this article and it sent a slight chill down my spine. https://www.hardwaretimes.com/msi-cuts-the-warranty-of-its-graphics-cards-to-just-6-months/

When you spend £400 or more on a CPU or a GPU, or any component IMO you would be rightfully expecting the component to last for at least 3 years if not 5, these are expensive devices, they should be high quality and operate reliably for several years.

3 years for the minimum warranty is acceptable to me.

I know this article is for mining cards, and the fact that they are only offering a 6 month warranty for them should tell you how long MSI expect these cards to last mining.

In recent years the push from all sides has been to increase prices while offering less, the 11900K is $540 MSRP, the 10900K which has 2 more cores than the 11900K and is faster was $490, that's a $50 increase in price for less CPU.

AMD have put the prices up on Ryzen 5000 vs Ryzen 3000 while at the same time no longer offering Box Coolers with any of them.

Both AMD and Nvidia's prices for GPU's even for MSRP have ballooned out of control.

My MSI Gaming-X GTX 1070 Quick Silver had a higher quality Shroud and VRM Heat Syncs than my $150 more expensive MSI Gaming-X RTX 2070 Super. the build quality on the MSI GTX 1070 was phenomenal, the build quality on the 2070 Super is average.

When AMD launched their RDNA 2 GPU's they reduced the warranty from 3 years with RDNA 1 to 2 years with RDNA2.

Looking at everything else.

AMD CPU's: still 3 years
Intel CPU's: 3 years
Nvidia GPU's 3 years

So not too concerned right now but its something to keep an eye on because if they conclude we don't care much about how long the warranty is it will fall to 12 months without you even noticing.

And that for expensive components is taking the pee.

The manufactures warranty is how long you should expect the component to last reliably. Minimum.

comon that's clickbait

it's 6 month warranty for mining cards

they should be honored they got any at all because all manufacturers offer ZERO warranty for mining cards currently

if you don't believe, read your GPU's warranty card next time

 

[Gray2233]

Surely with the shortage of cards it would be worth the hassle though, given all the hassle they seem to go to to get hold of cards (bots, ebay, alert systems, overpaying etc etc)? If it's so profitable why do they have random spare cards just lying around instead of being put to work?

With small scale operations that's very possible.

That said you have to understand that there's people out there with some crazy mining rigs, we're talking hundreds of cards from people that are buying pallets directly from manufacturers. I don't think people understand the scale of some of the operations out there. Even now with the shortages that sort of thing is still happening. When you're mining to that scale you're going to have redundancies in place for card failures, and your limiting factor is going to be how much space and power you have available.

 

[Begbie]

With small scale operations that's very possible.

That said you have to understand that there's people out there with some crazy mining rigs, we're talking hundreds of cards from people that are buying pallets directly from manufacturers. I don't think people understand the scale of some of the operations out there. Even now with the shortages that sort of thing is still happening. When you're mining to that scale you're going to have redundancies in place for card failures, and your limiting factor is going to be how much space and power you have available.

If it's to that scale, it'll be ran as a business and not many businesses are going to throw away a £1000 unless their man power is maxed. It takes all of an hours manhours to RMA a card (fill in email, print off label, take to nearest postoffice), this is just made up and not actually what people do. Just assumptions on what big industries are doing. Especially when that £1000 takes 4-6 months to recoup it's costs.

 

[Gray2233]

If it's to that scale, it'll be ran as a business and not many businesses are going to throw away a £1000 unless their man power is maxed. It takes all of an hours manhours to RMA a card (fill in email, print off label, take to nearest postoffice), this is just made up and not actually what people do. Just assumptions on what big industries are doing. Especially when that £1000 takes 4-6 months to recoup it's costs.

You're assuming that all the cards are £1000, and then there's the issue with proving the card didn't die due to mining itself which would void the warranty with most companies.

As long as the card has made a certain amount back it wont necessarily be considered a loss, and it's very rare for a card to die before that happens during periods of high profitability such as we've been seeing. I think there's an assumption that mining cards die left and right, that isn't what happens.

While admittedly anecdotal I know a couple of people involved in mining operations with up to 60-70 cards, they do not feel it is worth their time to deal with RMA procedures every time a card dies. These are totally solo ventures for reference, they don't employ staff or have help.

 

[Robi_uk]

M


if you don't believe, read your GPU's warranty card next time

Can they actually prove if someone is actually mining on a card?

 

[Begbie]

You're assuming that all the cards are £1000, and then there's the issue with proving the card didn't die due to mining itself which would void the warranty with most companies.

As long as the card has made a certain amount back it wont necessarily be considered a loss, and it's very rare for a card to die before that happens during periods of high profitability such as we've been seeing. I think there's an assumption that mining cards die left and right, that isn't what happens.

While admittedly anecdotal I know a couple of people involved in mining operations with up to 60-70 cards, they do not feel it is worth their time to deal with RMA procedures every time a card dies. These are totally solo ventures for reference, they don't employ staff or have help.

Solo ventures would make sense, I suppose - if they want to lose profits. I'd imagine it's very rare for companies to throw away profit though. But it's not up to you to prove it wasn't used for mining - otherwise all RMAS would be refused until you proved otherwise.

 

[Gray2233]

Solo ventures would make sense, I suppose - if they want to lose profits. I'd imagine it's very rare for companies to throw away profit though. But it's not up to you to prove it wasn't used for mining - otherwise all RMAS would be refused until you proved otherwise.

Part of the problem with the genuinely large ventures from what I understand is that they do often buy in bulk direct, it's generally pretty obvious what they're doing and very difficult for them to prove whatever failures weren't related to mining and thus making them ineligible for a replacement anyway. At least in the case of smaller scale ventures (up to a certain point) they'll have a certain level of anonymity as to what they're doing, if Bob with his six 3090's had a card die then absolutely he'd be nuts not to RMA it and it's unlikely the company he bought the card from would be aware of his activities.

 

[dvinell]

In over 20 years of working in IT and building computer hardware, I have never, ever seen a CPU "fail" through normal use. Nor have I seen one DOA.
I've seen dead CPUs due to bent pins or damage during installation, damage during de-lidding attempts even with no visible external damage, overclocking/overvolting too high.
Just saying.
GPUs.... yeah they go bad a lot more.

I've only ever fried one CPU.
A power supply went literally "bang", smoke etc.
Disconnected the power supply, got it on the bench, plugged it in again connected to a DVM ... no more smoke, but there was something like 90v (fluctuating) on the 5v line.
Took "overvolting" to a new level - every component inside the case was fubar, and no, I didn't try to RMA anything

Lost some blades off a fan, had GPU fans fail, had to repaste a GPU, no HD or SSD fails yet, so maybe a chunk of bad luck got used up in that charred box.

 

[darket]

Part of the problem with the genuinely large ventures from what I understand is that they do often buy in bulk direct, it's generally pretty obvious what they're doing and very difficult for them to prove whatever failures weren't related to mining and thus making them ineligible for a replacement anyway. At least in the case of smaller scale ventures (up to a certain point) they'll have a certain level of anonymity as to what they're doing, if Bob with his six 3090's had a card die then absolutely he'd be nuts not to RMA it and it's unlikely the company he bought the card from would be aware of his activities.

If you're spending that kind of money and buying direct you'll 100% be negotiating a direct returns policy with them and some sort of exchange returns guarantee. Its not like you're buying them under the radar you'd be negotiating directly with Msi, Asus, Inno3d, etc etc.............. Have a think about that and let it sink in.

 

[HangTime]

With small scale operations that's very possible.

That said you have to understand that there's people out there with some crazy mining rigs, we're talking hundreds of cards from people that are buying pallets directly from manufacturers. I don't think people understand the scale of some of the operations out there. Even now with the shortages that sort of thing is still happening. When you're mining to that scale you're going to have redundancies in place for card failures, and your limiting factor is going to be how much space and power you have available.

I guess it just doesn't stack up to me, on the one hand miners are desperate to get hold of all the cards they can, paying well over the odds, there is a shortage of supply yet they have pallets of cards available on tap and would turn down a 'free' card for the sake of a bit of minor hassle that can't be that much harder than acquiring a new card. I mean if a card is worth say £1k that's a pretty good ROI from performing an RMA. I agree it wouldn't make sense for ancient cards with low hash rates they'd probably want to swap out anyway.

Presumably even where they have redundancy, as that redundancy gets used, they would want to replace the backup cards? I mean logically if what you say is true and they are limited by power and space, why would they be ordering more and more pallets of cards given they have insufficient power or space to use them, they just sit taking up even more space? In this scenario, surely RMA is the perfect JIT model - a card fails, you promote a backup card into your mining system, and then the RMA replacement backfills the backup card pool. Perfect inventory management - one in, one out which is exactly what you want when you are at power/space capacity.

 

[Gray2233]

If you're spending that kind of money and buying direct you'll 100% be negotiating a direct returns police with them. Its not like you're buying them under the radar you'd be negotiating directly with Msi, Asus, Inno3d, etc etc.............. Have a think about that and let it sink in.

As stated multiple times in the thread, these companies do not (or at least very rarely) offer warranty for cards which die due to mining, regardless of who is buying them and in what quantity.

https://videocardz.com/newz/chinese...uying-geforce-rtx-30-laptops-to-mine-ethereum

Some AIBs agree to sell cards directly to them because those clients pay more (usually 1/3 more than any distributor) and they get limited or no warranty at all.

With the profitability of mining the ball is in the GPU makers court, there's a limited window as to how easy it is to mine whichever crypto-currency and with gains the way they are people are willing to take risks (although in these cases they're slim, the cards don't die left and right while in use). Miners are not in a position to turn down mass purchase offers, especially in such a limited market due to the effects of Covid.

Presumably even where they have redundancy, as that redundancy gets used, they would want to replace the backup cards? I mean logically if what you say is true and they are limited by power and space, why would they be ordering more and more pallets of cards given they have insufficient power or space to use them, they just sit taking up even more space? In this scenario, surely RMA is the perfect JIT model - a card fails, you promote a backup card into your mining system, and then the RMA replacement backfills the backup card pool. Perfect inventory management - one in, one out which is exactly what you want when you are at power/space capacity.

In large because the company they're buying from knows exactly what they're doing and has them between a rock and a hard place. The miners need the cards to benefit from current trends, they're not really in a position to negotiate things such as warranties. Even if a card dies for unrelated reasons it'd be a nightmare to prove, shy of a batch of cards being DoA it's easier to just move on.

The things I'm saying are fairly common knowledge within the mining community, you don't have to take my word for it -- hop over to a dedicated mining sub-reddit or something and ask about it there and I'm sure you'll be told similar.

@ScottiB mentions the way miners treat warranty on the first page and I'm pretty sure he used to work for MSI.

 

[jaybee]

Can they actually prove if someone is actually mining on a card?

This is still currently impossible with all cards built to date as far as is publicly known.

 

[HangTime]

they're not really in a position to negotiate things such as warranties. Even if a card dies for unrelated reasons it'd be a nightmare to prove, shy of a batch of cards being DoA it's easier to just move on.

The things I'm saying are fairly common knowledge within the mining community, you don't have to take my word for it -- hop over to a dedicated mining sub-reddit or something and ask about it there and I'm sure you'll be told similar.

@ScottiB mentions the way miners treat warranty on the first page and I'm pretty sure he used to work for MSI.

So if warranties are an issue, and needing to 'prove' stuff is an issue, then I can see why this is a problem and they might shy away from it. I was commenting more on the general point of whether logically it would make sense to claim warranty on a GPU. If RMAs were less disputed, do you think it would be different?

I can believe it in that context, it's just logically difficult to comprehend why people would turn down the opportunity to get free, scarce, expensive resources that can generate more revenue for small effort - clearly the effort must be a lot higher in these scenarios than for most people due to warranties being handled differently.

 

[Gray2233]

So if warranties are an issue, and needing to 'prove' stuff is an issue, then I can see why this is a problem and they might shy away from it. I was commenting more on the general point of whether logically it would make sense to claim warranty on a GPU. If RMAs were less disputed, do you think it would be different?

I think it would depend on the scale and the people behind the operation. If for arguments sake mining wasn't an issue for returns I could imagine at least some cases where people would RMA, such as with higher value cards like a 3090.

In the case of the big Chinese farms I find it more likely that they'd attempt in house repairs over RMA'ing, and honestly I wouldn't be surprised if at least some of them were Government backed and happy to just eat the costs in order to promote whichever crypto they're involved with.

Article you might be interested in: https://in.news.yahoo.com/investors...rency is known,the levels achieved by Bitcoin.