Don't Buy A Used Mining GPU

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

and fans in servers etc generally run 24/7 for years and years.

No doubt mining will increase wear on fans, but to the point where it reduced their life enough to be signifcant? probably not.

Server fans tend to use different types of bearings which promote longevity over noise.Servers rooms,are anything but quiet and also tend to be temperature controlled to 25C,etc. People's rooms tend not to be temperature controlled,so lots of heat,high seasonal temperatures,etc has more of an effect on things running 24/7 as the fans will need to ramp up.

A lot of consumer stuff actually uses rifled/sleeve bearings as they are quieter but will wear out quicker. This is why the AIB partners don't give long warranties on their mining GPUs.

Since I have used constant speed fans in SFF builds,I have tested this out. Its surprising how some well rated "quiet" fans,start to wear quicker than you think,especially with dust buildup and they get appreciably noisier. In fact its why I have rated some of the old Noctua/NMB-Mat fans in the past because of their consistency.

 

[Jono8]

Server fans tend to use different types of bearings which promote longevity over noise.Servers rooms,OTH,are anything but quiet. A lot of consumer stuff actually uses rifled/sleeve bearings as they are quieter but will wear out quicker. This is why the AIB partners don't give long warranties on their mining GPUs.

But to the point where we are talking a lifespan of just a year or two etc? Lets face it, most GPU's are replaced well before the average lifespan of a standard fan, even if run continuously.

 

[FredFlint]

If a card dies because a fan stops, the card is a bad design. I think most that buy a ex-mining card will have no more problems than buying any second hand card can bring. AIB's just want to put people off as they know sales are going to fall off a cliff soon.

 

[gpuerrilla]

Renewable won't become common place until fossil fuel companies NEED to start working on them because they have ran out fo them. We have been well capable or making renewable work for atleast 30 years but we dint because the people who make the rules are in the pockets of the people with all the money (all the fossil fuel comapnies).

Exactly that. Except it was a different miner that got the stick back then. The greed is all around but people turn a blind eye. Simply singling out one thing is not enough, if you want to go full green then to lead by example you need to get unabomber style and live in a hut self sustained then you can point and shout at people. To state ahh its ok people need to travel.. come on. There's bound to be all posters in some capacity moaning about wasting energy but they will be contributing to that waste by living how they do.

 

[pieman109]

Right, heres a link to a better image of a burnt gpu when the fan fails

https://imagizer.imageshack.com/img922/3981/8igZ8P.jpg

 

[D1craig]

Tbh them thermal pads look normal compared to the **** we've seen on them nvidia cards this gen. The die, that can't be from being used for mining as the core gets undervolted and underclocked to as low as it can go.

 

[Haggisman]

Right, heres a link to a better image of a burnt gpu when the fan fails

https://imagizer.imageshack.com/img922/3981/8igZ8P.jpg

That isn't exclusive to a mining card though, if you carry on gaming on your card when the fan dies, you'll end up with the same result. I'm not going to argue that mining 24/7 isn't going to reduce the usable life of the fans (purely based on number of running hours), but if you carry on using it when/if it does fail, you only have yourself to blame if the card gets fried!

 

[KompuKare]

I have nothing against digital currency either, if it is sensibly controlled, but you cant have every man and his dog able to generate what is essentially free money, it's not sustainable in the long term.

Don't know about the other cryptos, but Etherium is going to Proof of Stake.

That's is, only every man (and woman) and their dog who already have assets can have free money.

So things will be back to 'normal' soon: those who have money make even more money!

Actually, there is one way to mine without wasting energy. Under very specific conditions, though:

In the winter in a home which is solely heated by electricity, then mining wastes nothing.

Although I hvea say I hate fan heaters and a bunch of GPU fans rattling would go on my nerves.

 

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Renewable won't become common place until fossil fuel companies NEED to start working on them because they have ran out fo them. We have been well capable or making renewable work for atleast 30 years but we dint because the people who make the rules are in the pockets of the people with all the money (all the fossil fuel comapnies).

Using them up quicker will give us more time to fix the planet before this woke generation take over and we are in a worse place than they are in mad max, nuking each other because they didn't realise their pronoun was a word they had never heard of or used before...

The most important use of fossil fuels isn't fuel,its feedstock for all our chemical industries. You know plastics,fertilizers,pharmaceuticals,etc. Once that goes south,its not transport which is going to be the issue,it will literally building tons of things we want.....including GPUs.

Plus production is still going to produce pollutant gases anyway. Production is still a big part of the energy/pollution used during the lifespan of any device.

But to the point where we are talking a lifespan of just a year or two etc? Lets face it, most GPU's are replaced well before the average lifespan of a standard fan, even if run continuously.

It was within a year with some of these fans running under higher constant load for long periods. So they started off less noiser than the ball bearing ones(or modern hybrid bearings),but once dust/wear increased they were noisier,and got worse and worse. The Panasonic/NMB-Mat and Noctua fans,they held up far better,even with dust intrusion. Some have lasted years.

The bigger issue is also how many GPU designs don't have easy fan replacement. That means you need to have an aftermarket cooler that fits. I know casual gamers who use GPUs from 2013/2014 still. My last GPU I used for 5 years,and my other system has a 6 year old GPU.

AIBs have had a history of cheaping out in the past,why do you think they give under 1 year warranty for their "mining" cards?

The thing is lots of gaming GPUs are not really design to run 24/7 under constant heavy load - they are designed to be quiet under normal peaky loads most gamers put them through. I doubt most gamers run these things constantly under heavy load,and those that do probably have had more chance of a failure happening. A lot of enterprise cards OTH,having blower coolers using decent fans,or have no fans at all,ie,designed to be in a blade/rack with forced induction cooling. Plus server rooms,will be temperature controlled,and kept very dust free!

 

[ASMB]

I always used to buy my GPU when they went EOL rather than 2nd hand, eg. 970 for £180 rather than £300 and my Vega 56 for £235. It will be interesting to see if there are any discounted 3000 and 6000 series cards when they go EOL, after all the mining boom might be played out by then and hopefully many people who want a card will also have got one. (This time around I bought before the card went EOL. I sold other cards I had for more than I paid for them, so the cost to trade up this generation was even cheaper than waiting for cards to go EOL)

 

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

TBF,I saw R9 290 cards for £180 for decent models,and the GTX970 could be had under £250 brand new towards the end of its lifespan IIRC.

The big problem is going to be the price of the RX4000/RX7000 series. If Nvidia/AMD do another Turing moment,its going to make sure the current generation won't drop much in price.

They did it with Turing. Pascal GPUs were selling out at RRP,and Nvidia didn't need to deep discount the GPUs that much at the very end,especially since prices falling back to RRP,made it look good.

 

[Jono8]

The most important use of fossil fuels isn't fuel,its feedstock for all our chemical industries. You know plastics,fertilizers,pharmaceuticals,etc. Once that goes south,its not transport which is going to be the issue,it will literally building tons of things we want.....including GPUs.

Plus production is still going to produce pollutant gases anyway. Production is still a big part of the energy/pollution used during the lifespan of any device.



It was within a year with some of these fans running under higher constant load for long periods. So they started off less noiser than the ball bearing ones(or modern hybrid bearings),but once dust/wear increased they were noisier,and got worse and worse. The Panasonic/NMB-Mat and Noctua fans,they held up far better,even with dust intrusion. Some have lasted years.

The bigger issue is also how many GPU designs don't have easy fan replacement. That means you need to have an aftermarket cooler that fits. I know casual gamers who use GPUs from 2013/2014 still. My last GPU I used for 5 years,and my other system has a 6 year old GPU.

AIBs have had a history of cheaping out in the past,why do you think they give under 1 year warranty for their "mining" cards?

The thing is lots of gaming GPUs are not really design to run 24/7 under constant heavy load - they are designed to be quiet under normal peaky loads most gamers put them through. I doubt most gamers run these things constantly under heavy load,and those that do probably have had more chance of a failure happening. A lot of enterprise cards OTH,having blower coolers using decent fans,or have no fans at all,ie,designed to be in a blade/rack with forced induction cooling. Plus server rooms,will be temperature controlled,and kept very dust free!

But there are a hell of a lot of people that leave their PC's on all day (and sometimes overnight) and that's been the case for decades.

The 1 year warranty for mining cards, is likely because they don't need to offer any more because they know they will just sell with little competition. Why bother covering anything for more when you dont need to?

 

[KompuKare]

Nope - at least cars are needed for transport,and reduce local pollution. I still think that the current battery technologies are really not sustainable and more people show learn to walk/cycle when they can,instead of using the car for everything.

I walk and cycle everywhere, but even in urban areas councils really are very hostile to pedestrians.

The minimum a council should aim for is a level pavement 2-3 metres wide, priority at junctions, plenty of crossings, good surfaces etc.

Instead they give under a metre sometimes, the surface is uneven from utilities works, driveways etc., at every junction only motor vehicles are considered. And so on.

Even people who would like to walk or cycle are put off by the cars first, cars second infrastructure.

This is decades of bad planning and there's no signs of it changing. A crazy example is a new estate where the bus has to reverse out. What kind of an incompetent idiot gave the planning permission there? If they didn't get a backhander they must totally incompetent. Naturally, from that estate walking to next/previous estate means a detour to the main road rather a direct walking/cycling path.

 

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

But there are a hell of a lot of people that leave their PC's on all day (and sometimes overnight) and that's been the case for decades.

The 1 year warranty for mining cards, is likely because they don't need to offer any more because they know they will just sell with little competition. Why bother covering anything for more when you dont need to?

I don't know so many who do that if they are not using them,and even then modern desktop PCs will fall into deep sleep modes,which means power at the wall should be well under 100W,and the fans will spin down/shut off. You have to consider most PCs,don't have a dGPU,and those that do have mainstream GPUs which are lowish power anyway. Most people run it all at stock clockspeeds,etc. Laptops are even more frugal with power.

Compare that to a mining rig with say 5 GPUs attached,its 100s of watts,maybe even more constant 24/7 usage throughout a year. Unless the room is temperature controlled and dust free,the fans are going to just spin much quicker,in a very hot room with 100s of watts(maybe over a kilowatt) being dumped outside.

The AIB offering short warranties,is because they know themselves the fans won't last long enough,or something else will go when run 24/7. A lot of consumer GPUs,and indeed motherboards are underdesigned with mostly noise and cosmetics in mind. They are frankly not fit for purpose IMHO.See how many £100+ motherboards have crap VRMs/VRM cooling but look all nice and shiny?? It doesn't matter if they run so hot,the motherboard will eventually fail.

But everything is disposable,so might as well throw it away and get a new one(which they want you to do).

I walk and cycle everywhere, but even in urban areas councils really are very hostile to pedestrians.

The minimum a council should aim for is a level pavement 2-3 metres wide, priority at junctions, plenty of crossings, good surfaces etc.

Instead they give under a metre sometimes, the surface is uneven from utilities works, driveways etc., at every junction only motor vehicles are considered. And so on.

Even people who would like to walk or cycle are put off by the cars first, cars second infrastructure.

This is decades of bad planning and there's no signs of it changing. A crazy example is a new estate where the bus has to reverse out. What kind of an incompetent idiot gave the planning permission there? If they didn't get a backhander they must totally incompetent. Naturally, from that estate walking to next/previous estate means a detour to the main road rather a direct walking/cycling path.

I agree,but look at how trains were screwed over decades ago? Something that can be powered very easily from renewable power sources. Instead they want more mining of Lithium,Coltran,etc and dump most of the batteries after one re-use since it "costs too much" to properly recycle the batteries. They moved everything so you need a car,including more roads,and stuff outside of town centres. So construction firms got more money,car companies and oil companies got more money,and the government can get more tax from cars,petrol,etc.

 

[gpuerrilla]

Since the lockdown it has highlighted how much travel has been wasted and how much better the infrastructure is when they can unlock cycling lanes and do needed maintenance. People dont all attend the office now and remote working is accepted, zoom chat meetings etc have made a far bigger impact - so it shows you can change behaviour and to hit targets you will need to make drastic cuts like this to get remotely close to climate reversal levels. As the National Grid link I posted states, the biggest UK energy waste to focus on is travel!

A 5 GPU mining rig left on 24/7 will use about 12 kWh a day.

The average unit lets say is 15p. This equates to costing £1.80p a day.

If you think that is killing the planet but petrol/diesel guzzling cars doing hundreds of miles a week but that's ok (or even worse short car journeys in traffic, you can walk/cycle/bus/pool car) its no wonder the priorities are mixed up.

 

[KompuKare]

As the National Grid link I posted states, the biggest UK energy waste to focus on is travel!

The UK isn't even the worst though.

I've taken to nicknaming the Republic Tir na carr as decades of one off housing and Bungalow Blight (very 1970s as it's more like Dallas style monster dormer houses the last two decades or so) mean that public transport in RoI is almost impossible to provide with houses spaced so far apart.

Still compared to most wealthy Northern European countries, infrastructure for public transport, pedestrians and cycling in the UK is shockingly bad.

 

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

A lot of industries were frozen(including heavy industry),leading to shortages. So OFC people need to be back at those jobs - remember early last year when there were shortages of laptops,webcams,CPUs,etc. Then there is the whole aspect of agriculture - you need people to pick/plant things!

So power usage is going to rise,if you want to make things again. You might want to see the difference between China being locked down and China re-opening all its factories.

Yet a miner using 10 GPUs,wasting kilowatts in power is OK? My main system for 5 years with a GTX1080 was running off a 450W SF450 Gold. Frequently I was seeing gaming loads under 200W if running a game(max around 280W at stock before undervolting),and the PSU was running in passive mode. A person with a mainstream laptop is mostly likely to use under 200W under heavy load. I cap the FPS in my games too.

Someone having a bunch of even undervolted RTX3080/RTX3080TI cards,for example,is consuming a ton more power than I do. Its not even them having one GPU,or even two,its the loads and loads of GPUs these people are buying.

GPUs consume way too much power,that is a fact. They are getting worse and worse - people laughed at Fermi,but its nothing now. Next generation,apparently 400W or 500W GPUs?? Crazyiness!

I am kind of glad SLI/Crossfire does not work well anymore.

 

[pieman109]

That isn't exclusive to a mining card though, if you carry on gaming on your card when the fan dies, you'll end up with the same result. I'm not going to argue that mining 24/7 isn't going to reduce the usable life of the fans (purely based on number of running hours), but if you carry on using it when/if it does fail, you only have yourself to blame if the card gets fried!

The difference being you'll know it and do summat about it (if you've got any sense), big mining rigs run the risk of not being monitored correctly and a duff fan can and will be missed. So when found the fan is replaced, no-one is any the wiser when sold on, unless the heatsink is removed and the die inspected.
Theres probably loads of people out there buying these cards with knackered fans that have been replaced and they're none the wiser to the state of the dies underneath.
Would you want one of those cards, the evidence is there in the pic.

 

[KompuKare]

I agree,but look at how trains were screwed over decades ago? Something that can be powered very easily from renewable power sources. Instead they want more mining of Lithium,Coltran,etc and dump most of the batteries after one re-use since it "costs too much" to properly recycle the batteries. They moved everything so you need a car,including more roads,and stuff outside of town centres. So construction firms got more money,car companies and oil companies got more money,and the government can get more tax from cars,petrol,etc.

Not that it did or does the slightest bit of good, but RoI at least had a planning policy about superstores having to be under a certain size (think it was 1 hectare), so IKEA in Dublin needed an exemption precisely because retail parks kill towns and cities and encourage car use.

Retail parks and Tesco Extras (the church of consumption, Tesco even have a roof like a church) etc. are really awful places. In the quest to squeeze as many car parking spaces as possible, what is almost always forgotten is that even the person coming in a Hummer has to get out sometimes, so why do most never have any pavements?

 

[pieman109]

Tbh them thermal pads look normal compared to the **** we've seen on them nvidia cards this gen. The die, that can't be from being used for mining as the core gets undervolted and underclocked to as low as it can go.

But the fans are probably set to run full pelt all the time, so they're gonna fail sooner than later and when they do, that (whats in the pic) can happen, also I've had loads of cards pass through my hands over the past 18 months, and I can safely say I've never seen pads in such a sorry state, all I had to do was blow on them and they'd fly off!

I find it a bit perturbing that some people here are trying to justify damage to these cards
Anyone who buys ANY card thats been mined on runs the risk of ending up with a knackered item, so if possible, try to get them to let you take the heatsink off first and have a shoofty underneath, you might be a bit shocked at what you might find.