How Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies are hurting gamers

Psycho Sonny · 10 Jul 2017 at 23:32

V F said:
How will Corsair be losing on memory sales? Memory can cover anything that is needed. I doubt that applies to Asus as well as somebody is always looking for a display.

If I'm in the market to build a gaming pc. I need a gaming monitor and decent ram.

Miners however will use cheap ram and no monitor.

Since I can't get hold of a gpu. I then have no need to buy ram or a monitor

andybird123 · 10 Jul 2017 at 23:48

jabbz said:
How much better are the mining cards compared to the same standard?

They arent better, just cheaper to buy as they have no video outs.

TheMorningStar · 11 Jul 2017 at 00:38

andybird123 said:
They arent better, just cheaper to buy as they have no video outs.

I was thinking they would be great for crossfire setups. The Second-hand market will probably have them pretty cheap with their obvious history when the cards start to be less economical.

Gerinako · 11 Jul 2017 at 14:27

Just got a notification from OC that the card I wanted pre-boom is now in stock - trouble is it's £130 above what I originally was willing to pay!

(AMD 4GB 570)

AlamoX · 11 Jul 2017 at 20:22

prepare for RX480/580 flood, ethereum sees a huge jump in difficulty and the price of the coin is falling to around 180$ compared to it's 400$ peak.
i think most casual miners will start offloading their cards soon.
tweaktown

jabbz · 11 Jul 2017 at 20:53

Would you buy a ex bitcoin mining card with no idea of how much use its had?
I know what your thinking new is the only safe option.
I would not risk it unless it was so cheap I could buy another every 3 months lol!

MichaelM · 11 Jul 2017 at 21:15

jabbz said:
Would you buy a ex bitcoin mining card with no idea of how much use its had?
I know what your thinking new is the only safe option.
I would not risk it unless it was so cheap I could buy another every 3 months lol!

I wouldn't have any worry if its an AMD board because they tend to be over engineered and being run at a constant temperature without heat cycles is less damaging than gaming and turning computers on and off which they can clearly cope with anyway. A mining RX 400 will be run at less than 100W if the miner was aiming for high hash rates and low power consumption anyway.
The only issue is the fans wearing out, so either the miner already took them off to use higher CFM and larger fans to cool the cards and the stock fans are fine or just pick a model that has replaceable fans like Sapphire nitros.

jabbz · 11 Jul 2017 at 21:22

If you get the same size fans you can normaly change them with little hassle.
Just need a small soldering iron and some heat shrink. Oh and steady hands lol.
Good points, but I would still be worried about how they have been treated by some people.

AlamoX · 11 Jul 2017 at 21:24

jabbz said:
Would you buy a ex bitcoin mining card with no idea of how much use its had?
I know what your thinking new is the only safe option.
I would not risk it unless it was so cheap I could buy another every 3 months lol!

im waiting for vega personally.
but depands on how many rx flood the market and how low the price goes, it might be extremly tempting to a lot of ppl, after months of over priced cards to see a 580 for 120-150£.
retailers sales will be very low the up coming months, if the ethereum really crash.

jabbz · 11 Jul 2017 at 21:37

Only time will tell, but I hope there are some good deals. I could do with a second hand card for my other pc that I dont use a lot.
It's not a gaming pc but if I get a 480 or 580 cheap it will do for freinds that come round for LAN gaming fun

jabbz · 11 Jul 2017 at 21:39

The other thing I am wating to come down in price is SSD's. But this is not going to happen until some time in 2018 from what I had seen.
I can make do with what I have for now, but I would like to upgrade some time to a bigger one.

Pocah · 12 Jul 2017 at 09:18

I agree that they most certainly are, OP. The price of my current graphics card as increased by 50% since I bought it, and current card prices are just insane. They are 50-100% more than they should be. I would like to buy a new card now but I'm not going to at these prices. To my mind there is no doubt that eventually there will be a custom CPU for mining and the demand for GPU's will fall - it's just a question of when. Buuuut, right now is NOT the time to buy a graphics card unless you really have to or have so much money you don't care.

Gerinako · 12 Jul 2017 at 09:39

Pocah said:
Buuuut, right now is NOT the time to buy a graphics card unless you really have to or have so much money you don't care.

How does one get this

Sasahara · 12 Jul 2017 at 10:10

Gerinako said:
How does one get this

Mine a lot of bitcoins 7 years go.

Psycho Sonny · 12 Jul 2017 at 11:22

Pocah said:
I agree that they most certainly are, OP. The price of my current graphics card as increased by 50% since I bought it, and current card prices are just insane. They are 50-100% more than they should be. I would like to buy a new card now but I'm not going to at these prices. To my mind there is no doubt that eventually there will be a custom CPU for mining and the demand for GPU's will fall - it's just a question of when. Buuuut, right now is NOT the time to buy a graphics card unless you really have to or have so much money you don't care.

actually it's a good thing they are so expensive IMO. will cut into miners profits. the less miners there are the better IMO.

a lot of the small timers are abusing trust. e.g. someone else is paying for the electricity.

the professionals are the ones driving the prices up though. buying hundreds of cards. imagine if prices were lower they would be buying even more cards in their thousands. it's the fact part time miners are buying up cards on the cheap on the members market i don't like. there should be limits on the number of GPU's that can be bought within say a 1 month time period.

AlamoX · 12 Jul 2017 at 20:52

Gerinako said:
How does one get this

the brain is a funny thing, even though the sentence was rubish, you had enough elements for your brain to get the message.

FoxEye · 13 Jul 2017 at 10:08

jabbz said:
Would you buy a ex bitcoin mining card with no idea of how much use its had?
I know what your thinking new is the only safe option.
I would not risk it unless it was so cheap I could buy another every 3 months lol!

I did buy an ex-mining card. An AMD 280X. Bought it from the MM here in fact.

It was fine for 6 months and then the memory died, leaving me with artefacts. Sold it on again cheap on the MM, as faulty.

Didn't lose much (~£55), but if you're going to lose that money in 6 months you might as well buy new and suffer the depreciation instead.

I wouldn't buy another mining card, no.

Psycho Sonny · 13 Jul 2017 at 12:42

FoxEye said:
I did buy an ex-mining card. An AMD 280X. Bought it from the MM here in fact.

It was fine for 6 months and then the memory died, leaving me with artefacts. Sold it on again cheap on the MM, as faulty.

Didn't lose much (~£55), but if you're going to lose that money in 6 months you might as well buy new and suffer the depreciation instead.

I wouldn't buy another mining card, no.

when you bought it did you run latest 3DMARK several times? it's a sure fire way of testing a GPU to see if it throws up a fault.

samcat · 13 Jul 2017 at 12:44

Psycho Sonny said:
when you bought it did you run latest 3DMARK several times? it's a sure fire way of testing a GPU to see if it throws up a fault.

This. When selling on ex mining kit I used to put it into my gaming rig, put 3dmark on and let it run for a couple of hours... If it was running fine after that then there is no issue. And I would always declare it as a ex miner..

But then I am different to some miners, and none of the mining cards go over 65oC.. the 3dmark test was often the hottest the card had ever been.

V F · 15 Jul 2017 at 23:42

Hmm, I've never seen this little video before...