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Used Mining Cards

scottomus0

scottomus0

scottomus0

Associate
Joined
3 Dec 2011
Posts
776
Location
Manchester
Are second hand mining cards worth considering, or is it a big no?

I seem to read conflicting info, depending on what the card has been through.

Eg, I can see someone selling a 3090 for a good price, £700 but it was used for a few months for mining.

Seller states that the card has had pads and paste changed and was udervolted, and the vram temps were low 90s. Said happy to install to show working and temps

Basically it was looked after?

Obviously sellers can lie!

Should It be considered? Or spend the same money on a lesser, new card?

TIA
 
scottomus0 said:
Are second hand mining cards worth considering, or is it a big no?

I seem to read conflicting info, depending on what the card has been through.

Eg, I can see someone selling a 3090 for a good price, £700 but it was used for a few months for mining.

Seller states that the card has had pads and paste changed and was udervolted, and the vram temps were low 90s. Said happy to install to show working and temps

Basically it was looked after?

Obviously sellers can lie!

Should It be considered? Or spend the same money on a lesser, new card?

TIA
Click to expand...
With something like that its more likely to be true plus he does say he is happy to show you. Individuals will run cards for 24hrs but thats not going to harm a card. If he showed you say 3d Mark Timespy running and a couple of others and it passes fine it should be ok.

However I wouldnt pay £700 for 2nd hand I've seen them for less and they were not used for mining (according to the description) you can also get them 2nd hand for about £750 with warranty on the high street.
 
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I had about 8 cards mining 24/7 at one point. Several have now been sold/given to friends and family and not one has been reported back to me as having a problem yet. I did of course care for them properly by undervolting and giving them a lot of space between cards for airflow.

Let the chap demonstrate it for you, and if it passes some 3d tests without crashing then I agree there shouldn't be a problem.

Listen out for rattly fans though, as the only moving part its most likely to break.
 
scottomus0 said:
I can see someone selling a 3090 for a good price, £700 but it was used for a few months for mining.

Seller states that the card has had pads and paste changed and was udervolted, and the vram temps were low 90s. Said happy to install to show working and temps
Click to expand...

That sounds like a very honest and genuine miner to me. I'm more worried if they say it's never been used for mining because you have no idea if it's true. I still wouldn't buy it though because it has no warranty. What if it died after 3 months?

KFA2 GeForce RTX 3080 10GB for £728.99 with 2 year warranty is a much better deal than a 3090 with no warranty.

Mining is irrelevant - any new GPU off the shelf could fail. With no warranty, you've lost your money. Don't get me wrong, the used market is great if you don't have much money. But £700 is a lot.
 
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Pass. £700 with no warranty is a hell of a lot of money to throw away. I don't care if it sat in a box, or was used to send a space shuttle to the moon.
 
I've seen what happens to a gpu die when a fan fails on a mining card, wouldn't touch with a barge pole, and that doesn't include what goes on with the memory as Arknor states
 
I wouldn't even pay £700 for a new GPU direct from OCUK if it didn't have a warranty. It's not like there's a shortage anymore.

There is literally hundreds of new lower tier GPUs available with full warranty for less than £700. So absolutely no excuse to waste money on anything without a warranty unless it's around £200 or less.
 
pieman109 said:
I've seen what happens to a gpu die when a fan fails on a mining card, wouldn't touch with a barge pole, and that doesn't include what goes on with the memory as Arknor states
Click to expand...
What happened then?

Pretty much every CPU and GPU on the market now will throttle itself when temps get too high so I can't imagine it burst into flames.
 
Sorry to tell the fear mongers but if a component fails it is not always correlated with the usage.
I had a HD 7770 1GB die on me (XFX Ghost) after 1 year and a GTX 480 I had on an Liquid Nitrogen Bios on air cooling lasted 4 years before croaking.

To say a mining card is worse off is just bias based on fear.

It's like saying your HDMI lead has better quality when it is purely digital with 1's and 0's meaning if it works it works, if it don't it don't.

Wear is not really a thing, hitting extreme limits is just the point of disaster and things dying earlier than expected. A case of it flat out failing way passed it's quality control time. It's not something that can be helped.

Buy a card new and it dies a week later, it's impossible to some folk as to them they base everything on what they experience.
 
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Depends on the brand of the GPU - some AIB accept warranty just by SN and count it from production date. Some miners give invoices on which they don't even mention the card has been used, so you can register warranty as new, from the date of purchase from the miner (and it works fine, as friend of mine tested in practice), if no additional restrictions from the vendor. Some vendors (like NVIDIA with their FE cards) will NOT help you at all if you don't have proper proof of purchase from their authorised reseller, as they even underline on their website that FE warranty is NOT transferable. And of course, changing pads and repasting means warranty sticker has been removed - some AIB don't care, some will refuse warranty afterwards. Best to check their terms of warranty to see which of the above options will be in effect in this case.

I wouldn't mind mining card on warranty, but I wouldn't pay £700 for a card without warranty (irrelevant mining or not) - it's too much to risk it.
 
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Marak said:
I had about 8 cards mining 24/7 at one point. Several have now been sold/given to friends and family and not one has been reported back to me as having a problem yet. I did of course care for them properly by undervolting and giving them a lot of space between cards for airflow.

Let the chap demonstrate it for you, and if it passes some 3d tests without crashing then I agree there shouldn't be a problem.

Listen out for rattly fans though, as the only moving part its most likely to break.
Click to expand...
This. I also had a few that I was mining on.

I wouldn’t have an issue with buying a used mining card. Especially if it’s via the forum and the seller is genuine.

Pad changes I’d see as a bonus, from experience most cards tend to have leaky thermal pads from the heat generated, it doesn’t harm anything but you can get drips.

I changed the pads on a few of the 3090’s I owned and saw significant temperature improvements.

I’d rather buy from here than the likes of auction sites, at least you know the history of the cards.
 
Marak said:
What happened then?

Pretty much every CPU and GPU on the market now will throttle itself when temps get too high so I can't imagine it burst into flames.
Click to expand...
I've posted a pic on here about 18-24 months ago, (god knows where it would be) on the die of a gigabyte gtx1070 where the centre fan failed while in a mining rig. I went round to pick it up and the chap I was buying from was fitting a replacement fan. Passed a coupla benchies with no problems so paid and off I went. Got installed in a mate's pc and the temps were about 95c ish and the bugger was throttling like crazy. Anyways, took the cooler/fan assembly offf and there it was, the die wasn't only tarnished (a sort of light brown colour), but severely pitted as well. The thermal paste and all the pads were in a very poor state as well, being all flaky almost like paper, while some of the thermal paste was so old and hard on the copper heat plate, I had to use emery cloth to get it off. So, straight back round to the guy I bought it from, showed him, he just shrugged his shoulders, handed me an asus 1070, tested that and all was fine and dandy. That was from a mining rig, because he told me his Father and his friend were running one with about 1500 gpus in it.
Real case of once bitten, permanently shy, lol.
 
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