Miners are currently trying all means to get rid of their used graphics cards. Because “GPU mining is dead” and many are at least trying to limit their losses. They also resort to unfair means.
Our cover photo in the article is a symbolic image.
Why are miners selling their graphics cards? At the end of 2022 there was a big change in Ethereum, one of the most important cryptocurrencies. Put simply, powerful graphics cards now play only a minor role in cryptocurrency mining. Or as a well-known miner tweets: “GPU mining is dead” (via twitter.com).
Because of this, miners are now more or less desperate to sell their graphics cards (via pcgamer.com). This even goes as far as miners repainting or otherwise “refurbishing” their graphics cards and then listing them as “new”. Knowing that the graphics cards are definitely not new anymore.
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Graphics cards are said to be painted and sold as “new” even though they are not new
Where does the information come from? An investigation by Youtubers Iskandar Souza and Paulo Gomes claims that some third party vendors in China are selling GPUs that appear to be new but have been touched up to hide the fact that they were used for crypto mining.
We have embedded the video by Youtuber Iskandar Souza here. Here you can
The YouTube channel TechLab had also pointed out these problems (via YouTube.com). Here, some graphics cards had a different color than GPUs from other vendors.
With extensive knowledge in the field, they were able to quickly confirm that the Brazilian company was selling old mining cards to unsuspecting customers.
How do you recognize such a graphics card? With a graphics card, pay attention to the coloring of the memory. If the graphics card has been used for a longer period of time, the memory will turn yellow. The YouTuber, for example, explains that the memory on new cards is black and then slowly discolours.
In order to hide exactly that, some miners now go and color the graphics card black – this way you can hide the yellowish tone of the memory. But there are also other signs of a used graphics card:
Re-soldering memory to a new circuit board is a common practice in graphics card repair and refurbishment. In this case, however, the retailer often lists the product as ‘Refurbished’ or ‘Refurbished’ rather than ‘New’.
In Germany, used items must also be declared as used. Products such as graphics cards are considered new only if they have not been used and are made from new materials.
More about mining: It’s not the first time miners have launched their legacy graphics cards. Such cheap graphics cards sound tempting at first, but you should still be careful what kind of graphics card you buy in the end:
Chinese miners are flooding the market with used RTX 3080 graphics cards – they’re cheap, but be careful