OT: INCOMING! GPUs from Cryptomining hitting the market
Greymom
Posts: 1,140
To conserve the extremely large but still finite supply of electrons in the universe, I don't want to trigger another long debate about the pros and cons of used GPUs from cryptomining, but this was just too extreme to pass up:
There have been several auctions on EBAY for lots of 100 MSI 1070 ti graphics cards, claimed to be "brand new" (yeah, right!). The going price is $65,000 plus $800 shipping. Act fast, there's only one lot left! I checked in cushions of both couches, and could not quite come up with that much spare change. 
The funny thing is that it is not even a good deal ($658)! I can get a real new 1070ti for as little as $400 now at several online vendors.
In the past two weeks I have seen multiple used 1070 ti's go for $260-$280 each (total price). Other vendors are trying to sell them for as much as $1000!
People are also starting to put entire mining rigs up for alledgedly discounted prices (have not seen a good deal yet).
When the new NVIDIA cards hit the market, I expect that the prices will drop even more.
It will be very interesting to watch developments.
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Comments
Wouldnt you know it!!! I already spent $53,362 on the DAZ this month. I knew I shouldve held out... so close, so close!
Good to know that price drops will be coming. Im totally spoiled by my 1070ti.
i dont even have a GPU ..using integrated grpahics so all my rendering is done via CPU ... yeah, been waiting for prices to come down for a long time.
I wouldn't buy second hand.
Considering what's been going on for the past couple of years, I'd only buy a used card if it was a super low price, practically free. Mining hardware might be worth it. I've seen some mining cases on Newegg that look cheaper than the parts it would take to build them. I can only hope the new Nvidia cards push down the price of the 10 series.
Remember that warranties do transfer. Nearly all warranties are 3 years, and Pascal is only 2 years old. The 1070ti is less than a year old, meaning any 1070ti you buy still has a good 2 years on its warranty. If it does break in that time, you are still covered.
If you buy used, buy from reputable sellers. Every GPU I have ever bought has been used. No issues.
I would still be weary of cards used in mining, considering that many mining rigs are built cheaply and often poorly cooled. However, it does depend on how things were done, and again, you can use the warranty. Some manufacterers may say mining voids the warranty, but they can't prove a card has ever been used for mining. Just tell them you didn't use it for mining, LOL. Moreover, EVGA does not void the warranty for mining, so only some board makers will do this.
I found this quote from the EVGA forums, which in fact has a forum dedicated to mining. This quote is in direct responce to a post asking about mining temps.
I will never buy GPU from miners because these videocards are very worn out and warranties takes 1-2 months for expertise in my place. It's not my choice. I like new devices.
Good joke, man :)
I have purchased seven used graphics cards in the last year (3 Titan X 12 GB, 3 GTX 970, 1 GTX 1060), both for myself and family, and to build low-cost systems for friends and neighbors. All were from highly-rated EBAY sellers. I have had no problems at all. I am waiting to pick up a 1070 ti (where I would be covered by ebay or the manufacturer at least initially) for $250 (or less if possible). Keeping an eye on the Pascals too.
For those who really don't want to spend $65,000, they have a 20-pack of 1070 ti's ('new") for a mere $12,800, or a six-pack for $3000.
Again, these are not bargains! You can get the same card for ~$400 (actually for sure new) from the popular vendors if you shop around.
I took the advice from the forums and extended the warranty on my 1070ti. 10 years!
I would consider 2nd hand mining cards if you are prepared to replace the fans which was more time consuming than I'd anticipated when I did it 3 years ago after the previous mining collapse.
2nd hand 8meg AMD 480s are not too expensive, but again its your time on the line with converting Nvid Iray materials?
I wasn't saying others shouldn't; folks please themselves. I was stating I wouldn't, at least I never have; if the card was low enough price, then perhaps, but my worry would be: why is it so low? :)
It's all about RISK. Undoubtedly, a used card is a higher RISK than a new card. If you check the failure statistics, it's more likely a used card will fail before a new card. It doesn't mean it WILL happen, it's just MORE LIKELY. I think most computer electronics is designed for a life of around 7 years or so. So if it's already 4 years old and used, it PROBABLY won't last as long as a new card. And if the card has been used in a warehouse in a mining rig, it's MORE LIKELY that it has been insufficiently cooled, but keep in mind that the drivers/BIOS is designed to self-protect to keep it from thermal damage. Now, has the user done something stupid (overclocking, etc.) to invalidate all of that? You never know.
So it comes down to what YOU think the risks are, and what you're willing to pay for a card with those risks. Personally, from what I've seen on computer tech forums of people who are pretty clueless as overclockers doing goofy stuff with hardware and not cleaning dust out of fans so on, I wouldn't EVER trust used equipment like GPU's. For me, it's just not worth the hassle, and I'd much rather pay a few extra $$ to not have to worry about something failing and having to troubleshoot and then deal with a seller and worry that they won't honor the warranty and have to ship it off and wait for whatever refund which may never come because maybe the seller no longer is responding or no longer exists 2 years later.
You can always find someone who has had good experiences with used equipment, just like you can find the opposite, people who have had terrible experiences. There's no RIGHT answer, just a risk decision.
Everyone is always looking to make an easy buck. The people who dropped all this money on video cards and crypto currency are no different than the poor souls of the great gold rush. There is no quick get rich scheme! You have to have capital to begin with and you have to buy cheap and sell for more. If you get greedy you get stuck with too much inventory and eventually the product losesses it's value. Right now there are alot of people with big inventories of video cards that nobody wants because they were probably run too hot and the video card GPU is soldered in place and if the solder balls come loose the card becomes garbage unlike how desktop CPU's have slots and can move even if they get hot. This is why laptops, phones and video cards don't last like desktops PC's. These kinds of electronics are engineered to fail. It just makes good business stratagy. If you don't understand ask Henry Ford when he designed to Model T to run forever.
Can you kindly point me to where you found this failure rate of used GPUs?
A little Googling will give you some insights.
Here's from Tom's Hardware:
Also, some simple math tells us that a piece of electronic hardware designed for a life of, say, 7 years, will probably not give you the 7 year service life it it is already 5 years old. Especially if it was run outside of its design specs (eg, overclocked), which you won't know about.
And here's a paper explaining the famous "bathtub" curve for failure rates of electronic equipment in general, where failures are highest when new, and then again when the components are old and used, and reach the end of their service life.
https://www.xppower.com/Portals/0/pdfs/Reliability.pdf
And below is a snapshot of the pertinent page. There's a ton of other stuff out there describing failure rates of electronics, since it's such a huge issue.
Some on forums have speculated that due to the always on, but undervolted nature of mining, that this puts virtualy no wear on graphics cards. You have the upheaval and shock of transit and reinstallation after a 2nd hand sale. And the fan wear mentioned above.
I've never had a 2nd piece of electronic 2nd hand equipment fail on me [edit: 1 monitor actually]. In contrast to new stuff I've purchased. Not enough data points, but online annacdotal from forums over the years do no suggest a massive increase in problems with 2nd hand kit to me.
Second hand prices of 1070s are now close to half the release price 2.25 years ago. 2nd hand prices have fallen from $290 to $220 in the last 2-3 months. Mining fad is over. Again :/
That's why I say it's a risk decision. You can take the view that the miners (or previous users) did you a service by running the GPU during the early "break-in" period and verified that it didn't fail early on. Or you can take the view that, by definition, the previous users used up some of its service life, since all electronic components are designed to have X years of service life. Or you can look at some of the videos of guys setting up GPU mining rigs, where they basically rent an empty office space, get some guys to build some racks, buy a bunch of GPU's and hook them up, and then look around to see how the heck they're going to cool them. And they buy a bunch of flexible duct and duct-tape it to the office airconditioning vents and pipe the air into the racks of GPU's and hope for the best.
For me, $100 isn't worth the risk. Especially if you're never sure if they spilled their beer on the GPU when dismantling the racks
Keep in mind the reason they're selling off all their GPU's...they realized they're losing money and all that investment blew up in their faces and now they have no income and have to find a way to get as much cash as possible from a ton of used GPU's. Probably the last thing they're worrying about is taking care of these damn GPU's. They're probably much more concerned about what new business they're going to try next
This is probably the most important point worth considering; just how much care have they been accorded?
If 'you' knew it had been poorly treated would 'you' buy it? I wouldn't, so I presume it has been poorly treated - unless it can be demonstrated otherwise.
Mining is not the best way of treating a card; ergo: poorly treated in comparrison to its expected use. Of course, rendering is also a poor way of treating a card meant for gaming. :) Particularly lots of rendering taking lots of time.
Second hand is a risk. How much of a risk down to each individual to decide.
A brand new card can fail; anything new can fail, that is why they have a warranty, but there is still that warranty. Second hand? Well the warranty is less.
My 1070 doesnt work anywhere near as hard rendering as it does in games. 50-66% vs 60 - 100 in games. You can hear the fan working harder without having to resort to GPUz to tell.
What do you mean by "work as hard"? My GPU's always are at 95-100% utilization whenever they render. Seems strange yours are only at 50-66%.
Agreed, something is wrong if it's not being used at its full potential.
Sorry, I meant power draw! :D
Not sure I'd use fan noise and "power draw" to measure GPU status, but anyway....
I'd try something like HWinFo or GPUz; I'd certainly wanting to keep an eye on my system when I was pushing it hard; probably have CPUz and HWMonitor installed too.
Just use one or two, that have UIs you find most comfortable, then take a little time to find your way around them.
If for no other reason, I'd be wanting to check that what the supplier claimed to have provided me was actually true; they provide a quick way of checking if more careful examinations are needed. I build my own, but only with desktops; I made sure my laptop was as claimed. Mistakes happen, doesn't have to be dishonest.
But you sort of did with the graph above. You are quoting age. But the amount of juice being drawn might be argued == age on the candle-that-burns-twice-as-bright basis.
I agree with Kitsumo, I wouldn't buy one unless it's super, super cheap.
The Internet has destroyed the value of used, discontinued or otherwise "value impaired" goods. If it retailed for $500, you can bet an item will retain close to that value for years.
I know people will argue that and refer me to stores where they claim this might not be true, or mention that they bought something on eBay for a fraction of its price, but 95% of the time that just isn't so.
It's like the Internet is the clearance area at Walmart... https://consumerist.com/tag/raiders-of-the-lost-walmart/page/2/index.html
Now I realize I may have been a bit hasty with that comment. I was forgetting that it isn't constant use that 'wears out' components, it's the expansion and contraction of running at full speed then at idle, or even off. When components expand and contract repeatedly, it causes more wear than something operating at a constant temperature. Plus any miner with half a brain was probably thinking about return on investment, so most likely they underclocked their cards to prolong lifespan. So playing a few games every day, plus a couple of renders with a break inbetween could cause just as much wear on a card as running it at 85% constantly. No, I don't have any data to back that up, it's all theoretical. All I can point to is the data farms and cloud storage industry; they don't have servers crashing daily even though they try to run at near full capacity.
But personally, I don't have the extra cash to risk on a card that might fail. On a slightly off topic note, does anyone know if manufacturers have actually dishonored a warranty because of mining? Everyone says they'll do it, but I haven't seen any cases of it.