There’s a flood of cheap ex-mining GPUs, but you probably shouldn’t buy one

rockpapershotgun.com:

An ongoing crash in cryptocurrency prices is causing some miners to abandon ship, selling off their racks of graphics cards at discount prices in a bid to recoup some cash. Wccftech spotted that some erstwhile miners across China and South Asia, previously encouraged by low energy costs, are even hosting livestreamed auctions to get rid of their GPU ‘stock’ en masse.

First off: ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha. Second, while it’s entertaining to imagine desperate crypto barons hosting a kind of QVC channel for dusty PC components, I wouldn’t necessarily take this as a long-overdue opportunity to upgrade your graphics card on the cheap.

That’s not so much to do with the potential health of these cards. Buying used tech is always a bit of a gamble but research by Linus Tech Tips suggests that even after being run 24/7 for months on end, ex-mining cards tend to only be negligibly slower than new models at worst. Nah, the more offputting issue with these GPUs is that they’re just… not that much cheaper than what you can get from your existing, local second-hand market?

Take the RTX 3060 Ti, which miners in China are reportedly selling for the equivalent of $300-$350 (about £250-£300). Even a cursory glance at eBay reveals multiple listings at broadly similar prices, especially in the US, and although some of these also appear to have escaped mining rigs, the majority appear to be one-off sales from typical private sellers. And they come without the worry of having to import them from the other side of world, as well.

Also, to be blunt, many of the sellers now dumping their GPUs on auction sites are partly responsible for graphics cards being so expensive in the first place. Supply shortages played a part as well but