We’ve been waiting for graphics cards to reach our hands for some time now, and while it may be tempting, whatever you do, resist the urge to buy a cheap graphics card right now from a resale site, even if it claims to be brand new.
With the recent burst of the crypto bubble, there is now a flurry of the best graphics cards on the market hitting major reseller sites and even live-streamed auctions, according to Wccftech (opens in new tab). Scrupulous sellers, as far as dealers are concerned, are at least saying these cards are used. Many, however, claim that they are new and may even package them as if they were are brand new.
Either way, you need to stay away from these cards, no matter how cheap they seem. Whatever the price, it’s not worth it. Here’s why.
These cards are burning pieces of garbage right now.
Many of these graphics cards have been processing hashing algorithms almost non-stop for months or even years. They were “walked hard and kept it wet (opens in new tab)“, and a substantial amount of its lifespan has been used up.
Graphics cards should not run at the rate that those cards were running and under these conditions. In many cases, it’s in a dusty open warehouse alongside dozens of other similarly burnt graphics cards, all of which generate heat and fry their own silicon transistors and their neighbors’ plastic PCBs and solder.
The moment you get your hands on this card, there’s no telling how much more it can take or how long it’s been serving time in crypto mines. We wouldn’t even compare that to a used graphics card you bought from a gamer friend who’s managed to upgrade their own equipment and is looking to recoup some of the cost. This is a legitimate purchase, especially if your friend is doing nothing but playing games with it. Hell, even if they are mining some cryptocurrency, this is nothing compared to what is happening in some of these large-scale cryptocurrency operations.
Will this new card last another six months? One year? Who can say, but until then, the new Nvidia RTX 4090 and other Nvidia Lovelace and AMD RDNA 3 graphics cards will be available, so prices for Ampere and RDNA 2 graphics cards are bound to plummet. This is especially true if we teach cryptocurrency miners that there will be no “recovery” of their investments when the next bubble bursts.
Don’t Let Them Off The Hook, Make Cryptominers Eat The Costs
Cryptominers have been buying an obscene amount of graphics cards over the last couple of years, with some estimates indicating that they have bought up to $15 billion in GPUs alone.
They’ve made life for gamers hell trying to buy the latest graphics cards, and even worse, they have absolutely destroyed the environment in the process. The only proven use cases of cryptocurrency mining are criminal exchange and the acceleration of a climate catastrophe. In no way, shape or form should this behavior be rewarded.
Cryptocurrency miners, especially those who entered the middle or later of the bubble, will likely still be in the “recovery” phase of their operation. They probably didn’t earn enough from cryptocurrencies to justify buying every graphics card out there at inflated prices, and they’re probably now desperate to at least balance their investments.
That’s where we all come in. They denied us graphics cards and spread troll face memes among themselves on their little Discord channels at the expense of players. Well, the twist is fair game. As they freak out that they have thousands of dollars in the red in their “investments”, it’s the players’ turn to rub it in their faces. Make them eat all those costs while looking at their two or three RTX 3090 Ti’s that they bought for $3,000 each and that no one will buy at any price.
Teach them to leave our graphics cards alone the only way we can, making it as financially difficult as possible to bet on cryptocurrencies next time. Maybe the next generation of graphics cards won’t be a lost generation like this one.
