46 ms·

more concerning is the wear/tear on the fan bearings and the thermal interface between heatsink and board will often be dried out and in poor condition. some g

more concerning is the wear/tear on the fan bearings and the thermal interface between heatsink and board will often be dried out and in poor condition. some gpus are rather hard to get a replacement fan for because it's not like they use an off the shelf modular 60 or 80mm 12vdc fan.

yardie 4y ago
The GPU makers aren’t exactly making fans in-house. There is probably a seller on AX with the exact part needed. I’ve had great luck in finding replacement parts for pretty niche hardware.
- walrus01 4y ago
  if the fans aren't sold by newegg and its top ten largest US domestic competitors as standard sized items - i would consider them as rare weird items, because the size, shape and mounting of the blower is often unique to each card. not going to play games with something I have to order on aliexpress and wait 6 weeks for it to maybe show up from china.
  - KennyBlanken 4y ago
    Most of them are 95mm fans. You can get replacement fans on ebay for almost any relatively common GPU because most of these fans come from the same places and the companies that make the fans for the GPU manufacturers long ago figured out there was a market for replacement units. The higher end card companies in some cases will just ship you a replacement fan if your email to them is pleasant. Or sell it to you for a modest price. I just looked and I can get replacement fans for my specific GPU for less than $20 including shipping.
    - 7speter 4y ago
      You can also take off the Orem fans and shroud and zip tie casefans (noctua or arctic are good brands) onto the heatsink
jotm 4y ago
Bah, that's such a minor issue it's not even on the radar. TIM can and should be replaced anyway, fans can be fixed with some automotive grease (not all, sadly). Modding another fan onto it is also an option. The bigger problem is VRM wear, you never know when it will fail. Said TIM drying out affects the VRM components the most. One failed capacitor or resistor and the whole GPU can get fried (seen it happen many times).
- walrus01 4y ago
  looking on newegg I see lots of factory new 3060, 3070, 3080 selling at pretty regular prices so unless the deal on an ex-mining card was REALLY good (we are not there yet, at price drops in ebay, for when I compare the same NIB newegg price vs used on ebay), I wouldn't buy a used mining card... Maybe if it was like 50% of the new price in a few months from now.
  - jotm 4y ago
    Well, yeah, it'd have to be a great deal.
- exikyut 4y ago
  :/ Is there a good way to spot this sort of thing from a distance when evaluating stuff off eg eBay?
  - jotm 4y ago
    You could try to guess based on dark spots maybe but that's more like gambling. Boards that smelled "burney" worked fine while others just failed - the cause of failure was heat as in most cases the thermal pads weren't touching the heatsink or the component, were missing or were crumbling. SMD elements can fail either open or closed/shorted, the latter is more likely to cause a worse failure but it's not exclusive. Due to protection circuits elsewhere they can fail without visible marks so it's hard to diagnose. Thermal pads dry out because of heat first, their quality second, with load coming in last imo. So the fact that it's been used for mining alone doesn't mean much. The conditions under which a card was used and the time matter more - if only sellers told you the average temperature, case type, ambient temperatures, whether the cards were undervolted/overclocked and how long they actually ran...

yardie 4y ago

The GPU makers aren’t exactly making fans in-house. There is probably a seller on AX with the exact part needed. I’ve had great luck in finding replacement parts for pretty niche hardware.

walrus01 4y ago
if the fans aren't sold by newegg and its top ten largest US domestic competitors as standard sized items - i would consider them as rare weird items, because the size, shape and mounting of the blower is often unique to each card. not going to play games with something I have to order on aliexpress and wait 6 weeks for it to maybe show up from china.
- KennyBlanken 4y ago
  Most of them are 95mm fans. You can get replacement fans on ebay for almost any relatively common GPU because most of these fans come from the same places and the companies that make the fans for the GPU manufacturers long ago figured out there was a market for replacement units. The higher end card companies in some cases will just ship you a replacement fan if your email to them is pleasant. Or sell it to you for a modest price. I just looked and I can get replacement fans for my specific GPU for less than $20 including shipping.
  - 7speter 4y ago
    You can also take off the Orem fans and shroud and zip tie casefans (noctua or arctic are good brands) onto the heatsink

jotm 4y ago

Bah, that's such a minor issue it's not even on the radar. TIM can and should be replaced anyway, fans can be fixed with some automotive grease (not all, sadly). Modding another fan onto it is also an option. The bigger problem is VRM wear, you never know when it will fail. Said TIM drying out affects the VRM components the most. One failed capacitor or resistor and the whole GPU can get fried (seen it happen many times).

walrus01 4y ago
looking on newegg I see lots of factory new 3060, 3070, 3080 selling at pretty regular prices so unless the deal on an ex-mining card was REALLY good (we are not there yet, at price drops in ebay, for when I compare the same NIB newegg price vs used on ebay), I wouldn't buy a used mining card... Maybe if it was like 50% of the new price in a few months from now.
- jotm 4y ago
  Well, yeah, it'd have to be a great deal.
exikyut 4y ago
:/ Is there a good way to spot this sort of thing from a distance when evaluating stuff off eg eBay?
- jotm 4y ago
  You could try to guess based on dark spots maybe but that's more like gambling. Boards that smelled "burney" worked fine while others just failed - the cause of failure was heat as in most cases the thermal pads weren't touching the heatsink or the component, were missing or were crumbling. SMD elements can fail either open or closed/shorted, the latter is more likely to cause a worse failure but it's not exclusive. Due to protection circuits elsewhere they can fail without visible marks so it's hard to diagnose. Thermal pads dry out because of heat first, their quality second, with load coming in last imo. So the fact that it's been used for mining alone doesn't mean much. The conditions under which a card was used and the time matter more - if only sellers told you the average temperature, case type, ambient temperatures, whether the cards were undervolted/overclocked and how long they actually ran...