3 ms·

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)

by 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...

by jotm 4y ago

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...