We've all been waiting for graphics cards to hit our hands for a while, and while it might 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 new.
With the recent bursting of the crypto bubble, there is now an avalanche of the best graphics cards on the market hitting major reselling sites and even live auctions, according to Wccftech (opens in a new tab). Scrupulous sellers, when it comes to resellers, at least tell you that these cards are used. Many, however, will claim they are new and might even package them as new.
In any case, you should definitely stay away from these cards, even if they seem cheap. Whatever the price, it's not worth it. This is why.
These cards are burnt garbage right now.
Many of these graphics cards have been hashing almost non-stop for months or even years. They've been "rolled up tight and stored wet (opens in a new tab)," and much of their shelf life has been used up.
Graphics cards are not designed to run at the speed these cards were run at and under these conditions. In many cases, it sits in a dusty open warehouse alongside dozens of other similarly burned-out graphics cards, all generating heat and burning out their own and their neighbors' silicon transistors, plastic PCBs and solders.
By the time you get your hands on this card, there's no telling how long you can handle it or how long you've been mining crypto. We wouldn't even compare this to a used graphics card you bought from a gamer friend who successfully upgraded his own rig and is looking to recoup some of the cost. It's a legitimate purchase, especially if your friend has only been playing on it. Hell, even if they did mine crypto on it, that's nothing compared to what's going on in some of these large-scale crypto operations.
Will this new card last another six months? One year? Who knows, but the new Nvidia RTX 4090 and other Nvidia Lovelace and AMD RDNA 3 graphics cards will be available by then, so the prices of Ampere and RDNA 2 graphics cards should come down. This is especially true if we teach cryptominers that there will be no "payback" on their investments when the next bubble bursts.
Don't Let Them Get Away, Make Crypto Miners Eat Costs
Crypto miners have bought an obscene amount of graphics cards in the last two years, with some estimates stating that they have bought up to €15 billion in GPUs alone.
They made life miserable for gamers when they tried to buy the latest graphics cards, and even worse, they completely destroyed the environment in the process. The only proven use cases for crypto mining are criminal trading and accelerating climate catastrophe. In no way, shape, or form, should this behavior be rewarded.
It is very likely that crypto miners, especially those who jumped midway through or later in the bubble, are still in the “catchback” phase of their operation. Chances are they haven't created enough crypto to justify buying all the graphics cards at inflated prices, and are probably desperate right now to at least recoup their investments.
This is where we all come in. They denied us graphics cards and spread troll memes to each other on their sleazy little Discord channels at the expense of gamers. Well, turning around is fair game. As they panic at the thought that they have thousands of dollars in the red in their "investments", it's the players turn to rub it in their faces. Feed them all those costs while they look at your two or three RTX 3090 Tis that they bought for €3,000 each and no one will buy at any price.
Teach them to leave our graphics cards alone in the only way possible, making it as financially painful as possible to play crypto next time. Perhaps then the next generation of graphics cards isn't a lost generation like this one was.