Identify a used GPU card that was used in mining?

And it should be. Anyone who isn't mining on their GPU when they aren't using it is pissing money away.
If every gamer started mining tomorrow, there would be a significant drop in profitability. Miners would lose money, and stop buying video cards.
 
And it should be. Anyone who isn't mining on their GPU when they aren't using it is pissing money away.

Some people pay for their own electricity. I fire up a rig on days cold enough for me to turn a heater on. Minimg in the warmer months also means turning on the AC and at .40/kWh you’re gonna be paying a lot to mine.
 
Some people pay for their own electricity. I fire up a rig on days cold enough for me to turn a heater on. Minimg in the warmer months also means turning on the AC and at .40/kWh you’re gonna be paying a lot to mine.

Ouch, 40 cents per kilowatt hour?
 
Ok, but what if the miners were dumping their 3090s for say $100 or $200.
Right, they'll sell a card that they could almost instantly sell for over $2000 for $100 or $200 because...reasons?
 
Ouch, 40 cents per kilowatt hour?
We are on a tiered plan. I believe it starts at .25 and goes up to over .40 at its highest rate, which it would be if I mined in the warmer months since that would also involve AC. To make matters worse, once you hit that higher tier, all your consumption for the month is billed at that rate, not just the amount you used that put you over the top. It’s not uncommon for a 10% increase in usage leading to a 100% increase in your power bill.
 
We are on a tiered plan. I believe it starts at .25 and goes up to over .40 at its highest rate, which it would be if I mined in the warmer months since that would also involve AC. To make matters worse, once you hit that higher tier, all your consumption for the month is billed at that rate, not just the amount you used that put you over the top. It’s not uncommon for a 10% increase in usage leading to a 100% increase in your power bill.
Ouch, that's awful.
 
best thing i can think of is to look at the seller's rating and contact if in doubt.
 
But pretty much any 3XXX or 6XXX card would still make money even with those conditions right now.
Not sure how math works in your neck of the woods but that's pretty much impossible over here. An AC unit sucking up a couple thousand watts, plus the mining rig eating up a few hundred more and you're telling me a 3060/3070/3080 or 3090 will pay for all that plus make me a profit?

Also, I was an error on the rates. They start at .33/kwh followed by .41 for the next tier and .51 for the high usage tier.
 
Right, they'll sell a card that they could almost instantly sell for over $2000 for $100 or $200 because...reasons?
Because mining has turned completely unprofitable for the future, and the miners dump their cards on eBay all at the same time. Most cards never get sold until the sellers reduce the reserve price enough.
 
Not sure how math works in your neck of the woods but that's pretty much impossible over here. An AC unit sucking up a couple thousand watts, plus the mining rig eating up a few hundred more and you're telling me a 3060/3070/3080 or 3090 will pay for all that plus make me a profit?
Yes, that's how profitable GPU mining is right now and why people are paying so much for cards. A 3060ti will pull in $5.84 a day as of today, -$1.59 assuming .51/kWh (your power cost blows lol), still gets you $4.25 a day, even of you subtract another $1.59 for added AC cost, that leaves you at $2.66 profit a day.

whattomine.com
 
Yes, that's how profitable GPU mining is right now and why people are paying so much for cards. A 3060ti will pull in $5.84 a day as of today, -$1.59 assuming .51/kWh (your power cost blows lol), still gets you $4.25 a day, even of you subtract another $1.59 for added AC cost, that leaves you at $2.66 profit a day.

whattomine.com

The average central AC unit consumes 3500 watts. Assuming 8 hours of usage per day that's over $14/day just for AC
 
Because mining has turned completely unprofitable for the future, and the miners dump their cards on eBay all at the same time. Most cards never get sold until the sellers reduce the reserve price enough.
Mining has already crashed a couple times so we can pretty safely say GPU prices won't drop that hard. They will drop, but you won't be getting 3080s or 3090s for $200
 
Not sure how math works in your neck of the woods but that's pretty much impossible over here. An AC unit sucking up a couple thousand watts, plus the mining rig eating up a few hundred more and you're telling me a 3060/3070/3080 or 3090 will pay for all that plus make me a profit?

Also, I was an error on the rates. They start at .33/kwh followed by .41 for the next tier and .51 for the high usage tier.
Yeah, not saying I would mine at .40 cents per kilowatt hour but the more efficient cards would still be profitable.

A 5700XT mining at 55 MH/s at 130W still earns decent money. But you lose about 25% of your profits compared to something like 10 cents/kWh.

https://whattomine.com/coins/151-eth-ethash
 
The average central AC unit consumes 3500 watts. Assuming 8 hours of usage per day that's over $14/day just for AC

lol, The mining is only responsible for adding 130watts of heat into the house, that's all the additional load it is adding to your AC's workload. The rest of the AC is on you, your house, and the weather, you're going to be running that AC regardless. It doesn't make sense to add your homes full AC cost to the cost of running a GPU.
 
This is hardly the case across all cards. Cards that have been mined on may have had their core voltage or TDP lowered which is great for the GPU but they also have their vram clocked to levels that would lock up your PC as soon as you launch a game. That can’t be good for the memory modules long term. While most people who purchased mining cards after the last crash fared just fine, there were plenty who received cards with serious artifacting issues in games due to degraded vram.
I have years of experience with at least a few video cards, I would say my 5700 XT ram has degraded, it was never particularly a good overclocker either. Anyways it use to do 103% mem OC for Ethereum mining, I can only do that now at 101% or 100%. Ethereum mining is very memory intensive. The Vega's (3x) HBM has thus far shown zero memory degradation, it is so temperature protected as in if it gets above 70c the memory will automatically slow down the hash rate, all three Vega's memory OC just as good as when they were removed from the box as far as I can tell. Each Vega has over 1 year, more like 2 years of about 24/7 mining. The 1080 Ti (2x) memory seems to be about the same as well. Only card that definitely showed memory degradation was the 5700 XT. As for the 3090, they have terrible memory cooling on the backside and probably not a good card for long term mining unless modified, the 3080 Ti maybe the best long term mining card as well as the 3080 due to better cooling of the memory. Except Nvidia is hinting at limiting the mining rate for the 3080 Ti, meaning recouping some of the extra cost as an option maybe limited.

Anyways the best way I can think of for mined cards to ensure they are good, is actually testing the card out, stress test, OC tests etc. If the seller can do that, that is if honest, someone could get a good card from a miner. I normally give away or throw away my video cards once they become more or less useless. Did sell two 1070s that were also used for mining to a friend, couple of years ago, still working today just fine. Now they were not in the long term used for mining, maybe 9 months of 24/7. I don't see me selling my GPUs in the near future due to how profitable they are currently and if any of them show marked degradation or issues they would basically be thrown in the trash, maybe saving a few parts for the others.

Mining is a more consistent power rate, heat rate operation than gaming. In gaming the GPU is constantly heating up and cooling down depending upon load, same with the memory. That heat and cool down also means expansion and contraction over and over again. Plus gaming cards can be heavily OC with inadequate cooling. I believe actual gaming is much harder on a card then straight mining. Mining farms are still using Polaris, 4 year old cards basically and they are functioning the same (actually better with modified bios and better cooling) as before.
 
lol, The mining is only responsible for adding 130watts of heat into the house, that's all the additional load it is adding to your AC's workload. The rest of the AC is on you, your house, and the weather, you're going to be running that AC regardless. It doesn't make sense to add your homes full AC cost to the cost of running a GPU.
My machine uses over 130 watts idling and I do turn it off when not in use, so i'm really not sure where you're getting these low ball figures from.
 
The idea is never buy from miners. It gives them monetary gain and a form appreciation for putting us in this situation in the first place.

When you buy from a miner It's like "Good fellow, I would love reimburse the money you spent on a (slave) card, to make money sitting on your ass. God forbid you break even running a (slave) card 24/7 until its an inch from it's life and not get back at least some of the money. "
Buying from miners at this time only supports them financially and makes you part of the problem .
Make them eat the cost.
lol, nope, it is actual work, from adding electrical panels, wiring, cooling, building rigs and gaining the knowledge to effectively mine, picking the right coins, maintenance as well as paperwork for taxes. No free lunch and I just do it for a hobby, fun game, strategy. Maybe those who just buy coins and hoping they moon are the ones sitting on their asses. Mining folks have to work at it, constantly paying attention to changes in the market etc. Anyways I've found it very much rewarding in a number of ways. I have no problem not selling you a perfectly running card and would never sell you a card I knew was faulty.
 
Mining has already crashed a couple times so we can pretty safely say GPU prices won't drop that hard. They will drop, but you won't be getting 3080s or 3090s for $200
Fair enough. What do you think used cards will go for on Ebay, compared with MSRP for new cards?
 
My machine uses over 130 watts idling and I do turn it off when not in use, so i'm really not sure where you're getting these low ball figures from.
I think the figure was from the example of a 5700XT. If you assume a 5700XT uses 130 Watts mining and provides 55MH/s in hashrate (ETH), at today's rate you're earning $8.01 per card and paying $1.25 per card per day in power ($0.40 / kWh). The additional power needed to run the AC would be an extra cost as well. So let's say you have a 5kW AC unit operating at 30% load all the time anyway during summer. An additional 130W (2.6% load) might take you from $14.40 / day in AC costs to $15.65 or a $1.15 increase. So your profit might be $8.01 - $1.25 - $1.15 = $5.6 / day / card. It's still a good profit if you can get the cards at their old prices of around $500, but if anything happens with crypto mining profitability you'd be the first one priced out so it would of course be a riskier position compared to someone who's paying much less in electricity costs. This is a simplified example but should give a general idea of the costs.
 
I think the figure was from the example of a 5700XT. If you assume a 5700XT uses 130 Watts mining and provides 55MH/s in hashrate (ETH), at today's rate you're earning $8.01 per card and paying $1.25 per card per day in power ($0.40 / kWh). The additional power needed to run the AC would be an extra cost as well. So let's say you have a 5kW AC unit operating at 30% load all the time anyway during summer. An additional 130W (2.6% load) might take you from $14.40 / day in AC costs to $15.65 or a $1.15 increase. So your profit might be $8.01 - $1.25 - $1.15 = $5.6 / day / card. It's still a good profit if you can get the cards at their old prices of around $500, but if anything happens with crypto mining profitability you'd be the first one priced out so it would of course be a riskier position compared to someone who's paying much less in electricity costs. This is a simplified example but should give a general idea of the costs.

But the thing is it’s not 130 watts. It’s 130 plus whatever the rest of your computer is using. If I’m mining it’s a minimum of 300-350 watts since my PC isn’t on when I’m not using it. And since efficiency isn’t 100% 300 watts of extra heat will need more than 300 watts of extra consumption to pump it out.

So basically the way it boils down .

If I keep my computer on at all times and
If my GPU only consumes 130 watts while mining and
If I keep my AC on whether I’m mining or not and
If the efficient of removing the added heat is 100%

Then mining is still marginally profitable.
 
But the thing is it’s not 130 watts. It’s 130 plus whatever the rest of your computer is using. If I’m mining it’s a minimum of 300-350 watts since my PC isn’t on when I’m not using it. And since efficiency isn’t 100% 300 watts of extra heat will need more than 300 watts of extra consumption to pump it out.

So basically the way it boils down .

If I keep my computer on at all times and
If my GPU only consumes 130 watts while mining and
If I keep my AC on whether I’m mining or not and
If the efficient of removing the added heat is 100%

Then mining is still marginally profitable.

The point I'm making is that each GPU is, in this example, 130 Watts. Whatever the rest of your computer is, it's already running anyway isn't it? So is the extra idle time an additional expense? If so, you can add that in as well. So if you're running an entire computer to mine with 1 GPU only then yeah, you're eating into the profits of that GPU more. But if you have 6 GPUs, you're not running 6 computers, you're running 1 computer with 6 GPUs, so it's not like you need to multiply the CPU heat by 6. Maybe it's different there, but most people here leave their A/C on all day so it would be unusual to turn your AC on just for a single GPU to mine. Or you could throw everything in the garage and not spend any additional money on AC.
 
The point I'm making is that each GPU is, in this example, 130 Watts. Whatever the rest of your computer is, it's already running anyway isn't it? So is the extra idle time an additional expense? If so, you can add that in as well. So if you're running an entire computer to mine with 1 GPU only then yeah, you're eating into the profits of that GPU more. But if you have 6 GPUs, you're not running 6 computers, you're running 1 computer with 6 GPUs, so it's not like you need to multiply the CPU heat by 6. Maybe it's different there, but most people here leave their A/C on all day so it would be unusual to turn your AC on just for a single GPU to mine. Or you could throw everything in the garage and not spend any additional money on AC.
So I actually did a search on motherboards designed for mining. Aside from the gaggle of GPU slots, they were pretty low-end chipsets. And some of those mboards were not exactly cheap. So would any [H] run one of those systems as their daily driver, instead of a midrange to high end chipset board?
 
Whatever the rest of your computer is, it's already running anyway isn't it? So is the extra idle time an additional expense? If so, you can add that in as well.
No, for the most part my computer isnt running when not in use, and yes it has a single GPU. I’m not speaking for everyone, I’m speaking for myself as to when It does and does not make sense to mine So those 6 GPU setups are not relevant to my use case.

Tossing everything in the garage isn’t an option. I need a computer in the office so a garage computer means an entirely new machine, so extra cost there. It also gets to 100+ ambient since we actually use it to pull our cars into. Summer heat plus up to 3 hot engines is a lot of energy Dumped into a confined area. The system wouldn’t last long.

This started when someone said anyone who doesn’t mine with their GPU is pissing money away, which is quite simply not the case.
 
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No, for the most part my computer isnt running when not in use, and yes it has a single GPU. I’m not speaking for everyone, I’m speaking for myself as to when It does and does not make sense to mine So those 6 GPU setups are not relevant to my use case.

Tossing everything in the garage isn’t an option. I need a computer in the office so a garage computer means an entirely new machine, so extra cost there. It also gets to 100+ ambient since we actually use it to pull our cars into. Summer heat plus up to 3 hot engines is a lot of energy Dumped into a confined area. The system wouldn’t last long.

This started when someone said anyone who doesn’t mine with their GPU is pissing money away, which is quite simply not the case.
Yeah, I mean everyone's circumstances are different I guess. I leave my PC on most of the time anyway, so it's not a lot of extra power, and the AC is going to be on in summer anyway, and in winter it helps me go without using the heater.
 
So I actually did a search on motherboards designed for mining. Aside from the gaggle of GPU slots, they were pretty low-end chipsets. And some of those mboards were not exactly cheap. So would any [H] run one of those systems as their daily driver, instead of a midrange to high end chipset board?
I'm not a fan of doing that but I can try to explain why people might. First, anything mining specific has spiked in price recently, those motherboards didn't used to be hideously expensive. Second, the more GPUs you can run on a single computer the more you save on extraneous costs that aren't bringing in income leading to a faster ROI time (CPU, motherboard, maybe PSUs). And third, some people have issues with GPU risers and PCIE expansion boards and prefer to keep everything plugged in directly to the PCIe slots.

I've had great experience with risers (if new) and for me, buying two cheap motherboards and CPUs is cheaper than buying 1 expensive mining specific motherboard, so I would rather do that instead, especially since normal consumer level stuff has other uses in case the market crashes.
 
I have purchased a lot of used GPU's and sold a lot of used GPU's both mined on and not mined on. I always check for obvious scorch marks but the most important thing is how are the fans spinning. If you spin them they should spin freely and also have a magnetic "springback" to them. If they don't have that "spring" they won't be spinning properly and are on the way out. Fans are really the biggest concern in my experience and 90% of the time they are fine unless you are buying really old cards.
 
I have purchased a lot of used GPU's and sold a lot of used GPU's both mined on and not mined on. I always check for obvious scorch marks but the most important thing is how are the fans spinning. If you spin them they should spin freely and also have a magnetic "springback" to them. If they don't have that "spring" they won't be spinning properly and are on the way out. Fans are really the biggest concern in my experience and 90% of the time they are fine unless you are buying really old cards.
If the fans are really the biggest worry, then I won't have an issue with buying a used card since I have a custom loop and would take the stock cooler off of it and put a water block on it. I really appreciate a lot of the information in this thread, I was worried about a card used primarily for mining being a bad investment, but if what a lot of you are saying is true, they should be fine.
 
If the fans are really the biggest worry, then I won't have an issue with buying a used card since I have a custom loop and would take the stock cooler off of it and put a water block on it. I really appreciate a lot of the information in this thread, I was worried about a card used primarily for mining being a bad investment, but if what a lot of you are saying is true, they should be fine.
Hmm.. that brings up an interesting point though. Miners usually aren't going to watercool their cards because it's expensive. So if you find a card with a waterblock on it it probably was only used casually for mining.
 
To answer the original question, no there isn't a way to tell if a card has been mined on. Just as there is no way to tell if it has been gamed on.
As the OP, I have really learned a LOT from this thread. A lot of people seem to be saying, "Don't worry, be happy," but that's just not me. :whistle:

I'm more the "Trust, but verify" kind of guy, and what I have learned from this thread is that you can't verify in any meaningful way.
 
As the OP, I have really learned a LOT from this thread. A lot of people seem to be saying, "Don't worry, be happy," but that's just not me. :whistle:

I'm more the "Trust, but verify" kind of guy, and what I have learned from this thread is that you can't verify in any meaningful way.

This too shall pass. That is, unless anyone actually believes that the road to life-long prosperity is paved with personal money printers. ;)
 
Don't mention it. I am laughing all the way to the bank after having paid for the cards multiple times over (y).
You’re speaking for yourself now where as before you were speaking for everyone. Big difference. I don’t doubt mining is profitable for many people, perhaps even most people with a capable card, but that still isn’t everyone or anyone.
 
You’re speaking for yourself now where as before you were speaking for everyone. Big difference. I don’t doubt mining is profitable for many people, perhaps even most people with a capable card, but that still isn’t everyone or anyone.
Yah, from what I read, a lot depends on the cost of electricity. Plus, you might be running your system more hours of the day, leading to fan motor failure or other component failure.

Of course, mining is probably a lot more rewarding than putting in huge amounts of time trying to score a new video card.
 
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