Identify a used GPU card that was used in mining?

Don't see a way to confirm a card hasn't been used for mining, but if you're using something like ebay which lets you see the person's selling history you may be able to sus out if they are more likely than not mining cards. Someone who has a listing for multiple cards for sale, or has a history of selling a bunch of GPUs of the same type or same generation may be a giveaway.

It may be counterintuitive, and I may very well be wrong, but I would reckon used 3000 series cards are less likely to have been used for mining than older gens on the market. The new cards are still more than profitable at this point, Ethereum mining difficulty may be growing but so is its price. Ethereum also has more optimistic price predictions which will likely keep people mining it throughout this year rather than selling due to the typical crypto price fluctuations that happen fairly often. Will take the big crash to get a massive dump on the used market from miners who have thrown in the towel.

I suspect people who are selling "used" current gen cards are mainly people who due to the current crunch couldn't get the card they wanted and had to settle on something else. After finally being able to pick up what they actually wanted, they list the "old" card on ebay or whatever. At least this is what happened to me. Really wanted a 3090 but was able to get lucky enough and find a 3080 at Microcenter back in November. Finally got lucky with an EVGA queue order for a 3090 in late December and sold the 3080 to a friend. If I was smart I would have used the 3080 as a miner, but back then I would have probably just listed it on ebay if I didn't have a private sale.

Buyer beware however, and as it's been said, it may be fair to assume any card listed for sale used has been used for mining at some point.
 
If every gamer started mining tomorrow, there would be a significant drop in profitability. Miners would lose money, and stop buying video cards.
They're already there. Everyone and their mother's running minimally nicehash. Every youtube video is pumping out "EZ CA$H WITH YOUR GAYMING PEE CEE? HEREZ HOW" to every kid that wasn't already aware.

The distinction between "miner" and "gamer" no longer really exists.
 
Well, net-net, as the OP, I don't think I'm going to be able to get a good deal on Ebay any time soon for a 3060 ti or maybe a 3070.

Meanwhile there is no joy in being on the EVGA list. I just wish they would release some statistics so average Joes like me know when to expect to get a card off that list.
 
So how do you guys handle taxes (in the US?) Does Nicehash send you a Form 1099?
 
They're already there. Everyone and their mother's running minimally nicehash. Every youtube video is pumping out "EZ CA$H WITH YOUR GAYMING PEE CEE? HEREZ HOW" to every kid that wasn't already aware.

The distinction between "miner" and "gamer" no longer really exists.
Mamer? Giner? Mimer? Ganer?
 
So how do you guys handle taxes (in the US?) Does Nicehash send you a Form 1099?

When I transfer out of the mining operation (Nicehash, etc.) to Coinbase, I consider that point "income." So I have X amount of transactions into my Coinbase account every year that indicates additional income that I pay taxes on. You then pay capital gains taxes when you sell based on the profit (or take a capital loss on the loss). I use a 3rd party website (taxbit.com) to do the calculations and it will output tax forms to input into TurboTax or take to your accountant for tax purposes.
 
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.
Is there any evidence at all that you can degrade a memory modules? If anything, you may need to repaste/repad but if it works, it works.
 
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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.

.37/kwh here.. pretty much paid the total household usage electrical bill mining just the last 2-3 days.. the rest of the time is just profit ;)
 
"lol just waste stuff, who cares, its free money! lets just burn more coal than 3 developed countries, and get rich making useless hash strings. If you don't subscribe to my ideology, you're just an idiot wasting potential money!"

-- people of 2021
 
Is there any evidence at all that you can degrade a memory modules? If anything, you may need to repaste/repad but if it works, it works.
Well I did it to my 8800GT back in the day and there were plenty of people that purchased used mining cards after the last crash that had issues with artifacts in game. Can't say if those cards were over-volted in addition to being over-clocked but I can tell you my 8800GT was only ever overclocked and after a couple years I had to under-clock it to prevent graphical glitches.
 
Well I did it to my 8800GT back in the day and there were plenty of people that purchased used mining cards after the last crash that had issues with artifacts in game. Can't say if those cards were over-volted in addition to being over-clocked but I can tell you my 8800GT was only ever overclocked and after a couple years I had to under-clock it to prevent graphical glitches.
I had this start happening to my 980TI's, but it turned out they just needed new TIM. I went with liquid metal, and they can clock 13MHz higher now than they did 5 years ago. They ran an overvolted and overclocked 300W BIOS with their stock blower fans the entire time. (no mining, just gaming)
 
Can you tell physically or even via software if a CPU has been undervolted and overclocked? Same difference really. Any miner worth their salt will undervolt to save electricity and max out the overclock on the memory to maximize hashrate. AMD GPU's have needed bios hacks to bypass limits but this is the same stuff any overclocker would be doing to maximize benchmarks and framerates. A 3080 or 3090 that has thermal pads replaced... how can you tell if it's just a gamer vs miner?
 
Can you tell physically or even via software if a CPU has been undervolted and overclocked? Same difference really. Any miner worth their salt will undervolt to save electricity and max out the overclock on the memory to maximize hashrate. AMD GPU's have needed bios hacks to bypass limits but this is the same stuff any overclocker would be doing to maximize benchmarks and framerates. A 3080 or 3090 that has thermal pads replaced... how can you tell if it's just a gamer vs miner?
Let's say that you buy a used 3080 or 3090 off Ebay. When you receive the card, you notice (by inspection?) that the RAM has been overclocked? Or you buy an AMD card with a hacked BIOS. What recourse do you have?
 
Let's say that you buy a used 3080 or 3090 off Ebay. When you receive the card, you notice (by inspection?) that the RAM has been overclocked? Or you buy an AMD card with a hacked BIOS. What recourse do you have?
How would you tell that the memory was overclocked? A physical inspection would not tell you. Sure a card with a mining bios would be a dead giveaway, but telling ebay that would probably get you nowhere. Now saying the card has a defect would almost guarantee a return, ebay sides with the buyer 99% of the time. I have 2 3080's that mine 24/7, they are properly underclocked, in a dust free, cool environment. 50c core 90-95c memory junction. If I sold you one you would have no idea it was mined on unless I told you so. The only negative about these cards would be the fan life has been reduced.

I would look at the fans and heatsink. Are the fan bearings already going bad on a card less than a year old? That would at least tell you that it was run at 100% 24/7.

Bottom line these days, if you're buying a used card that has a good enough hash rate, it was mined on. Period.
 
How would you tell that the memory was overclocked? A physical inspection would not tell you. Sure a card with a mining bios would be a dead giveaway, but telling ebay that would probably get you nowhere. Now saying the card has a defect would almost guarantee a return, ebay sides with the buyer 99% of the time. I have 2 3080's that mine 24/7, they are properly underclocked, in a dust free, cool environment. 50c core 90-95c memory junction. If I sold you one you would have no idea it was mined on unless I told you so. The only negative about these cards would be the fan life has been reduced.

I would look at the fans and heatsink. Are the fan bearings already going bad on a card less than a year old? That would at least tell you that it was run at 100% 24/7.

Bottom line these days, if you're buying a used card that has a good enough hash rate, it was mined on. Period.
So the bottom line for me is, don't buy a used card from anyone I don't know. So when and if the miners start unloading their cards, then I'm hoping that prices of new cards will also drop down to MSRP levels.
 
Let's say that you buy a used 3080 or 3090 off Ebay. When you receive the card, you notice (by inspection?) that the RAM has been overclocked? Or you buy an AMD card with a hacked BIOS. What recourse do you have?

It's USED. It's a crapshoot no matter what the card was used for.
 
"lol just waste stuff, who cares, its free money! lets just burn more coal than 3 developed countries, and get rich making useless hash strings. If you don't subscribe to my ideology, you're just an idiot wasting potential money!"

-- people of 2021

"Just let the fed print 4x the total of all previously printed money in history in one year and devalue your savings, your income, and cause runaway hyper-inflation. Debasing a currency harms no one because it only harms the little people! Just suck it up and don't do anything to protect yourself from being robbed." -Mystique 2021
 
It's USED. It's a crapshoot no matter what the card was used for.

Some people still have this stigma that a used undervolted mining card is somehow worse for the wear than a gaming card that was subjected to thousands of rapid hot/cold temperature cycles during its lifespan. Not to mention then overclocking their CPUs and pushing their DDR4 to the bleeding edge. But I guess it's ok to run your system memory at 4000Mhz+, but if you overclock your GPU memory you are killing your video card.

Look at the RX580s and 1060s out there. A lot of them were used for the LAST crypto boom and then sold for peanuts. Now they are reselling them AGAIN for $600+ and still working fine.
 
We're heading into warmer weather now and our AC is just about to start kicking on in the next week or two. 1600 square foot house and our rate is .085/kwh. No doubt with about 1000w of extra heat being pumped into the house from running a small rig and mining on my desktop pc it is going to have an impact. The lower rate helps ease that a bit, but I wouldn't be surprised to see the electric bill bump up an extra $50/month just from increase in AC use alone.

Fans are an easy replace on cards so that is no huge deal. As far as memory speeds if you get a card that was mined with and you are having problems with artifacting at stock speeds then that thing was not mining any more when they sold it. It would've been crashing and/or submitting invalid shares to the pool and become essentially useless. IOW, you were totally ripped off with a dead card at that point. While it's true that people crank up memory overclocks for eth mining the idea is to run the memory stable and cool. GDDR6 is actually pretty easy to keep cool, at least on my big navi cards. The issue lately has been Nvidia 3000 series and GDDR6X which is more challenging.
 
Some people still have this stigma that a used undervolted mining card is somehow worse for the wear than a gaming card that was subjected to thousands of rapid hot/cold temperature cycles during its lifespan. Not to mention then overclocking their CPUs and pushing their DDR4 to the bleeding edge. But I guess it's ok to run your system memory at 4000Mhz+, but if you overclock your GPU memory you are killing your video card.

Look at the RX580s and 1060s out there. A lot of them were used for the LAST crypto boom and then sold for peanuts. Now they are reselling them AGAIN for $600+ and still working fine.
The cores on mining cards may have had easy lives, but their memory did not especially if it was heavily overclocked as miners do. Your point stands though that secondhand buyers do misunderstand and overestimate risks of buying an ex-mining card.
 
Memory junction temps on my 5700xt never push over 82c and are kept in the low to mid 70s on my big navi cards. No issue there for long term exposure to those temps. I wouldn't recommend it but there are people who have mined for years on 5700 series cards with memory junction temps in the 90s. Still going, and still submitting valid shares.
 
"Just let the fed print 4x the total of all previously printed money in history in one year and devalue your savings, your income, and cause runaway hyper-inflation. Debasing a currency harms no one because it only harms the little people! Just suck it up and don't do anything to protect yourself from being robbed." -Mystique 2021
You mad bro?

It's almost like you've never heard of platinum,gold,silver,copper or any other inflation hedge or something.

P.S. before you cry about the effort to mine those, all of those precious metals are instrumental to society (e.g. to make semiconductors) and our economy and are worth something other than hash trash.
 
The cores on mining cards may have had easy lives, but their memory did not especially if it was heavily overclocked as miners do. Your point stands though that secondhand buyers do misunderstand and overestimate risks of buying an ex-mining card.

My point was that nobody thinks twice about running 1.35V and 4000+ overclocked system RAM. Nobody even doubts that it will continue to work fine at those speeds/timings indefinitely. So why is it suddenly a problem to overclock video memory?

I think a used card is a used card. If you don't want a used card, buy a new card. A well maintained mining card could very well be a better buy than a high end gamer card depending on the owner. If you don't trust the owner of the card, don't buy their cards.

Transferrable warranties are valuable also.
 
Sadly, transferable warranties are becoming rather scarce any more.

Unfortunately, there is a segment of users who abuse the shit out of warranties which is why we can't have nice things. There was a clown, SixFootDouche or something in the Hot Deals who used to brag about how he would send it cards at the end of the 3 year warranty window with nonsense "problems" and have them give him a brand new generation card.
 
I remember when EVGA had lifetime warranties. When I was a kid that had no money, that warranty kept me in the game. I guess it sucks, but I think kirbyrj is right about abusers.
 
My point was that nobody thinks twice about running 1.35V and 4000+ overclocked system RAM. Nobody even doubts that it will continue to work fine at those speeds/timings indefinitely. So why is it suddenly a problem to overclock video memory?

I think a used card is a used card. If you don't want a used card, buy a new card. A well maintained mining card could very well be a better buy than a high end gamer card depending on the owner. If you don't trust the owner of the card, don't buy their cards.

Transferrable warranties are valuable also.
I mean I could get into why it's a problem to get an ex-mining card with heavily overclocked video memory but I won't because like I said b4, I agree with you. Video cards are made to be utilized and one should take the usual precautions one does when buying used, and if they demand 100% peace of mind then don't buy used in the first place. Easy peasy. Want a guarantee buy new. Even refurbs are not far off from buying used.
 
In all honestly I'd rather buy a card from a miner who more than likely knows how to treat a GPU properly than a negligent gamer who essentially ran his card as hot if not hotter playing games
I agree with this. Plug n play gamers that never clean dust, watch temps, etc (average gamer) vs a miner who has a vested interest in maintaining low temps, etc.

The answer to the OP: There is no way of knowing most of the time. My general rule of thumb is to assume any used card has been used for mining - it is up to you to decide if that matters.
 
"lol just waste stuff, who cares, its free money! lets just burn more coal than 3 developed countries, and get rich making useless _insert_anything_here_. If you don't subscribe to my ideology, you're just an idiot wasting potential money!"

-- people of all years ever.
That's a bit short-sighted. I'll fix it for you, though!
 
I mean I could get into why it's a problem to get an ex-mining card with heavily overclocked video memory but I won't because like I said b4, I agree with you. Video cards are made to be utilized and one should take the usual precautions one does when buying used, and if they demand 100% peace of mind then don't buy used in the first place. Easy peasy. Want a guarantee buy new. Even refurbs are not far off from buying used.
I've had mixed results buying older, used film camera Nikon photo gear. Almost all of the time, I got a good, useable product. The times I didn't, I had an expensive service bill.
 
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