Buying Second-Hand GPUs Is a Good Idea, Even From Miners: LinusTechTips
Shared by LinusTechTips new video Even if the card is used for mining, it has recently shown the advantage of buying a used GPU now. The purpose of this video was to disprove the growing ideology that mining cards are a downright bad buy, and to show that mined GPUs are in as good or better condition than used gaming GPUs. .
For testing purposes, LinusTechTips purchased a large number of desirable used graphics cards for mining purposes at one point last year. Models range from AIB partner model his RTX 3060s to RTX 3080 10GB card to AMD’s Radeon RX 5700 XT GPU. All models were compared to less frequently used models owned by the LTT.
With these GPUs, LinusTechTips used Kombuster to test the GPU’s clock speed and silicon quality, and used multiple triple AAA games running at 1080P, 1440P, and 4K to test the GPU’s performance. verified. A GPU that was working 3% on the reference card was considered a defective card.
Overall, nearly all of the 19 cards passed, including all RTX 3070s, RTX 3080s, most RTX 3060s, and most RX 5700 XT GPUs in use. The only issues I had with the outlet were his two cards, the Gigabyte Eagle RTX 3060 OC and the Sapphire Pulse RX 5700 XT.
The 3060 was a complete failure, featuring incredibly low clock speeds due to temperatures over 100 degrees Celsius. Linus went so far as to test the reliability of his VRAM on the card, but it failed the test completely. The RX 5700 XT wasn’t too bad, he just failed the Kombustor test at under 3% clock speed compared to LTT’s reference RX 5700 XT model. In gaming, however, the GPU worked perfectly, showing virtually identical performance compared to all other his RX 5700 XTs tested.
LTT hasn’t explained the reason behind the clock speed issue on the Kombustor, but it could be the reduced power target for the Sapphire Pulse model. This only appeared in Kombuster, not in Game Test. This is not surprising given that the Sapphire model ran the coolest of all his RX 5700 XTs.
Aside from these two cards, all other GPUs worked fine and worked as effectively as new. Again, note that all of these GPUs were probably used by miners at some point in their lifecycle.
So, at least according to LTT’s testing, buying a used mining GPU may or may not be as risky as it seems. Still, make sure the place you got your card from has a return policy in case you run into performance issues.
There are certainly benefits to testing LTT, but be aware that the sample size is rather small. We’ve also heard first-hand counterarguments from his Nvidia partner regarding mining GPU degradation. Graphics card maker Palit claims that 24/7 mined GPUs can reduce performance by about 10% per year. We don’t have the details to support Palit’s claims, but it’s definitely something to consider.
Either way, it’s a good idea to find out as many details as possible about the graphics card you’re considering buying before you start buying. It’s impossible to know how well a used GPU was treated in its previous home, whether it was used as a mining card or not, and whether it will still perform as well as it did when it was new.
For our take on whether or not you should buy a used GPU, check out our guide here.