It’s no secret that miners tend to sell graphics cards they no longer need and pretend they’re almost new, or at least never used for mining. There have been reports of miners power washing numerous GPUs in the past. But recently, these vendors seem to have found a new way to trick gamers who want high-performance, affordable graphics cards. As reported by Iskandar Susa When tech lab.
There are many ways to indicate that your graphics card is not new. Dust accumulation, worn warranty stickers, scratches, oxidation of contacts, and minor changes in PCB color are to be expected on cards that have been in use for months or years. The slightly darker GPU board and yellowish markings on the memory chips also indicate that the card has been in use for a long time. The latter is what some miners are currently trying to hide.
Missing screws and missing warranty stickers are also clear signs that the GPU has been tampered with. In some cases this could be the result of using a 3rd party cooling system and then switching to a stock cooling system, but most of the time these are due to the board being used for mining and then cleaning up. It indicates that it was opened for Change the thermal pad. /paste etc.
Apparently, there are other reasons for removing the cooling system and then reinstalling it. For resoldering dead GPUs or memory chips, and for painting memory chips to make them look newer than they really are.
Graphics processors that have been around for a while tend to discolor (or discolor the epoxy) due to high temperatures. When GPUs are used for mining and exposed to high temperatures for long periods of time, their colors tend to darken significantly.
Painting a GPU board is a lot of work, and no one seems to have done it yet. However, the markings on memory chips tend to have a yellowish color after extended use due to being overheated or soldered in a repair shop. To hide this, some miners are reported to have given their DRAM ICs a special coloring, but according to reports, this coloring is easily done to reveal the chip’s true color. can be removed.
Re-soldering expensive components is something even an official repair facility does. So, for example, if you bought a refurbished graphics card, it may come with a resoldered GPU or GDDR SGRAM chip. However, graphics card manufacturers and repair shops usually don’t repaint memory ICs to hide that they are not new.
Either way, buying one of the best used graphics cards at a decent discount may sound like an attractive deal. But apparently, miners are adopting new tactics to make high-use products look less used or as good as new. So be extra careful when buying a recently used graphics card. Because years of wear and tear can be hiding just under the paintwork, which is the only thing truly new on the card.
