Why you shouldn’t buy a second-hand graphics card, no matter how cheap it is

The second-hand market is filling up with graphics cards originally purchased for cryptocurrency mining; but they may have lost 10% of their original potency.

Everything indicates that, after a break in the “fever” for cryptocurrency mining; The actions of the Chinese government have had a particular impact on this industry and as a result, many players are dumping the hardware they bought, and the used market is filling up with cheap graphics cards.

It may seem that this will be a golden period for gamers and enthusiasts, who will be able to buy the best graphics cards on the market, such as the Nvidia RTX 3080 or the AMD RX 6800, at the best price. Those are the best models for gaming at the latest with high frame rates, but they are also the best for running the computations needed to mine cryptocurrency; as a result, it is impossible to find them in stores at their RRP. In this situation, buying a cheaper second hand graphics card sounds like the most sensible option.

However, manufacturers are already warning users that this is not recommended at all. According to representatives of Palit Microsystems, in , second-hand graphics cards that have gone through cryptocurrency farms are much worse.

The company, one of the leading manufacturers of graphics cards, has conducted independent tests on cards used in mining, and they have found a 10% degradation in performance for every year of use. In other words, a high-end graphics card that’s been around for a couple of years might be just as powerful as a lower-end model.

Even without accounting for performance, the fact that these graphics cards have been running 24/7 means that the onboard fans are probably at the end of their useful life, failing during our games.

Of course, Palit is an interested party in keeping pre-owned sales from skyrocketing, and presenting this research is a clear attempt to convince users to buy new graphics cards. Graphics manufacturers have a lot to lose in this situation, after presenting the best sales data in their history, if sales suddenly plummet. However, in that the situation will not change much, and that there is enough demand among gamers to continue selling all the graphics they can make.