Cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin and Ethereum have suffered massive price losses in recent weeks. With Ethereum, this has a pleasant side effect for players: Due to the decline in value on the one hand and increased energy costs on the other hand, mining Ether coins is apparently no longer profitable. This in turn relieves the graphics card market, as the demand from the miners collapses.
RAM chips as a problem
At the same time, more and more old mining GPUs are now being sold second-hand because digging is no longer worthwhile. According to a report by Wccftech, that’s not necessarily good news for the used market. Accordingly, the corresponding graphics cards can be partially defective without you noticing.
With the GPU itself, there is apparently only a small risk, since it is hardly used for digging for ether coins. The built-in RAM, which was under heavy use throughout the mining period, is more critical. Apparently, this can mean that even graphics cards from the current generation already have to struggle with (partially) defective RAM chips.
Specifically, Wccftech reports on a user who bought a used Geforce RTX 3080 at a bargain price. The first look at GPU-Z was sobering: Although the Geforce RTX 3080 is sold with 10 or 12 GB, the corresponding model only had 8 GB of memory. Apparently, the remaining memory modules have given up their service under the intensive mining load, so that they can no longer be used.
Appropriate to the topic: Ethereum mining no longer profitable – price drop against energy costs
The fact that the graphics card still starts is apparently achieved using a method called “Memory Shielding”, for which instructions are circulating in China, for example. This allows defective RAM chips to be masked on any graphics card. A particularly thorough scammer could then also ensure that the original amount of memory is still displayed in GPU-Z.
Anyone who is currently looking for a graphics card bargain should therefore be careful when buying that they do not end up with a partially defective (mining) model. And even if a reduced amount of memory is already openly admitted, it cannot be ruled out that the RAM chips that are still working are also close to the end of their lifespan. Any offers should therefore always be checked as thoroughly as possible so that there are no nasty surprises at the end.
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