Used Graphics Cards

[Mambo100]

I am seeing a lot of used graphics cards of places like Ebay that are going for insanely good prices. I was wondering what your guy's recommendation would be on these graphics cards. Would they be a good choice to buy or would it be better to buy a brand new graphics card that would be worse in performance but the same price?

[Wolly9102]

4 minutes ago, Mambo100 said:

I am seeing a lot of used graphics cards of places like Ebay that are going for insanely good prices. I was wondering what your guy's recommendation would be on these graphics cards. Would they be a good choice to buy or would it be better to buy a brand new graphics card that would be worse in performance but the same price?

Better to buy new. Miners are flooding sites like E-Bay with their used stock of GPU's and they want to get rid of them fast.

[bmx6454]

a lot of them may be mining cards, which people tend to have very mixed opinions of. i personally am okay with mining cards, they are quite often taken good care of, but not guaranteed. if the seller has good feedback(and a good amount of it) i don't see it as a huge risk, especially if you buy a gpu that has a transferable warranty. if the amount saved between used-new isn't huge, i would just go with new instead.

[toasty99]

Used is good enough if you're willing to take a tiny bit of risk. I like mining GPUs. Actually, scratch that I prefer mining GPUs. 

 

I buy tons of GPUs locally then flip them on eBay and other places online. My experience over hundreds of GPUs is mining is good gaming is bad. 

 

In general, mined GPUs are taken decent care of. Personal gaming rigs? Not at all. People who mine tend to take care of their stuff and know what they are doing. End users gaming just play their games and let their cat hair, dog hair, and vape juice get all up on their gaming rigs and make things disgusting. 

[WereCat]

Should be mostly fine. You may need to flash BIOS on some cards as they may be using modified one for mining so it may not perform well in games. 

 

Watch out for cards with no video output, they exist. 

 

I wouldn't get RTX 3090 because if they were mining then the VRAM on the backside of PCB have been heavily abused.