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Comment by xmprt | Hacker News Reader

Are used graphics cards worth buying or does bitcoin mining cause significant wear and damage to them?

No. Properly maintained card in a mining rig is usually in a better condition than the same card that has been used for gaming, simply because it was less often thermally stressed.

Bitcoin mining is done with ASICs, not GPUs afaik. It's other currencies like Ethereum that use GPUs. I don't know what the extent of damage is though.

Some of us are waiting for the FPGA rigs to start to flood the market so we can do other stuff with them ..... the lower BTC goes the better

I did like the comment someone made on twitter the Elon's raving causing crypto to crash had done more for the planet than all the teslas ....

A few different people have done tests to verify whether GPUs used for eth mining took any damage from doing so, and haven't managed to find any evidence that it damages the card more than regular use. Running cards under severe load nonstop for years could potentially shorten their lifespan by a tiny bit due to electromigration or wear out the fans, but that's about it.

Of course, any used GPU could be defective, so you need to be careful buying one no matter what.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hKqVvXTanzI

https://youtu.be/3WWfj7RF_z8?t=381

Ethereum is down about 80% from their all-time-high and 74% from the start of 2022. It's a massacre for the whole scene.

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