© Future ImageThe AMD RX 6800 and 6900 graphics cards have been in the spotlight recently after they were damaged by a physical GPU break, and now we have a clear answer as to why.
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This comes from KrisFix on YouTube (a German hardware repair store) which has seen many AMD GPUs die with a crack in their door.
There was a lot of speculation at the time that AMD drivers might be the culprit—all owners of these graphics cards are using the latest versions—but as KrisFix explains in a new YouTube video (edited by Tom Hardware), that's the case. This is not the case. Issue.
In fact, KrisFix assumes that the problem is due to a combination of two factors: the GPU is an old crypto miner and the way it was stored before it was sold.
KrisFix says all of the trouble cards go on sale in late November or early December 2022, and are likely to come from the same source used — i.e. the crypto mining farm selling this AMD Radeon model.
So the idea is that these graphics cards are running at full capacity 24/7 on their mining operations and then stored in a warehouse that is probably in a bad environment, maybe with high humidity.
This means that when buyers upgrade, they will initially work fine on their GPU, but gaming (or other heavy workloads) will cause chip temperatures to rise due to excessive moisture damage (along with a lower clock mileage). prior to mining). . GPU is now broken. Owners may have the cards for a day or two -- maybe even three -- before they hit the pop.
All faulty graphics cards have the same damage and are generally in the same condition, coolers cleaned. (Usually a used graphics card has a bit of dust, but in this case all the cards were clean, indicating that the mining farm owner enjoyed everything before selling it).
Analysis: Using GPU-specific market risk
When we first reported this issue, we realized that the affected model might be an older mining GPU. What KrisFix is presenting here makes sense to us and explains why we haven't seen this issue anywhere else - a local mining operation has been shut down and all graphics cards (stored in the same way) are being sold to local buyers, very few. Among them, when the GPU goes bad, they turn to these repair shops to fix their problem.
So the good news is that this won't be a widespread problem for the RX 6900 and RX 6800 models, and AMD's graphics drivers aren't to blame (as KrisFix pointed out in a recent video).
Instead, this show is about the risks of buying an already broken GPU on a large mining farm, not just the workload but the environmental damage (and even post-farm storage before the cards are actually sold).
In short, there are obvious risks associated with this GPU, so buy an old graphics card for mining at your own risk. The problem is that sellers often don't disclose that the cards used are old mining stock because they know it's a turn off for a lot of people. So, to tell the truth about the graphics cards' past, you'll be in a position to trust the vendor's reputation and honesty.
All of these risks increase when the cryptocurrency falls off a cliff, as it did last year, and miners become desperate and want to sell their shares as a last resort. At times like these, the used GPU market can explode, so be careful when purchasing.