Miners start mass sales of graphics cards. Does buying make sense?

The source of the hardware used are both conventional miners and Asian internet café operators, who had no visitors during the covid restrictions and decided to compensate for the lost profits with mining. The used GeForce RTX 3060 Ti can be obtained from them in terms of between $ 300 and $ 400, which is usually below the recommended price ($ 399), for which the card was practically never sold.

Users approach these offers differently. One group sees in them a way to get a graphics card at a better price (however, some of them still advise to wait for better prices). The second group, on the other hand, encourages bidding to be ignored. The reasons are different. Some users point out that it was the cryptocurrency miners that distorted the market and that buying cards at prices just slightly below the recommended amounts is actually supported by users in this activity. Other users see the purchase of these cards as an obligatory hare in a sack.

Although some miners could operate the cards sparingly, given energy prices below the factory TDP level (undervoltage or underclocked), others did not have to. Those who had experience from previous waves (when any amount of extracted cryptocurrency with the increase in Bitcoin prices multiplied the value) simply did not have to build their “business model” on energy efficiency, but on trying to obtain the largest possible volume of cryptocurrency with the prospect of increasing its value (as turned out is secondary in this respect). If the user does not know the exact fate of the card he is buying, he is taking a significant risk.

Another fact is that if it is confirmed that the mainstream of the next generation will offer the performance of the current high-end for up to $ 500 (and with a two-year warranty), then retrospectively it will seem to buy a card with performance around GeForce RTX 3060 Ti for ≤ $ 400 (virtually no warranty). ) as considerably disadvantageous.

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