Topic: Gamers beware: miners are now painting GPU memory (Read 349 times)

There are a lot of offers of such video cards on Aliexpress, I even met lots for $50, but apparently the price is different for each country.
https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005005196592806.html
I think that there are a lot of used chips for similar video cards, so for a poor gamer a good video card in the price range of 50-70 dollars.

I do think they can still find profit even from reballing the whole card instead of just 1 or 2 faulty memory. It's because of perspective where we think they do it from a small kind of shop with little tooling. But what about at the industry level with a lot of BGA machines and scale-up processes? I think they can do it much faster, with high precision as well. Once old junks rebrand as new, it may be worth it after all since they got the memory and GPUs for dirt cheap price. All you need is the same pcb with the same memory layout -> all hard work can easily turn into automated.

I must of misunderstood your post. I assumed you meant that they recycled all the memory chips from old GDDR5 GPUs and ended up using those in some newer GPUs as rebranded chinese ones. What you are saying makes perfect sense.

Basically if only 1 memory chip is faulty and you can still sell the GPU for >$100 then its worth the labor to just replace that 1 memory chip. Probably will take less than an hour from start to finish. I had an old old Bitcoin SHA256 ASIC called the Jupiter (or Saturn) ASIC. This was back in 2014-2015 and I had many of the VRMs die on some units and I basically removed the dead ones and took working ones from other boards. Since I was only replacing 1 VRM instead of all of them it was worth while.

Yes, they do. The GDDR5 memory is dirt cheap so it might not be worth the hassle of replacing all of them. Cost and labor work to replace all of the memory chips isn't rewarding so sometimes, people sold a faulty VGA with GDDR5 memory for 10 bucks. Usually, if you got like 1 or 2 faulty GDDR5 memory, replacing 1 or 2 is right up everyone's alley.

It isn't like they need to reballing all of the memory. They just took the faulty VGAs with a few bad memory and replace them with the recycled memory that they got from other VGAs. Basically, the frankenstein VGA, you see. Some are greedy enough to retouch the PCB so it looks new and sold it with the tag as a brand-new product. GDDR6/X is now where this process is profitable while GDDR5 is less so. Thanks to the crypto mining boon back in the heyday leading to the massive amount of GDDR5 flooring the market, so you're half-right on your assessment.

I'm from Vietnam so local reviews cover something that is very obscure and questionable Chinese products that you won't see anywhere. A bunch of dudes found something very cheap but questionable quality/price, a dude with technical background brought it first and broke it down, testing to see what was inside them and telling the other if it was worth the price/performance for social creed. We've some really old bb forums that took root from overclocking and PC hardware since 2006. Also, some VGA is at the end of product life so I doubt if you could find a truly new analogue for that VGAs (1060, 580,...)

I have heard many times that it is better not to reball the memory, and it will work worse due to possible overheating during installation. But when repairing video cards, the masters change one memory module several times, and the video card continues to work for a year or more.

Do they really recycle the old memory chips? If you take a GPU it usually has about 8 memory chips. And its very easy to remove these chips if you have the right equipment. Heat it up for a minute or two and remove it with a suction pen. The pain will come right after.

Its very difficult and time consuming to take off the old solder and then you need to carefully apply the balls on the solder joint, you use a stencil to do this. Again this is doable however doing 8 chips will take 30-60 minutes depending on skill level. If this was reballing some GPU chip for a product worth $500 it would be worth it, but to go thru this hassle of reusing the memory chips just sounds crazy.

What reviews are you talking about? The Chinese sell video cards after repair at 2 times cheaper, and these video cards work for at least 6-12 months in general. Delivery to Russia from China takes several weeks, so many people buy video cards there for 50-70 dollars.
In the store, a new analogue costs $ 220 minimum.

With the massive semi conductor chip shortage such business practices are expected and not ending any time soon , but not were such is done and sold as brand new instead of refurbished is dishonest trading, probably stealing to a large extent!

Several youtube computer geeks like "linus tech tips "have done speed tests and teardown to see what these GPUs, SSDs are made of and what you said was true as they are mostly knockoffs with a 50/50 chance of working .

People who are privileged to know this information know what to look out for, but who will tell & protect the first time buyers with no knowledge of these refurbishing practices of chip's and what not...

Recycling old memory chips has been a trade for China's brands for a while. Not just GPU memory but also others like RAM, and NAND flash memory,... You may not know, but some China NVMe SSD also uses shitty or low-yield NAND or even recycled NAND from used SSDs. The same for some questionable Chinese RAM brands like Kingfast or Kingspec (copycat of Kingston name).
Dead VGA cards with untouched VRAM could still fetch a good price even if it not working or are completely dead (ten bucks for RX 470/570 model with 8GB last I check). To be honest, it was very eco to make use of everything even the old and busted memory of all kinds. Still, advertising it as a brand-new product is dishonest. My advice: don't take anything from China's market at the face value, check reviews from many other customers or broke-down, disassemble reviews like OP mentioned.

No need to bring on the console vs PC war on this topic. Consoles have traits on their own, I agree with that. But for anyone who wants to tinker with their PC, wants to have more options, or might just simply want their gaming experience at both low heat and silent, PC is where you have every tool to tune for your needs.

The rx480 graphics cards were indestructible and they work great 6 years after mining. This works at high temperatures up to 90 degrees on video cards with a faulty cooling system without gas. But not all video cards are like that.
Even now the local market has very good prices, and I would take new video cards.

I dont mind if they are painted or not.i have couple of rx480s from china they still working bought in 2019.yes condition was dead very bad. Very dirty.pads were hard as steel,fans are gone but after good care they working well.if it very very cheap i go to risk.i wish i could order gpus from china again like old good days

You can find scams everywhere where the price is cheap, such as selling cheap cars at auctions in the US, where people can check the car only after purchase. In China, there are new and used good video cards with a guarantee, but not everyone is satisfied with a 10-20% discount.

No you are  wrong, what I am asking to Bitmain is to respect the delays they gave when they signed a sale order with someone, and to tell "used" instead of "new /  never used" when the miner is used. I don't care what they are supposed to do in some theories, in the real world when they sell miners, it means that they earn profit from the sell, otherwise they wouldn't propose it to the people. So they just have to respect the deal, like it's supposed to be in absolutely every commercial deal.


"Asking them to give free money" : FREE MONEY ? Are serious ?
You mean I don't pay for electricity ? I don't pay neither for parts, or the building I bought to use them ? I don't pay my ASICs ? Is my time spent to do maintenance and to manage the ASICs worthless ?
Where is the free money ? Do you think that I am a 14 yo person who never organized a mining setup ? 

Telling me that I am asking from Bitmain for free money is totally crazy.


It depends, maybe for you that's fine. Each situation is different, each country has his own kw/h rate, people have different skills, different opportunities to buy and host hardware..

For me, mining was and is still more than profitable, so if I just bought coins instead of my mining equipment, I would not have earn as much as with mining (around 2 times less). Even with the current difficulty, you can still be profitable if your electricity rate is not too violent.

Isn't that natural?

When miners make money, everybody wants to mine. Bitmain is manufacturing miners but even they don't have infinite resources to feed this black hole. When everybody wants to mine, the demand is infinite but the resources to make miners is finite. Naturally, most people that want free money won't get it.

If you look at this from Bitmain's perspective, they shouldn't be selling their miners at all. Would you sell your miners if you were bitmain? Nope. You would mine with them and hopefully that's what they do.

Think about a second what you are exactly asking from bitmain now. Basically you are asking them to give you free money. Yes it all boils down to "Bitmain, y u no gimme money?"

For these reasons, I always recommend people to buy crypto instead of mining. Mining isn't worth the trouble you are getting.

This is another reason why I believe gaming on a console is so much cheaper than PC gaming without having to worry about low fps and whatnot...now imagine having to invest in a GPU just to get better video memory or fps with lots of money for a used item that can die any time... and also the worst part about buying these products is that they are not covered by a warranty if you will be importing them from some other part of the world, in a nutshell, some bad business practice from our Chinese friends to be honest needs not to be supported.

I recently chose an SSD for one of my PCs.
I had a month or two before I had to replace my old hard drive and wanted to order from China. I chose the SSD manufacturer KingSpec. Good reviews. Then I looked at its price in a large store in my city and found that the price was a few dollars cheaper and 3 years warranty. A very interesting statistic is that 25% of my SSDs break before 3 years, and I get a refund.

Basically if somebody like my Dad bought a GPU he would of never known. My Dad is cheap and buys everything from Alibaba and he never uses it. He would of just either bought it and left it unpacked for years, or would install it, see that it works and just never play games on it. Its these types of people that buy these types of GPUs and why the sellers get away with it.

People see that you can get a $500 GPU for only $250 and they think its a steal, they buy it and never know. Most gamers would never pay $250 for a GPU that is suppose to be $500 because they know its common sense that its way too cheap and something is wrong. Its the same with WISH dot COM, they also sell these fake products and they do it because nobody actually uses the product, they just buy it for the sake of buying it.

You know how many SD cards my dad bought from Alibaba and WISH dot COM. Probably dozens. They were all like 32GB. And he tested them out and they worked because he took a photo or two. However if you took 100 photos, you would get data corruption because its really a 1GB SDCARD. And by the time you realise you were scammed you cant make a claim and get your money back.

Hence its why they keep selling these junk electronics.

I have miners who bring equipment from China, but they have their own representative there who checks each equipment. If you do not check, then there is a very high chance of being deceived. But the cost of delivery and the cost of customs makes the delivery of equipment profitable not to all countries.

Bitmain is even worse, they make pre-sales, and hold + use the Antminer, only to ship them once the market collapses. What they did with the L7s was quite a caricature.. I have never ordered directly from them, their reputation is too bad for me. I prefer to have a trusted intermediary who deals with them, and who also avoids me astronomical minimum orders...

I had never wondered about GPUs, it's quite interesting. I've been trying to find some numbers or articles to get an idea on a global worldwide scale, to see how widespread this bad practice is. I can only find a few sources that talk about some Chinese suppliers, but one can imagine that the Chinese are not the only ones to do this kind of trickery... In the end, it's better to buy a guaranteed refurbished product than a  ‘‘too good to be true price’’ in China.

At least they can't lie too much about the used Antminers 
When they arrive from China full of dirt and dust, it takes away all the mystery 

That’s pretty shady. Intentionally trying to sell a GPU as a different GPU is on another level. You pretty much have to assume that GPUs bought from China for below MSRP are going to be used no matter what they claim. It’s like when ordering antminers from Bitmain. They say that they’re new but a close inspection will tell a different story as some parts are caked in dust.

I am not surprised. They have been doing this for years.

In the past a buddy of mine bought some R9 290 GPU on alibaba because it was "super cheap". It arrived and looked legit. Had a box labelled r9 290 and everything. However upon installation it was something like an R9 270. He complained and got a refund.

They do this because they know that most experienced gamers won't be buying any china brand GPUs. They do this because they hope that some newbie buys this and doesn't notice its a generation lower than displaced and since it still works in games, they don't complain.

I don't buy video cards from China, because in my country I can buy 3000 series video cards for the same price with a remaining warranty period of 1.5 years or more. But I will never look at the memory color of a purchased video card immediately after purchase. And after 1-2 years of mining, it will not matter.

Crypto miners are painting graphics card memory to sell them as new
An investigation from YouTuber Iskandar Souza and computer technician Paulo Gomes has shown that graphics card sellers on Chinese retail platforms are not truthful about selling ‘new’ graphics cards.
https://videocardz.com/newz/gamers-beware-miners-are-now-painting-gpu-memory-to-make-them-look-as-new