Although Nvidia and AMD have announced new generation graphics cards today, the end of mining has created a large second-hand market. In this context, miners continue to develop new methods to sell their cards. Now, two Brazilian-based Youtube channels have revealed that miners paint graphics cards to hide signs of wear on the card.Mining signs are hidden on video cards
As it is known, crypto money mining, which increased especially during the Covid-19 period, caused serious supply problems in AMD RX 5000 and Nvidia RTX 30 series graphics cards. In recent months, the popular cryptocurrency Ethereum’s transition to the Proof of Stake model has alleviated the problems experienced in the market.
Today, we cannot say that cryptocurrency mining causes negative consequences on all cards. However, a heat-induced yellow tone may occur in the memory chips of video cards that work under heavy load for long periods of time. Iskandar Souza and TecLab discovered that miners paint these memory chips to sell the cards they hold and show that they are less used.
In addition, heavy use and repair processes leave traces on other components of graphics cards. As can be seen in the photos, discoloration and scratches around the central processor show us that the card has been tampered with.It is not always correct to draw conclusions immediately after seeing a yellow tint on the video card components. However, it seems that miners will continue to come up with new methods to dispose of repaired and heavily used graphics cards. For this reason, we recommend that users who plan to buy second-hand graphics cards be careful during the control phase.
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