If we had been told a few years ago that we would see graphics cards in street markets, we would simply end up denying it. But this is what is happening in some parts of the world. What is the reason for this peculiar and singular situation? Will we ever see an RTX in a bag of chips?
Graphics cards are sold by weight at street markets in Vietnam
How much a kilo of Radeon, and that of GeForce? All kidding aside, it seems that surplus inventory of graphics cards we’ve never seen appear on store shelves to be used for mining is showing up in as unlikely a place as flea markets in Vietnam. And no, it is not an exaggeration, nor is it news from a satirical newspaper, the image is real and has gone around the world.
With the end of mining due to the change in the rules when it comes to mining, see Ethereum 2.0, together with the current economic situation and the rise in the price of energy throughout the world for geopolitical reasons at a global level, in the end many of these graphics cards have outlived their usefulness. The problem is aggravated when we take into account that we don’t need more than one graphics card on our PC to play, since games are not designed to use more than one.
The consequences? No one wants a part on their PC that they can’t use for anything and can’t take advantage of, although it’s true that it could be used to encode streaming in real time, either for platforms like Twitch, YouTube or to create a homemade Netflix, but We are talking about people who did not have one, without several graphics cards, rather dozens, in their mining RIGs.
GPU to play at a bargain price?
The reason why we see graphics cards in markets is due to the fact that they have not been able to sell them in another way, although a good configuration for mining sought to consume as little as possible to get the maximum performance per watt, we cannot guarantee that and there is a lot tricks that has broken a graphics card and it is possible that these do not even work.
And what’s the point of buying graphics cards that might be partially broken? Well, because if you have the right tools and knowledge you can acquire several of them and create one that works 100% and without problems from the parts of different units of the same model. Of course, this can only be done by a few, but we must tread carefully, especially in the second hand, lest we find one of these Frankengraphies.
