Anyone who buys used hardware is sometimes surprised when unpacking it. This is probably how the new owner of an RTX graphics card from Nvidia felt (via Mein-MMO). He bought it through Facebook and found that there was an unusual attachment on the back.
The solution to the riddle is easy to spot for a little more practiced PC hardware eyes and the background is not surprising. After all, a presumably not to be underestimated number of graphics cards on the used market come from cryptocurrency mining systems.
But let’s take a look at the graphics card and the attachment in the following photo:
A cooling solution that gamers mostly don’t need
The structure of the graphics card and the position of the power connector make it recognizable as a Founders Edition of the Geforce RTX 3060 Ti or RTX 3070. The grid-shaped attachment on the back is most likely a passive cooling construction that is supposed to help dissipate the waste heat that is produced.
While this is usually not necessary in gaming PCs or makes no relevant difference, such attachments are quite popular with mining hardware. Above all, the graphics memory is required here and every degree less can mean a larger gain.
Many Founders Editions from Nvidia have a fan on both sides of the GPU, so that the back of the board is also actively cooled. This does not apply to the Founders Edition of the RTX 3060 Ti/RTX 3070, as you can see in the picture of the original back at the beginning of this article.
Ultimately, the attachment of the used graphics card is a slight improvement in cooling. This shouldn’t make any relevant difference in gaming use, but the attachment doesn’t hurt either.
The power cable seen in the photo, on the other hand, makes a less good impression. However, the picture is not particularly high-resolution, which makes a more precise assessment difficult.
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Should you rather keep your hands off such a mining card?
There is nothing fundamentally wrong with buying a graphics card that was probably used for mining. Ultimately, however, there is always a certain risk when buying a used GPU, since you do not know for sure how long it has been used and how well it has been treated. In our experience, however, GPUs are quite robust and can often still be used without errors even after longer, high loads.
Above all, it is crucial that you make sure that the price is fair and that the structure of the offer looks as serious as possible when comparing on portals such as Ebay or similar sites. All important information such as the date of purchase and the previous purpose of the graphics card and, ideally, several photos should be available.
If you are not sure how fast an older GPU is compared to current models, we recommend you take a look at our large comparison overview with over 70 graphics cards under the following link:
Graphics cards 2023 in comparison: Over 70 GPUs in the large performance ranking
Would you buy a used graphics card if it had such an attachment? Or do you prefer to avoid GPUs, which were probably used for mining? Feel free to write it in the comments!
