If a graphics card is very cheap in AliExpress, beware...and many

For some time they appeared graphics cards on AliExpress, regardless of the model and the brand, which are a bit particular because they are very cheap. They have become very popular among users with smaller economies and are particularly popular in Asian and Latin American markets, but they could make the jump to Europe in a short time, especially due to the crisis. His particuliarity ? They have an M at the end of their name, but they are not standard models, but graphics cards suitable for laptops. Is it worth buying them or should you run away from them?

down brands of Chinese origin, but unknown to us JieShou or Soyo we can find less strange versions called AMD RX 6600M, NVIDIA RTX 3060M or RTX 3070M. If you search through the partners of NVIDIA and AMD, you will find that these marks do not appear anywhere, so they may seem suspicious at first glance. Reality? These companies aren’t lying, these are the graphics cards that these AMD and NVIDIA GPUs have, but the big difference is that these are converted laptop models.

What about AliExpress graphics cards?

You have to start with the graphics cards from AliExpress are real laptop models that have been converted. Let’s not forget that just like their desktop counterparts communicate with the PCI Express interface of the processor, the difference is that since they are on the same PCB, there is no socket in the middle to plug the card in and they are wired directly through the board itself. Well, laptop models run at much lower voltages and reduced speeds. Let’s not forget that 150 W is already considered excessive for a laptop graphics card.

In fact, they are the same chips that are used for desktop computers, but without being accompanied by a complex cooling system and firmware or graphics BIOS designed to run on a laptop. By using the PCIe interface and selling both the GPU and video memory in a single block, it’s easy to strip them out and build a graphics card around them.

His origin?

Well, from tgraphics cards for mining RIGs, in which, to obtain the best return per watt, they end up reducing their consumption. So we’re not talking about overloading your GPU and video memory. Simply, that with the switch to Ethereum 2.0, they ceased to be useful.

And why were laptops used? Well due to the fact that in the case of NVIDIA these were not covered by LHR in their day

. That is to say, the official board assemblers and makers who did business behind the scenes with the miner issue didn’t come up with the desktop chips that had disabled mining, but smartly the computer ones. laptops. In other words, they sacrificed gaming laptop sales in exchange for temporarily making more money from miners.

Is it worth buying graphics cards from AliExpress

With the price of graphics cards exploding, it is normal that the opportunity to launch these products on the market arises. In any case, their low price is due to the fact that the materials to build them were obtained at very low prices. This allows them to skyrocket prices and are, therefore, sweet candy for less buoyant economies. In any case, we are not the ones telling you how you should configure your PC and how to spend your money, we are simply here to inform you about what these AliExpress graphics cards really are.

So why should we be suspicious?

No, it’s not because they can be burned, which they are not. Believe that they have worked in optimal conditions to operate 24/7. However, don’t think that by buying an RTX 3070M you get an RTX 3070 at a bargain price. Otherwise, you are paying for an inferior product because the model they sell keeps the laptop clocks. And this is where the real problem begins.

on laptops there are infinite variations of each model, for the simple fact that the laptop manufacturer can touch the settings of the GPU when mounting it in their laptop thanks to certain tools that NVIDIA and AMD provide to their partners. So, you can find models with a 3070 on the laptop market that perform like a 3060M or worse from having a cut TDP. If we start from the fact that these graphics card assemblers buy the models wholesale, we can see that from the same batch and the same model there are disparate returns.

The other problem of AliExpress graphics cards is after-sales service. On the issue of drivers, it’s a bit complicated, because while AMD uses common drivers for laptop and desktop GPUs, NVIDIA does not. This will therefore have to be taken into account. Although the biggest issue is the warranty. They are not partners with GPU manufacturers and so if there is a driver issue with certain models, they won’t bother to fix it.