Warning Signs When Buying Used GPUs: How to Detect Defective Video Cards

36 Comments

1. We'd love to hear more about our community's experiences with either buying used PC hardware components (GPUs, CPUs, etc.) or helping friends fix their own. There are probably a lot more shared experiences that can help other viewers of the comments section learn and protect themselves from bad purchases. Post them below!
   This video is following-up our guide on preventative maintenance, dusting, cleaning, & re-pasting video cards: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n7NMeu0QiYk
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2. Artifacting is an easy fix

3. Hello, just bought a 6900 xt recently from local (CZ) auctioning site with buyer's protection measures. In fact was looking for 6800 xt, but after finding out there is a coil whine seller was more than generous to exchange the card with mentioned 6900 xt for free (even had no issues with the fact that I would keep them both for test comparison). In the end, the 6900 xt was in better shape so I kept it and it works 100%.

4. Really good advice, thank you. Bought a 1080 a year ago and been perfect ever since. Guess I got lucky. Some protection buying on ebay,at least and use paypal for same reason.

5. I bought a GTX 1060 6GB used for mining and I have stutter in some games, but I also think it's my processor (core i7-2600), I don't know…

6. $700 for a 580??? 🤦🏽 If he had patients, you could now buy one for $65. If you have no patients, then you're bound to get duped. He could buy 4x 5700xt now for $700.🤦🏽

7. Linus beef existed way before boys😂 11:50

8. Bought a few used GPU's, the human element is the first second and third thing I comb through every time. I avoid anything that that says "ships from China", anyone with bad reviews claiming they were scammed (circumstantial), and check their history, if they have even a recent history of just selling random computer parts it helps. Lots of context clues that help before even looking at all the pictures of whatever you're buying.

9. When I resell a card, if it is two years old, I take 25% off the MSRP (at the time of purchase) AFTER I clean it up, replace the pads and thermal paste. If I don't do that, 35% off. If the card is 4 years old, 45% off MSRP, 55% if I don't "refurb" it. If it is older, flat 75% and I might feel spending the time before sale depending on my mood. Every time I have my listings, I describe all I did to clean it, what kinds of games played on it to give an idea of heat stress and pictures with full metadata and timestamp. I've done this for well over 10 years and I try to give the person considering buying form me some confidence.
   I am building a new computer at the end of this week as the one I have is 8 years old. I am not sure if I will be reselling the old RX 580 I have. It was one of the better MSI X versions, and I don't have any of the original packaging (that was another "selling point" I had on ebay) due to moving unexpectedly and having to trash it. If I do, it may be "as is" since it is so old, and people are still buying it.

10. RX 580 8GB 2048 SP

11. you forgot to mention that if you can take apart the card – look for burn/solder marks
    a common failure in older video cards is chip fall off, and the only fix is resoldering it, but that fix usually doesn't last very long so you gotta watch out for that

12. Jesus. I paid $180 for my rx580

13. $700 for a 580 hahahahahahahaha that's so funny that he got scammed also 😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂 what an idiot LMFOAOAOAOAOAOAOA

14. I'm late but would my card be considered bad/going bad? Bought a used 3080ti for $750 from a local guy who says he got it second-hand for his build but never managed to complete it.

    It runs fine from the looks of it aside for one issue, the mobo fails to detect it through the display ports on startup (white vga light on the mobo), just shows a black screen with no splash logo so i can't get into the bios unless i plug into the Hdmi port or the mobo for cpu i-gpu.

    It does however make it to the windows log in screen after showing the black screen for a few seconds and runs games just fine, even checked gpu-z and the card seemed legit.

    I took my whole set-up to a pc building shop and they didn't really tell me much other than what i found out myself.

    Should i try to RMA it since it's still within warranty? (EVGA) or is it something i can fix?
    Is it just going bad? Wut do now?

15. I got mine refurbished , rebuilt through a tech company for 100 bucks less than a new one . Works great looks new .

16. Look carefully at their ad. Does it seem sketchy? Is the picture of a stock image, and not their own item? Does it say, No returns, or Untested? Is their contact email a gibberish throwaway account name? Does Google maps indicate odd seller location? Any one of these could be signs to hold your money and run like hell.

17. hi i have a rule of thumb when buying second hands on the internet :
    i always buy on reputable site that do have history of the buyer and the buyer has my history too (like ebay rakuten etc)
    for example i bought a 3090 second hand, first one was cheap but new vendor etc no way.. second one the seller sells regularly since 2005 and has good marks etc so why not , furthermore rakuten gives the money once i declare it received and in good shape

18. 11:45 Cracked me up when he said that the dented GBU bracket looks like it must have been handled by Linus. 😄

19. I guess I got lucky buying a used RTX 3060 from eBay, won it in an auction for about $249 plus shipping. Aside from a few mildly dented heatsinks it works just fine as intended and hasn't given me any problems at all.

20. I bought 1 year old asus 3070 ti from local shop, and it has still 2 years warranty. I tested the card before I paid for it. Ran Furmark software to check benchmarks, it was giving more than 160fps and temperature at 60-65%. It was in good condition like new totally clean. So I suggest you find local store to buy a used graphics card which has been used not more than 1 year.

21. I bought a used card for $50 off and then literally a week later the price of the card dropped to about $70 cheaper new

22. 2:13 do not do that you’re scratching the shit out of the heatsink

23. Used GPU,s aren't always bad just try not to get something that's too low quality. There core clock is a bit lower GHz.

24. Tip: save up and buy brand new

    I bought a gtx 1070 and 1080 about roughly two years before the whole mining covid bullshit but wont trust any used computer item anymore

    The two cards are still running strong though

25. For artifacting reflow the vRAM components and it usually goes away – there are many ways to accomplish it – better with reflow station of course – ideally preheat the pcb

26. 11:43 YO THAT WAS FUNNY

27. Watching this AFTER I already bought a used card lmao. 🤡

28. I bought a 3070 for $270 and its the bomb

29. I'm working with xfx atm on and RMA for my xfx6900xt. Turns out my card was fine it was the monitor that was having issues. They tested it, told me it was fine then replaced it and the gpu they sent me a dead gpu… I followed up to be sure no other issues by buying and testing with a 3070ti and a sapphire 6900xt. Now they won't respond or at least they are taking days to respond… they tried blaming me and the shipping. Xfx also explained that shipping the card is on me for about 50-100 bucks to send back each time. Because there would be no way they would do that ofcourse. 😅 can't even trust big companies to do what's right… looking for help.

30. Iv purchase all kinds of stuff on ebay. The biggest thing is to make sure they accept returns and have good ratings. If they don't accept returns I don't even consider giving them my money. My one and only bad experience is when I paid for a 1 terabyte hdd and received a 80gb hdd lol. But it did have win10 on it as described. I only paid like 20$ so I didn't even bother with a return or anything. Maybe some day I'll use it for something. But not likely because it's only 80gb! Lmao.

31. 11:45 perfect example 👌

32. my gtx1070ti stop working days ago so iv order a EVGA GTX 1080Ti FTW3 i mean untill i see a real price drop the thing is they need use more then we need them..

33. Greasy spots on the back of the PCB where the mem chips are – indicator the card has mined. ETH mining esp works out the mem chips a lot – they heat up and the crapy original thermal pads give out this greasy fluid which soaks the PCB so much that it can't really be cleaned with alcohol. Yes, this can happen with time with gaming, but 1st gaming would not heat up so much mem chips, second avarage gamer would use the card a lot more rare than 24/7. Often this can be spotted without taking apart the card. BTW replaced pads with higher grade ones also 99% indicates mining. A gamer would usually not run into mem chips overheating issue to bother changing them. In fact most cards dont even have mem chip temp sensor. changed thermal pads can also be seen from the side without taking the card apart (with some degree of certainty)

    Still in times of crypto bear market I believe it is unjustified to buy a new card given the huge price reduction there is in the second hand market. you can get same performance with 50% or less of the money. So despite the risks I believe most sellers are actually honest and correct (most ppl realize the long term benefits of being honest) so yeah – go for a second hand! 🙂

34. the linus burn😂

35. Hi, thank you for the video, Where do you buy the retention clip?

36. How did the gpu 3080 got 1950hz there?

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