As we again reach the point where cryptocurrency mining using GPUs stops delivering an acceptable return on investment, a deluge of used graphics cards is landing on the second-hand market. Depending on the card and the miner, some of these might be in great shape; others might be covered in dust and run at higher temperatures than normal, leading to reduced performance.
Or perhaps you’re simply the owner of a card that’s been kicking around for a couple of years. If you’ve had it in your PC for a while and haven’t bothered to give it a thorough clean, it might be running hotter and louder than when it was new.
Whatever the source, any used graphics card can benefit from routine maintenance. More importantly, Nvidia’s RTX 30-series cards that come equipped with GDDR6X memory often run it at uncomfortably high temperatures, hitting 100°C or more even when gaming—and reaching 110°C and throttling performance when mining Ethereum and other memory-intensive coins.
We’ve managed to get our hands on some used RTX 30-series cards that have been used for mining, and we’ve checked performance and thermals before and after replacing the thermal pads and thermal paste. The improvements on every card were substantial and well worth considering if you have a graphics card that’s running on the toasty side. –JARRED WALTON
START WITH A THOROUGH CLEAN
We apologize if some of the images you’ll see here offend your eyes. We love fast hardware, and we know that routine maintenance of our PCs is important to keep everything running smoothly. Not everyone knows how to care for their PC hardware, though, whether mining or gaming, just as not everyone takes proper care of their automobile. It doesn’t help that there’s no “Check Engine” light that kicks on every few months to remind you that it’s a good time to dust out your PC.
A friend, who shall remain nameless, started mining cryptocurrencies in late 2020 and managed to acquire a variety of cards over the past 18 months. We’re not here to judge (very much), but the opportunity to test and service some of the cards was too good to pass up. After looking at the small mining farm, we selected four of the worst-performing GPUs to see what sort of gains could be had via a proper clean and refurbishment of the cooling hardware. We chose two RTX 3080 cards and two RTX 3090 models: a Founders Edition for each GPU, then a Gigabyte Vision, and an Asus TUF Gaming.
All four GPUs were, as our friend put it, “underperforming” when it came to Ethereum mining, and the cause was obvious. Memory temperatures were at 110°C,
