Video Card Craziness(Pricing)

[bunnspecial]

Last year, when the COVID craziness hit, I decided to build a "gaming" computer. I kind of overdid it and used a Dell workstation class computer I had lying around(dual Xeon CPUs of the same generation as my Mac Pro 5,1, and in fact it got hand-me-down CPUs and RAM from upgrading that computer then ended up with dual quad core 3.66ghz).

Of course a gaming computer needs a good video card, and I paid a friend $200 for a gently used Nvidia GTX 1070 Founder's Edition, a card that at the time was a generation old and the "second tier" card in the 10xx line-up(after the 1080). It was still a good card and more than enough for me even though it was a bit dated.

In the last few months, cryptocurrency has gone nuts. Bitcoin and others are primarily "mined" using GPUs, and when cryptocurrencies go high, mining becomes lucrative.

Lately, that has made the latest and greatest AMD and NVidia GPUs basically unobtainable.

Consequently, guys looking just to build a gaming machine are looking to older but still capable cards.

I missed the peak by a bit, but I listed my 1070 on Facebook Marketplace yesterday morning. I fielded inquiries and offers all day, but last night came to a deal with someone for $300. Had I sold it a month earlier, it probably would have been an easy $400.

Not too bad of a return on investment for getting a bit of use out of a card for a year and then turning around and selling it...

I don't have the time or space to set up this computer now, but once prices return to sane levels I'll likely toss a better card in this computer and call it a day.

 

[xgmad]

yes a little dated, but im running a 1050ti which is UNBELIEVABLY AWESOME!

 

[MRC01]

The GTX 1050 in my Ubuntu desktop has been working great for years. But it only has 2 GB VRAM and some of the new airplanes on XPlane require 4 GB. So I looked around for reasonable replacements. The RTX 2060 looks like the best value / performance, with 4 GB VRAM and 2-4 times faster performance. But pricing is insane right now, well above retail if you can get it at all. So, I'll wait... the 1050 is working and if it ain't broke don't fix it.

 

[daves87rs]

Wanted to get a gaming computer…..

 

[Propflux01]

Wow, my stuffs getting seriously old. While I don’t game, when I built my computer in 2014, I used a GeForce GTX 650 2GB card for the video. Seems to still work good for editing my GoPro files and such, but the pricing does put me off of upgrading the computer for awhile it seems. Hope it holds together a bit longer.

 

[BMWTurboDzl]

1060 GTX 6GB bought in 2018 or 2019.

GPU prices have been ridiculous for at least 5 yrs due to the influence of crypto mining and more sophisticated buying techniques.

Basically there are entities on the internet who have software which enables them to buy up the majority of the GPU's as they go on sale which they then resell at a profit. It's why on Cyber Monday's the GPU's are sold out in about 2 minutes.

 

[BeerCan]

Man I have probably 6 1080/1080ti and a few 1070's time to sell

 

[redhat]

Hear ya, I was fortunate enough to get an MSI GeForce GTX 1660Ti on launch day. I have that in a system with a Ryzen 5 2600X, B450M mobo.

I am not getting rid of this anytime soon.

 

[SwampSurvivor]

Yeah it's a tough market. We were able to get a RTX3080 machine earlier this year after a few places fell through. Between everyone being stuck at home and the cryptominers .... its' a hard market.

But I believe NY will be making crypto mining illegal because it's a waste of natural resources or something along those lines.

 

[Brons2]

But I believe NY will be making crypto mining illegal because it's a waste of natural resources or something along those lines.

Will be found unconstitutional because only the feds can regulate interstate commerce, IMO. Besides it's pretty much unenforceable.

 

[bunnspecial]

The big cryptomining operations are pretty discreet(they can just look like a normal data center but with huge power bills both from the computers and the HVAC) and it's my impression that they tend to operate in places with inexpensive electricity.

Not sure how New York fares in that regard-I could see it being cheap at least in the northern part of the state thanks to all the hydro from Niagra Falls, but then I legitimately don't know.

At one point, there were some big mining operations in Eastern Kentucky. They can operate under the radar in the middle of nowhere, and that region in particular has cheap power from the prevailing economic climate, plentiful coal, and also plenty of hydro thanks to the TVA.

 

[JustinH]

bought a pallet of dell servers and precision workstations, refurbed them and sold them all for a nice profit within a month. All crypto miner buyers who paid cash.

 

[dogememe]

Yeah, it's nuts now. I sold my got-for-free-a-while-back GTX 780 for $200. And a GTX960 I bought as part of a used whole build for $100 for $100 and so basically a free computer and had I kept it a few months longer could have got almost $200 for that as well.

I daily an i7-6700/32GB RAM/GTX 1050 I got for free as my primary/gaming PC. Good enough for mild gaming on a single 1080P 60Hz monitor. I want to do a triple monitor setup again soon but will have to wait on that so I get a better GPU first. Pre-built gaming PCs from major OEMs are the only way to get a reasonable price on a new gaming PC right now unfortunately. But the older stuff is fine too. An i7-6700 is still fine for most anything reasonable.

 

[Brons2]

I have a Precision T5500 workstation I haven't turned on in a few months, has 2x quad core Xeons, maybe should put it to work cryptomining.

 

[bdcardinal]

I needed a new PC for work in January after my Acer Predator I had been using since 2013 decided to no longer to be with us. Of course I realized this on a Sunday afternoon. The options near me are fairly limited and my PC at home uses an obscenely huge Corsair case so that wouldn't work. I ended up with an Alienware Aurora A11 (?) from Best Buy. I probably paid too much, but it was the only PC they had with out of the box dual monitor support.

 

[bunnspecial]

I have a Precision T5500 workstation I haven't turned on in a few months, has 2x quad core Xeons, maybe should put it to work cryptomining.

The T5500 is-I think-what I used for the gaming build I mentioned in the OP.

To be honest, what I know of mining is that you'd be wasting a lot of electricity for not much result these days. The dedicated mining boxes tend to have simple low-power CPUs and a couple of GPUs shoved in one box. GPU mining is a LOT more efficient that on a CPU to the point that I don't know that anyone does CPU mining anymore.

From what I remember when I researched this, the PSU in the T5500 is fine with something like a single GTX 1070 or equivalent, but it might be pushing things to even go up to a GTX 1080. Some of these cards need serious power to run them.

 

[JustinH]

Yep I refurbished a bunch of T5500's and T7910's. They are absolute workhorses. I run dual xeon processor and a RAID 10 Flash array, and a NVME boot drive on my T7910. I don't mine I use it for virtualization, home lab, and home prod stuff. My T7910 is pretty efficient, my UPS reports it using about 150 watts continuously.

 

[dogememe]

Yep I refurbished a bunch of T5500's and T7910's. They are absolute workhorses. I run dual xeon processor and a RAID 10 Flash array, and a NVME boot drive on my T7910. I don't mine I use it for virtualization, home lab, and home prod stuff. My T7910 is pretty efficient, my UPS reports it using about 150 watts continuously.

That's better than my Plex server which uses like 400W+ at idle. LOOOL.