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.
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.