Thanks for the mention, I would have went — the market is rapidly shifting and prices are dropping almost weekly. Somehow It feels like that they're going to go lower.
I've heard of 3090's were being sold for 60k a couple weeks ago and now the latest I'm hearing is 40k without warranty (imports).
Yeah these were the same concerns I had when I was planning to get a GPU.Though prices seem to have plateaued for a bit since there isn't much stock left for the miners to sell, would expect just a slight reduction to clear out remaining stock but since they knew people bought when the price was higher, they hope to sell it for that price itself(Prime example of how the 3060Ti was listed for 23k for a brief moment then bumped back up to 24k).
Even at 21k for a 3070 with warranty, I don't think it's a good time to buy a GPU for gaming (economy, inflation, new launches). The mining craze, covid fog and everything else that went wrong in the world has really messed with our way of thinking of what's a decent price for used hardware so to put this into perspective, the 3070 was released two years ago at ~51k. Back in the day, I couldn't get even half price for my 970 a year and a half after purchase.
That's why I contemplated their condition, if I really needed a GPU right now, will warranty be honoured, etc.(My main conclusion was that you get low prices for used stuff only when the seller has a neccesity/needs to sell it urgently and that getting this amount of rasterisation for this price won't be possible for quite some time in the future, so decided to pull the trigger and got the 3070 for
wellll below 20k and with ~20 months of warranty left and with only
one card per bill)
Again for the deal I got I think the only way I'll match the price to performance ratio is to get a 5060/5070 at MSRP.
Also, with this mass offloading of GPU's, the RMA procedure and requirements are going to change drastically, it's almost certain these manufacturers didn't increase their reserve stock for RMA as they increased manufacturing during the GPU craze because they never expected miners to claim warranty (mods, ROI).
This we can't really do much about. If the manufacturer decides to deny mining GPUs there's zero ways you'd know the GPU has been mined on unless the bill has multiple GPUs on it(which you could explain as prebuilt,etc but that's the only case in which the manufacturer finds out you have a mined GPU, granted you clean the card well).
But I don't think they'll go with this route(but it's possible) as it would upset the people who bought it second hand would be affected most.
What I think they'll do is focus more on refurbishing the cards they get for RMA(as long as they're not dead, overheating can be fixed, fans can be fixed, cards can be cleaned, cosmetic damage is not considered anyways) and then RMAing the cards which come later on with the refurbished ones.(Most cost effective for the manufacturer)
The best case scenario is that the still give everyone who goes for an RMA a new card until stocks run out(3070Ti Galax cards have already run out in India afaik, there will probably be many more going out of stock soon) until they run out of stock eventually and give every subsequent RMA a new 40 series card
*OR* the market rate for their card(This is in the terms and conditions, I read it since I didn't want to take ANY chances) and since we have no idea about what the market rate is going to be then, can't comment much on it(Also don't know anyone who has been compensated like that, buy hey its in the T&C)
TLDR; Options for warranty are:
1)Give new but same SKU
2)Give refurbished SKU
3)Give market rate refund
4)Give RTX4000 SKU/Higher RTX3000 SKU
5)Offer to repair if possible
6)Reject RMA since it's a mining card(multiple cards on bill/improper condition)
