Graphic Cards PSA : Caution before buying mining cards

[Slayer88]

So, a month or so ago I was looking for 3080 and was open, infact, I wanted a mining GPU as (I hoped) they'd be cheap and as there's nothing wrong with buying one. While I knew some were meticulous and mined with great skill, I felt most would have had a cheap table fan for relatively decent thermals and would not have done anything stupid as it's expensive hardware at the end of the day. Today, I saw some stuff that made me rethink my last statement and made my extra investment on a new card seem worthwhile. Towards the end of my search I was looking for Zotac cards with 5 years warranty.

TLDR and my recommendation to you my fellow gamers, avoid GPUs with just 12-18months warranty unless you trust the source. Suggest you buy Zotac cards that have 3+ years remaining warranty

 

[salian]

I lost it at running GPUs hanging from the window grill attached with bits of wire.

Seems to be mining jugaad-coin.

 

[joy.das.jd]

So, a month or so ago I was looking for 3080 and was open, infact, I wanted a mining GPU as (I hoped) they'd be cheap and as there's nothing wrong with buying one. While I knew some were meticulous and mined with great skill, I felt most would have had a cheap table fan for relatively decent thermals and would not have done anything stupid as it's expensive hardware at the end of the day. Today, I saw some stuff that made me rethink my last statement and made my extra investment on a new card seem worthwhile. Towards the end of my search I was looking for Zotac cards with 5 years warranty.

TLDR and my recommendation to you my fellow gamers, avoid GPUs with just 12-18months warranty unless you trust the source. Suggest you buy Zotac cards that have 3+ years remaining warranty

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Agree to the idea of getting Zotac cards with at least 2 years warranty. Also try to get bill of cards and try to avoid cards in case multiple cards in a single invoice.

 

[nRiTeCh]

Mining gpus only worthy if it got a guaranteed warranty and first will ask the owner to rma it for me and then pay him etc.

 

[john1911]

Zotac requires RMA to be initiated via email from the original email ID with which the card was initially registered for extended warranty.

Mining gpus only worthy if it got a guaranteed warranty and first will ask the owner to rma it for me and then pay him etc.

But how are they going to RMA a working card?

 

[nRiTeCh]

Zotac requires RMA to be initiated via email from the original email ID with which the card was initially registered for extended warranty.

But how are they going to RMA a working card?

Hence I said let the orginal seller/owner handle rma headache..

But how are they going to RMA a working card?

We all rma products during their last warranty days stating xyz reasons.. think from those many reasons..

 

[Slayer88]

We all rma products during their last warranty days stating xyz reasons.. think from those many reasons..

This is a growing problem and super unethical, happening way too much in India. This is the reasons why companies with great customer service start adding clauses to thier RMA claims. Corsair PSUs are the most common place I see this which is why they have new T&C where there were no questions asked before. Mostly resellers are abusing this, but seen many members here too do the same thing to fetch higher resale value.

 

[john1911]

We all rma products during their last warranty days stating xyz reasons.. think from those many reasons..

Wow, Is this a real thing? I was totally unaware of it. It sounds unethical though.

And you guys get a new piece just like that? They give a new mobo/gpu/ram without even testing/reproducing/verifying the problem?

 

[nRiTeCh]

Wow, Is this a real thing? I was totally unaware of it. It sounds unethical though.

And you guys get a new piece just like that? They give a new mobo/gpu/ram without even testing/reproducing/verifying the problem?

Theres no such thing as unethical here. Imaging today is last day of warranty for your product and you didnt availed any replacement yet and exactly tomorrow your product goes kaput. What then?\
I have done this only for hdds..and its totally worth it!

 

[john1911]

Theres no such thing as unethical here. Imaging today is last day of warranty for your product and you didnt availed any replacement yet and exactly tomorrow your product goes kaput. What then?

It sounds like a huge PITA to obsessively RMA everything when it is nearing its warranty expiration.

Some RMAs take weeks, you'll have a non-working PC for that time. Other than that, what if they refused the RMA and something broke during the to and fro shipping, what then? What if the service centre "engineers" f*** something up in the product and then refuse RMA.

There is so much that can go wrong here, not to mention it is really unethical to RMA a product which is working perfectly without any fault, whether you accept it or not.

 

[Slayer88]

Theres no such thing as unethical here. Imaging today is last day of warranty for your product and you didnt availed any replacement yet and exactly tomorrow your product goes kaput. What then?\
I have done this only for hdds..and its totally worth it!

Bro, the only argument I can make to you if you make such a statement is, 'What if it was you who was the manufacturer, would you (your business) not suffer a great deal if people did this?

not to mention it is really unethical to RMA a product which is working perfectly without any fault, whether you accept it or not.

+1

 

[nRiTeCh]

Bro, the only argument I can make to you if you make such a statement is, 'What if it was you who was the manufacturer, would you (your business) not suffer a great deal if people did this?

+1

No arguments, personal choice for everyone... 95/100 people follow this and what you think doesnt the manufacturer knows all this? They arent fools eod! And who has time at their end to actually get to the core issue etc. They might be getting 1000s of ram requests each day and they already has stock for most of the stuff...they also want to get rid off their inventory..

It sounds like a huge PITA to obsessively RMA everything when it is nearing its warranty expiration.

Some RMAs take weeks, you'll have a non-working PC for that time

Hence PSUs are the least products to be rmaed as nobody keeps psus in stocks. Storages and gpus are the most common ones.

 

[nitin_g3]

95/100 people follow this

Now I know I'm one of those 5 here. Never heard of such practice by the end users like us at least.
But I know people abused Amazon a lot during it's initial days.
I was so happy when Amazon came to India and had 10 days no questions asked return policy for everything. But people abused it to extreme extent. Some people I know used to get iphones on credit card just to show off in a marriage for family function and then return it. Amazon had to change their policies due to these kind of abuse.

 

[enthusiast29]

Buy gpu if mined on by a casual miner (means the person is mining on it in free time but also using it in his PC). Such GPUs will definitely be looked after. Most miners who built mining rigs specifically and are using risers etc. need to be vetted. They won't care for the card as even 1min downtime will cost them money so they mostly keep them running 24x7 even if dust is caked all over or temps are near 80s all the time.

 

[joy.das.jd]

Now I know I'm one of those 5 here. Never heard of such practice by the end users like us at least.
But I know people abused Amazon a lot during it's initial days.
I was so happy when Amazon came to India and had 10 days no questions asked return policy for everything. But people abused it to extreme extent. Some people I know used to get iphones on credit card just to show off in a marriage for family function and then return it. Amazon had to change their policies due to these kind of abuse.

Count me too in one of those 5.

 

[Slayer88]

Count me too in one of those 5.

Me three.

 

[rockstah]

Resellers do these stuff to increase price of used hardware. I've seen people having tie up with service people doing RMA during the end of warranty or while they or their friends want to sell it.

Coming to the topic, I'm fine with less than 6 months old mined GPU but my main concern is what if they had altered GPU and lie about it while selling thinking that it'll never need RMA and we end up with warranty voided GPU. May be I'm paranoid but I've seen a similar case happen in FB.

 

[enthusiast29]

Theres no such thing as unethical here. Imaging today is last day of warranty for your product and you didnt availed any replacement yet and exactly tomorrow your product goes kaput. What then?\
I have done this only for hdds..and its totally worth it!

I hope you RMA a perfectly fine product during last days and when you receive the RMA replacement to use it hope it goes bad just a week or so after warranty ends. You'll know the taste of your own medicine.

I know you might get offended by this but it's true this is highly unethical practice due to which India has such bad consumer protection laws or none at all for that matter.

 

[Slayer88]

I hope you RMA a perfectly fine product during last days and when you receive the RMA replacement to use it hope it goes bad just a week or so after warranty ends. You'll know the taste of your own medicine.

I know you might get offended by this but it's true this is highly unethical practice due to which India has such bad consumer protection laws or none at all for that matter.

This is very likely to happen. Seagate, from my RMA experience from 7-8 years ago, (I RMAd a dead drive) they gave me a 'Certified Renewed' HDD, which has more changes of failing than a first hand drive that is working perfectly!

On this note, I saw a case where a guy had a high-end Corsair PSU but wanted to upgrade to a higher wattage unit and decided to pull this stunt so he could sell the RMA'd unit at a good rate and buy his upgraded PSU. Sadly for him, Corsair did not have that unit as it was out of production and offered him a lower end unit and he was the loser in the end. Hope that guy learnt his lesson!

As they say, 'What goes around comes around!'

 

[dexterz]

I always prefer to purchase new for high value products to avoid hassles with warranty. As to the other topic, me four. I go for RMA only if the device fails.