And that "not safe to use"? You think it's gonna explode? Worst case it doesn't work, but even that's probably pretty low risk. Hardware doesn't "wear" that way that quickly.
The only thing I could imagine to break are capacitors, but I still have to run into anyone who has issues like that.
GPU mining is poised to be permanently done. There is no "lesson" to teach miners, because there is no expected repeat of such a run on GPU mining again.
Meanwhile, the implication from your post is that it is better that the tens or hundreds of thousands of GPUs miners currently own and may offload would be better in a dump, just for retribution.
Let them clean up their environmental disaster.
But graphics cards are what we REALLY need to focus on and you better believe you are tuning in for the next big show. It's almost manufactured.
In some ways, letting a GPU run at a constant load (and thus constant temperature) is less damaging than a typical gaming workload I imagine, where the temperature fluctuates often. In other ways it probably isn't (e.g. atoms of the chip 'migrating' over time with the constant electron flow, though I have no idea how much of an issue that is with modern chips).
The few investigations have generally found mining cards are perfectly fine and if anything above-average in used quality. Because yes the primary damage is from thermal cycles, not just being on. And since mining is a constant load & constant environment, it has very few thermal cycles. And miners primarily care about efficiency, so they're power-limiting them[1] which further reduces strain on the cards.
Fans might be closer to death than a typical used card would be, but on pretty much any GPU those are cheap & easy to replace. That's really the only "risk"
1: And before someone inevitable scoffs at this, it's common enough that this is built into tools like nicehash. It's literally "click 1 button" territory, not exactly something a miner wouldn't attempt.
Yup, assuming it works and checks out the first 24 hours I have it.
Solid state electronics are pretty robust. If they survive whatever torture you put them through plus being shipped to my door, chances are it will work just fine. In my experience there are some problematic GPU models that are more prone to early failure under heavy use (HD6990 I'm looking at you!), but they are more rare than legend may lead folks to believe.
At an appropriate discount it's far cheaper to just buy these at pennies on the dollar and just be alright with self-insuring for a rather rare early failure. When you can buy 2 or 3 for the price of new, it starts to get rather compelling.
If I can inspect a card in person, I would be plenty happy to buy an ex-mining card, but most of these are going to be sold online sight-unseen. This isn't a problem exclusive to mining cards though; people have been selling damaged GPUs as 'working' for years.
I don't think there was anything artificial about the scarcity generated by miners; the demand was genuine. Scalpers are a different matter....
> And don't believe that a card that has been on 24/7 is safe to use
Are you claiming that it is somehow unsafe to use?
For your wallet, yes. Do you have any information about the environment in which a card was used? Temperature, dust, air moisture were like in a home or there operated in an industrial warehouse? Fan bearing status after all these hours? Voltage applied? Stock BIOS? were they in an enclosure or in a sort of a case? Thermal paste has been changed? Ever been disassembled?
I would not trust a miner's card even if it was a gift.
Miners screwed the market over and now they want you to think that their used crap is such a bargain. Let them deal with their waste, don't help them.
As for waste: I very much hope it will not become waste. Why would you be advocating for that?
That would be even more true for cards owned by non-miners; most miners will operate at a large enough scale to use some best practices, which definitely isn't true about most people who buy GPUs for personal use.
Of course, if a card's running at thermal throttle for long periods of time, that has a chance to damage the card, but given that most cards are running underclocked, the likelihood that you'll run into that problem is low.
For Nvidia it made no sense not to produce as many ships as they could.
Remember: don't buy miner cards and let them rot. They artificially generated scarcity thus raising the prices for everybody during the pandemic. And don't believe that a card that has been on 24/7 is safe to use. "but it was undervolted!" means nothing.