Exactly. The thing that stresses silicon the most is extreme change of temperature. Guess what doesn't change during mining: Temperature. When mining, you want a steady rate and will most likely downclock and undervolt it in order to get maximum efficiency out of your card.

The only thing I could imagine to break are capacitors, but I still have to run into anyone who has issues like that.

Fans, soldering, thermal pads

The environmental argument crumbles a bit when defending miners, don't you think?

Look up "sunk cost".

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.

Nicely said. Actually there is a point - vengeance and moralizing. But you're right this probably wouldn't have much effect on GPU availability and reduction of pollution in the near future.

They're defending taking advantage of a miner's forced fire sale. Less waste, lower price for a good GPU. What's not to like?

His argument is that by buying a miner card, you're validating strategy of miners, which are considered "bad actors" by gamers and environmentalists. If you intentionally decline buying a miner card, you're helping to make miner activity less profitable, thus doing the "right thing".

You still want to give them money in exchange for dubious goods.

Why don't you go to a beach and scoop up some oil from the BP spill? It's good oil after all.

Let them clean up their environmental disaster.

Holy false equivalence, batman!

>Why don't you go to a beach and scoop up some oil from the BP spill? If it was trivial, why not? If you told him "don't buy any GPUs" then it would make sense. But either way he will be using some "oil" (GPU) in this case so I don't see why he should waste perfectly good "oil." I suppose you would rather leave the oil in the ocean?

I have never understood this argument. How much environmental damage is done by the mere creation of all television shows cumulatively, the creation of plastic tat given away at conventions, plastic wrapping at grocery stores?

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.

He is not defending miners.