Used graphics cards from mining rigs: In-game cheating is becoming increasingly common

Used graphics cards from mining rigs: In-game cheating is becoming increasingly common


from Andrew Link
Fraud is becoming more and more common when selling used graphics cards from mining rigs. Vendors go to great lengths to make the cards look new or to disguise the past as a prospector slave. This goes so far that BGA chips are re-soldered.

After the end of the hype about mining cryptocurrencies, the cards from the mining rigs are increasingly flooding the used market. But despite the high prices for new goods, it is not so easy to get rid of the cards. To remedy this, some sellers are trying to declare their goods as new and are tuning the chips. As Youtuber Iskandar Souza and technician Paulo Gomes have determined, there is cheating on platforms in China.

Usually, used cards from mining rigs are fairly easy to spot, but sellers are now going to great lengths to make the cards look new. But even if some cards look new (warranty stickers, no dust, no scratches), they may only look that way. The yellow coloring of the memory and the GPU is the easiest to recognize. Apparently a new method of tricking customers into dyeing the memory chips to make them look newer than they should have been devised was devised.

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Yellowing of the memory and GPU may be due to vendors re-soldering mining card components on newer boards, or simply excessive heat build-up with prolonged use. Whatever the reason, the yellow tint is a clear sign that the map isn’t new.

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However, China is not the only market where more and more tuned cards are appearing: a report by Teclab refers to similar occurrences in Brazil. The cards that were sold had a different epoxy color than brand new cards from other manufacturers. The incidents are likely to further complicate the trade in used graphics cards Even without the tricks, it is always difficult to tell how a used device has been treated or mistreated. With the re-soldering of graphics and memory chips, however, the fraud reaches a new level, since the effort for the BGA packages is not trivial.

Source: Iskandar Souza, Teclab

Reference-www.pcgameshardware.de