Are USED Graphics Cards WORTH IT?

whoa whoa whoa look before you leave a hateful comment calling me poor please hear me out I know the ease of just going to Amazon and buying a brand new graphics card for your new custom gaming PC is enticing two clicks and you get a super powerful GPU show up at your door chef's kiss but what if I told you you could have top tier performance for half the price let's go over every single reason why you would probably be fearful to buy a used GPU and I'll do my best to put those fears to rest at the end of this video if you still want to buy a new GPU I won't fall to you and I know some people live in countries where it just doesn't make sense to buy used I get it guys really do what you need to do but for the rest of us the first reason to not buy a new graphics card is obviously the price as a general rule of thumb use things cost less than new and with the previous shaky Market of graphics card due to the Silicon shortage pandemic lockdowns the the boom and crash of crypto mining the market for used gpus has finally stabilized enough where you can get a great discount on slightly used cards for example the cheapest RTX 3080 can find for brand new was this weird anime one on NewEgg for 760 but the coupon brings it down to 720 after paying 10 tax you'd end up paying almost 800 for this card and this is the cheapest one most of them were well over eight or nine hundred US Dollars alternatively I bought this EVGA RTX 3080 from a friendly guy on Facebook for 480 last week over 300 in savings for the same performance it came in the original packaging and everything I talked to PCS with the guy I got a great deal and I helped out my community instead of giving my money to Nvidia this wasn't just a once in a lifetime kind of deal the very next day I bought this Founders Edition RTX 3080 for 500 from another friendly local PC Enthusiast you can even buy used 3080s on Amazon from third-party sellers for 550 plus tax that even includes a 30-day return window in case anything is wrong with the card org is damaged and shipment now I understand this might be a bad comparison for many of you as the 3080 has been out for two years at this point and the 4000 series was recent released but I don't know anyone who's paying 1200 for an RTX 4080 it's just an absurd price many new pc Builders are still buying from the 3000 Series as the new 4000 series is just too new to have any kind of used market yet after scalpers are done wreaking havoc on the used market for the 4000 series I'm sure those cards will sell used at a pretty hefty discount as well why spend more when you don't have to well many people would say they are scared to buy used because the card might be mined on and that's a fair reason there is no real way to detect if a card was crypto mined on the best you can do is look at the seller's profile and if they are selling tons of graphics cards that is a Telltale sign of someone offloading their used mining rigs but if it's just a random person selling a one-off card they're probably not but even if it was mind on who cares there have been dozens of tests done by people like Linus Tech tips and others to test the performance and lifespan of a brand new card versus a used mining cards and they could not find any noticeable differences they all performed within a margin of error whether it was brand new used or had been mined on for four years this fear that Mind cards are just ticking time bombs as they have been worked to exhaustion and will have premature failure is based entirely out of fear and not facts not to defend crypto miners but these gpus were an expensive investment to them I guarantee they traded the cards with respect undervolting repasting keeping thermals in check they needed them to last as long as possible and be sustainable the two people I've met who were crypto miners in real life said they treated their mining rigs way better than they treated their personal rigs if we had concrete proof that mind gpus perform worse or die faster than normal used cards I might be worried that's just not the case for most people we also need to talk about the fear many PC Builders have that used items are more likely to break compared to brand new now you might not like this but that's not exactly true let's examine the bathtub curb if you're unfamiliar with this the bathtub curve shows us the expected lifespan and rates of failure for any given Consumer Electronic we have three lines the random failure rate basically means things break randomly you can't control it it's a constant compared to brand new or old the life expectancy failure this is where items start to fail as they reach closer to end of life pretty obvious but what most people don't ever think about is the first curve the expected rate of failure in a GPU is highest within the first few months of ownership this would be due to manufacture defects not detected by the chip makers during testing and that's the real reason why manufacturers offer a warranty as they know that the more complicated product being produced the more likely there could be defects from the factory or things breaking very quickly so what does this mean it means you're brand new Straight Out of the Box GPU is way more likely to be defective than a GPU that has been used for six months that's a hard pill to swallow but the data doesn't lie to combat this manufacturers offer those warranties that basically mean if your card breaks in the first one to three years of ownership they will repair or replace it this usually means having to take the card out of your machine go through a laborious RMA process pay for shipping yourself and end up waiting two to six weeks depending on the manufacturer and sometimes they send it back and it's still broken or it's just been replaced by another card that was broken and then refurbished you're not getting a brand new one I don't know about you but I'd rather have someone else not to deal with all that in the first year of ownership then once they've tested it I'll swoop in and buy a gamer test a GPU for much cheaper than retail also many manufacturers offer warranty transfers I know EVGA could easily allow you to transfer the ownership of a warranty if you buy a card from someone used I get to spend less money on the cart and still keep two years of that warranty that's a win going back to the bathtub curve obviously I'm not recommending you buy a GPU that is 10 or 12 years old at that point you are nearing end of life and you might have it die on You by buying a car that was manufactured in the last two years could be an amazing value speaking of 10 years ago many people buy brand new graphics cards because they are future proofing and wanted to last as long as possible 10 or 15 years before they upgrade now if you're buying something like a car or a boat this might be a valuable way to operate but let me tell you in consumer electronics there is no such thing as future proofing technology moves so fast that the thing you paid an extra one thousand dollars on because you thought it would be best in class for 10 years yeah it just got overtaken by a shiny new thing a year later that cost 20 less and then again the next year for 50 less 10 years ago if you had bought some of the best components for your PC on the consumer Market you'd still be using a GTX 680 and an i7 3770k in 2023 you'd probably have four to eight gigs of DDR3 RAM you might have a 40 gig SATA SSD if you were really rich otherwise you're probably still on a hard drive probably using a power supply that has pretty bad power efficiency and your PC probably has some ugly blue LEDs that were all the rage in 2010 and while yes this PC could still play some Esports titles just fine try any other modern title from the last few years and you'll be struggling to hit even 60 FPS and that's at 1080p you can forget going 1440p or God forbid 4K in this hypothetical we bought that PC expecting it to perform really well for a long time but even five years later it started the show its age and 10 years later it's considered ancient and can't keep up with even budget PC builds from a few years ago future proofing just doesn't exist in gaming computers and shouldn't be used as an excuse for buying the most expensive brand new graphics cards a more sustainable method to using high-end parts and still having a relevant PC would be to buy a few used components and perform major upgrades every three to five years reselling your old equipment to offset the cost this way you can still enjoy some high-end gaming have relevant quality of life implements like nvme ssds dlss that kind of stuff and you don't have to spend four thousand dollars all at once to Future proof your PC but this mentality isn't just for people who want the best there are also people who don't want to deal with it all together they don't really care about technology they just want a computer to play GTA RP on so they go on Amazon they buy a bunch of PC components maybe get one of their friends to build it and they won't think about upgrading it until a game comes along in the future and they aren't able to play it I totally understand this mindset PC Building is an Enthusiast level Hobby and isn't for everyone if you're one of these people I actually wouldn't recommend going out and buying a used graphics card I recommend going out and buying a whole ass used gaming computer your local community and online have expert level PC enthusiasts who like to build PCS for a small profit let them handle finding good deals putting it all together and stress testing you can probably even contact them and get them to use a case you prefer if you care about the Aesthetics these PC Builders don't work for massive companies like I buy Power or main gear or whatever just enthusiasts who love building computers you'll get some of the best hardware at the best price because these guys are going to look out for you let them deal with all of it and you reap the rewards go to your local Facebook Marketplace I guarantee you'll find a few people doing this in your city our planet has a major problem that we are still trying to figure out how to solve E-Waste technology is evolving at such a rapid rate that we are cranking out new devices every day and throwing millions of them into the trash we have begun to scrape the surface when it comes to recycling many of these raw materials but the majority of electronics still end up in the trash and no while I don't think this 3080 I bought would have ended up in the trash if I didn't buy it I don't want to be a part of the problem of just constantly buying new things and ditching the old ones many people love to talk about recycling but they often forget the two r's that come before it reduce and reuse then as a final effort you recycle we need to try to reuse our current products in different ways resell or donate the items we don't want anymore and buy used when we can now I'm not going to just lecture you to buy used gpus and not push you in the right direction every Marketplace has its pros and cons if you buy from someone on Facebook Marketplace you get to see that person's actual Facebook account that they have probably had for over 10 years if they made the account in the last few months it's probably a scam buying locally helps you save on shipping costs and platform fees but if on the very rare chance that car does end up being broken there really isn't much anyone you can do for you unfortunately eBay has been a very popular place to buy Cards in the past as long as the seller has some good reputation and the car looks like it's in good condition you should be good to go you're going to pay more on there because of tax shipping platform fees but you get eBay's Buyer guarantee which pretty much protects you from getting scammed or buying a broken item it might be worth the extra cost to have that peace of mind A good rule of thumb on any Marketplace is to make sure the account wasn't made recently the seller has good feedback and item isn't four parts only or as is this means the card is literally broken so just search for used pre-owned or refurbished did I miss any reasons why people would want to buy new cards please let me know in the comments and if you still want to buy a new card after this video I won't hold it against you I'm just trying to inform the uninformed my name is Jason thanks for watching get subscribed

Channel: Jason Witmer 2

Views: 8,172

Keywords: used gpu, use pc parts, is buying used pc worth it, video card, graphics card, used video card, should i buy used gpu, should i buy cheap gpu, should i buy cheap video card, should i buy used graphics card, gpu, buy, graphics card price, mined graphics cards, is it bad to buy mined on gpu, mined gpu, buying used gpu, buying used graphics cards, best used video cards, best used gpu, stop buying new gpu, worst gpu to buy, used graphics card, used gpu vs new gpu, used gpu ebay

Id: df8UuBKxN6k

Length: 10min 5sec (605 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 10 2023