These two years were supposed to be a golden period for DIY. In 2017, AMD took Ruilong back to the high-performance processor market. The graphics card market also had RX Vega. Intel and NVIDIA also each launched a 6-core 8-generation Core Duo, GTX 1080. Ti/1070 and other high-end products.
However, the DIY market did not actually get fired. The main reason is that there are two challenges, one is memory , Flash memory prices continued to increase for more than two years, resulting in memory, SSD hard drive prices rose sharply, especially the memory prices went straight 800-1000 yuan, installed at least to increase the budget of 1,000 yuan.
Another accident is that the graphics card is out of stock, rising prices In fact, it is an external disaster. The root of the price increase is the overnight myth of digital currency. As a result, many people who don’t even understand the digital currency have joined the mining market. According to statistics, they were sold last year. A total of 3.7 million graphics cards for mining, which account for a lot of high-end graphics cards.
If the digital currency market continues to be so popular, the hardships of DIY players cannot be seen. Fortunately, the biggest feature of the mining market is fluctuations. As countries become more aware of digital currency risks, regulatory measures have become increasingly severe. , The difficulty in cutting leeks in the mining market has increased. Some foremen have already started to withdraw from the market. The mining cards are also cooling down. No more sweeps are needed to boost the price of graphics cards. The graphics card market is expected to return to normal.
But at this time, everyone can't take it lightly. Because the miners exit the market, they need a liquidation mine card. These long-serving graphics cards will be sold by them as second-hand graphics cards. They are back to the blood, but the follow-up quality of the mining card, quality assurance risk will be borne by the DIY players.
Some time ago, we may have heard stories of bosses of Huaqiangbei as a miner business. Now that the price of miners has fallen, many reports have said that businesses lose money, and so on, but they are not so miserable because they do not Less merchants have not done a brand new mining machine business and instead developed a second-hand mining machine market. They used a thousand or two price recovery machine (the new multi-miner is really a clearance sale).
Take NVIDIA's GTX 1060 graphics machine as an example. Each machine is equipped with 6 graphics cards. The price of the second-hand graphics card they took out was about 800-1000 yuan. After calculating a set of mining machines, they could make three or four thousand dollars, which is more profitable than selling new ones..
However, they are not the last link in the recovery of mining machines. The used GTX 1060 graphics card with an average price of less than 1000 will be sold to players by other companies. Even if it is sold for 1500 to 2000 pieces, it will still be cheaper than the new card. - 50%, We can calculate the profit, after all, the current GTX 1060 new card price is still about 3,000.
The use of mine card as a (game) card resale is not what it was today. The root cause of the problem lies in the fact that it is difficult for consumers to distinguish between game cards and mine cards. Both of these are essentially simultaneous. The main issue is the length of use. , But players must be vigilant about the mine card, do not stray into cheap and mistakenly do not understand the mine card, long-term high-load mining will have different degrees of negative impact on the graphics chip, even if it is a few hundred dollars cheaper, the trouble is also Infinity.
What is the impact of mining on the graphics card? GPU core is the first
Regardless of processor or graphics card, their core parts are all silicon-based semiconductor chips. The official warranty period is usually about three years, but the actual life of players will be much longer than this, some players' homes may still have More than 10 years ago, PC, and some can be used normally, indicating that the CPU, GPU's normal service life is very long.
This is true. The service life of IC chips is really long under normal conditions. Some special industries even use them for decades. It shows that the service life of the chip can be very long. For the chip life problem, the IC industry has been studying this problem for many years. In simple terms, we can divide the use of the chip into three cycles:
The process of chip life is a bathtub curve The entire life cycle can be divided into early failure period, usable life and wear life. In the middle of usable life, the failure rate is the lowest, and it is usually relatively stable. The features are high on both sides, low in the middle, and much like a bath tub for bathing. The tub curve is named after this.
For consumers, the early stage of the manufacturer's testing process has verified the various problems of the expiration date, warranty time is usually in the available life, because this process is the longest, and relatively stable.
Therefore, after IC chips are produced, manufacturers will do burn-in tests. DIY players are familiar with this term. We often test the machine ourselves, and the aging tests of manufacturers are also like this, but they last for a long time. The chips that fail to pass the burn-in test will be eliminated. The processors that pass the quality check will always have a relatively stable usable life.
Once the usable life span has passed, the failure rate will gradually increase and enter the loss-loss period. The period will be affected by factors such as air pressure, temperature, mechanical stress, and electrical stress. In the case of our daily use, the CPU or GPU will be affected. The biggest factor in the core is the temperature.
Players who have studied the basics of electronics should understand that temperature is the killer of various electronic products, and their service life decreases as the temperature increases. Although there are factors such as the impact of long-term electron currents, high heat caused by long-term use may affect Key factors of chip life.
An important factor that mine cards can't buy is its long-term use. In order to maximize mining profits, miners will use the graphics card to work 7x24 hours, and to increase revenue.
Some miners will also use a redesigned BIOS to use an overclocked graphics card. If this is done, the graphics core will always be in a hot state. This problem is especially serious when multiple cards are connected in parallel, because the cooling space is severely compressed, but the miners do not care about the heat. Noise and other factors, after all, they are mining to make money, the original graphics card used by the game is used by such a high load.
Some people may retort that the warranty time for the graphics card is two or three years. Even if the miners use it for one year, will it not be a year or two?
This justification sounds reasonable. However, in fact, the three-year warranty provided by the manufacturer does not consider the 7x24 operation because normal gamers cannot do so. Nowadays, people play games for three hours a day is a luxury level enjoyment, so the load of daily graphics cards is not an exaggeration, so that scattered use will not seriously shorten the useful life of the chip, but the mining is completely different. .
For this problem, we can use a living example to understand - sports athletes, when they are in service, they train far more than the average person per day, but most of them are retired when they are very young. (Especially after winning the prize), because the peak of their movement has arrived, behind the bright surface is a variety of injuries caused by long-term exercise, many people's bodies have been severely overdrawn.
The relationship between miner cards vs. game cards is somewhat similar to that of athletes vs. ordinary people. Long-term high-load sports consume the vitality of mine cards, indicating that there is no difference between watching cards and game cards, but there are a lot of dark injuries. Maybe one day it will happen.
Don't worry, the GPU core has escaped, other components may also have dark injuries.
If the players who bought the minecard are fortunate, the GPU core has not been affected much, and the failure rate has not gone out of control. Isn't that a matter of peace? It is not necessarily. Because the graphics card has other electronic components besides the GPU core, especially the power supply circuit, it also has the problem of service life.
No matter how many phases are supplied, the basic power supply circuit will consist of capacitors, inductors and MOSFETs. These products will also show various problems with time.
Take the example of a solid-state capacitor that is most easily advertised by manufacturers. Companies in Japan, Taiwan, and China have production. The manufacturer’s promotion is that the Japanese capacitor is the best. The service life is up to tens of thousands of hours, so it basically eliminates the life span. Thousands of hours of electrolytic capacitors become an absolute mainstream.
However, the lifetime of a capacitor is closely related to temperature. Regular manufacturers often indicate the life of the XX temperature, which is usually said to be only 2000 to 5000 hours at 105°C.
The relationship between capacitor temperature and life can actually be calculated. Nichicon official website provides a formula for everyone to calculate the life of the capacitor. The figure above shows the long-life RS8 series as an example. There is 8891 hours of service life at 80°C..
Of course, the RS8 is a product of high durability. For a product that lasts 2000 hours, the service life will be greatly reduced.
In short, even if the player started using a second-hand mining card, the GPU had no chance of a dark injury. However, other components have also been overloaded and overloaded. There is also a quality risk.
Also want to map cheaper? Manufacturer has sealed the mine card warranty
As mentioned above, there are so many potential problems with mine cards. However, there is still the temptation of players being unable to resist low prices. They choose to buy cheaper mine cards, but choosing a mine card can save some money. Subsequent warranty can be a hassle. Well, because NVIDIA and graphics card manufacturers have changed their attitude towards mining.
At first, they kept a blind eye on this issue and did not interfere with consumers playing games or mining with GeForce graphics cards. However, as the market changed, officials have changed their attitude towards mining. On the one hand, NVIDIA introduced The dedicated mining graphics card does not have a video output interface, and the warranty time is only three months. It is mainly for mining people. On the other hand, graphics card manufacturers have also changed the policy, emphasizing that the GeForce graphics card is used for games, and is strictly prohibited for digging. Mine, otherwise you will lose the warranty.
Video card manufacturers to block the mining of graphics cards is of course to save yourself from all kinds of quality assurance troubles, but in a sense is also to protect the game players, ban the mining card warranty will have some deterrent to the mining people, increase their sly scan game graphics card cost.
The new card prices gradually return to normal, no need to buy second-hand cards
For gamers, in addition to saving money on second-hand cards, there is another important reason that the new cards were monopolized by mining companies. Some mine owners even took cash to go to the production factories of video card manufacturers to grab goods and dig into them. Many people in the mine have more money and channels than the average consumer. It is much easier to buy a graphics card. This is an important reason for the lack of stock of the graphics card. There was a time when the major e-commerce hot AMD, NVIDIA graphics card collective out of stock, Players don't have to buy if they want to buy it.
With the excavation and fever, the shortage of graphics cards in the past two weeks has been much better. In the past two days, the GTX 1060 graphics cards are basically available, and the prices are much more rational. Sotec GTX 1060 graphics cards cost as little as 2,699 yuan. The rise can even do 2,499 yuan, which is about the same as the level before the mining price increase.
Correspondingly, the price of AMD's RX 580 graphics card is now a lot normal, compared with the exaggerated price that has risen to nearly 4000 pieces before, Sapphire, Dylan's RX 580 is now down to about 2800 yuan.
In short, persuading players not to buy second-hand mining cards can only be a temporary solution, and the real improvement is still to solve the problem - to solve the graphics card supply problem. At present, this trend is still very gratifying, at least in the right direction, the graphics card market. The supply is returning to normal prices.
Of course, we do not exclude all used graphics cards. Second-hand sales have always been an important branch of the DIY market.
Here's an alert for used graphics cards The main thing is to remind everyone that once the mine disaster is coming, second-hand mining cards will inevitably affect the wave of markets, and ordinary consumers cannot discern second-hand game cards and used mining cards. It is difficult to see the trick on the surface, and even graphics card manufacturers are not necessarily guaranteed. Can be identified, so the risk is very high. Players should be cautious in selecting used cards. If you are not sure, it is best not to go for this trick..
