Now that the Merge has occurred (opens in new tab), large-scale ethereum miners are discovering themselves with a lot of GPUs with nothing to mine. This implies a few of these operations will possible try to dump their mining kits on the secondhand market to salvage some revenue. However first, you bought to wash your stock, proper?
A collection of videos posted by Twitter person I_Leak_VN (noticed by Tom’s {Hardware} (opens in new tab)) reveals Vietnamese miners utilizing a powerwasher on the graphics playing cards inside their mining rigs. One video even reveals a handful of GPUs bathed in ozone water, in accordance with the tweet.
The video could seem clearly ridiculous, besides: I strongly suggest towards energy washing your gaming PC or parts with water out of your yard hose. I do get the temptation; we all know from Powerwash Simulator (opens in new tab) that energy washing guidelines. Simply… not on this case.
The stress from the jet wash might simply injury a graphics card, blast off a capacitor, or wash away thermal paste or lube, as Tom’s {Hardware} factors out. That does not even cowl {the electrical} injury that might doubtlessly be achieved through the use of common ole water.
Some Vietnamese miners have cleaned up their previous graphics playing cards after ETH merge by bathing them with extraordinarily excessive threat. It is actually their cleansing season whereas ready for the following GPU-minable third coin. (1/3) pic.twitter.com/qnUMWxpyctSeptember 23, 2022
You can doubtlessly use ozone or deionized water (opens in new tab) to wash electronics because it would not include the impurities that make faucet water conduct electrical energy. As long as you let the parts dry out after a deionized water bathtub, they need to work once more simply superb. Nevertheless, even in the event you dunk your stuff in deionized water, it will possibly nonetheless get contaminated with impurities (opens in new tab) when you pull it out into the open air. Likewise, except you are giving your stuff a shower in a spotless clear room, that water could not keep pristine for lengthy.
I am fairly skeptical these crypto miners are drying out GPUs in a sterile surroundings, so we arrive again at my unique level: energy washing your pc is a foul thought. The very last thing you wish to plug right into a PC is a GPU with a pocket of moisture trapped inside it.
These movies ought to function a warning for anybody fascinated by searching for a used graphics card within the subsequent few months because the secondhand market is flooded with crypto mining playing cards.
Seeing that the huge demand for GPUs is dropping post-Merge, they need to be just a little simpler to seek out at retail. And with the launch of Nvidia’s new RTX 40-series (opens in new tab), anticipate to see massive gross sales of previous-gen RTX 30-series GPUs within the subsequent few weeks. There is not any cause to threat your treasured PC with a doubtlessly broken part with a purpose to save a buck.
