A Reddit user received two old mining farms that the owner was ready to dispose of and found 12 Nvidia GeForce RTX 3070 graphics cards inside. They had been lying in the basement for several years after the mining boom ended, but despite this, they only show minor signs of wear and tear.
A Reddit user received two old mining farms that the owner was ready to dispose of and found 12 Nvidia GeForce RTX 3070 graphics cards inside. They had been lying in the basement for several years after the mining boom ended, but despite this, they only show minor signs of wear and tear.
This was reported by user CelebrationIll9568 on Reddit. He now plans to test all 12 graphics cards. If most of them turn out to be working, he wants to sell 10 or 11 and keep at least one for himself.
Found used mining rigs with 12 x RTX 3070
by u/CelebrationIll9568 in pcmasterrace
The most valuable part of the find is 12 RTX 3070 graphics cards from Zotac. Together, they have 96 GB of video memory. Also found in the systems are an MSI MPG Z390 Gaming Plus motherboard, a Rosewill 1000W power supply, two 4 GB DDR4 sticks, and two 120 GB SSDs.
CelebrationIll9568 noticed oily traces of thermal pads on some of the graphics cards. These can appear over time when the pad material starts to release silicone oil. The comments noted that this in itself does not seem to be a serious problem, as the cards can be cleaned and the thermal pads and thermal paste can be replaced if necessary.
Also, GPUs in mining farms were often run at reduced voltage and limited power consumption to reduce heat and power consumption. So even after prolonged use, some of these cards may remain functional.
Previously, dev.ua wrote about a similar find: a man at a flea market in Kuwait bought an Asus expansion card for $30, and under its radiator he found three Samsung 980 Pro SSDs, each with a capacity of 2 TB. The total cost of the drives was estimated at approximately $1,300–1,500.
