With the recent surge in used Nvidia GeForce RTX 3060 GPUs, those waiting for the ongoing graphics card inventory shortage to be resolved may want to check the used market instead. However, leading partner card maker Palit sees this as a potentially bigger problem than sell-out signs and artificially inflated prices.

Speaking to Benchmark.pl, a Palit representative noted that (as our sister site PC Gamer discovered) most used current GPUs tend to come from cryptocurrency mining rigs. Therefore, any wear and tear suffered by these GPUs could negatively impact their core gaming performance.

Palit, of course, has its own reasons for wanting prospective buyers to stay away from the used market. However, these concerns about the long-term health of former mining cards are legitimate. Whereas the average gaming PC only abuses its GPU for a few hours a day, mining rigs are designed to run an entire rack of graphics cards 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. Some miners reduce or optimize the voltage of the graphics cards, and even taking into account that they are not always running at full power, the wear and tear is intense.

Palit pointed to independent studies that suggest that mining with a graphics card may lose 10% of its original performance each year. This may vary from model to model. However, it makes logical and technical sense that cards used for mining are subjected to harsher conditions than used cards simply used for gaming.

The availability of Nvidia GeForce RTX 30 series and AMD Radeon RX 6000 series GPUs at MSRP is undoubtedly attractive to many. However, in addition to the added risk of getting a graphics card that has already seen several expected lifetimes of use, there is no guarantee that the seller will be upfront about the individual GPU's past. Online listings may give the impression that the everyday PC owner is simply selling an old card, when in fact it is a heavily used former minor.

Our advice: be careful if you find a reasonably priced card on sites like eBay, as most non-mining cards are still overpriced. It is more likely to be a crypto miner trying to recoup losses than a genuine private seller (or repentant scalper).

Yes, this is more an instruction to accept outrageous prices as the norm than to help find a good deal. But given the state of the broader GPU market, at least you may be able to avoid another kind of rip-off.