Fraudulent crypto miners use paint to sell used GPUs as new

Youtubers Iskandar Souza and Paulo Gomes recently unveiled an investigation into third-party GPU vendors and resellers painting over certain areas of graphics cards to make them appear newer. The two accuse crypto miners of finding increasingly inventive ways to resell overused graphics cards for profit.

Paint was discovered on GPUs sold by crypto miners, which had enticed the new owners to buy outdated graphics cards. Also, Paulo explains how to find out if a graphics card is new. A few warning signs he mentions in the video are screws that appear to be tampered with and missing labels or stickers. Apart from that, when looking at the appearance of the graphics card, users should be able to notice a slight yellow tint on the memory chips and GPU.

From the discussion between Paulo and Iskandar in the video, it appears that the coloring is not only from long wear and tear, but also from miners who know how to solder components together with other graphics cards. On the video you can see how the paint is scraped off the chips to reveal the actual color of the card and its components. The following picture shows the painted DRAM module, on which clear markings can be seen:

The following picture shows the top layer of paint removed by heating and scraping it off the surface, revealing a heavily used graphics card:

The TecLab YouTube channel also followed a similar theme when it discovered that used graphics cards were being sold in Brazil as new cards from a brand called AFOX. The content authors recognized the problem by the fact that the epoxy resin was a different color than other GPUs from the same manufacturer. The review was conducted during a live stream event so that users could know and see that there were no errors in the review.

There is always a risk when buying a used graphics card. However, these problems are not to be expected when buying a brand-new GPU. Yellowing can sometimes occur with newer components. So if you want to make sure that you get a new graphics card, you should make the purchase at a store or website that you can trust and that offers a warranty in case something does happen.

Source: VideoCardz, Iskandar Souza