It is no news that those who have mined cryptocurrencies are now trying to resell GPUs they no longer need, sometimes even in a decidedly dishonest way. The latest gimmick was discovered by the youtuber Iskandar Souzatogether with computer technician Paulo Gomes, who unearthed how several vendors have disguised the VRAM of the video cards for sale, in an attempt to pass them off as new products.
Paulo Gomes in particular shared a video on how to immediately recognize such a card, first of all pointing out how some of these had missing stickers and nicked screws, clearly unscrewed by a screwdriver. While others appear to be brand new, with warranty stickers intact, they are actually hiding components, such as the memoirs, which have been repainted on purpose is that you can recognize them by a strange yellowish tint. This is actually even visible on the graphics processor and is due to the high heat generated by the card during heavy mining workloads.
Of course this is also a clear indication that the GPU being sold is not new at all. In the various examples shown by Paulo, which we post in the article, it is possible to see how memory modules can show different states of degradation due to heavy use. An entirely similar investigation was also conducted by TechLabwhich highlighted that several video cards sold by Chinese retailers had a clear different epoxy color than new products.
During the purchase phase, the advice therefore remains to contact reliable retailers, such as large commercial chains, as well as of course paying particular attention to the GPUs purchased, verifying that the seals, the various stickers and the product itself are intact and do not show any sign of wear or suspicious anomaly.
