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upstart writes:

The Mystery of the Radeon RX 6000 Mass Extinction Event May Have Been Solved:

Earlier this month, there was a widely reported story regarding a large batch of AMD Radeon RX 6000-series graphics cards (all Navi 21 models) that had mysteriously but catastrophically died. These were some of the best graphics cards, up until the latest generation parts started launching. German electronics repair shop KrisFix.de received 61 broken or malfunctioning RX 6900 / 6800 family graphics cards and found 48 of them suffered from physically cracked GPU silicon. The mystery regarding these ruined GPUs may now have been solved, with the likely culprits being the terrible twosome of crypto mining and high humidity storage.

[...] According to KrisFix, these cards were likely stored for a few weeks or months since GPU-based cryptomining became uneconomical. The problem is that they seem to have been stored in an environment with inappropriate temperatures / humidity levels. The experienced electronics repairer says he has seen this exact symptom of chips cracking and popping up from the PCB after being used in the wake of this kind of inappropriate storage.

[...] Readers need to be wary of the used GPUs market, but the post-crypto world has been both a source of great bargains and ticking time bombs with regard to product durability. Miners will go to extraordinary lengths to clean up and sell on their old GPUs, but thankfully we haven't heard too many tales like this one from KrisFix.

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