Youtuber Bryan, who runs Tech Yes City, picked ten 'untested' Inno3D GTX 1070 8GB GDDR5 GPUs, likely from a mining farm, which he later confirmed upon personal inspection. The ad was on the Facebook AU marketplace, where the seller was upfront about the condition of these GPUs, stating that it is likely one or two graphics cards are working only via its DVI port- which he also says could be the fault of his PC. Still, these are pretty cheap, and the cards can likely be repaired or salvaged as a donor board. It is a gamble, but for AUD 180 (later reduced to AUD 150), roughly $100, it could be worth it in some form. Bryan said that he has been getting into soldering capacitors on motherboards.
Before Bryan could fire up these graphics cards, Bryan gave them thorough cleaning as running graphics cards in a mining environment tends to pick up a lot of dust. The graphics cards are abused to the point there would be some rust in the components; hence, agitating it is necessary, especially for the video output ports. All the GPUs were dilapidated, and Bryan found it surprising that the seller claimed at least one of the GTX 1070 was working. Irrespective of its outcome, he hoped that these graphics cards were undervolted when mining and would have to undervolt the graphics card.
Once unassembled, dirt and grime can be seen on the PCB and the heatsink. Upon consulting his brother, Bryan used a little vinegar to remove the rust from the heatsink. After giving the PCB and the heatsink a good wash under his ultrasonic cleaner, followed by a rinse, both the components were way cleaner. After cleaning its fans by hand and blow-drying the components, the GPUs were given an application of thermal paste and re-assembled, ready to be tested.
After rescuing from 'Crustation Nation' as Bryan calls it, all the 10 GTX 1070s were tested and checked for stability. Bryan was gobsmacked as nine out of ten GTX 1070s were working just fine, with the last graphic card having a peculiar problem where it wouldn't boot through HDMI or DVI port. Using a DisplayPort adapter to a DVI connector yielded no success. Using the DisplayPort output at first didn't work correctly to the extent that he couldn't get the system with it to boot to Windows. Bryan said he used the heat gun on this GPU's connection ports, hoping it would do the trick, but didn't make any changes.
A quick search on the Facebook marketplace revealed that you could buy a GTX 1070 8GB GDDR5 for 120 AUD, so Bryan was lucky to get nine units working the way they should after a good cleaning and fresh application of a thermal paste. There could be a change for the tenth graphic card to be fixed, maybe if the issue can be localized for Bryan to take care of it.
Getting a graphics card repaired in many countries could be expensive. While getting nine graphics cards, let alone one was an incredible find, it should be noted that not everyone will be lucky enough to get a bunch of graphic cards from a mining farm, as it should be. In such cases, it's a gamble, and it was an excellent one for Bryan only after he gave it a good scrub using a Sonic cleaner, something not necessarily many would have.
It is also a good learning experience for sellers to give the graphic card's PCB a good cleaning and fresh application of thermal paste and pads where needed, allowing them to verify its working condition only to sell it at a reasonable price. In any case, Bryan rescued these graphics cards, giving them a new lease of life away from landfills.
