You can now buy bulk GPUs at Vietnamese street stalls

Looking for a cheap new GPU? Miners in countries all over the world are looking to dump their excess stock of cards that are no longer fit for purpose following the cryptocurrency value crash, and more recently, Ethereum’s move to a proof of stake model. One place you’ll find these cards showing up now, is street sellers. The self-proclaimed King of VGA, Lê Thành, has shown off his collection of many, many graphics cards, which he’s now just selling off of a blanket on the street.

This is a bizarre scene just a few months on from the crypto-winter where you couldn’t buy new graphics cards for love nor money. Well, maybe a lot of money if you were willing to brave the scalpers, but now they’re in such abundance that anybody can get one for practically pennies on the dollar. If you don’t mind trusting a random seller on the street.

And you probably shouldn’t. Even if you do find yourself on a Vietnamese street and find a bunch of graphics cards for cheap, they will have been treated very poorly in their time in the crypto mines, so may not last as long as you like, or even work as intended. You don’t know what undervolts, overclocks, or custom BIOS might have been used on them in the past.

And RDNA 3 is just around the corner. Let’s see what the new gen can offer before consigning ourselves to out of date and battered second hand GPUs.