In the Vietnamese market, as well as globally, purchasing a new graphics card (GPU) at the current time is considered nearly impossible. With the price of ETH (the second highest market-cap cryptocurrency after Bitcoin) still at its peak, most new GPU models released by AMD and Nvidia have been hoarded by cryptocurrency miners in large quantities. This “supply-demand imbalance” has driven the prices of these GPU models to be significantly higher than their listed prices.
Notably, the skyrocketing prices of GPUs are not limited to new models but also impact the market for used GPUs. Due to the inability to purchase new GPUs, cryptocurrency miners in Vietnam are so desperate that they are willing to buy several years-old used GPU models to mine ETH.
After “extensively using” for a few years, still doubling profits
Currently, AMD’s GPU models have quickly become one of the most sought-after targets among cryptocurrency miners. Thanks to advantages in hashing speed, AMD’s several-year-old models provide more profit for miners compared to Nvidia’s models of the same price range.
Graphics cards like the RX 570 and RX 580 from AMD are now among the most sought-after by miners, with their purchase prices even nearly double compared to the new purchase prices from a few years ago. (Screenshot)
For instance, the RX 580 – a mid-range GPU model released in 2017 by AMD – is currently being bought by miners for a very high price, around 7.8 – 8.2 million VND for the 8GB VRAM version. It is worth noting that this is the buying price for RX 580 models that have been used for a long time. Naturally, the “newer” the GPU looks, the higher the resale price.
Interestingly, many users who own GPUs like the RX 570 and RX 580 in Vietnam have even made significant profits of several million VND when reselling, despite having used them extensively for a few years.
“I bought this RX 580 8GB version in March 2018 on an e-commerce platform for a very cheap price, only about 2 million VND. The shop owner said this graphics card was sold off by a cryptocurrency mining farm when the price of ETH plummeted at that time, forcing them to liquidate to recover capital. After using it for about 3 years, since I no longer had the need to game, I decided to sell it to a trader for 7 million VND, thus making a profit of up to 5 million VND after 3 years,” said Duc Tung, a user in Hanoi, cheerfully.
Another user, Hoang Viet, also from Hanoi, recently sold his RX 570 8GB for 5.8 million VND. This selling price allowed him to gain about 1 million VND compared to the amount he spent in 2017 when the RX 570 was first released by AMD. According to Viet, as soon as he posted it for sale on Facebook, a series of “traders” contacted him to buy it.
A mining rig consisting of 6 RX 570 cards connected to one motherboard. Each RX 570 provides a profit of nearly 3 USD per day after deducting electricity costs.
GPU prices skyrocketing, next month higher than the previous
Notably, the phenomenon of old GPUs increasing in price month after month has left many users feeling regretful for having “sold too soon” at a price much lower than the current market value, just before the cryptocurrency market exploded.
“Since I just upgraded to a new graphics card, I decided to sell my old RX 570 to a friend in November 2020 for only 1.5 million VND. Just a few months later, this friend resold the graphics card for 6 million VND,” shared Tan Trung, a user in Ho Chi Minh City, with regret.
I remember in January 2021 – when the price of ETH was about to surge, a major computer company in Ho Chi Minh City launched a program to buy old AMD graphics cards like RX 570 and RX 580. Users could exchange them for a brand new 100% Nvidia GTX 1650 Super graphics card, which was priced around 3.6 million VND at that time.
This “quite profitable” promotion quickly attracted the attention of many users, as they could trade their old, worn-out graphics cards for a “brand new” one without any cash payment. However, not many people knew that the buyers were the ones who benefited, as the purchasing price of used AMD GPU models was much higher than the listed price of the new GPU model.
Currently, the GPU price surge is expected to continue as the cryptocurrency market is still on track to set new records. However, the upcoming transition of ETH to version 2.0 also means that mining with GPUs will soon “become a thing of the past” with the implementation of the PoS protocol. This indicates that the resale prices of old GPU models are likely to plummet significantly in the second half of 2021, according to many experts’ predictions.