Some AMD RX 6800 and 6900 graphics cards recently had a hardware failure in the form of GPU cracking, bringing the issue into the limelight.
The cause of this failure has now seemingly been determined.
Reported Damages
Last week, a German repair business received 48 Radeon RX 6000 series graphics cards with stability issues, according to online sources, including OC3D.Net.
Many of these GPUs were discovered to have shattered GPU dies upon disassembly, prompting widespread claims online that AMD's newest GPU drivers are harming graphics cards and that the RX 6000 series GPUs are collapsing in droves.
Apparently, all of these assertions are false.
YouTube user KrisFix, who operates the hardware repair business in Germany, saw a high volume of cracked AMD GPUs arriving at his store, prompting him to post this observation.
Speculation at the time pointed to AMD's driver as a probable culprit because all owners of these graphics cards were using the most recent version. But as KrisFix reveals in a new YouTube video, as first reported by Tom's Hardware, this was not the case.
Initial Claims
Since the GPUs in question had previously been used for cryptocurrency mining, and since they were improperly kept before being sold, KrisFix suggests that the two reasons together are to blame for the problem, TechRadar reported.
According to KrisFix, all faulty cards were sold in late November 2022 or early December 2022, suggesting they originated from a single resale outlet. It could be from a cryptocurrency mining farm that was clearing out its inventory of AMD Radeon graphics processing units.
Investigation's Verdict
Consequently, it is hypothesized that these graphics cards were worked very hard around the clock in their mining roles and then kept in an inadequate environment, such as a warehouse with high humidity conditions.
In other words, when customers finally got their hands on their GPUs, they seemed to function well at first. However, when later subjected to prolonged periods of heavy use, for instance, in games or data mining, the chips overheated and broke as a result of the humidity damage.
There was a chance that the cards may have lasted their owners three days before they finally destroyed.
Damage to the cracked graphics cards was consistent across the board, and the coolers were all in good working order after being cleaned. Usually, a used graphics card would have some dust in there, but all cards in this instance were clean, suggesting the mining farm owner had them all tidied up before setting them on the market.
KrisFix's conclusion is not unexpected, as the afflicted models may have been repurposed GPUs from a mining rig.
The good news is that this should not affect many RX 6900 and RX 6800 units.
This incident should serve as a fairly obvious caution against purchasing GPUs that were previously used in a large-scale mining farm since the risks are not limited to the workloads to which they have been exposed.
