Inno3D Warns that mining can break Warranty on their GPUs

Hidden, non accessible to anything or anyone but someone who knows exactly what component to test, time counter of above 80% usage.

 

Not surprised at Inno3D because of their build quality in the past. I have only ever had one Inno3D graphics card and only ever had one graphics die on me. First prize goes to the first who can guess?

 

If they are going to do something like this, then they shouldn't single out mining.

Cars have a "year" warranty and a "mileage" warranty. If graphics cards are, essentially, going to the same system, then it needs to apply to all, and have a "hours of use" warranty and "year" warranty.

I mean what about folding@home and various other things?

 

folding@home never gained this level of popularity because it doesn't make the user money, it's essentially charity

less incentive to do it

 

And? Not sure what that has to do with anything when it comes to do with the reasoning behind this "breaking" a warranty, which is based of the idea that, say, a 5 year warranty is not infact a "use consistantly 24/7 for 5 years" warranty.

 

These cards were never designed for the kind of abuse mining gives. They were never meant to run 24/7/365. If anything, the rest of us (gamers) will suffer as warranties are harder to get.

 

Sorry, should have clarified.

Basically that, because mining is super popular and is more likely to be on 24/7 than even f@h, there are going to be a lot more cards breaking and going back for RMA before the manufacturers expected breaking point, on a typical gaming gpu you will not be gaming 24/7 and tolerances plan for this. Manufacturers can offer RMA because it is essentially good for their reputation and only slightly cuts into profits.

Your card that you mine on breaking after 5 month of mining would have made a gamer happy until it is essentially obsolete years later (or at least the RMA period is over).

Another point is that the current RMA period for many manufacturers is designed around the fact that you game on them, not use them 24/7. Lifetime/10/5 yr warranties are not going to be a thing anymore if mining continues, which it probably will

I'm hoping the separate market for miner cards comes out soon, AMD has expressed interest in it, and I can guarantee those cards will have lesser warranties. It's a lot of money for nvidia/amd if they can get it together and get those cards out, you can cut out a lot of the non essential features in a real gpu to make a mining gpu and lower cost

 

Maybe they are planning to release "mining editions" that are warranted for this purpose. I think it's just a warning that warning that you're not going to return 10+ cards. If you register too many XFX cards they can(and will) cancel the warranty on ALL of them. I don't like the idea that a company is telling you what you can do with your hardware. It's a stupid move IMO. Will they tell me what games I can play next? Are they going to check the temperature in my house next?

 

Possibly they have been getting a large amount of RMA's and they have decided that they have been used for mining, and as such are now looking on mining as breaking the cards warrenty.

Of course i have no idea how they check if a card has been used to mine 24/7, maybe they are seeing a pattern on the returned cards.

 

I don't think they can legally do that oO?
The warranty is legally mandatory.
Just imagine they could simply add a sticker and write : "If you connect your card to your motherboard we can break your warranty"...

I receive my Inno3d last weak and I can confirm there is a sticker on the package.

 

It has nothing to do with being an Nvidia card and I can guarantee that AMD partners will start doing the same thing as soon as they start getting thousands of RMAs due to mining.

 

The current types of warranty are based on normal usage not mining, mining at this scale is newish, bitcoin fell off due to ASIC usb miners though I'm not sure why this hasn't in this period picked up again

The legal clauses involved will inevitably have loopholes unpublished to protect he manufacturers

Even a simple clause of "do not so what we do not produce this card for" can invalidate mining breakage

 

I feel like I am the only one who feels it's a good move and completely justifiable lol. If it were my company I'd have looked for a way to put an end to miners abusing warranties long ago. As with auto manufacturers warranty, we have full legal right if there is clear signs of abuse to void/deny ones warranty. Having a GPU taxed 24/7 365 is full on abuse, sorry! next time you guys go for a drive, drop your car and first gear, and keep that thing pinned. See how long your engine lasts. I think some have confused themselves in their own thinking " oh but servers run 24/7!" yes, but servers are pretty much never 100% taxed 24/7......if ever. Inno3D has been around a long time in the GPU market, and has not lasted this long by making poor products & business decisions. So when suddenly they are seeing record breaking RMA's, something needs to be done. Worst case scenario, by doing what they are doing in the long run, they will be money ahead, less customer heat, and better overall customer satisfaction. I do agree however, perhaps there should be some sort of Miners Edition cards available.

 

Not a bad idea by Inno3d here because Miners need to have their own card instead of ruining for us gamers to purchase a card. Also Inno3d might raise questions if they receive more RMA requests than normal just like JoeyR has said.

 

I wonder when manufacturers adds a extra SSD to their cards, which records all the data, on what purpose the card has been used.
RMA the card, and if they find something, like mining, what they ain´t intended for, and revoke the RMA.

But with that, they could also log the OC data, and revoke RMA just by " You OC´d your card."

 

i wish i could play that much would mean my life is completly set but is an example of using the card as "intended" but i gues if you try to rma cards by the dozens is a dead giveaway you are minning. Is kind of funny for years they tried to put in consumers minds tha gpus can do a lot more than gaming and now they did 180 degrees and say.... oh no no no those are intented for gaming only

 

They wouldn't revoke the RMA for OCing they would allow some leeway. However I can see them installing a flash based storage device something similar to what the Wii and Wii-U used and use it to log GPU load percentage, GPU temps and Fan speed percentage and if its maxed out for 24/7 for a couple of months and the card dies after that they can fix the cards to extract the data and see what the card was used for and if its maxed out every day for a couple of months then they can revoke the RMA because there is no way hardcore gamers would max out the GPU like that by just gaming with it.

 

imo if the manufacturers are worried about certain types of usage shortening the life of a gpu then they should be setting power limiters to prevent it happening rather than telling consumers how they should use it. It's like telling people to never turn off vsync because removing the frame limit increases the duty cycle.

 

I will not buy or recommend brands that do that or will do that. You shall too.

 

People like "schmidtbag" make this world a sad place to live in. When bullies beat you, that is bad. When you thank them and ask for more, it is much worse.

That being said, I can only add that there is absolutely no excuse for this in-no-vision's "warning". Tomorrow morning, all the producers of all devices will "warn" against 24/7/30/12 mining, and day after tomorrow there will be something else on the block. Try to understand, dear colleagues: the companies are the organizations of GREEDY people whose ONLY goal is to give you LESS for the same money (or, if it's possible, for more money).
The devices' warranties MUST automatically understand UNLIMITED use within the defined period of time. No producer has I right to tell you how many hours a day you are allowed to watch movies, or to render graphics, or to play games...That's it. And that is ALL.