Scavenger Finds 12 RTX 3070 GPUs from Crypto Mining Era

A Reddit user has stumbled upon a GPU jackpot by claiming two old cryptocurrency mining rigs with 12 Zotac-branded Nvidia RTX 3070 graphics cards. The machines were reportedly used during the COVID-era mining boom and had been sitting unused in a basement, probably since the day Ethereum mining became unprofitable. The discovery was shared on the r/PCMasterRace subreddit, and judging by the photos, all of the parts look surprisingly undamaged despite the long period in a basement.

Apart from the graphics cards, the setup also features an MSI MPG Z390 Gaming Plus motherboard, a 1000W Gold-rated Rosewill power supply, two 4GB sticks of DDR4 RAM, and a pair of 120GB solid-state drives. Upon closer inspection of the GPUs, the Reddit user noticed minor silicone bleeding across most of the cards, which is a common occurrence caused by thermal pads breaking down and releasing oil over time. Commenters pointed out that while the cards might require a clean-up with isopropyl alcohol, as well as new thermal pads and thermal paste, the hardware is very likely salvageable.

Launched in 2020 as an upper mid-range graphics card, the RTX 3070 is based on Nvidia’s Ampere architecture with 5,888 CUDA cores and 8GB of GDDR6 memory. It was designed to deliver strong 1440p gaming performance and became one of the more popular GPUs of its generation. The card also arrived during the cryptocurrency mining boom, where its combination of performance and power efficiency made it attractive to miners.

GPUs used for mining aren't necessarily a bad proposition for gaming. Mining rigs were often configured to run GPUs at reduced core voltages and power levels to lower temperatures as well as electricity costs. This also helped in reducing stress on the silicon itself when compared to standard gaming.

For now, the Reddit user does not plan to keep all 12 graphics cards for themselves. Their first step is to test the RTX 3070s individually to find out how many are still in working condition. If most of the cards pass testing without issues, the user says they plan to sell 10 or 11 of the GPUs and keep at least one for themselves. With each RTX 3070 carrying 8GB of VRAM, the haul represents 96GB of VRAM in total, which in today's economy is a valuable amount of graphics memory, particularly due to the soaring prices of newer GPUs.

Kunal Khullar is a contributing writer at Tom’s Hardware. He is a long time technology journalist and reviewer specializing in PC components and peripherals, and welcomes any and every question around building a PC.