At least one company is fighting back against the cryptocurrency craze that is depleting the market of graphics cards. Over at Reddit, a user brought to attention a warning sticker from Inno3D that tells miners it may opt not to honor its warranty if its cards are used for mining.
"This product is not designed for Crypto Mining. We reserve the right to void the warranty if there is any damage associated with this application," the sticker reads.
It is not clear how widespread the label is—this one was found on an iChill GeForce GTX 1060 6GB X3 V2 graphics card with factory overclocked specs. Whereas Nvidia's reference blueprint calls for a 1,506MHz base clock and 1,708MHz boost clock, Inno3D's card has a 1,556Mhz base clock and 1,771MHz boost clock.
Miners are in part to blame for the shortage of certain model graphics cards, which has led to inflated price tags in the second-hand market and by third-party sellers on marketplaces such as Amazon and Newegg.
While cryptocurrencies are considered volatile, both Bitcoin and Ethereum have seen rapid rises in value, leading to a sort of modern day gold rush. The good news with Bitcoin is that it's not worth trying to mine with graphics cards—ASIC hardware does a much better job. Ethereum, on the other hand, is designed to be mined with GPUs. However, it's also not uncommon for miners to cash in their other currencies (Zcash, LBRY, etc.) and invest in Bitcoin.
The huge demand on hardware by miners has not been lost on hardware makers. Sapphire recently came out with headless cards designed specifically for mining, and Asus is prepping a motherboard with 19 PCIe slots. AMD and Nvidia have both acknowledged the demand for graphics cards from the mining community as well, with AMD even pumping out drivers that are tuned for mining.
Inno3D's stance makes us wonder if the company or others have seen an uptick in RMA requests. Either way, it's refreshing to see Inno3D take a stand against mining, even if it has its own self interest in mind.
