Hard drives on backorder for two years as AI data centers trigger HDD shortage

My understanding is that refurbished GPUs from e.g. crypto mining are something people are warned away from, because they've often been run into the ground. Are AI usage practices different?

> My understanding is that refurbished GPUs from e.g. crypto mining are something people are warned away from, because they've often been run into the ground.

No, this wasn't the case. While there were never comprehensive studies various tech media purchased these cards to run testing and found that, other than scammers, they all performed to expectation.

You can buy used car tires with 1% of thread left and they'll perform amazingly during your one time test too

Car tire is a moving part that wears in use. Only moving parts a GPU has are its fans, which can be replaced. The rest may last really long, or fail brand new.

Thermal cycling will eventually cause problems with continuity but I'm not sure that's really predictable. We have some really old GPUs that eventually had problems under load, we attributed it to thermal degradation as we had ruled out pretty much everything else.

Believe it or not but the "really long time" you're mentioning is much less "long" when you run the card 24/7 at 100% in enclosed spaces

Electricity is a moving part btw, electronic components do wear and tear

It was considered a fear but I don't know if there is much truth to it. The fans and capacitors would give out long before the silicon.

Even if it say, halved the life span of the chips, that is still far longer than what most people would ever use them for.