I've been upgrading my PC piece by piece for years, but my budget is extremely tight right now. My current graphics card is a GTX 1050 Ti, and I'm mainly playing games from around 2015–2020 rather than expecting high-end performance in the newest releases.
While house-sitting, I found an abandoned cryptocurrency-mining rig containing three RX 580 8GB cards and three RX 570s. The rig reportedly ran for about a year and then sat unused. The owner may give me one or two of the RX 580s for free or very cheaply.
I know very little about graphics cards that were used for mining. I've heard they may need a BIOS reset or special software such as a pixel-patch tool, and that their clock speeds might need to be restored. I'm not comfortable changing BIOS settings without understanding the risks.
What problems should I look for with these cards, and what would be the safest way to test and prepare one for gaming? Would an RX 580 8GB be a worthwhile upgrade from a 1050 Ti if it works, or is it likely to become a major headache?
5 Answers
Test the card before relying on it. Use a GPU monitoring utility such as GPU-Z to watch temperatures, fan speed, clock speeds, and power behavior while running a demanding 3D benchmark or stress test. Look for crashes, visual artifacts, driver resets, unusually high temperatures, or fans that don’t behave normally. Also inspect the card for dust, damaged components, and signs of corrosion before installing it.
An RX 580 8GB should generally outperform a GTX 1050 Ti, especially in games that benefit from the extra VRAM, although it’s still an older card. It won’t be a modern high-end upgrade, but for older games and a very small budget, a free RX 580 is a reasonable improvement. Make sure your power supply has the required PCIe power connector, usually a 6-pin or 8-pin depending on the model.
The previous owner may not know much about the hardware either, so treat each card as untested. Try one card at a time and verify that your power supply can handle it. You may need to install the card’s driver normally before troubleshooting anything more complicated. Keep the 1050 Ti available until the RX 580 passes testing, since it can be useful as a fallback if the older card turns out to be unreliable.
Mining cards can have worn fans or memory that has been stressed, but one year of use isn’t necessarily alarming if the rig was kept cool. Let the card sit at room temperature, clean it carefully, and test it at stock settings first. If it works reliably for a few hours under load and temperatures stay reasonable, you probably don’t need to change anything. A newer 6000-series card would be faster, but at a free-or-nearly-free price the RX 580 is still worth evaluating.
If you can get an RX 580 for free or nearly free, it’s worth trying. Mining use doesn’t automatically mean the card is bad, and many of these cards continue to work normally. A BIOS flash should be considered a last resort, not the first step. Start by installing the normal graphics driver and testing the card at its default settings.
That helps a lot. I’ll research BIOS flashing first so I understand it, but I’ll avoid touching it unless testing shows there’s actually a problem.
That’s exactly the kind of upgrade I’m looking for. I’m not trying to run the newest games at maximum settings, so even a modest improvement would be useful.