Radeon VII @ newegg for 500 dollars US on 11-27

[paulunderwood]

Originally Posted by paulunderwood

amazon.co.uk has some cheap secondhand Radeon VII, cheap compared to eBay offerings, including one for £340. There are ones for £240.

I just snapped one up. Another 40-core equivalent card is winging its way to me.

My order was cancelled. Why? Bulk buyer? Scam? All gone anyway.

[aheeffer]

Originally Posted by paulunderwood

My order was cancelled. Why? Bulk buyer? Scam? All gone anyway.

I had the same with Radeon VII cards four times on the Amazon Germany site. Some lesser used accounts get hacked. The last one put 80,000 items for sale overnight and all orders got cancelled with 24 hours. I got my money refunded immediately, except for the last one three weeks ago for which I am still waiting.

[Xyzzy]

https://old.reddit.com/r/Amd/comment...everything_is/

[ewmayer]

Woke up yesterday morning, on checked on my wo multi-GPU-hosting systems, saw the open-frame 3xR7 desktop one described late spring 2020 in this thread had gone down during night, after reboot showed last file updates ~1a.m. That system usually averages ~1 month uptime between needing reboot, so going down was in itself not unusual. Fired up usual GPU runs ... ~15 mins later again went down. Was able to reproduce this several more reboot/run-start cycles, no sign of filesystem issues or overheating of GPU or CPU, the CPU has only ever been used for administering the GPU work and e.g. doing GCDs during p-1 testing. Signs pinted to PSU, although nothing untoward-looking-or-sounding there. This is a Corsair RM850 I bought last summer (note there is no longer an Amzaon.com item page at that link), first half of its life I was using it to drive 4 R7s, all downclocked, total wattage ~900W-at-wall, thus probably 750-800W of GPU output, pretty close to its rating, but I'd heard the Corsairs were known for honest rating numbers and being able to get pushed hard. Last 3-4 months only had 3 GPUs, 750-800W-at-wall.

But figuring better-safe-than-sorry, last Fall laid in a spare PSU of the same model. Spent ~4 hours last night and this morning moving the open-frame to my workbench - the multiple design flaws were again manifest, this time 2 of the 4 predrilled acrylic T-brackets holding the middle 2 (or 4 total) crossbeams to the side rails of the frame had cracked, so after pulling the old PSU out I hacksawed and drilled 2 rectangles of 2"-wide and 1/8"-thick Alu. bar stock to replace those. Got all back together w/new PSU an hour ago, so far so good. Need to check whether there's a standard-issue 1-year warranty against defects - conking out in under a year of operating hard but within its rated wattage seems like it should be covered by such. Cost only $130 w/tax, so not a major outlay in any event.

Edit: Turns out I bought the RM850 that appears to have gone bad on 12 Feb 2020, literally 1 year and 4 days before it boinked. I originally bought it as a possible spare for my old ATX-case Haswell system after I installed my first R7 in that (that ~10-year-old old non-modular metal-box PSU is still working faithfully, even with two R7s in the system as of last summer), didn't use it for several months until I caught the multi-GPU bug and assembled the test-frame system, but I'm guessing 1-year warranty starts on purchase date.

[paulunderwood]

Originally Posted by ewmayer

Edit: Turns out I bought the RM850 that appears to have gone bad on 12 Feb 2020, literally 1 year and 4 days before it boinked. I originally bought it as a possible spare for my old ATX-case Haswell system after I installed my first R7 in that (that ~10-year-old old non-modular metal-box PSU is still working faithfully, even with two R7s in the system as of last summer), didn't use it for several months until I caught the multi-GPU bug and assembled the test-frame system, but I'm guessing 1-year warranty starts on purchase date.

My Corsair PSUs have 8 or 10 year warranty

[PhilF]

Originally Posted by ewmayer

Turns out I bought the RM850 that appears to have gone bad on 12 Feb 2020, literally 1 year and 4 days before it boinked.

If this is the system that uses your infamous Frankenstein cabling for distributing power to the R7's, be sure you test that power supply in a "normal" system before tossing it.

[ewmayer]

@Paul: the little micro-printed owner's manual that came in the box is full of weasel-wording re. warranty - "claims must be made within 30 days of purchase", huh? Then "warranty at least 2 years in the EU", and in special section for the Aussies, "3-10 years, depending on [vague stuff]". But right on front of the box, bottom right, "Corsair 10-year guarantee". But not a 1-year window as I'd feared in any event.

Originally Posted by PhilF

If this is the system that uses your infamous Frankenstein cabling for distributing power to the R7's, be sure you test that power supply in a "normal" system before tossing it.

Of course. :) Now that this system is down to 'just' 3 GPUs from the original 4 I could go with jsust 8-pin PCIe cables for all GPUs, but since it's been running stably as is for about a half year, figured let's keep the cabling as-is, swap in the spare same-model PSU and see if that does the trick. It did, so cabling appears not an issue, though pulling the system out allowed me to inspect all the hookups to look for loose connections, signs of excess heat, etc.

I regularly blast dust out of the system using a refurbished water fire extinguisher I bought last year for use as a refillable home compressed air tank. works brilliantly, but mounted in the test frame the PSU fan intake is largely shielded from that blasting by the 3 GPUs. Now that the old PSU is out I was able to give it a good close-up air blasting, quite a bit of dust came out. Do these things have any kind of internal temperature sensors?

Anyhow, no intention to toss the unit - at worst I'm sure there's a thriving refurbishment market for such new-ish gear. Plan is, now that we know it was the PSU but are not sure if it was component degradation or simply dust build-up, next time I pull the unit out for close inspection and de-dusting, will set it next to the original PSU on the workbench, swap cabling from the spare to the original, fire it up, see if it can run under load for at least several hours. If yes, just start regularly close-up dust-blasting its interior. If not, inquire about getting it refurbished or replaced under the warranty.

[Prime95]

$1201 is the current bid for a picture of a Radeon VII.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/254892875387?ul_noapp=true

[PhilF]

Originally Posted by Prime95

$1201 is the current bid for a picture of a Radeon VII.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/254892875387?ul_noapp=true

Think of all the money you'll save in electricity if you let a picture do the crunching for you.

[kriesel]

Originally Posted by Prime95

$1201 is the current bid for a picture of a Radeon VII.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/254892875387?ul_noapp=true

22 bids by what appears to be 13 different bidders; ~90 minutes to go, no doubt the outbid are getting messages it could still be yours if you act quickly!
(Is this the new method for transferring funds to drug purveyors or terrorist cells?)

[ewmayer]

Originally Posted by kriesel

22 bids by what appears to be 13 different bidders; ~90 minutes to go, no doubt the outbid are getting messages it could still be yours if you act quickly!
(Is this the new method for transferring funds to drug purveyors or terrorist cells?)

Winning bid was $1226 and change - I wonder if the seller actually ends up getting paid.

Based on the ad wording, seems like a genuine gamer-with-a-gripe taking out his frustrations in a creative - and hopefully profitable - way. I'm feeling a strange yen to take up still-life GPU photography myself.