Cheap AliExpress Graphics Cards - SCAM???
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2019-05-06
·
1,645 words · ~8 min read
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Google Home Max, latest hell, one plus.
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No way!
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They're finally here!
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I thought Anthony was just throwing money away
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buying graphics cards on AliExpress.
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Let's go check these things out
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Okay, so apparently what we think we ordered
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is an ELSA GTX 1080 and a MacSun GTX 1060 5 gig.
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And this is what we've got.
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So why don't we start with the one that has no box?
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So we've got ELSA on here.
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That's actually like molded.
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So, you know, presumably there's some kind of volume
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to this production.
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And then it's got a sticker on the fan that says de Broglie?
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I don't know what de Broglie is.
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But it doesn't sound very good.
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The board feels pretty heavy.
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It's got a lot of memory chips back here.
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So this seems somewhat credible,
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but there's no recognizable part number anywhere on it.
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It's got what looks like a serial
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and then a warranty void by a tear or damage.
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And that's about it.
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I gotta say though,
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this shroud is sketching me out a little bit.
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I haven't seen many 1080s that are that, sort of, cheap.
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Sort of cheaply constructed.
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All right, so we know already that this one
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doesn't have five gigs of memory
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because NVIDIA doesn't make a GTX 1060
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with five gigs of memory.
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This is a funny thing for me.
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So Mac's son is using a really cheap heat sink design
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on this thing.
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Holy crow.
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I haven't seen something like this on a card
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above the like $100 price point in my memory.
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So you see, even though it has
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all of these aluminum fins,
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this is just a, what is it?
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Like a cast design.
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I'm gonna check with Alex.
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Would this be cast aluminum?
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You see how the fins don't go all the way through?
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Actually, no, this was extruded.
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Extruded.
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Okay, so his theory is that it's actually extruded
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and that makes a ton of sense
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because then they just have this profile
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and they'd have the aluminum just kind of push through it.
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And then they could just slice off heat sinks like this.
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And then it's very little work to create,
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these little slices for air to pass through.
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And then these little spots where they can throw in
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a couple of heat pipes.
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This is a very inefficient way of cooling
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versus having fins that actually pass all the way through,
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so you've got a lot more airflow.
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There's nothing really else about it
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that sets off warning bells
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other than the plastic back plate,
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which will obviously not only serve no purpose for cooling
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cause even metal ones don't do that,
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but actually could make it worse.
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Holy crap.
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Holy crap.
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This might actually have five gigs of RAM.
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What is a 160 bit bus?
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Am I mistaken?
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Is there a five gig that like,
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look, you know what?
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Let's just, all right.
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So we've got benchmarks run
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for our reference Founders Edition GTX 1080 already,
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which means we can go ahead,
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pull that puppy off the bench here
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and throw on the Elsa de Broglie.
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How much less did we actually pay?
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I thought the idea was we were supposed to find things
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that were like cheap.
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Okay.
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So 720 US for the 1080?
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325 US for the 1060.
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Okay.
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They've got some kind of tape over the SLI fingers.
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Why would they do that?
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And not like a temporary looking tape.
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Like this doesn't look like it's intended to be taken off.
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These little heat sink fins on the back
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don't actually appear to be like attached
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to this aluminum plate in any meaningful way.
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So I don't know.
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I doubt sincerely
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that they're really doing anything for cooling.
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It does show up as a GTX 1080.
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Benchmarks almost done.
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And honestly, everything here is looking pretty good so far.
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We haven't like power throttled or anything like that.
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So 6551, average FPS of 49.
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How does that compare to our Founders Edition, Anthony?
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Our Founders Edition did 6576.
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Okay.
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So this one is bang on.
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That's actually pretty cool
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because compared to the overpriced mining cards
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that were available at the time,
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even though we did pay a lot of money for this thing
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and getting a warranty for it
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would probably be a pretty sketchy ordeal,
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we at least did save a significant amount of money.
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Spoil it for me.
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Was there anything I was supposed to notice
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that was bad about this one?
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That shroud is for a GTX 980 Ti.
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That shroud is for a GTX 980 Ti.
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That shroud is for a GTX 980 Ti.
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Not a 1080.
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Did they reuse the PCB as well?
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The PCB is for an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 Founders Edition.
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But then they're just using a 980 Ti shroud on it.
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Yeah.
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Okay.
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There are model numbers on the back
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that coincide with an Apple Mac Pro GeForce 7300 GT.
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So it's not like it's not a little sketchy,
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but by and large, we got what we paid for.
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I consider that one a success.
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All right.
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This one, oops.
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I am not quite as hopeful about.
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These fans are exactly as cheap as the heatsink.
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Oh, wait, hold on.
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Maybe they're not at,
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no, they're not as bad as I thought it, ow, ow.
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Okay, you stop that.
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This isn't like an AMD card or something, is it?
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Okay, no, no, don't tell me, don't tell me.
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Well, I'm not sure if I'm expecting it,
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but we should see performance similar to a GTX 980 Ti.
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This is a 1060.
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Frame rates look like about what I would expect
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from a 1060.
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Let's see what it is.
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It's actually showing up as 1065 gig
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with memory running at four gigahertz.
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So that would be eight effective.
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So at 3532, that's about 300 points less
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than we got with our Founder's Edition 1060,
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but every piece of data we can find seems to confirm
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that this is in fact a five gig card.
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So those of you who have heard us rant on,
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what was it?
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The 1070 Ti video and at various points on the WAN Show,
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we'll be aware of how we feel around here
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about manufacturers saying, this is a 1060.
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It's got six gigs of RAM.
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And this is a 1063 gig, but oh, by the way,
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it's actually also cut down in some ways.
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We don't like it,
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but apparently they're screwing around with this even more.
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And more in other regions?
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Okay, so after some digging,
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what it looks like happened here is NVIDIA
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actually released a China specific five gig version
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of the 1060 with the only difference,
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same number of CUDA cores,
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with the only difference being the bus width
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and the amount of memory.
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So it performs as we saw fairly similarly
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to a regular 1060,
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but what with the whole global DRAM shortage and all that,
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it comes in at a,
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a lower price and it is intended for internet cafes.
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So this card ended up accidentally on purpose
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on a marketplace,
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but it was actually for OEM sales only
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to these kinds of LAN cafes
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that are much more popular over there
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than they are over here.
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So once again, we actually got an okay value
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and the product itself was legit.
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So buying GPUs on AliExpress,
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good idea, bad idea,
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we're still not quite sure,
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but it's,
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it's not obviously a complete scam.
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So that's actually better than I was expecting
8:32
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So thanks for watching guys
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If you dislike this video, you can hit that button
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But if you liked it hit like get subscribed maybe consider checking out where to buy the stuff
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We featured from a source that we definitely trust at the link in the video description
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Also down there is our merch store, which has cool shirts like this one and our community forum, which you should totally join
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Well, that was fun. Now. We've got a couple graphics cards that we bought that we don't need
9:42
So we'll probably have like an eBay or a Craigslist link under the video at the end here
9:46
If anyone actually wants it
9:47
I'll give you a free copy of the 5 gig 1060 or 1080
9:51
Presumably you'll get no warranty coverage whatsoever. So, you know, the thing about mystery meat is it tastes best with a grain of salt