Reports of AMD Radeon 6000 Failure Spikes Get Corrected (And It’s Good News!)

Given the fact that GPUs (even last-gen models) are still commanding pretty high price tags with retailers, many of us are anxiously dreading the day that we may turn our PCs on only to find that we no longer have any kind of graphical output. – I know for a fact that I’m getting more than a little concerned about my trusty but certainly ageing 1080 Ti.

Earlier this month, however, some alarm bells started ringing when a notable YouTube channel (and graphics card repair centre) reported a notable spike in AMD Radeon RX 6000 series failures. – Put simply, it led to significant fears that the Radeon 6000 series might have had a fatal flaw which was just starting to crop up due to either time or driver factors.

Following a report via Videocardz, however, it seems that we need not panic. Following an update from the original source, it seems that while an AMD Radeon 6000 failure spike was indeed accurate, it was (fortunately) for reasons which are nothing to do with any kind of issue with the GPU itself, but more with its usage!

Good News – AMD Radeon 6000 GPUs Are NOT Breaking!

I should first note that the source is not to be blamed for this situation. Based on the information they had, it did look like AMD Radeon 6000 graphics cards may have had a ‘ticking timebomb’ issue which could lead to them being completely destroyed. It was, additionally, a factor of considerable coincidence that of all the users who reported a bricked Radeon 6000 GPU in this apparent ‘spike’, they were all ran on the exact same driver version.

In a nutshell, it’s an unfortunate incident of putting two and two together and accidentally, but not unintelligently or maliciously, coming up with five.

So, what is the problem? Well, we’ve posted their video above, but for those of you who want the TLDW, it would appear that all of the AMD Radeon 6000 graphics cards encountered in this failure spike came from the same original source. Now, whether the seller was aware of this or not is unclear, it has, however, been confirmed with a pretty hefty degree of certainty that these broken GPUs were ex-mining models, and more so, were likely utilised (or stored) in exceptionally poor/unfavourable conditions.

Yep, in a nutshell, it sounds like these GPUs probably came from a now-defunct sweat shop mining centre (probably somewhere in Asia) and someone out there tried to flip them, despite their poor quality, to unsuspecting consumers in Germany. – And yes, this isn’t unheard of and is a major problem with the second-hand graphics card market right now. Unless the individual is a private and/or local seller, you really can’t be sure what kind of life any kind of pre-owned GPU has had, and more so, how much it might potentially have left in it!

The good news though is that if you own an AMD Radeon 6000, don’t worry. This was an isolated incident, but one that does undoubtedly highlight the perils and pitfalls of ex-mining graphics cards. – As the old expression goes, if something looks too good to be true, it probably is!

What do you think? – Let us know in the comments!