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5 things you should do with your old GPU instead of selling it
Despite draining your wallet, upgrading your GPU can be quite an exhilarating experience. Not only can a better graphics card improve your in-game FPS, but it can also let you enjoy your favorite titles at higher resolutions with better visuals. However, the steady inflation in graphics card prices can take its toll on your savings, especially if you factor the hidden expenses, like buying a high-capacity PSU or a large case, into the mix.
Your outdated graphics card may not be able to render games at 4K60FPS, but these tweaks can help it chug along for another GPU generation or two
Assuming your older GPU isn’t dead or on its last legs, selling it can offset some of the new graphics card’s cost. But there are just as many reasons to stick with it, and in this article, we’ll go over some of the most useful things you can do with your outdated GPU.
Keep it as a backup GPU
On the off-chance that something untoward happens to the new card
Graphics cards, just like every other piece of tech, can end up dying out of nowhere. If you were to go to great lengths to ensure its longevity, all it takes is one dead capacitor to render your shiny new pixel-pushing GPU out of order. To add insult to injury, the manufacturer might end up rejecting your warranty claims, and the service fee can end up costing just as much as a new graphics card!
Retaining your old GPU as a spare option can come in real handy in such situations. Sure, proper maintenance can go a long way in keeping your new card in tip-top shape, but it’s always a good idea to have a backup option at the ready. In fact, if your processor doesn’t have an iGPU, I’d especially recommend keeping the old GPU or else you might not even be able to use the PC in case the new one ends up biting the dust.
Use it in multi-monitor setups
For those who need a lot of screen real estate
Modern graphics cards support a handful of display outputs, with even the cheapest options on the market shipping with at least 3-4 HDMI/DisplayPort connections. However, if you’re someone who requires multiple displays for their computing needs, you could end up running out of spare ports on the GPU.
So, instead of dealing with signal degradation on flimsy display splitters, you could simply slot your old graphics card into the PC and use it to drive some extra monitors. That said, this setup has its own share of issues, as you’ll need adequately spaced-out PCIe slots on the motherboard and adequate capacity on the PSU to handle more than one GPU.
Add it to your home server and enable PCIe passthrough
The ideal use-case for any server PC owner
If you’re a home server enthusiast, you may be familiar with virtualization platforms and operating systems that possess all the facilities you need to make full use of containers and virtual machines. One such feature is PCIe Passthrough, which lets you access the devices connected to the PCI Express slots on your motherboard from your VMs. This means you can attach the old graphics card to a server chassis and use it inside the virtual machines after enabling IOMMU in the BIOS.
Relegate it to projects where new GPUs can have issues
Trust me, you'll find plenty of such projects in the computing rabbit hole
This one’s actually based on my personal experience with Proxmox. Last week, I tried to run some macOS applications on a VM using the virtualization platform. But since my older PC and dual Intel Xeon E5 2650-v4 system yielded unsatisfactory results, I had to throw my main gaming rig into the mix. Before I could even run macOS, my RTX 3080 Ti's drivers prevented me from installing Proxmox.
As long as you have a fast processor, adequate RAM, and a boatload of patience, you can run a surprising number of apps on your Proxmox Hackintosh
If I didn’t have my trusty GTX 1080 on me, I would’ve been forced to wrap everything up. And that’s not the only project where using a newer GPU can result in compatibility issues. Software involving outdated code libraries and ancient standards can be harder, if not outright impossible, to run on the latest and the greatest graphics cards, making a spare GPU quite useful for DIY project lovers.
Build a second PC with it
It can be a NAS, a test-bench, or even a retro gaming system!
Upgradability is arguably the best aspect of PCs, as you can easily swap out outdated hardware and replace it with newer counterparts to keep up with your computing needs. Leaving the whole Ship of Theseus argument aside, there will soon come a time when you’ve swapped out most of the essential parts, and are left with enough spare components to build a secondary PC.
Even with an older GPU thrown in the mix, you can actually pull off a surprising amount of cool stuff. For example, your ol’ reliable graphics card can be useful for media transcoding tasks if you decide to build a Plex server out of your old PC parts. Alternatively, you can turn it into a retro gaming machine or use the GPU’s output for a test bench. Heck, if the card isn’t low on VRAM, you can even use it as a decent AI-hosting server that can run LLMs and generate images.
Reducing e-waste by reusing your old components
Besides the graphics card, there are a couple of other components that you can reuse after buying their newer models. Assuming you have a decent PSU, you can keep reusing it for future PC builds. While mechanical hard drives can show a lot of wear with age, you can still expect older SSDs to hold up well even after considerable usage.
There's something here for everyone, regardless of whether you're a budget user or a gaming enthusiast
In fact, you can even put components outside your PC’s chassis to good use instead of throwing them away after an upgrade. If you’ve recently purchased a high-end monitor, you can repurpose the older one as a secondary display, and with the help of a monitor arm, even flip it in a portrait orientation to increase its usefulness in non-gaming tasks.
