AMD RX 6800 and 6900 graphics cards recently came under the spotlight after a bunch of them broke due to the GPU actually physically cracking, and we now have an apparent answer as to why this happened.

This comes from KrisFix on YouTube (who runs a German repair shop that fixes hardware), who noticed the many such AMD GPUs that were turning up on his doorstep that had died due to cracking.

At the time, speculation was rife about AMD’s driver being a possible cause – as all the owners of these graphics cards had been running the latest version – but as KrisFix explains in a new YouTube video (opens in new tab) (highlighted by Tom’s Hardware (opens in new tab)), that wasn’t the case.

In actual fact, KrisFix proposes a theory that the issue was caused by a combination of two factors: the GPUs being ex-crypto-mining models, and the way they were stored before sale.

KrisFix notes that the problem cards were all sold towards the end of November, or start of December 2022, and likely came from the same second-hand source – namely a crypto-mining farm selling off a load of these AMD Radeon models.

So, the idea is that these graphics cards were driven super-hard 24/7 in their mining duties, and then likely stored in a poor environment, maybe a warehouse with high humidity levels.

Meaning that when the buyers got their GPUs through, they worked okay to begin with, but then when gaming (or other intense workloads) pushed the chip temperatures up high, due to the damage from…