What to Do With an Old Graphics Card Instead of Throwing It Away

Tech site Engadget has outlined what to do with an old PC graphics card (GPU, the component that processes images) after buying a new one. The reason is rising prices: memory and silicon costs have pushed new cards up, so discarding a working one makes little sense.

Prices and resale

In the latest hardware survey from the Steam gaming platform, the most common card is the Nvidia GeForce RTX 5070, installed in 6.15 percent of surveyed systems. It launched at $549 and can now cost more than $800. That may stretch the usual GPU upgrade cycle, which is typically three to five years.

Used cards still sell well on eBay. Some RTX 3060s go for almost their original price, while the 10-year-old GTX 1060, which launched at $249, is usually listed at $50 to $100 in good condition. Prices fluctuate.

Ways to reuse it

An old card can go into a home media server to handle video encoding and decoding with Nvidia's NVENC or AMD's AMF. Both Jellyfin and Plex support this acceleration, which takes load off the processor. Other options include:

• a PC connected to a TV that doubles as a game console for light indie games and emulation;
• running legacy games and software, or adding extra video outputs for more monitors;
• a second card in the main PC, which requires a suitable power supply and motherboard and can hurt the main GPU's performance because of PCIe lane limits;
• supporting the new card with Lossless Scaling ($6.99 on Steam), capturing game video, or building a separate rig for video work in DaVinci Resolve and Blender;
• local AI workloads, which depend heavily on video memory.

If there is no use for it, the card can be kept as a spare in an antistatic bag, though its resale value will decline over time.

Recycling

Electronics should not go out with household trash. E-waste recyclers will break the card down, and the gold, copper and aluminum inside will be reused elsewhere.