Comment by Melatonic

While I'm sure there are small amateur setups done poorly that push cards to their limits this seems like a more rare and inefficient use. GPUS (even used) are expensive and running them at maximum would require large costs and time to be replacing them regularly. Not to mention the increased cost of cooling and power.

Not sure I understand the police raid mentality - why are the police raiding amateur crypto mining setups ?

I can totally see cards used by casual amateurs being very worn / used though - especially your example of single mobo miners who were likely also using the card for gaming and other tasks.

I would imagine that anyone purposely running hardware into the ground would be running cheaper / more efficient ASICS vs expensive Nvidia GPUs since they are much easier and cheaper to replace. I would still be surprised however if most were not proritising temps and cooling