Ads, complete lack of privacy, kremlinbots.

It used to be the platform that did one thing good. Build communities. Not it does a lot of things, but all of them badly.

Not to mention that their owners are the main reason why “YouTube works bad, because Google’s servers are degrading”. Basically, Roscomnadzor (an official government censorship service) has been making YouTube unusable for over a year now to make people switch to VK Video or Rutube (both owned by same entity) whilst pretending that it doesn’t. Did it work? According to them, yes. According to reality, however, the vast majority just switched to using VPN.

Ah, I see. Yes, you’re right, they do manufacture reference design cards. First time dealing with reference models, since those aren’t sold where I live, hence the confusion, haha

Those will all be the same in terms of temperature and clock speeds. Build quality should only vary insignificantly, although I do not trust Gigabyte, due to 3000 series PCB issues and how they handled it, and ASUS due to their borderline scam customer support.

You won’t be getting any warranty buying used, I don’t think. So, imo, just get the cheapest one. You should concern yourself more with the seller, and do make sure to thoroughly check everything after buying. Both physically and performance-wise.

You must be mistaken because reference cards are specifically those made by GPU manufacturers, aka AMD, Nvidia, and Intel.

They’re called that because third-party manufacturers (Gigabyte, Asus, XFX, etc) use those as a reference to create their own designs of PCB, coolers, and settings.

Can you give links to the cards you’re speaking about?

Those aren’t reference models, the ones you named are called something like AIB or aftermarket cards. (Reference models are those made by GPU manufacturers)

Main differences between all are temperatures, clock speeds, build quality, and price.

They also have different “tiers” of cards using same GPU. Those of higher tier cost more, but have better coolers and higher clock speeds. The premium you’d be paying isn’t usually worth it, unless it’s a small amount.

Personally, I prefer Sapphire, PowerColor, or XFX for AMD cards.

It’s simple math and understanding of the law, what does political affiliation has to do with it?

0.05$ is not a substantial amount of money regardless of your political views.

Am I missing some context here that there’s new taxes passed by Trump? (Am not American)

Not really. You just have to make sure you got what you ordered by doing a bunch of tests. Plus, you usually don’t get a warranty.

Don’t know about the alternatives, but those SOTC ones seem to be in stock on Ali if you’re interested.