It looks like cryptocurrency mining is back in craze, as miners are firing up their old mining hardware from 2022 to cash in. Bitcoin is now north of $72,000, and is dragging up the value of several other cryptocurrencies, one such being Qubic (QBIC). Profitability calculators put 24 hours of Qubic mining on an AMD Ryzen 9 7950X 16-core processor at around $3, after subtracting energy costs involved in running the chip at its default 170 W TDP. "Zen 4" processors such as the 7950X tend to retain much of their performance with slight underclocking, and reducing their power limits; which is bound to hold or increase profitability, while also prolonging the life of the hardware.

And thus, the inevitable has happened—stocks of the AMD Ryzen 9 7950X have disappeared overnight across online retail. With the market presence of the 7950X3D and the Intel Core i9-14900K, the 7950X was typically found between $550-600, which would have added great value considering its low input costs. CPU-based cryptocurrency miners, including the QBIC miner, appear to be taking advantage of the AVX-512 instruction set. AMD "Zen 4" microarchitecture supports AVX-512 through its dual-pumped 256-bit FPU, and the upcoming "Zen 5" microarchitecture is rumored to double AVX-512 performance over "Zen 4." Meanwhile, Intel has deprecated what few client-relevant AVX-512 instructions its Core processors had since 12th Gen "Alder Lake," as it reportedly affected sales of Xeon processors. What about the 7950X3D? It's pricier, but mining doesn't benefit from the 3D V-cache, and the chip doesn't sustain the kind of CPU clocks the 7950X manages to do across all its 16 cores. It's only a matter of time before the 7950X3D disappears, too; followed by 12-core models such as the 65 W 7900, the 170 W 7900X, and the 7900X3D.

The US Government is considering new plans that will attempt to curb the after effects of cryptocurrency mining. The White House revealed details about its proposed "DAME Tax" scheme on Tuesday of this week - the Digital Asset Mining Energy excise tax is under consideration for this year's US Budget. The government wants to address the impact that cryptomining has on the US economy as well as the environment, alongside numerous other national challenges. Companies engaged in the extraction of cryptocurrencies could be charged extra for the running of computer equipment (starting in early 2024). A White House spokesperson states: "after a phase-in period, firms would face a tax equal to 30 percent of the cost of the electricity they use in cryptomining."

American crypto companies are facing a 10 percent taxation of their energy bill for 2024, that will then increase to 20 percent in 2025, and the maximum tax rate will hit a high of 30 percent in 2026. The White House number crunching team reckons that $3.5 billion could be generated by the proposed DAME excise tax. The new rules would represent a radical change for large scale cryptomining efforts: "Currently, cryptomining firms do not have to pay for the full cost they impose on others, in the form of local environmental pollution, higher energy prices, and the impacts of increased greenhouse gas emissions on the climate. The DAME tax encourages firms to start taking better account of the harms they impose on society," reads a White House statement." The government's investigation has determined that the domestic cryptomining industry is close to consuming more electricity than the entire nation's residential lighting system. US lawmakers last year calculated that some of the larger digital asset mining firms are capable of using more energy than nearly all of the residential population based in Houston, TX.

NVIDIA is stepping up to manufacturers of counterfeit graphics card in China according to an article published by MyDrivers - the hardware giant is partnering up with a number of the nation's major e-commerce companies in order to eliminate inventories of bogus GPUs. It is claimed that these online retail platforms, including JD.com and Douyin, are partway into removing a swathe of dodgy stock from their listings. NVIDIA is seeking to disassociate itself from the pool of unlicensed hardware and the brands responsible for flooding the domestic and foreign markets with so-called fake graphics cards. The company is reputed to be puzzled about the murky origins of this bootlegging of their patented designs.

The market became saturated with fake hardware during the Ethereum mining boom - little known cottage companies such as 51RSIC, Corn, Bingying and JieShuoMllse were pushing rebadged cheap OEM cards to domestic e-tail sites. The knock-off GPUs also crept outside of that sector, and import listings started to appear on international platforms including Ebay, AliExpress, Amazon and Newegg. NVIDIA is also fighting to stop the sale of refurbished cards - these are very likely to have been utilized in intensive cryptocurrency mining activities. A flood of these hit the market following an extreme downturn in crypto mining efforts, and many enthusiast communities have warned against acquiring pre-owned cards due to the high risk of component failure.

NiceHash has recently announced that their latest QuickMiner (Excavator) cryptocurrency mining software is able to unlock 100% of performance for NVIDIA RTX 30-Series Lite Hash Rate (LHR) graphics cards except the RTX 3050 and RTX 3080 12 GB. The first NVIDIA LHR algorithm was inadvertently unlocked by NVIDIA themselves after non-LHR drivers were released before an updated LHR algorithm was introduced with the RTX 3060 that is now present on all RTX 30 cards except the RTX 3090. The NiceHash developers had previously announced an unlock mechanism to reach 70% mining performance in August 2021 before today announcing this complete unlock. This unlock has been independently verified by the Benchmark.pl team where they recorded hash rates with the RTX 3080 Ti of 117 MH/s up from 85 - 88 MH/s previously.

NiceHashWe are very excited to tell you that NiceHash QuickMiner (Excavator) is the first mining software to FULLY (100%) UNLOCK LHR cards!

Now you can earn more profits than any other mining software on the market if you are using LHR graphics cards with NiceHash QuickMiner. Support for NiceHash Miner is coming soon.

A new, $5 million-backed campaign aims to increase awareness for Bitcoin's elevated energy expenditure - and aims to put pressure on a technological change that reduces its energy consumption and carbon impact. Funded by Ripple Labs co-founder Chris Larsen, the campaign, titled "Change the Code, Not the Climate" aims to increase awareness of technological solutions that could replace Bitcoin's expensive Proof of Work security model. A model that has seen power usage for transactions on the cryptocurrency hit historic highs in 2021, averaging an estimated 204 TWh power consumption for the year - around the same energy consumption as that of 70 million-citizen Thailand.

The campaign particularly calls for a change towards Proof of Stake, a transaction validation method that could reduce Bitcoin's energy consumption footprint by 99%. Of course, actually implementing the changes themselves on the live Bitcoin blockchain wouldn't be so easy as simply flicking a metaphorical code switch: Ethereum's implementation of such a transition has taken years already - and this with a more modern, more flexible blockchain. Considering the success of implementation for smaller, more technical aspects of Bitcoin mining - such as Blockchain rewards - has already led to forks of the cryptocurrency. One can only imagine what would happen following such a fundamental shift in technology, blockchain security - and miner payout.

VideoCardz has recently published pictures of a rumored AMD BC-160 (Blockchain Compute) mining card designed by XFX China and featuring a Navi 12 GPU. The card supposedly features 8 GB of HBM2 memory along with 2304 Stream Processors however a memory speed of 4 Gbps is also listed which is not currently available casting doubt on the legitimacy of this rumor. We did report on rumors in March that pointed to AMD releasing Navi 10/12 headless cryptocurrency mining cards so this could still be true.

The only existing product featuring the Navi 12 GPU is the Apple-exclusive AMD Radeon Pro 5600M which features 256 more Stream Processors at 2560. The BC-160 card was pictured in a mining cluster where it reached performance levels of 72 Mh/s in Etash with a TGP of 150 W. The card features two 8-pin power connectors and should offer performance around 25% faster than the Navi 10 Radeon RX 5700 XT. We are unsure if this is a real product or how much it might cost so take these rumors with a healthy dose of skepticism.

Intel's VP and GM of Client Graphics Products and Solutions Roger Chandler has recently confirmed in an interview with Gadgets 360 that the companies upcoming Arc Alchemist desktop graphics cards will not ship with any software or hardware cryptocurrency mining inhibitors. Roger Chandler didn't rule out the possibility of Intel implementing such a lock in the future simply stating that it is not a priority for the company. Intel SVP and GM of Accelerated Computing Systems and Graphics Raja Koduri also noted that they cannot guarantee sufficient supply will be available to meet consumer demand. These graphics cards are not expected to be released until Q2 2022 with mobile versions coming earlier in Q1 so we cannot be sure how they will affect availability and pricing for the general GPU market. The full interview which also covers reference board designs, workstation products, and XeSS super-resolution technology can be found at the link below.

Roger ChandlerAs far as like software lockouts and things of that nature, we're not designing this product or building any features at this point that specifically target miners. As far as actions we're taking to avoid or lock them out, it's a product that will be in the market and people will be able to buy it. It's not a priority for us.

MSI has recently launched the first NVIDIA Cryptocurrency Mining Processor (CMP) 50HX model with the MSI CMP 50HX MINER. The CMP 50HX is the third card in the CMP lineup above the CMP 30HX and CMP 40HX and a step below the flagship as of yet unreleased CMP 90HX. The CMP 50HX was expected to feature nearly identical specifications to the RTX 2080 Ti due to the similar reported mining performance and the fact that 30HX and 40HX models were derived from consumer cards. MSI has revealed that the CMP 50HX does use the TU102 but with only 3584 CUDA core compared to the 4352 cores found with the RTX 2080 Ti, the 50HX also features less memory with only 10 GB GDDR6. These core and memory reductions do come with a small power requirement reduction from 250 W to 225 W however dual 8-pin power connectors are still required. The MSI CMP 50HX card features a blower cooler design with a small plastic window and no display outputs.

MSI has recently announced two new CMP (Cryptocurrency Mining Processor) 30HX MINER Series cards the MSI CMP 30HX MINER, and MSI CMP 30HX MINER XS. These new cards borrow the coolers from the ARMOR series and VENTUS XS respectively, MSI is one of the first manufacturers to offer multiple versions of a CMP card so it will be interesting to see the differences in performance and pricing given the two cards feature identical specifications. The two cards both feature the TU116-100 GPU with 1408 cores and a base clock of 1530 MHz along with a boost clock of 1785 MHz and 6 GB GDDR6 memory. The cards also lack any display outputs as per all CMP cards and pricing or availability information is not available.

Hot on the heels of NVIDIA's recent Cryptocurrency Mining Processors (CMP) launch and slightly debacled driver-level neutering of popular mining algorithms with their latest GeForce RTX 3060, AMD product manager Nish Neelalojanan confirmed to PC Gamer that AMD's stance is a fundamentally different one: that they won't be the ones to decide what their customers can or can't do with their hardware. His words, precisely, were this: "We will not be blocking any workload, not just mining for that matter."

Nish then went on to speak on how AMD - and its current RDNA2 product stack - have been specifically geared and optimized for gaming workloads. There are some architectural choices present in RDNA2 that automatically reduce its utility and performance when it comes to mining, such as its infinity Cache - an architectural choice that aims to increase gaming performance by improving cache hits, at the expense of overall memory bandwidth (the most important metric for actual mining operations).

The first NVIDIA CMP (Crypto Mining Processor) 30HX card from Gigabyte has been pictured and it closely resembles that of Gigabyte's GTX 1660 SUPER OC 6G. This resemblance makes sense considering the 30HX uses the same TU116-100 GPU found in the GTX 1660 SUPER and is paired with the same 6 GB of GDDR6 memory. The NVIDIA CMP 30HX features a TDP of 125 W and achieves a hash rate of 26 MH/s in Ethereum mining similar to that of the RTX 3060 with it's anti-mining algorithm. The card features no display outputs which limits the cards capabilities once it's no longer profitable to operate. The card should run cool with the dual-fan cooling solution and improved airflow due to the lack of outputs.

MSI recently published an official blog article advertising the cryptocurrency mining potential of their GE76 raider laptop with a mobile RTX 3080 graphics card. The official post appears to have now been removed but has been archived by the Wayback Machine. MSI acknowledges the shortage of graphics cards and proposes that miners look at purchasing their new laptops. MSI shows the earnings potential of their GE76 raider laptop running NiceHash on the Intel Core i9-10980HK processor and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 graphics card. The mobile RTX-3080 achieved a hash rate of 52.8 MH/s running the Excavator miner with the DaggerHashimoto algorithm. This performance is slightly above the RTX 2080 Ti but falls significantly short of a desktop RTX 3080 which achieves nearly double at 95.7 MH/s. MSI also noted that they would be publishing a follow-up post with their profitability statistics however this now seems unlikely given that the original post appears to have been taken down.

Last year, we found out that a group of investors has accused NVIDIA that the company has misled its investors by reporting crypto revenue as gaming revenue numbers and making its gaming revenue seem much bigger than it is. The original lawsuit was filed in 2017 and it demanded that NVIDIA should pay one billion US Dollars to investors shall they be proven right. In 2017, cryptocurrency mining was at the same craze it is today, with people buying every possible card that exists and consumers having a hard time upgrading their PCs. Investors in NVIDIA corporation have believed that in 2017, the company has presented its cryptocurrency earning figures as a part of the gaming figures, thus giving misleading information about the company's success in the gaming market.

Today, we have information that NVIDIA has won this lawsuit. On Tuesday, U.S. District Court Judge Haywood Gilliam has dismissed the case and ruled that investors were unable to provide any significant evidence that the company has used such practices and misled investors. By taking this case off the company, NVIDIA will not be paying one billion USD to the accusing investors and the company continues operations as normal.

Back in February, NVIDIA has announced its GPU SKUs dedicated to the cryptocurrency mining task, without any graphics outputs present on the chips. Today, we are getting information that AMD is rumored to introduce its own lineup of graphics cards dedicated to cryptocurrency mining. In the latest patch for AMD Direct Rendering Manager (DRM), a subsystem of the Linux kernel responsible for interfacing with GPUs, we see the appearance of the Navi 12. This GPU SKU was not used for anything except Apple's Mac devices in a form of Radeon Pro 5600M GPU. However, it seems like the Navi 12 could join forces with Navi 10 GPU SKU and become a part of special "blockchain" GPUs.

Way back in November, popular hardware leaker, KOMACHI, has noted that AMD is preparing three additional Radeon SKUs called Radeon RX 5700XTB, RX 5700B, and RX 5500XTB. The "B" added to the end of each name is denoting the blockchain revision, made specifically for crypto-mining. When it comes to specifications of the upcoming mining-specific AMD GPUs, we know that both use first-generation RDNA architecture and have 2560 Stream Processors (40 Compute Units). Memory configuration for these cards remains unknown, as AMD surely won't be putting HBM2 stacks for mining like it did with Navi 12 GPU. All that remains is to wait and see what AMD announces in the coming months.

This is a big one: NVIDIA has officially announced a new family of products specifically designed to satiate the demand coming from cryptocurrency mining workloads and farms. At the same time, the company has announced that the RTX 3060 launch driver will include software limitations for cryptocurrency mining workloads specifically correlated with Ethereum mining, essentially halving the maximum theoretical hashrate that could be achieved from a purely hardware perspective. The new family of products, termed CMP (Crypto Mining Processor) series, will see its products under the HX branding, and will be available in four different tiers: 30HX, 40HX, 50HX and 90HX. These products will not have any display outputs, and therefore are not applicable for gaming scenarios.

NVIDIA's stance here is that their new product will bring some justice in the overall distribution of its GeForce graphics cards, which are marketed and meant for gaming workloads. The new cryptocurrency-geared series will be distributed by NVIDIA authorized partners in the form of ASUS, Colorful, EVGA, Gigabyte, MSI, Palit, and PC Partner (more may be added down the line). There is currently no information on what silicon actually powers these graphics cards; and of course, the success of this enterprise depends on A) the driver restrictions not being limited to the RTX 3060 graphics card - it isn't clear from NVIDIA's press release if other RTX 30-series graphics cards will see the same performance cap. Even if NVIDIA did release those drivers, however, cryptocurrency miners would just opt to, well, not update them. So it is possible that NVIDIA will release a revision of the RTX 3090, RTX 3080, RTX 3070 and RTX 3060 Ti with silicon enhancements that will only work with the latest GeForce drivers - after allowing the channels to move all of their existing, cryptocurrency-enabled stock.

ZOTAC's official Twitter channel has posted an image that promotes the usage of its graphics cards in mining environments. Under the caption "An army of #ZOTACGAMING GPU's hungry for coin!", the company posted an image of a cryptocurrency mining farm populated with its graphics cards. The usage of a gaming hashtag in the post just adds insult to injury, with the picture showcasing at least eight of its GeForce RTX 3070 Twin Edge graphics cards on mining duties.

Of course, for ZOTAC, its cards being re-purposed for mining isn't a make-it-or-break-it affair: the company makes money selling its products to gamers or miners alike. However, considering how global supply of the latest gaming-branded graphics cards has been constrained ever since the initial RTX 3000-series launch, it seems that this Tweet might have been a misstep on the company. It's bound to attract crosshairs towards a seemingly unjust distribution of graphics cards in the market, with several would-be users of their gaming-branded graphics cards being left out in the cold regarding the primary purpose these graphics cards are developed and marketed for: gaming. The company has in the meantime deleted the Tweet.

An internet cafe in Vietnam has turned to mining cryptocurrency as the pandemic has affected their business. Internet cafes have been ordered to close to limit the spread of COVID-19 forcing the owners to find an alternative use for their computer hardware. The owner of Star Computer computer cafe in Ho Chi Minh city has announced that they will be switching to cryptocurrency mining as the "profits are higher". The cafe is owned by a Vietnamese computer store and has managed to secure a significant number of RTX 3080 GPUs for the mining operations. Star Computer internet cafe has also encouraged other internet cafe owners to contact them about setting up similar operations.

Star Computers (translation)Switching business season, Profits are higher than net business, whoever wants to do, contact me for free.

With its GeForce RTX 30-series "Ampere" graphics cards on the horizon, NVIDIA has reportedly taken the first steps toward discontinuing popular SKUs in its current RTX 20-series graphics cards. Chinese publication ITHome reports that several premium RTX 20-series SKUs, which include the RTX 2070, RTX 2070 Super, RTX 2080 Super, and the RTX 2080 Ti, are on the chopping block, meaning that NVIDIA partners are placing the last orders with upstream suppliers for parts that make up their graphics cards based on these GPUs.

It is a slow process toward product discontinuation from this point, which usually takes 6-9 months, as the market is left to soak up leftover inventory. Another juicy bit of information from the ITHome report is NVIDIA allegedly guiding its partners to increase prices of its current-gen high-end graphics cards in response to a renewal in interest in crypto-currency, which could drive up demand for graphics cards. NVIDIA is expected to announce its GeForce RTX 30-series on September 17, 2020.

In a move that made us go "WTF" internally, Razer has decided to test their fanbase's loyalty more so than ever before. Today, the company introduced Razer Softminer, a mining software program that is intended to be installed on computers and run to mine cryptocurrency. But instead of the users getting whatever new cryptocurrency is in fashion, Razer instead wants to retain all mined crypto and in turn "award" users with the so-called Razer Silver- loyalty reward credits, in their own words. The miner appears to be running off a version of the Gamma desktop application, as per speculation from TweakTown.

Razer Softminer utilizes heavy GPU performance loads, and there is no mention as to what the actual mining is for. It is clear, however, that the users are not mining Razer Silver (which Razer is quick to admit is not cryptocurrency) and these loyalty credits are handed out in an equivalent manner based on the mining power of the system. In their estimate, a sytem with at least a NVIDIA GTX 1050 or AMD RX 460 running the mining program for a whole day will net ~500 Razer Silver, and these can be used to "redeem Razer peripherals, digital rewards such as games, vouchers and more" from a dedicated rewards page.

Maybe the guys at ASUS haven't noticed it, but this is probably the worst time to announce an effort to promote cryptocurrency mining. The crypto market has fallen about 80% since its peak in 2017, and this November has been an special tough month for crypto investors with Bitcoin going under $4,000 for a few days. Miners are running away and a lot of people think the bubble is finally exploding. Companies such as GIGABYTE are suffering the consequences, but ASUS seems to be quite sure that the situation isn't that bad.

They have partnered with blockchain technology provider Quantumcloud and they will encourage users to use their idle GPUs to mine cryptocurrencies. Yeah, that's right. There are no details on what crypto currencies will be mined with Quantumcloud's software, but at least ASUS is letting now those potential users that they "won't get rich quick, but you can earn some easy money with your idle GPUs". In fact there's a disclaimer telling they do not "guarantee that users of its software will make any earnings or profit" and ASUS adds that users "are responsible for considering their own usage costs". Maybe a year ago this could have been a thing, but the idea seems really uncool right now.

The world-renowned company, Alphacool, now offers special mining solutions for industry and end customer use. In addition to mining the well-known crypto currencies such as Bitcoin and Ethereum, systems very similar are also increasingly being used in research, development and other areas. These systems generate a lot of heat due to the mass of components used in enclosed spaces. Now, Alphacool has met the demands from the industry and has created cost-effective water cooling solutions and systems. Starting with cases for e.g. server racks and full cover graphic card coolers up to complete mining systems including hardware and preinstalled software.

The products are all cost effective, particularly the graphics card coolers! Extremely low prices are possible which can compete, or even beat the prices of air cooling, without compromising on quality. For even more reliability, there are graphics card coolers with include an integrated pump. Since there are usually several GPUs in a circuit, if one pump does fail, the other pumps can easily keep the liquid flowing ensuring that the system stays cool.

The world-famous manufacturer Alphacool introduces the first case of its Mining Rig series. The Alphacool Mining Rig 12 can accommodate two motherboards, four power supplies and of up to 12 graphics cards. There are also extensive mounting options for water cooling. For example, up to six 360 mm radiators can be mounted and at least two reservoirs with space for corresponding pumps. The ideal mining rig for Ethereum, Bitcoin, Zcash, Monero or whatever coin you wish to mine.

Mining Rig in perfection
The Alphacool Mining Rig 12 offers extensive options for equipping a water cooling system with different NexXxoS radiators, Eisbecher reservoirs and a wide range of pumps. The Mining rig case can also fit up to 7 fans, which blow directly on the graphics cards to ensure your cards stay as cool a possible whilst mining. In the lower part of the Mining Rig 12 you have 4 spaces for power supply units.

Despite not being backed by an official statement, NVIDIA's next-generation crypto-mining Turing graphics cards are expected to be revealed at GTC 2018 between March 26 to 29. According to DigiTimes's latest report, NVIDIA is expecting a drop in demand for graphics card later this year. In an effort to prolong the lifecycle of their current graphics cards, mass production for Turing won't start until the third quarter of 2018. Sources around the industry have also revealed that NVIDIA had a sit-down with AIB partners to address the current situation. In short, NVIDIA partners are now forbidden to promote activities related to cryptocurrency mining and to sell bulks of consumer graphics cards to cryptominers.

The truth of the matter is that the cryptocurrency boom isn't losing strength yet, and graphics card manufacturers are more than happy to profit off this phenomenon. However, one must have the right tools to mine cryptocurrency effectively. NVIDIA is keen to provide cryptominers with the necessary hardware as they ready their latest GP102-100 card for launch. The GP102-100 should sound familiar to most enthusiasts since it employs the same GP102 chip used in the mainstream GeForce GTX 1080 Ti and GTX Titan Xp graphics cards. Nevertheless, NVIDIA made a few modifications in order to maintain the hash rate while lowering the price at the same time. In other words, we're basically dealing with a gimped version of the GP102 chip with less memory channels, shader cores, and memory.

The Inno3D P102-100 is the first model to show up in the wild. The card packs 3,200 CUDA cores clocked at 1582 MHz and 5 GB of GDDR5X memory operating at 10 Gbps across a 320-bit wide memory interface. Inno3D is utilizing their Twin X2 cooling solution to cool the card. This solution features five heatpipes to draw the heat away from the GPU and two fans to provide active cooling. Being a mining-oriented model, the Inno3D P102-100 lacks a bracket and display outputs. It also only requires four PCIe lanes to function. The Inno3D P102-100 has a 250W TDP rating and draws power from a pair of 8-pin PCIe power connectors. According to Inno3D, their card is capable of mining Ethereum with a hash rate of 47 MH/s which easily beats a GeForce GTX 1080 Ti and GTX Titan Xp. Pricing is unknown at the writing of this article.

So, what's cheaper than building your own cryptomining rig? Stealing one, of course. With the humor aside, the Associated Press reported that around 600 cryptomining computers were stolen from multiple data centers in Iceland over the last three months. The first three thefts occurred in December, and the fourth took place recently in January. So far, the Icelandic authorities have apprehended 11 individuals, including a security guard, in connection with the series of heists. According to the publication, the stolen computers are estimated to worth almost $2 million. Unfortunately, the police haven't had any lucky locating the whereabouts of the stolen goods. However, they are actively monitoring electric consumption in the country, since cryptomining tends to require high power usage. They've also contacted local internet service providers, electricians, and storage space rentals to ask for their cooperation in reporting any abnormal requests for more power.