D-Central Technologies proudly announces the launch of its latest innovations in Bitcoin mining hardware, the Bitaxe Supra v401 and the NerdAxe Ultra. These cutting-edge devices are set to revolutionize the Bitcoin mining landscape with their advanced features and unparalleled performance.

"The latest Bitaxe Supra v401 and NerdAxe Ultra set a new standard in Bitcoin mining accessibility", Jonathan Bertrand, CEO, D-Central Technologies

Today Intel announced that they would be discontinuing production of their Blockscale 1000 series of ASICs built for cryptocurrency mining. Blockscale was designed by the Custom Compute Group within what was Intel's AXG graphics division at the time, and launched to market back in April 2022 when the value of Bitcoin was still above $40K USD. Blockscale initially succeeded with efficiency and supply advantages over competing ASICs as Intel leveraged their manufacturing capacity to produce the chips, however the valuation of the crypto currency market experienced a major slump over the second half of 2022. Intel's AXG has also recently seen a major restructuring, though there have been no mentions of what the operable status is of the Custom Compute Group. Support for existing Blockscale customers is set to continue for some time. Intel has not announced any possible follow-up crypto ASIC generation, only saying, "We continue to monitor market opportunities."

Intel's Blockscale was rather late to the market as far as crypto mining ASICs go. Early mining ASICs began hitting the scene in mid-2012 as FPGAs started to reach their limits in efficiency, and investment funds began to funnel into crypto startups. Intel's interest in cryptocurrency hardware lagged behind even their contemporaries at NVIDIA and AMD, both of which had crypto-focused variants of consumer GPUs on the market as early as 2017 during the first major mining-induced hardware shortages. Intel hasn't mentioned whether the timing of Blockscale contributed to its short shelf life, but Bitcoin is on its way back up after the recent slump, shooting up to around $30K USD just prior to Intel's announcement.

NVIDIA Ada and AMD RDNA3 will not sell to Ethereum miners. In a dramatic move, the creators of Ethereum have switched over the popular crypto-currency's algorithm from proof-of-work, to proof-of-stake, which means miners will no longer spend GPU resources in competing to find the same blocks. This effectively ends GPU-accelerated mining as Ethereum mining was the number-1 consumer of high-end GPUs through 2021. The switch-over happened as the total terminal difficulty surpassed 58,750,000,000T, with the last block having been found. With this move, global electricity consumption is expected to reduce by 0.2% (that's enough to power the world's top 5 cities).

The impact of this move on GPU sales to crypto-currency miners is expected to be profound. GPUs are no longer an economical way to mine Bitcoin, ASICs are; and Ethereum mining constituted the bulk of activity from GPU-accelerated mining farms. This doesn't mean there aren't other crypto-currencies that rely on GPU-accelerated proof-of-work blockchain compute; but Ethereum had the highest market-cap among such currencies. Gamers have reason to rejoice, as NVIDIA and AMD now have to sell high-end GPUs squarely on merits of gaming performance, power-draw, and graphics card pricing.

Gelid Solutions is excited to introduce the "The Ultimate Mining Fan" GALE and GALE EXTREME, designed to maximize cooling capabilities by combining modern technologies with exceptional hardware, the gale series looks to out compete all of its competitors. Both high performing fans contain a double ball bearing system along with an optimized impeller to improve reliability and airflow. Also, a pre-installed Fan Grill is added to avoid damaging the fan blades. Its impressive specifications are worthy for any miners that value efficiency to give it a try.

GALE: Comes with a max air flow of 110 (CFM) for cooling, fan max current 0.55 (A) with a fan connector of 4-pin PWM, max noise level 45 (dBA) also with a power draw of max. 7 (W), static pressure of 12 (mmH2O) and a Fan Speed of 500 - 3500 (RPM). GALE EXTREME: Comes with a max air flow of 195 (CFM) for maximum cooling, fan max current 2.8 (A) with a fan connector of 4 Pin PWM, max noise level 60 (dBA) also with a power draw of max. 33.6 (W), static pressure of 24 (mm H₂O) and a Fan Speed of 500 - 6000 (RPM).

Remember those unofficial GeForce RTX 3060 cards that sported "hackamajigged" Mobile versions of the NVIDIA RTX 3060 desktop GPU wrapped in a shiny, desktop-like shroud? Well, those cards are now surfacing again just as Ethereum's Merge approaches (for the umpteenth time, it has to be said). Miners have taken to offload their graphics cards in order to recoup their hardware investment costs. Despite the recent positive price action, which saw Ethereum in particular recovering 34% of its value in about a week, there's only so much time left to mine before all those re-purposed GPUs become "nothing more" than gaming graphics cards. And those are usually superfluous beyond one per rig - never mind the numbers used by miners.

As these cards are now surfacing in the secondary markets, some benchmarks are also leaking. According to a Korean YouTuber, It appears that the RTX 3060M is actually a pretty competent RTX 3060. The GeForce RTX 3060M makes use of the same GA106 (Ampere) silicon as the GeForce RTX 3060 Mobile, sporting 3,840 CUDA cores and 6 GB of 14 Gbps GDDR6 memory (256 more CUDA cores than the desktop version, as wider, lesser-clocked GPUs sport better power efficiency profiles). The desktop shroud does allow it to unlock an additional 300 MHz in core frequency, while reducing its TDP from 105 W down to just 80 W.

Even as the price of Bitcoin and cryptocurrency in general tumbled some 60% in as many months, miners don't seem to be winding down their efforts at all. In fact, in what could be seen as a doubling-down in the value of crypto, miners have been seemingly investing in both more powerful and more power-efficient rigs. While mining rig prices too have tumbled along with crypto prices, these aren't small investments at all. Yet according to JPMorgan, they have allowed miners to decrease the average cost of mining a single Bitcoin down to $13,000 from its $24,000 average just a month ago.

The $13,000 figure is the lowest since September 2021. Remember that Bitcoin mining costs are affected not just by energy prices, but also by the amount of hash power available to the network, which automatically changes its mining difficulty to cater to higher (or lower) miner demand. And as energy prices have increased, miners have been taking less power-efficient rigs offline, which would cut into their profits - explaining the reduction in overall hash rate.

BIOSTAR, a leading manufacturer of motherboards, graphics cards, and storage devices, today unveil their brand-new iMiner 660MX8D2 prebuilt mining rig. Designed with superior mining capability in a plug & play mining solution, BIOSTAR's new iMiner 660MX8D2 system brings maximum performance on a stable platform.

Built on top of BIOSTAR's TB360-BTC D+ motherboard, the new iMiner 660MX8D2 comes equipped with 8 AMD RX6600 series GPUs capable of executing an ETH hash rate of 248 MH/s (±5%)(Windows OS). With an operational capability of mining all major cryptocurrencies, such as ETH, ETC, RVN, ERG, etc.., the iMiner 660MX8D2 carries blockchain-grade hardware with BIOSTAR's superior product quality and capability.

BIOSTAR today, announces the iMiner A588X8D2 pre-built mining system. Designed and pre-assembled by BIOSTAR, the new iMiner A588X8D2 system brings plug and play mining capability to the next level. Packed with blockchain-grade high-end hardware, the iMiner A588X8D2 comes with 8 AMD RX580 graphic cards that dish out an ETH hash rate of 232 MH/s (±5%). Powered by Intel's G4900 processor and an 8 Gb DDR4 ram, the system can run Windows, Linux, or HiveOS.

The iMiner A588X8D2 system supports most major cryptocurrencies, such as ETH, ETC, RVN, ERG, Etc, further opening up a viable path for even inexperienced users to start a crypto mining operation without all the hassles of sorting out and assembling the hardware. Furthermore, BIOSTAR guarantees availability in large quantities for any interested parties. It is a great opportunity for mining enthusiasts and professionals to get their hands on professionally assembled mining equipment in bulk.

BIOSTAR, a leading manufacturer of motherboards, graphics cards, and storage devices today, unveils the brand new TZ590-BTC motherboard. Designed based on the Intel Z590 chipset that runs Intel 10th and 11th gen processors, BIOSTAR's new TZ590-BTC motherboard targets the mid-range audience of casual gamers, content creators, and users looking to build an HTPC for casual-content consumption. The TZ590-BTC also specializes in crypto mining with native inbuilt functionality to support this claim.

Available in a full-ATX form factor, the new TZ590-BTC motherboard provides a strong feature-rich base for users, with functionality such as PCIe 4.0, PCIe M.2 4.0. An 11 Phase power design controlled by BIOSTAR's signature DIGITAL PWM technology keeps everything running smooth and safe. 4x DDR4 RAM slots that support up to 3600 (OC) with a maximum capacity of 128 GB come in handy for all purposes. The TZ590-BTC has 8x PCIe 3.0x1 Slots, ideal for BITCOIN and ETHEREUM mining, as well as a single PCIe 4.0 x16 Slot targeting exceptional performance.

Just a few days ago, we reported that Intel is preparing to unveil the company's first application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) dedicated to mining cryptocurrency. To be more specific, Intel plans to show off its "Bonanza Mine" ASIC at the 2022 ISSCC Conference, describing the chip as "ultra low-voltage energy-efficient Bitcoin mining ASIC." We have yet to see how this competes with other industry-made ASICs like the ones from Bitmain. However, it seems like the startup company GRIID, valued at around $3.3 billion, thinks that the Bonanza Mine ASIC is the right choice and has entered a definitive supply agreement with Intel.

According to the S-4 filing, GRIID has "entered into a definitive supply contract with Intel to provide ASICs that we expect to fuel our growth. The initial order will supply units to be delivered in 2022 and GRIID will have access to a significant share of Intel's future production volumes." There are a few other mentions of Intel in the document, and you can see another exciting tidbit below.

Intel is reportedly looking to disrupt the cryptocurrency mining hardware business with fixed-function ASICs that either outperform GPUs, or end up with lower enough performance/Watt or performance/Dollar to take make GPUs unviable as a mining hardware option. The company is planning to unveil its first such product, codenamed "Bonanza Mine," an ASIC purpose-built for Bitcoin mining.

Since it's an ASIC, "Bonanza Mine" doesn't appear to be a re-purposed Xe-HPC processor, or even an FPGA that's been programmed to mine Bitcoin. It's a purpose-built piece of silicon. Intel will unveil "Bonanza Mine" at the 2022 ISSCC Conference. It describes the chip as being an "ultra low-voltage energy-efficient Bitcoin mining ASIC," putting power-guzzling GPUs on notice. If Intel can clinch Bitcoin with "Bonanza Lake," designing ASICs for other cryptocurrencies is straightforward. With demand from crypto-miners slashed, graphics cards will see a tremendous fall in value, forcing scalpers to cut prices.

Sapphire, along with various other AIB partners from AMD, has been making graphics cards exclusively for cryptocurrency mining. With the arrival of AMD's RDNA2 generation, this has continued as well. However, the company has been doing it more quietly to avoid backslash from its customers already furious about the poor availability of graphics cards in general. Fortunately, El Chapuzas Informatico managed to get ahold of two datasheets from Sapphire that highlight features and use cases of its GPRO X080 and GPRO X060 mining graphics cards, primarily targeting Ethereum coin mining.

According to the source, the company has readied two models based on RDNA2 chipsets. That is GPRO X080 SKU based on Navi 22 with 2304 Streaming Processors, running at 2132 MHz frequency. Paired with Navi 22 GPU, 10 GB of GDDR6 memory runs at 16 Gbps speed on a 160-bit bus. This model has no display outputs, and the only connector is a PCIe 4.0 x16 slot that connects the GPU to the motherboard. Running at the default 165 Watt TGP, the card produces a 38.0 MH/s hash rate, while the optimized form of 41.6 MH/s reduces TGP to just 93 Watts.

NVIDIA's Crypto Mining (CMP) series of graphics cards are made to work only for one purpose: mining cryptocurrency coins. Hence, their functionality is somewhat limited, and they can not be used for gaming as regular GPUs can. Today, Linus Tech Tips got ahold of NVIDIA's CMP 170HX mining card, which is not listed on the company website. According to the source, the card runs on NVIDIA's GA100-105F GPU, a version based on the regular GA100 SXM design used in data-center applications. Unlike its bigger brother, the GA100-105F SKU is a cut-down design with 4480 CUDA cores and 8 GB of HBM2E memory. The complete design has 6912 cores and 40/80 GB HBM2E memory configurations.

As far as the reason for choosing 8 GB HBM2E memory goes, we know that the Ethereum DAG file is under 5 GB, so the 8 GB memory buffer is sufficient for mining any coin out there. It is powered by an 8-pin CPU power connector and draws about 250 Watts of power. It can be adjusted to 200 Watts while retaining the 165 MH/s hash rate for Ethereum. This reference design is manufactured by NVIDIA and has no active cooling, as it is meant to be cooled in high-density server racks. Only a colossal heatsink is attached, meaning that the cooling needs to come from a third party. As far as pricing is concerned, Linus managed to get this card for $5000, making it a costly mining option.More images follow...

The United States has now become the leading country in cryptocurrency mining operations, following China's mining ban and subsequent exodus of its mining operators to less dangerous waters. According to figures published by the Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance, US-based miners reached a 35.4% share in overall bitcoin hashrate in July this year - up 17% compared to April, and only a month after China's move to ban all domestic cryptocurrency mining operations. In the months since, China's Bitcoin hash rate control declined from 44% in May of this year down to 0% as early as July - a far cry from its September 2019 high, which saw the country hold around 75% of the global mining hashrate.

As is usually the case, one country's loss equates to another's "gain", and the same is true for mining operations following the China ban. The US may have become the biggest player in this particular court, but any country with cheap electricity that allows for profits increases is fair game. Countries like Kazakhstan went from 8% to 18% in the same period, claiming the current second spot in overall hashrate, while Russia has now claimed third place after reaching an 11% share - rising from 6.8% three months earlier. It remains to be seen whether these mining operation relocations will see the US face the same migratory phenomenons as China did back when mining wasn't banned: operators spent the dry season on regions like Xinjiang in late autumn, winter and spring, migrating to regions with significant temporary overcapacities in low-cost hydropower, like Sichuan, between May and October during the 'wet season'. The impact of this mining relocation to the US in its power delivery infrastructure (if any) remains to be fully understood.

NVIDIA was originally planning to release the RTX 3080 Ti with 20 GB of memory however this was changed shortly before the official announcement to 12 GB. This plan came very close to fruition with NVIDIA manufacturing and distributing these GPU's to board partners including Gigabyte, some of these completed cards have now been sold in limited quantities. The Gigabyte RTX 3080 Ti 20 GB Gaming OC was purchased by a Russian YouTuber who tested the card's cryptocurrency mining performance and uploaded the BIOS to our GPU database.

The RTX 3080 Ti 20 GB lacks official NVIDIA Game Ready drivers with Gigabyte Russia denying the existence of the model making cryptocurrency mining the only viable use for the product. The card doesn't feature the Lite Hash Rate (LHR) algorithm NVIDIA has been including on all their new cards including the RTX 3080 Ti 12 GB giving it excellent performance in Ethereum mining. The retailer had pre-configured the card with a 100 MHz boost clock increase and a 1000 MHz boost to the memory speed along with a TDP limiter of 80%.

Genesis Mining, one of the largest cloud providers of cryptocurrency mining services headquartered in Iceland, has today won a great deal with China's Supreme Court. According to the reports, Genesis is now getting back the 485,000 AMD Radeon RX 470 8 GB graphics cards returned to its mining facilities in hopes of soon usage. What leads to this you might wonder? Previously, Genesis Mining partner, Chuangshiji Technology Limited, which provides hosting services for Genesis, took the company's mining hardware and started listing it without consent from the Iceland-based firm.

As the company filed a lawsuit in China supreme court, the legal disputes were going on for some time and today Genesis has won. According to the report, Genesis is getting back as much as 485,000 AMD Radeon RX 470 8 GB graphics cards with a total mining power of 14.5 TH/s. All these GPUs are now looking for a new home inside Genesis Mining facilities and will be able to provide a bit over a million dollars in mined Ethereum, at today's prices.

Sapphire appears to be preparing a custom mining product consisting of two RX 570 GPUs onboard a single card. The board features two Polaris 20XL GPUs each with 2048 Stream Processes paired with 8 GB of ram for a total of 16 GB. The mining card reported a total power draw of 156 W with each GPU drawing 78 W however this number may refer only to ASIC power and the total card draw could be higher. The card achieved a mining hashrate of 59.69 MH/s which while not particularly impressive by today's standards still offers an efficiency level similar to that of the RX 6600 XT. The board features a single HDMI port and no clear branding as Sapphire has attempted to hide their connection to the card by hiding their logo underneath the heatsink.

The latest version of NBMiner, a software that helps you mine Ethereum, purportedly restores up to 70% of the mining performance of NVIDIA GeForce RTX 30-series GPUs with LHR (lite hash-rate). The latest batches of the company's GeForce RTX 3080, RTX 3070, RTX 3060 Ti, and RTX 3060, are LHR by default, meaning that the GPUs feature a mining hash-rate limiter that throttles the GPU when faced with workloads resembling mining; with the idea being that they become unviable for miners.

The latest NBMiner update doesn't completely restore mining performance for LHR, but works around the LHR restrictions. The ETH mining hashrate is increased from 50% to 68-70%, which is a definite improvement. This is also the first public miner with improvements made to LHR GPU mining performance. Until now, only private mining groups have claimed to develop custom miners with workarounds for LHR GPUs.

The Ukrainian Security Service (USS) have recently exposed a large illegal cryptocurrency mining operation in the city of Vinnytsia. The mining farm was illegally connected to the power grid stealing power so efficiency didn't appear to be a major concern. The SSU seized 3800 game consoles, 500 graphics cards, 50 processors, and various documents with information of the operation. This is the first time we have seen the PlayStation 4 being used to mine Cryptocurrency however the idea isn't insane with various older consoles having been programmed to do so. The PlayStation 4 features an AMD GPU with 18 Compute Units and roughly 1.84 TFLOPs of single-precision compute performance while the PlayStation 4 Pro offers 4.2 TFLOPs.

Update Jul 19th: We have learned that these PlayStation 4 consoles were not being used for cryptocurrency mining and instead were part of a FIFA bot farm creating and leveling up accounts that could later be sold.

ASRock expects that GPU shipments will grow in Q2 2021 despite the global component shortages and an anticipated decline in Chinese cryptocurrency mining demand. ASRock believes that GPU availability will improve in H2 2021 as supply chain constraints are alleviated which will hopefully apply some downwards pressure on pricing. China currently accounts for a large portion of global cryptocurrency mining hardware demand but as restrictions are introduced this demand is expected to fall drastically. Ethereum is also expected to move to a Proof-of-Stake system later this year which will drastically reduce mining profitability.

Expreview have tested one of the latest RTX 3060 graphics cards of the LHR (Lite Hash Rate) nature, so as to discern exactly how cryptomining limited these LHR cards are in practice - and whether or not there are performance differences for non-mining related workloads such as gaming. The results are satisfying: the new RTX 3060 Lite Hash Rate puts out around 21 MH/s at 119 W - and it does so from the beginning of the workload, which didn't happen prior, when NVIDIA's solution was a poorly implemented driver check instead of a new device ID (it started at 40 MH/s and then decreased until it hit the LHR ceiling). The RTX 3060 also didn't show any performance difference compared to previous, non-LHR cards in gaming benchmarks, which might put some prospective buyers at ease.

Also leaked was the said RTX 3080 Ti mining score. Since this card is only coming out now, a way to differentiate it from existing stock is unneeded. But even if the RTX 3080 Ti doesn't carry the LHR suffix as does the RTX 3060 and eventually the 3070 and 3080 upon their re-release to the wild, it does pack in the same mining performance limiter. And the card was tested to deliver some 58 MH/s at a 199 W board power. One should be cautious about expecting swift prices back on the market, as miners shift their focus towards the RTX cards already in the second-hand market or the new CMP cards; one can only be hopeful that the actual gaming market is already well-furnished with cards enough that scalpers aren't able to contend with the (ideal?) overflow of stock on LHR cards.

Amulet Hotkey, a leader in design, manufacturing and system integration for mission-critical remote workstation and high-GPU-density solutions, is pleased to confirm it is now supplying HUT 8 Mining Corp. with its CoreServer CX4140 technology that hosts either four NVIDIA CMPs or four NVIDIA A100 GPUs in a 1U rack form factor server, representing unprecedented compute density for High Performance Computing (HPC) or the mining of blockchain networks.

Amulet Hotkey is trusted by partners and customers to deliver solutions that shatter the CMP or GPU rack density offered by other manufacturers. By using its knowledge and experience in managing heat dissipation, Amulet Hotkey has once again demonstrated how strategic partnerships deliver unprecedented benefits.

"A key element for HUT 8 Mining is to work with technology partners who can bring flexible enterprise-grade equipment and who are able to meet the timelines and needs of an industrial-size crypto currency miner," said Jason Zaluski, Head of Technology, HUT 8 Mining. "Amulet Hotkey's ability to engineer four NVIDIA CMPs into a 1U rack server is testament to the way their technology is able to combine performance and efficiency, both aspects are critical to our mining at scale"

NVIDIA today has officially announced what we have gotten to know through sheer power of will, speculation, and leaks. The company took to a blog post to announce a new, revised lineup of RTX 30-series graphics cards, spanning from the RTX 3060 all the way to the premium RTX 3080 graphics card. All of these will now ship with a new silicon revision (the last 0 has been replaced with a 2, so we're now looking at GA102-202, GA04-302, etc.). LHR effectively halves each of these graphics cards' output in Ethereum mining, which is currently the greatest driver behind mining (and scalping) acquisition of graphics cards.

NVIDIA has also clarified that AIB partners will be clearly labeling their graphics cards with stickers denoting their "LHR" nature, both in the box and card itself, so that customers can know with utmost certainty what they are actually acquiring - though this only applies to newly-manufactured graphics cards, and not to the ones already in the retail channel, for obvious reasons. We are thus looking at a situation where we can find ourselves with two secondary markets for NVIDIA's RTX 30-series cards: one for miners, with non-LHR graphics cards and sold at much-inflated prices, and LHR-cards which should be in keeping with their MSRP - eventually. It remains to be seen whether or not we'll have to cope with yet another scalping arms race for the LHR cards as well, since there is surely a significant market still hungering for the 30-series performance.

GALAX has now become the first NVIDIA partner from whom some details on how NVIDIA's push to limit the mining hash rates on their graphics cards will turn out. The new GALAX graphics cards in question are the already-released, unicorn-like RTX 3070 and RTX 3080. The GALAX packaging doesn't seem to have any differences compared to their original launch packaging for these graphics cards, though; however, the product pages for these respective products do have an additional [FG] compared to the original releases. This seems to be in-line with NVIDIA's decision not to differentiate between LHR and non-LHR cards at a packaging level, so as to reduce desirability for miners to just keep gobbling up remaining supply for the non-LHR graphics cards still in the channel.

As we already knew before, the LHR graphics cards feature an NVIDIA-designed solution that identifies the workload you're putting your card through and artificially halves its performance for Ethereum mining workloads. Of course, NVIDIA would prefer to have miners buying their mining-specific CMP (Crypto Mining Processor) cards and free up demand from their gaming-oriented RTX cards, effectively feeding two very distinct markets. It remains to be seen whether this new NVIDIA hashrate limitation survives more than a few days compared to their latest attempt at such a solution.

Remember that story regarding NVIDIA relaunching a new RTX 3060 SKU that actually does limit the hash rate for Ethereum mining workloads? Well, not only has it been cemented, but it also has been expanded. Reports are coming in that all but confirm that NVIDIA is on its way to provide its partners with updated silicon that should put mining performance of their RTX 30-series cards into a less palatable price-performance territory for would-be miners. That, in turn, should bring them closer to NVIDIA's CMP (Crypto Mining Processor) cards instead - and as wanted by both the company and consumers.

According to the sources, the new graphics cards will be indistinguishable from those that are still in transit or in stock (all two of them worldwide, of course). NVIDIA is internally describing the revised silicon as "Lite Hash Rate", and that is the message they communicate with AIBs. Apparently, the new "Lite Hash Rate" graphics cards will range throughout the entirety of NVIDIA's already-released RTX 30-series portfolio, from the ill-fated RTX 3060 up to the RTX 3080 Ti - the only absent graphics card is the RTX 3090, apparently, which could mean that NVIDIA is confident enough on that graphics card's cost being too high to be attractive to miners - especially when you consider how much more they are going for above the MSRP that was half-heartedly slapped on it. The new chips carry an update to their SKU identification - the GA102-200 chip that powers the RTX 3080 is being revised to GA102-202, as will all other chips made "lite" in this way. Expect the new cards to start hitting retail come June.