Crypto miners might have a new hardware target soon if they choose to abandon mining with graphics cards.
As per a report by Digital Trends, it looks like AMD Ryzen CPUs are starting to get looked at by cryptocurrency mining enthusiasts. The reason? Their big L3 caches.
A AMD Ryzen processor seen in a Motherboard during the last day of the SOFA (Salon del Ocio y la Fantasia) 2021, a fair aimed to the geek audience in Colombia that mixes Cosplay, gaming, superhero and movie fans from across Colombia, in Bogota, Colombia on October 18, 2021.
This is due to the rise of a new player in the crypto market: Raptoreum, also known as RTM.
The new cryptocurrency can apparently only be mined in great quantities using a modern Ryzen CPU, like the Ryzen 9 5950X. RTM profitability calculators estimate that a 5950X can mine around 161 RTM per day, with 1 RTM worth around $0.00215607 as of this writing.
If you do the math, that's roughly $3.47 per day. It's not much considering other big cryptocurrencies on the market (i.e. Bitcoin is worth almost $70,000 right now), but proponents of RTM are touting the long-term profitability of the new crypto.
If profitability remains constant, a single Ryzen 9 5950X can net a crypto miner almost $1,000 a year in RTM, all because of the top-end AMD chip's massive 64 MB of L3 cache.
Furthermore, it's not just the consumer-class AMD Zen chips that could be a target for cryptocurrency mining enthusiasts.
According to Tom's Hardware, even bigger L3 caches could be fine in AMD's enterprise-class chips such as the Threadripper and the EPYC server CPUs.
A good example is the Threadripper 3970X, whose 128 MB of L3 cache can reportedly mine 404 RTM a day. The potential profits can be even bigger if you mine on an EPYC chip like the EPYC 7742 (256 MB of L3 cache), which can mine 597 RTM a day.
Aren't CPUs Already Being Used In Crypto Mining?
They are, but not explicitly to mine the actual cryptocurrencies.
Right now, the job of the CPU in a typical crypto mining rig is to just help the rows upon rows of hardware (often graphics cards) achieve their fullest potential. The CPUs being used in rigs also vary greatly in terms of performance, as per TechRadar.
Some rigs could use chips as powerful as the 5950X, or something as modest as a dual-core Intel Pentium. But if Raptoreum actually takes off, this situation could change almost overnight and directly affect other mining hardware; specifically, graphics cards.
The Graphics Card Butterfly Effect
Graphics cards are in short supply these days partly because of the current cryptocurrency mining boom. But if miners suddenly target Raptoreum and those AMD CPUs with their big L3 caches, it could theoretically put more GPUs back on the market--at a reasonable price, no less.
This is not a guarantee, however, that you'll be able to get your hands on an RTX 3090 anytime soon. It all still depends on whether Raptoreum will actually be a popular cryptocurrency among miners.
That said, it could be something you should keep track of.
Related: How To Buy Second-Hand NVIDIA and AMD Graphics Cards From Crypto Miners Without Getting Ripped Off
This article is owned by Tech Times
Written by RJ Pierce
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