This Dedicated Crypto Mining Rig Gives Hope to Gamers Without GPUs
Bitmain is preparing another hardware for crypto miners. The Antminer E9 is expected to provide Ethereum yield equal to 32 units of the GeForce RTX 3080.
Many reasons can be given for the lack of or often absurd prices of new graphics cards (and other electronics) in stores, including manufacturing problems. However, there is no denying that in the case of GPUs the blame also lies with crypto miners who buy up new GeForce and Radeon cards in large numbers. Perhaps they will be discouraged from the practice by Antminer E9, which is the most powerful Ethereum mining rig available on the market.
At least that's how Bitmain advertises its device, according to which the hardware can boast an efficiency (hash rate) of 3 GH/s (gigahash per second) in ETH mining. Thus, Antminer E9 is the equivalent of 32 GeForce RTX 3080 units. The rig is also said to boast a power consumption of 2556 watts, which may not be small, but it's still a lower power requirement than the already less efficient competition.
Bitmain has not revealed anything more for now, although we were assured that Antminer E9 will be coming to the market "soon". Of course, the question of price remains open, and there is no reason to believe that the company will charge for the rig anything less than the equivalent of 32 RTX 3080 units. However, if it will be comparable to competitive devices (speculation speaks of about 20-30 thousand dollars), Antminer E9 may discourage virtual miners to buy much less powerful consumer GPUs.
After all, there is no denying that miners definitely leave their mark on the market, which is already facing many other difficulties. Suffice it to mention the sudden rise in the price of hard drives in East Asia due to - how else - the growing popularity of cryptocurrencies (in this case, we are talking about Chia). The question remains whether in the current situation Bitmain and other ASIC mining rig manufacturers will be able to satisfy the demand of the market to a degree that would discourage miners from buying GeForce and Radeon?
