Now ‘mining’ can destroy the processor market too

Now ‘mining’ can destroy the processor market too

The new algorithm allows wizards to earn more than 1,000 kroner per month.

Hunting for cryptocurrencies has always been somewhat profitable for people who have newer graphics cards in their devices. This increased demand, which made getting the latest generation of graphics cards from AMD and Nvidia almost impossible, and prices skyrocketed and stayed there.

Obviously, the low availability and high prices have annoyed many PC gamers, whose gaming rig has not yet been upgraded. Now, however, it turns out that even “miners” looking for higher profits are frustrated by the situation.

The result is the creation of a new cryptocurrency called raptorium, which can be derived from the power of the processors rather than the graphics cards.

Raptoreum has been in the testing phase for a long time, but its popularity has been gaining momentum recently. Perhaps this is due to a combination of reduced additional access to graphics cards, as well as a higher profitability of the new cryptocurrency.

Some quick web searches show how many people have created large “mining farms” where they use dozens or hundreds of processors to extract raptorium.

In the past we’ve seen the same thing, with only hundreds of graphics cards.

Profitability varies from day to day, but with today’s “price” for Raptoreum, for example, the R9 5950X, the fastest AMD processor in the average consumer segment, can earn about NOK 38.5 per day, or NOK 1156 per month. Then comes the deduction for electricity expenses and income tax, which steals a few hundred dollars.

Anyway, it’s roughly on par with what a single AMD RX 5700 XT graphics card, or an Nvidia RTX 3070 Ti graphics card could earn by hunting down the most popular cryptocurrency Ethereum at the moment.

Two of the most profitable processors are AMD’s R9 3900X and 3950X. These are cheaper to buy and can be earned in just over 280 days if current profit remains constant.

Similar earnings have brought the graphics card market to its knees, and the concern is that mining fever will spread to the processor market, with higher prices and lower availability.

AMD’s Ryzen and Threadripper processors in particular are profitable to extract the Raptoreum, thanks to their large L3 memory (cache) of 64MB. However, the latest generation of Intel Core processors is also profitable at today’s price.

AMD is expected to release new processors in the Ryzen 6000 series early next year. Among the main news in this is the presence of more L3 memory, rumored to be up to a full 192MB. It’s three times the best processor today.

In this case, it could mean that the newcomers will appear as a pure banknote stamp at launch, thus becoming very difficult to purchase for anyone who wants to get them for higher gaming performance or use them for work.

By the way, earlier this year came the first digging algorithm that allows you to “mine” with your SSD storage, called Chia.

The search for “helium,” using wireless “hotspots” where many people congregate, also became a “talking point” in mining circles earlier this year.

However, neither of these digging opportunities worked, so hopefully, Raptoreum’s interest will also fade before it creates major problems.