AMD’s Ryzen 9 7950X CPU has surpassed the profitability of GPU crypto mining as a new bull run season begins. Subsequently, it has become harder to find one at some retailers as miners snag them all.
With Bitcoin hitting a new all-time high of $73,000, many alternative cryptocurrencies followed suit, benefiting from the rising market. One of these is Qubic, a cryptocurrency that requires CPUs instead of GPUs for mining. To be more specific, its algorithm uses AVX512 instructions, supported by AMD’s Zen 4 architecture. As you can imagine, it puts AMD’s chips in a highly desirable state.
Intel removed AVX512 support on its client CPUs back in Alder Lake, exacerbating the situation. AMD’s Ryzen 7000 series is currently the best choice thanks to its low entry prices, AVX512 instruction set support, and, most importantly, lower power consumption.
This is not the first time we’ve seen CPUs used for crypto mining. Bitcoin itself started on processors before moving to GPUs and then ASICs. When it comes to Qubic’s algorithm, Ryzen 9 7950X is able to generate around $3 worth of Qubic currency every 24 hours – including electricity costs at the chip’s default 170W. You can further improve this by down-clocking or undervolting the CPU. As you may know, following the initial CPU purchase, the only recurring cost is the electricity bill. Lowering the consumption is a good way to improve your returns.
At this rate, it would take about seven months to pay back the CPU’s $600 cost – excluding all support components such as the motherboard, RAM, and PSU. Adding everything would push it to a year. This wouldn’t be a big deal with GPU mining since you can install dozens (depending on the motherboard) on each machine. On the other hand, you can only have one CPU per system. This means more components that may be hard to re-sell, like RAM or PSUs, not to forget the huge space taken by each build. All of this, assuming crypto value doesn’t drop during this entire duration.
With all things considered, Ryzen 7950X wins many arguments against expensive/power-hungry GPUs. So, expect further stock outages – including other Zen 4 CPUs – as word spreads about its mining value. If it suffers only a fraction of what the last mining boom did to GPU pricing, we wouldn’t be shocked to see entry-level motherboards and PSUs prices skyrocket.