Crypto miners wipe out GPU stocks (again)

A surge in demand for crypto miners has again contributed to a global shortage of high-end graphics cards, reports Tom’s Hardware.

Turns out, cards like Nvidia’s RTX 3080 or AMD’s Big Navi have gone the same way as new Bitmain mining rigs and become almost impossible to get. 

Nvidia's board partners are selling their new GPUs directly to crypto miners, bypassing ordinary consumers.

Check these pictures out, this is an Ethereum mining rig with 78 PNY RTX 3080 cards in it. pic.twitter.com/6I3KeIsb7H

— JikissGamer (@JikissGamer) January 5, 2021

If it sounds familiar, this is not the first time rampaging markets have left miners and general computer users high and dry.

At the tail end of 2017, chipset makers tried to exploit demand for crypto-compatible GPUs by tweaking old stock.

But markets crashed and created costly inventory bubbles — which tanked NVIDIA’s share price by 20% and wiped $23 billion from its market value in a matter of days.

[Read more: Marathon raises $200M to buy Bitcoin miners]

Of course, ‘tough to come by’ and ‘impossible to find’ are two very different things; an article published last week by TechRadar offers miners at least some hope of securing new cards in February.

If you are lucky enough to lay your hands on a sought-after GPU, Tom’s Hardware estimated that (depending on which you plump for), it’s possible to recoup the cost of a new graphics card in as little as 79 days.