Facial palm: It’s no surprise to learn that the value of Nvidia’s pre-Lite Hash Rate graphics cards has increased following the release of its LHR variants. In Vietnam, a retailer sells the old GPUs in pre-built mining rigs, and these aren’t your regular RTX 3080s; these are limited edition ROG Strix Gundam cards from Asus.
After the release of the LHR variants of the RTX 3080, RTX 3070, and RTX 3060 Ti, miners began to fight for non-LHR cards, inflating their already high prices. Nguyenconpc via I_Leak_VN revealed that a Vietnamese retailer sells ready-made mining setups with original RTX 3080s. They will likely cost a fortune, made all the more expensive by the type of card used.
The mining rigs are filled with limited edition ROG Strix Gundam RTX 3080 from Asus, inspired by the famous anime. A quick check on eBay shows that many are for sale with buy-it-now prices of around $ 2,400. Considering these are Collector’s Editions, it’s pretty sad to see so many of them packed into mining setups where they’ll be pushed to their limit 24/7.
The good news for gamers is that, as the world remains in the grip of a chip shortage, the element of cryptomining that exacerbated pricing and availability issues is easing. China, which accounts for up to 70% of the global crypto supply, has severely cracked down on mining, which has led to a slew of used cards entering the market.
Ethereum’s upcoming shift from a Proof of Work to Proof of Stake model, Bitcoin’s price drop since April, and Nvidia’s dedicated CMP HX mining GPUs are also helping matters. All of this has contributed to the rapid improvement of the average point of sale and the availability of cards in many countries.
