Limited Edition Asus Gundam RTX GPUs Sold in Mining Rigs by Retailer

Asus Gundam RTX 3080
Conditions in the mines aren't the best. There's no tempered glass for these Asus Gundam cards to showcase their might. (Image credit: Công Nguyễn)

The market is still reeling from months upon months of the best graphics cards being sold directly to mining operations, not to mention scalpers jumping on most available graphics cards with nothing but easy profit on their minds. Now, adding insult to injury, a Vietnamese retailer has managed to subdue the legendary Asus Gundam as pauper slaves in pre-built mining rigs. Oh, how low the heroes have fallen.

As the market starts replacing its stock of available RTX graphics cards with Lite Hash-Rate (LHR) graphics cards, some brave miners are still investing in mining equipment. For those, non-LHR cards matter the most. And as a result, some retailers are looking to capitalize on the remaining mining demand by pooling together as many non-LHR GPUs as they can find, and selling them as part of pre-built mining rigs.

These Gundam graphics cards, which are part of a limited edition Asus release, can generally be found around the $2,300 mark on resale websites such as eBay. That pre-assembled mining rig with eight Gundam graphics cards? At current street prices it costs a mere $18,000 — not taking into account the rest of the hardware that makes up a mining rig, of course.

Is there any sort of economic sanity to these pre-sold mining rigs, though? At current Ethereum prices, there is surely profit to be taken. However, it's on the order of a mere $5 daily return per card, now — and that's for non-LHR RTX 3080 graphics cards. That means that a miner acquiring one of these GUNDAM graphics cards for their current $2,300 pricing should see its investment returned in around 460 days, though that's assuming Ethereum's price and mining rewards stay the same.

Pricing isn't really predictable, but mining rewards? Those tend to decline straight to zero profitability over time, and it's even worse now for Ethereum mining. Planned changes to Ethereum's protocol will destroy mining profitability irrespective of pricing.

Currently, Ethereum is set to go through two updates that will destroy mining profitability. The first one, EIP 1559, is part of the upcoming London hard fork, which will change the way Ethereum handles transaction fees. Before, this process was manual and miners were rewarded with the equivalent Ether value of these fees, but the Ethereum network will now set a base minimum fee for transaction completion. The network will then burn the Ether committed this way, only rewarding miners with the excess Ether, effectively cutting into miners' profits.

The bigger deal is the planned Ethereum 2.0 network, which will transition from the current Proof of Work paradigm to Proof of Stake. That will essentially do away with the need for miners to perform expensive computations that write transactions to the blockchain to keep it secure. Other coins can still be mined the old fashioned way, but profits are currently much worse. Conflux (Octopus) for example only generates about $3.35 per day on an RTX 3080, compared to Ethereum's $5 per day.

Once Ethereum ditches Proof of Work, and perhaps much earlier, these Gundam heroes will likely take flight once again. But after being worked to within an inch of their lives in dark mining caves, they might not have much more to give other than a few gasping breaths. Shed a tear for these poor, fallen heroes. May they rest in peace.

Francisco Pires
Freelance News Writer

Francisco Pires is a freelance news writer for Tom's Hardware with a soft side for quantum computing.

  • g-unit1111
    Totally disgusting, but not surprising.

    Something HAS to be done to keep these cards out of the hands of miners and bots.
    Reply
  • kep55
    Profitability will drop below $5 a day, eh? Well. boo-hoo-hoo. If you're that lazy or a paracusian, too bad.
    Reply
  • Krotow
    Anyway good riddance. Miners may prepare to becoming an dying species. And take scalpers together with them.
    Reply
  • mrv_co
    All hail Emperorer Xi as he cleanses the world of crypto miners making PC and console gaming affordable again! LOL, we will see.
    Reply
  • VforV
    Krotow said:
    Anyway good riddance. Miners may prepare to becoming an dying species. And take scalpers together with them.
    Not if they find the new coin to mine after ETH goes down...

    It's enough for one of the secondary ones to get traction, PR, some tweets from influencers and we can have birth of the next "ETH" and it's starting all over...

    Yes, crypto is this volatile and versatile at the same time, because is more about perception than anything.
    Reply
  • ConfusedCounsel
    Sad. My daughter is working hard babysitting to earn money to build Asus Gundam rig. She just got an Asus Gundam Motherboard. What a lesson!! Work hard, do your best, and watch your dreams get killed by bots and greed. @asus. My daughter wears her ROG merch with pride and fan girls buy your products. Reward her loyalty and that of your other customers by banning this merchant. Unless , Asus, you don't care about your customer, good will and brand image.
    Reply
  • david germain
    mrv_co said:
    All hail Emperorer Xi as he cleanses the world of crypto miners making PC and console gaming affordable again! LOL, we will see.
    Its likely the ban was done to protect the the state run mining operations.
    Reply
  • ConfusedCounsel
    david germain said:
    Its likely the ban was done to protect the the state run mining operations.

    I would also say it was done because mining threatened the government's control over their currency.
    Reply
  • jkflipflop98
    Remember, you might be desperate for a GPU, but whatever you do DO NOT BUY A 2ND HAND MINING CARD.

    It's been thrashed and will cause you headaches.
    Make the people that caused this whole GPU mess eat the cost of those puppies.
    Reply
  • JarredWaltonGPU
    ConfusedCounsel said:
    I would also say it was done because mining threatened the government's control over their currency.
    Ding ding ding! We have a winner!

    China doesn't want corporations and rich people using crypto to move millions or billions out of the country.
    Reply