An Nvidia RTX 3090 Mod Could Reportedly Make GPU Crypto Mining More Efficient

A PC gaming electronics researcher made headlines in the PC world this week after finding a way to boost the computational efficiency of the Nvidia RTX 3090 card per kWh. That could save the GPU crypto mining community some coin on the electric bill.

In Chemnitz, Germany, a one-man hobbyist PC gaming researcher by the name of Igor Wallossek recently found a way to cut the power consumption of the Nvidia RTX 3090.

A report about the home lab electronics caper by Hassan Mujtaba for WCCF Tech explains why this is a breakthrough for anyone who uses the GPU:

“NVIDIA’s GeForce RTX 3090 Ti graphics card is without a doubt the most power-hungry graphics card ever launched, sipping over 500 Watts of power and requiring insanely massive GPU cooling solutions to keep the heat in check.”

Of course, cryptocurrency industry watchers know it’s not just full-time gamers who stand to save some money if Igor’s efficiency mod to the chip is replicable by others.

Unless they’re using the ASIC chips specially designed to mine cryptos like Bitcoin (BTC), Ethereum (ETH), Dogecoin (DOGE), Litecoin (LTC), Bitcoin Cash (BCH), Monero (XMR), Zcash (ZEC), and others— GPUs remain the most effective way to mine cryptocurrency.

Igor Labs Mods Nvidia RTX 3090 for Big Efficiency Boost

Out of the box, the RTX 3090 has a manufacturer reference TGP (total graphics power) of 450W. That’s how much power the graphics subsystem requires to run the chip and keep it from overheating. WCCF Tech says most custom models run at closer to 500W. But Igor Labs found a way to limit power consumption to 300W— a 37% drop in its TGP rating — without losing nearly as much gaming performance. This was tested using 10 games at 4K resolution.

That yields an appreciable amount of electricity cost savings for the Nvidia GPU’s computations and the “insanely massive” cost of cooling the RTX 3090 (with electricity fed to the entire graphics rig through a 600 Watt rated PCIe Gen 5 16-pin connector, which is designed to accommodate future graphics chips rated for 600 Watts).

That could save some money for the GPU mining industry 

Graphics processing units are optimal for solving the SHA-256 hash algorithm problems that play a key role in the elaborate computational and economic architecture of proof of work cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin (and Ethereum for the past seven years, until mainnet merges with the Beacon Chain to create network consensus using proof of stake).

While the RTX 3090 is a powerful miner with a hashrate clocked at 135 MH/s on the Dagger Hashimoto implementation for Ethereum mining, WePC has recommended a more energy-efficient solution because the rig is such a power hog. Igor’s modification to limit the Nvidia card’s electricity usage could bump the RTX 3090 up the GPU mining leaderboards for key benchmarks like hashrate, power consumption, and daily profit/days to break even.