Qubic Cryptocurrency Mining Boom Causes AMD Ryzen 9 7950X Reseller Inventory to Drop Rapidly

The Profitability Calculator shows that 24 hours of Qubic mining on an AMD Ryzen 9 7950X 16-core processor costs about $3, after subtracting the cost of the energy required to run the chip at the default 170 W TDP. With a "Zen 4" processor like the 7950X, keeping the frequency at a lower level maintains much of the mining performance and lowers the power limitations, which can maintain or improve profitability while also extending the life of the hardware.

So the inevitable happened - stock of the AMD Ryzen 9 7950X disappeared from online retailers overnight. Thanks to the market presence of the 7950X3D and the Intel Core i9-14900K, the 7950X is usually priced in the $550-600 range, which would have been a high value-add considering its low input costs.

CPU-based cryptocurrency miners, including QBIC miners, appear to be utilizing the AVX-512 instruction set, which is supported by AMD's "Zen 4" microarchitecture with its double-pumped 256-bit FPU, and the upcoming "Zen 5" microarchitecture is rumored to double AVX-512 performance over the "Zen 4". Meanwhile, Intel has phased out the few customer-relevant AVX-512 instructions in its Core processors since the 12th generation of "Alder Lake" processors, which reportedly impacted sales of Xeon processors. $Advanced Micro Devices(AMD.US)$ $NVIDIA(NVDA.US)$