Having trouble finding a higher end graphics card at a fair price? Well good news—for the low price of just $69,000, you can take possession of 100 graphics cards, along with more than a dozen power supplies and a whole bunch of other hardware. It's all part of a Craigslist ad to dump a cryptocurrency mining setup and cash out while profits are down.
The GPU collection consists of 85 Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080 cards, including a mix of reference and Founders Edition models, and 15 AMD Radeon RX Vega 64 cards (all reference). These are spread out among 17 motherboards and powered by 18 PSUs, along with 17 sticks of 4GB DDR4 RAM and 17 SSDs of various sizes.
"The rigs consist of 5-8 GPUs each and are configured for turn key operation. They are power and temperature-limited (having been run between 60-65C since inception), remotely resettable, and run autonomously without user input. The farm requires little to no time commitment and can be controlled remotely," the listing states.
Also included are racks, 14-gauge power cables, a network switch, risers, smart plugs, a Wi-Fi surveillance system, and other peripherals. Basically, it's a ready-to-run mining operation for someone with deep pockets, and a desire to play the long game.
Doing a quick price check on Newegg, the motherboards, processors, power supplies, RAM, and SSDs collectively add up to around $7,000. Add another $1,000 for the various racks and other equipment, and you're looking at $61,000 for the GPUs. The seller claims $79,000 is fair market value for everything included.
Should you sell a kidney and buy this thing? Definitely not—your kidneys are pretty important. Beyond that, Ethereum prices are down on rumors of a new ASIC chip being developed. Ethereum has traditionally been mined with GPUs, which has contributed to the shortage of graphics cards for gamers. A specialized ASIC could change the landscape.
Other cryptocurrency prices have similarly dropped of late, and a quick look at Whattomine suggests that the 100 GPUs in question would gross about $140 per day right now. Factor in power costs however and you're down to about $105 per day in profits, and dropping. That means about 1.5 years to break even, assuming things don't get much worse, which is the way things are trending.
Anyway, here's the Craigslist ad. And hopefully this means retail GPU prices will return to normality in the next month or so.
