The cards that are most balanced on all algorithms are Nvidia LHR. They cost less up front because they're LHR, at least today. After the PoS crash, LHR and FHR cards will be the same price, because ETH will be unmineable. So if you're building a rig today, better to go with LHR. I would choose the RTX 3080 Ti LHR or RTX 3060 LHR (better dual mining potential).

If you're not interested in NV LHR, I recommend RTX 2000 or 3000 FHR cards that have the best compute + memory power efficiency. They are the RTX 3080 and RTX 3090.

The next gen RTX 4000 / RX 7000 series won't have much better memory bandwidth, but NV will be 50% more power efficient and AMD will be 80% more power efficient. They'll do better on core-heavy algos like RVN or dual mining. But these cards will be extremely expensive, while used RTX 3000's or used RX 6000's will be really cheap.


I agree. I don't like either of these two cards, but the GTX 1660 is better.

Of course, I just talked to an accountant today. He said that as long as I keep re-investing coin profit into new hardware, I will never have to pay any tax. Section 179 is the best choice because you can buy more hardware upfront.

If the tax rate is already zero, then it makes no sense to cheat or hide from the IRS. If you sell the equipment or take coins out of the business, that can be a taxable income distribution.

If you wait until GPU prices crash, you can buy 2x or 3x more cards, and thus collect 2x or 3x as many coins during the bear market. If you buy now, you'll have less equipment, which will generate less coins, which will eventually provide less profit in the future.

I learned my lesson in 2018: do not buy equipment for too high a price, especially not when there's news that PoS is happening in 3 months.

Not to mention the tax benefits of buying mining equipment, at least in the U.S. (Section 179, depreciation, electricity...). I know everybody here hates the IRS, but you never have to pay taxes on a mining operation if you just re-invest profit into new equipment.

There are no immediate write-offs for staking or HODLing coins.

I own an RTX 3080 Ti 12GB FE that was manufactured 2 months ago. It does have LHR.

I wouldn't assume that just because your video cards are good at non-ETH coins, the price of the cards will be worth the breadcrumbs of profit we'll get after the PoS merge. The other coins are competing with ETH for hashrate. Once ETH is gone, the profitability on the other coins will crash.

I recommend waiting until miners go bankrupt and liquidate their rigs 1-2 months after PoS. Then you'll be able to buy equipment at cheap prices that are justified by the meager profit.

If PoS indeed happens in June, miners who are buying cards at inflated prices right now will be screwed.

But if you insist on building a rig now, I would buy the RTX 3060 12GB LHR. It can dual mine ETH+CFX for the same profit as an RTX 3060 Ti LHR, it has 12GB memory, it's as efficient as the RTX 3080 and the LHR won't matter after ETH dies. You can mine ETC profitably in the future as long as you dual-mine another coin with it.

After the PoS crash, the RX 6800 non-XT might be a good buy since it has good VRAM bandwidth and is decent on non-ETH coins. It will probably be dirt cheap on the used market.

Even if the merge is delayed by 3 months, that makes a world of difference for miners. At current Ether prices, a RTX 3060 dual mining ETH+CFX makes $1.20/day of profit. That's $108 of profit in 3 months, which is a 20% payback on the video card.

But personally, I'm going to plan for the worst-case scenario: the merge happens in June.

The only reason the RX 580's are still profitable is because power cost is a small fraction of revenue right now. But that will change after PoS, when suddenly electricity eats up 60-70% of your earnings instead of 20-25% on the RX 580. After PoS, these cards simply won't be anywhere near as efficient as the newer models. They aren't that good at FiroPow or RVN. According to WTM, no coin except ETC comes close to the profit on ETH. Come on man, it's a 6 year old architecture on an outdated 14nm die, when we have 7nm/8nm and are progressing to 5nm this year. It would be a great choice in 2018 (I bought over a hundred of them), but not in 2022.

The GTX 1660 isn't much more efficient than the RX 580 and isn't much better on non-ETH coins. Rig overhead costs per card are higher than if you bought RX 6600 XT's or RTX 2070's.

The most profitable coin could even be dual mining. From my own testing, the RTX 3000 cards with 10GB+ VRAM can dual mine very efficiently (at 80% PL), especially if they're LHR.

Exactly my sentiment, except for the ETC part. #33 in market cap isn't exactly a 'shitcoin'. For a coin to be considered a shitcoin, the market cap ranking must be > 100.

I'm so excited for the big ETH GPU crash. Like you, I'm going to buy up as many used video cards as I can. Probably the RTX 3080 LHR or RTX 3060 LHR ones and a few RX 6800's.

In general, I think the RTX 3000 series will be the best choice, and it won't matter if a card is LHR or FHR (except on ETC; even then, you can do dual mining). Next-gen cards = way too expensive & bad VRAM bandwidth (unless you'll mine RVN/FIRO/core-heavy algos). Older-gen cards = poor power efficiency.

Who knows, somebody could figure out how to 'triple mine' on the 12GB/16GB cards with strong enough core performance. Imagine mining ETC+ERG+FIRO or ETC+CFX+FLUX. Whichever developer figures out how to engineer a reliable, efficient triple miner for these hard times will make millions.

The Ellesmere RX 400/500 cards will not be future-proof. They are only good at ETH, which will become irrelevant after PoS. After PoS, Nvidia cards will be the best since they perform well on multiple coins. The other problem is the RX 580's won't be efficient. Efficiency will really matter after the PoS crash, since revenues will crash and power cost is much more important. If you reduce power cost by 20%, you can probably make 20-30% more profit. Even if your strategy is to mine & hold, you'll be able to stick to that strategy for longer if the power bill is lower. Finally, these cards are 5-6 years old, so it's very likely a lot of them will fail at that age.

I don't like the GTX 1660's or any card with < 8GB or VRAM. Some algos benefit or require 8GB+, and new coins will probably be built with larger VRAM in mind. The 1660 isn't that efficient as well.

I think if you want to build a rig now, the best choices are the RTX 3060 LHR, RTX 3080 LHR or RTX 2070S/2080. The LHR won't matter because ETH will be dead. Even if you mine ETC, LHR is great at dual mining, so you can earn as much as an FHR card that only mines ETC. LHR cards will fall less in value than FHR (& especially AMD) after PoS and they're backed more by the gaming market.

After the PoS crash, newer AMD like the RX 6700 or 6800 might be decent because they're OK at non-ETH algos, while probably being very cheap and having decent efficiency.

I still think it's better to wait until PoS to buy equipment cheaply.

Right after the PoS merge, difficulty on the small coins (ETC/RVN/CFX...) will skyrocket as millions of cards try switching to them. These miners will figure out that they're only earning breadcrumbs, which will never compensate for the ridiculous prices they paid for their rigs. Miners will fire sell the cards and go bankrupt, which will drive down difficulty to reasonable levels again. This is exactly what happened in late 2018; the recovery stage took 2-3 months.

This is probably the best time to enter the market if your strategy is to mine & HODL. The cheaper GPUs are, the more rigs you can afford to build, and thus the more coins you can collect.

I predict that the best cards will be the Nvidia GreedForce RTX 3000 series, since they're good at a variety of coins but have decent efficiency. The new RTX 4000 series will be crazy expensive and isn't much more efficient. AMD cards should be a no-go because they perform best on ETH, even though they will crash the most in price.

I don't disagree with you. Of course there will always be a way to make profit with GPU mining. But only if you buy the GPUs for a reasonable price compared to the profit per card.

Minerstat can do this automatically, even though there are drawbacks to profit switching, especially on PPLNS pools.

Or you can just add 40w or so to the reported power, then multiply it by 1.1x for 120v / 1.08x for 240v (if your PSU is 80+ Gold).

In this case, the obvious choice is the RTX 3060 Ti because of the lower purchase price and depreciation.

I remember that my Radeon HD 7850 1GB was making $8/day on Dogecoin while it only cost $200. I really miss those days. Back in the day, you could also mine Ethereum on 2GB video cards. I also remember when I mined BTC in early 2013, but revenue was slashed by half in just one week. The 1st gen ASICs were being released.

At least the upside is that the industry is more mature, so there's less risk, but less risk means less reward.

The most efficient LHR video card, in my opinion, is the RTX 3060 12GB. It's a beast at dual mining ETH+CFX at just 130w DC. You can make the same profit as an RTX 3060 Ti LHR.

As an experienced miner who has been in this game since 2013, the key to success is not buying equipment for bloated prices, especially when we know a crash could happen in 4 months. I'm going to sell all 3 of my rigs in May/June, then buy them back at a fraction of the price around August. We can't expect another PoS delay as of now.

The miners who will win are those that build rigs when the market is in a panic. Those who scooped up RX 570's for $90 each in late 2018 and are selling them now made a killing. If the video cards are cheap, the lower profit doesn't matter.

Over the past 8 years, the payback period on a video card has almost always stayed in the 300 - 800 day range. This is good enough for me, especially since I'll be getting cheap power soon and I can lower my taxes by building these rigs.

Just wait until July or August, when RTX 3080's will cost $400 a piece on feeBay, with miners offering 10-20 of them for $350 each. I too thought it was time to buy after RTX 3060's were $530 on Newegg. But this week, Newegg started selling them for $500, and news broke that PoS advanced to the next stage. So I'll return my order after mining for 2 weeks, then hopefully buy them back for < $250 this summer.