Last year has been really hard on gamers and consumers alike. The shortage of electronic components all over the world increased the prices of GPU’s like crazy. Pair it up with the fact that miners have been trying to grab the remaining of the stock, and we have a really messed up situation.
Gigabyte is trying to capitalize on the situation and has released its first-ever CMP 30HX graphics card. The GPU is not meant for the consumer and is specifically designed with cryptocurrency miners in mind. One interesting fact is that the card comes with just three months of warranty. It has no display output either.
The Gigabyte CMP 30HX D6 6G is NVIDIAs first miner card. It is based on the popular NVIDIA TU116 processor that is clocked at 1785 MHz and comes with 6 GB of DDR6 RAM. The bus width is set at 192 bit. If the specifications sound somewhat similar, you must be surprised that these are the same specs as the GTX 1660Ti. Having said that, the card consumes 125W and comes with an eight-pin connector.
Since the card is aimed at miners, the company has focused on maximizing the lifespan of the card and minimizing the heat generated. Gigabyte has equipped the Windforce 2X cooling that comes with an aluminium radiator and a heat pipe. It is interesting to note that these fans rotate in opposite direction. The overall result is a cooling system that works well with the card running all day long.
The catch here is that the card only has a three-month warranty. This means that the value of the GPU will go down rapidly once the warranty is over, making it almost impossible to get decent resell value.
However, this might not be the case for people living in the European Union. A law passed by the EU mandates electronic manufacturers to give a minimum warranty of 2 years.
NVIDIA has plans to release more miner cards this year. This will surely lessen the burden on gaming cards, with most of them being out of stock. Even if you manage to find one that’s in stock, the price for the same will be ridiculously high.
