Facepalm: Most PC gamers are far from happy about the latest graphics cards being bought in bulk for crypto mining farms. One would imagine that AIB manufacturers know this, yet Zotac USA seems to have missed the memo. The company tweeted a now-deleted post showing a mining rig packed with its White Edition GeForce RTX 3000-series cards. To make matters worse, it included several gaming hashtags.
Purchasing graphics cards in bulk for mining rigs has long been a contentious issue, especially when they’re almost impossible to find outside of scalped units on eBay. Back in 2018, the last time cards were scarce and prices inflated, Nvidia recommended retailers “make the appropriate arrangements to meet gamers’ needs,” i.e., give less priority to miners.
With the price of Bitcoin and Ethereum going through the roof, and chip manufacturers struggling to meet demand—despite increasing their output—buying an RTX 3000 or one of AMD’s newest GPUs has become a near-impossible task. Even when they are in stock, the prices are much higher than the MSRP; a problem exacerbated by the tax on Chinese imports.
But it appears Zotac underestimated just how strongly most gamers feel about miners grabbing what cards are left. The company’s tweet, which highlights “An army of #ZOTACGAMING GPU’s [sic] hungry for coin,” isn’t going to endear it to those who have been desperate for an RTX 3000 since they launched. It also includes hashtags for PcGaming, Gaming, Gamers, and even PCMR and PcMasterRace—just in case the image alone wasn’t inflammatory enough.
Not surprisingly, the tweet incited plenty of anger from gamers, with some calling for a boycott against Zotac. The post wasn’t up long before being deleted.
While it won’t solve all the underlying problems, we’ve heard that some firms, including MSI, are working on Ampere cards designed solely for mining use. Nvidia last month talked about restarting its CMP line, which are mining-specific cards lacking display outputs. Hopefully, this will go some way toward improving the current situation.
Earlier this week, we heard about an internet café in Vietnam that had switched its business model to a crypto mining farm because “profits are higher.”