Cryptocurrency is ruling the virtual roost right now. It is today an exceedingly popular method of making online, anonymous transactions, and the interest in it is only growing.
What is it?
Cryptocurrency is essentially digital money, like Bitcoin, that can be ‘mined’ for over the Internet. Whenever a transaction is made between two digital wallets, it is the job of miners to verify these transactions and add them to a public ledger, but in order to do this, they must solve a mathematical puzzle or algorithm that increases in difficulty. Opportunities to mine from these transactions is completely open, so solving the equation happens on a first-come, first-serve basis. Once the miner has completed the puzzle, they are rewarded with a fee and any new ‘coins’ that are created as a result of the transaction.
Becoming a crypto-miner takes an enormous investment in equipment and time, as the puzzles they are presented with are extraordinarily complex, however, the return can be phenomenal.
We may have the solution
The most successful way of generating enough compute power to tackle the mining process is through the use of high-end graphics cards. We’re currently in the process of developing a brand new rackmount PC, the 4U Nano, which we believe will be the perfect companion for crypto-miners. Purpose-built for high-end graphics, it’s the only one of our product line-up able to accommodate multiple graphics cards, with room for up to four dual width cards such as the NVIDIA GTX 1080Ti or M6000. To ensure non-stop performance, we’ve also included the option for a 680W redundant power supply on top of standard support for up to 1500W ATX supply. We think this flexible, small form factor machine could be the answer to gaining the huge horsepower necessary for mining, but with lots of options to achieve a viable rig at a competitive price.
The supply challenge
The difficulty is that due to the surge in popularity for crypto-mining, graphics cards, particularly the likes of AMD and NVIDIA GPUs, are selling like hotcakes. It is becoming increasingly challenging to get hold of them at all, let alone at a reasonable cost. AMD’s RX Vega GPU was only released last month and its first wave sold out in minutes. However, as a leading UK PC manufacturer we’re used to experiencing constricted supply, so scour the globe for alternative supply routes for these very situations. The 4U Nano is just around the corner and we’re confident that by the time we release it in the coming weeks, we will have overcome the supply issues currently being seen in the market.
For more information on our 4U Nano for crypto-mining, or the NVIDIA graphics cards we use in our products, please get in touch.
