AMD’s Threadripper is undoubtedly the company’s most powerful HEDT CPU, albeit being far more expensive non-extreme Ryzen brethren. To that end, AMD wanted to show the mining community that its Ryzen Threadripper 1950X is capable of paying for itself, and asked tech site HardOCP if they could demonstrate.
Yes, we know that it is pretty much common knowledge that GPU mining is still more lucrative than CPU mining. But, what you may not know is that CPU mining with the AMD Ryzen Threadripper (also with Ryzen 7 processors) are actually more profitable than you may think. This is due to the CPU’s high core count, along with its large 32MB L3 Cache.
In the video, HardOCP had set a Ryzen Threadripper 1950X to mine Monero via the XMR-STAK mining program. Once the system was properly setup, the 1950X was able to achieve a hashrate of 1,486H/s, with a TDP of 246W. According to their calculations, and given the current value of the Bitcoin today, HardOCP reckoned that the 1950X would need to mine for approximately 18 months in order to pay itself off.
But that’s just the cost of the CPU itself. Judging from the video itself, HardOCP doesn’t mention the cost of the other components in use: the water cooler, motherboard, and even the RAM. On that note; the Ryzen Threadripper isn’t your average kind of CPU, and they require coolers specifically designed for them, and this is despite the fact that each Threadripper CPU comes with a special bracket.
(Source: HardOCP)
