Bitmain teases monstrous new crypto mining rig, especially for Ethereum

(Image credit: Yevhen Vitte / Shutterstock)

Chinese mining firm Bitmain has released a teaser of the company's upcoming Antminer E9 Ethereum mining rig, built around a new application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) chip.

The Antminer E9 reportedly delivers a hash rate of up to 3 GH/s when mining Ether cryptocurrency. In its teaser, Bitmain claims this is equivalent to the hash rate of 32 GeForce RTX 3080 graphics cards.

Assuming that a single GeForce RTX 3080 has a hash rate of around 95 MH/s, HotHardware extrapolates that calculation to equate the performance of the Antminer E9 to that of 25 GeForce RTX 3090 graphics cards, each of which dishes around 120 MH/s.

No word on availability

Many observers rate the Linzhi “Phoenix” ASIC miner as the current fastest Ethereum miner. If Bitmain manages to deliver the figures it promises in the teaser, it’ll slightly edge out the 2.6 GH/s hash rate of the Phoenix.

More importantly though, the Bitmain Antminer E9 draws up to 2557 watts together with a power efficiency of 0.85 J/M, which could make it nearly fifteen percent more efficient than the Phoenix, which guzzles about 3000 watts.

While Bitmain hasn’t shared any details about the availability or the pricing of the Antminer E9, rest assured it’ll cost quite a penny. While the Phoenix sells for $11,300 and $13,700, the word on Twitter is that the Antminer E9 would cost somewhere $25,000 and $30,000.

HotHardware again breaks out back-of-the-envelope calculations to suggest that, given the current prices of graphics cards, particularly the crypto-favorite GeForce RTX 3080, the rumored price tag would still be an “absolute bargain".

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Also check our collection of the best mining CPUs

Via HotHardware

With almost two decades of writing and reporting on Linux, Mayank Sharma would like everyone to think he’s TechRadar Pro’s expert on the topic. Of course, he’s just as interested in other computing topics, particularly cybersecurity, cloud, containers, and coding.