{"id":21186,"date":"2026-10-12T12:07:54","date_gmt":"2026-10-12T12:07:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.theck1.no\/?p=21186"},"modified":"2026-10-12T12:07:54","modified_gmt":"2026-10-12T12:07:54","slug":"reddit-user-pays-35-for-a-crypto-mining-rig-left-in-a-garage-and-gets-54gb-of-vram-at-65-cents-per-gb","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.theck1.no\/?p=21186","title":{"rendered":"Reddit user pays $35 for a crypto mining rig left in a garage and gets 54GB of VRAM at 65 cents per GB"},"content":{"rendered":"

AI-rewritten:<\/strong> This is a summary of an article from Tom’s Hardware, rewritten by AI (Qwen, running locally) to make it easier to read. The facts come from the original article – read it for the full story.<\/p>\n

Tom’s Hardware • Shane Downing • October 12, 2026<\/strong><\/div>\n\n

A Reddit user named markpronkin purchased an old crypto mining rig for approximately $35 after negotiating the price down from 3,000 rubles. The seller had found the equipment in a damp garage years earlier and listed it on Avito, but refused to allow a pre-purchase test despite the buyer’s offer to pay more if it worked. Although the hardware was rusty and contained a weak Celeron CPU with minimal system memory, all nine Nvidia P106-100 GPUs functioned immediately. These Pascal-generation cards, introduced in 2017, feature 6GB of GDDR5 VRAM each for a total of 54GB.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

The buyer successfully ran the 35-billion-parameter Qwen3.6-35B-A3B model using Ollama, achieving over 30 tokens per second. While the system has limitations due to PCIe 2.0 slots and limited bandwidth compared to modern cards, the performance is considered impressive for a device costing roughly 65 cents per GB of VRAM. The buyer noted that while a dense model like Qwen3.8-27B might struggle, the mixed-expert architecture of Qwen3.6 allows it to fit well within the available memory, enabling decent operation even with other optimizations applied.<\/p>\n

The user plans to upgrade the setup by moving the hardware to a new case capable of supporting an i7-7700K CPU and 32GB of RAM. This new enclosure will allow for up to 12 GPUs, meaning three additional cards could bring the total VRAM to 72GB. The buyer views this project as offering unlimited usage and privacy through self-hosted AI solutions. Although the nine GPUs combined have a high power consumption estimate of 1,080W, the user reports that electricity is free and inexpensive in their location.<\/p>\n

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Source:<\/strong> Tom’s Hardware • Shane Downing • October 12, 2026<\/p>\n

Read the original article at Tom’s Hardware →<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

AI-rewritten: This is a summary of an article from Tom’s Hardware, rewritten by AI (Qwen, running locally) to make it easier to read. The facts come from the original article – read it for the full story. Tom’s Hardware • Shane Downing • October 12, 2026 A Reddit user named markpronkin purchased an old crypto<\/p>\n

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