Asic-miners for Monero - XMR mining

Miners for Monero coins

For a long time, the Monero cryptocurrency was considered to be one of the coins that could not be mined with ASICs. But in September 2023, Bitmain released Antminer X5, the first ASIC for mining Monero. This miner changed the way people looked at mining this coin.

Features of Monero mining and the coin itself

The Monero network creates a new block approximately every 2 minutes. RandomX itself requires a large amount of RAM — at least 2 GB for efficient operation and information processing, so the hardware requirements are growing. The algorithm uses random calculations that are difficult to optimize for special equipment, which makes it unprofitable to release new models, and therefore the project’s capitalization does not grow due to its low popularity.

Recommended equipment for mining Monero?

There is essentially only one model on the market that is capable of mining effectively – the Antminer X5, which delivers a maximum hash rate of 212 KH/s while consuming 1350W, giving it an energy efficiency of 6.37 joules per kilohash. This radically changes the economics of Monero mining. For comparison, the top-of-the-line AMD Ryzen 9 5950X processor delivers about 15-20 KH/s while consuming 105-142 watts.
It turns out that the X5 outperforms the processor by 10-14 times in terms of performance, but consumes 9-13 times more energy. The efficiency is roughly comparable, but the scale of operations is radically different.
The appearance of the X5 has caused a mixed reaction in the community. Some miners saw it as an opportunity to seriously engage in XMR mining. Others believe that it contradicts Monero’s philosophy of equal mining.