NVIDIA CMP 30HX

In February 2021, at the height of the pandemic-era GPU shortage, NVIDIA launched the CMP (Cryptocurrency Mining Processor) line as a deliberate release valve. Crypto miners were buying up GeForce RTX cards in bulk, starving gamers of supply, so NVIDIA repackaged its existing GPU silicon into mining-only SKUs: same core dies, but with video outputs physically removed, driver support stripped down to CUDA/compute functions, and clocks tuned for mining efficiency rather than gaming performance. The CMP 30HX pairs a cut-down TU106 die (the same chip family used in the RTX 2060) with 6GB of GDDR6 and a 125W power budget. It was sold exclusively to miners and system integrators, never through normal consumer retail channels in the way GeForce cards were, and it never appeared on store shelves as something a PC gamer could buy by mistake.

At launch the CMP 30HX's headline number was roughly 26 MH/s mining Ethereum via the Ethash algorithm, a respectable but modest figure even in 2021, reflecting its position as the lowest tier in the CMP stack. That number is now almost entirely academic. Ethereum's transition to Proof-of-Stake in September 2022 ("the Merge") eliminated GPU mining as Ethereum's security mechanism overnight, and Ethereum was by far the dominant GPU-minable coin the entire CMP line was built around. As a result, the CMP 30HX today is a niche, secondary-market product: it still functions and can mine other Proof-of-Work coins, but there is no serious argument for buying one new, and used units trade for a fraction of their 2021 price. We're rating it honestly as a historical artifact of the mining boom rather than a card with ongoing mainstream relevance.

Within NVIDIA's own CMP lineup, the 30HX is the smallest and cheapest, sitting below the CMP 40HX (also Turing-based, on TU116) and well below the Ampere-based 50HX/70HX/90HX and the A100-derived flagship CMP 170HX. Against its gaming-silicon sibling, the RTX 2060, the CMP 30HX trades away every display output and most driver-level gaming optimizations for a lower price and a power profile tuned purely for 24/7 mining duty cycles. Compared to simply buying a used RTX 2060 today, the RTX 2060 is almost always the better buy for anyone who might ever want a display output, the CMP 30HX only makes sense for a buyer who specifically needs a cheap, dedicated compute/mining card and has zero use for video output.