iBUYPOWER Sets Sights on Digital Coin Miners with New 'Mine' PC
iBUYPOWER offers a handful of PC series that target different audiences, and with the world of cryptocurrency on fire, the company has now decided to target that audience as well. The biggest difference between iBUYPOWER's 'Mine' PCs and the others is that AMD's graphics cards come standard - something that won't strike those who already mine digital coin as a surprise.
To help those wanting to get into mining that might not be too familiar with it, iBUYPOWER gives some performance figures to help the basic gauge of performance be better understood. A configuration with a single Radeon R9 270X, for example, will generate 420KH/s (kilohashes-per-hour), whereas 3x Radeon R9 290X boosts that to 2640KH/s.
What's a little interesting is that it doesn't seem that iBUYPOWER will pre-install any mining program, but on its official product page, it lists a bunch of different currencies that can be mined. Have you ever heard of Dogecoin, Alphacoin, Neocoin, Anoncoin, Fastcoin, or Netcoin? They exist, and that's only six of the fourteen listed!
The basic model iBUYPOWER offers costs $999, includes an AMD CPU and dual Radeon R9 270Xs (840KH/s). The base Intel machine costs $1,559, and bumps the GPUs up to 280Xs. For some reason, the Intel machine is required for a triple CrossFireX configuration.
Given the incredible growth that cryptocurrencies have seen over the past year, I'm willing to bet that iBUYPOWER is going to be starting a trend of targeted machines here. I do believe it'd help things if the company bundled the software for you, however, as most miners are not simple to setup. Further, because mining will consume a lot of power, a calculator that estimates monthly power costs with 24/7 operation would be extremely helpful - though that might at the same time scare some people away.
