CyberPower’s Mega Miner Series PCs Claim To Be Your Ultimate Coin Mining System

A couple of months ago, iBUYPOWER got into the coin-mining craze by designing a PC series targeted squarely at it. Called Mine, the PCs feature only AMD Radeon graphics cards, since those currently give the best returns. In that post, I mentioned, "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." - lo and behold, we have our second entrant: CyberPowerPC.

As competitors often do, CyberPowerPC one-upped iBUYPOWER in the naming department; its coin-mining series is called Mega Miner. Like iBUYPOWER's solution, the Mega Miner series utilizes AMD Radeon graphics cards exclusively, and between both builders, the prospective kilohashes-per-hour ratings are exact - not too much of a surprise given it's completely dependent on the GPU.

Gamers looking to pick a build that's great for both mining and gaming might want to opt for another series; Mega Miner is designed entirely around the idea that you'll be dedicating it to mining. The fact that all of the default models - even the $2,569 Mega Miner 300 - have just 4GB of RAM, proves it. Likewise, all of them have low-end processors, and none have an SSD. What matters here more than anything is GPU power.

The base model is Mega Miner 100, coming in at $989. It includes an AMD FX-4300 processor, and dual Radeon R9 270X cards, capable of 900KH/s. The top model bumps the CPU to Intel's Core i3-4130 and goes all out on the GPUs: 3x Radeon R9 290, capable of 2,400KH/s. For those looking to get the best bang-for-the-buck and don't mind shelling out that kind of money, this build might be the best value - the 290X cards cost much more, and increase the KH performance only slightly.

I mentioned above that these PCs are purpose-built for mining, but as you'd expect, the configuration options are robust. You can boost the RAM, add or replace the HDD with an SSD, and so forth. For a bit more money, you can replace the PC's base CyberPowerPC chassis with XFX's TYPE01.

As attractive as coin-mining might be, its biggest downside is that it will rack up your power bill. For this reason, CyberPowerPC takes advantage of Thermaltake's DPS power supplies, which feature a software front-end that can help you monitor just how much power is being drawn when at full-load, and also predict your total cost. Now that's a nice touch.