A gaming cafe in Vietnam decided to turn to crypto mining after the COVID-19 pandemic slows down its business to a crawl. Over on its Facebook page (via @I_Leak_VN), it said that by switching to a different business model, the place ends up generating “higher profits” than if it is running as a normal internet-slash-gaming cafe.
The place in question is STAR GAMING Gaming House. Located in 106 Huynh Khuong An, Ward 5, Go Vap District, Ho Chi Minh City, it claimed to be the first gaming cafe that’s equipped with RTX 3080 in the area. As you can expect, the three-stories building is filled with rows and rows of rainbow-colored gaming rigs. Any local gamer who wants to play games at the highest settings can rent out one of its “Tournament”-specced PCs, armed with Intel Core i9 10900F CPU, RTX 3080 GPU, and 32 GB DDR4 RAM. Aside from the beefy Tournament rig, STAR GAMING also offers three other tiers:
- SVIP:
- Intel Core i7 10700F CPU.
- RTX 3070 GPU.
- 32 GB RAM.
- VIP:
- Intel Core i5 10400F CPU.
- RTX 2060.
- 16GB RAM.
- And Standard:
- Intel Core i3 10100F CPU.
- RTX 2060 GPU.
- 16GB RAM.
Unfortunately, as is the case with other businesses that rely on people getting inside your establishment, STAR GAMING eventually faces financial issues no thanks to the pandemic. The good news is, it has lots of expensive hardware lying around that can be used to make money in another way.
Intel Core i7 10700F CPU.
RTX 3070 GPU.
32 GB RAM.
Intel Core i5 10400F CPU.
RTX 2060.
16GB RAM.
Intel Core i3 10100F CPU.
RTX 2060 GPU.
16GB RAM.
The owner (and presumably also their employees) then stripped down all the PCs they have into crypto mining equipment. Personally, I don’t know and understand much about cryptocurrency mining. But a friend of mine said that one of the popular cryptocurrencies could net you around $12 daily just from a single RTX 3080 card. And as you can see above, in just one photo there are eight GPUs stacked inside four mining rigs. Sure, not every single one of them is RTX 3080, but mining virtual money with high-spec parts definitely could cover more than just the electricity bill compared to letting the gaming cafe PCs just gather dust all over the place.
