AMD RX 580 – Cryptocurrency Mining Review 2022

Did you hear about AMD RX 580 Graphics card? They are one of the most affordable graphics cards for mining.

Today we are going to check its mining performance and the output it can deliver.

Cryptocurrencies, unlike traditional currencies, do not have centralized authorities to handle payments. But even basic tasks like ledger management and transaction verification needs someone to do. In the case of cryptocurrencies, this task is also decentralized.

There are special nodes that handle these tasks. Both in Proof of Stake and Proof of Work, there are special nodes. These special nodes or devices are responsible for verifying transactions and adding them to the public ledger.

In the case of Proof of Work-based cryptocurrencies, miners handle these tasks. The miner nodes provide computational power to the entire cryptocurrency network. And in return, they receive a reward from the cryptocurrency network.

Mining is an essential aspect of a cryptocurrency. As it not only helps the cryptocurrency become fully decentralized but also creates new currency units of that cryptocurrency. Mining is also a profitable business for some. And with the help of proper devices, one can make good profits. Currently, GPU mining is the best choice for beginner miners. Because of the low initial investment and low cost of operation. And, undoubtedly, one of the most popular graphics cards in this regard is the RX 580.

This card from the team red has always been a crowd favorite. Be it PC gaming or mining, and this card has the potential to excel its competitors. The graphics card market is in turmoil right now. Prices are higher than ever. But still, this card is a best seller.

So in this post, I am going to talk about the AMD RX 580. And together, we are going to find out the best cryptocurrency to mine with this card.

AMD RX 580 – The Budget Miner’s Dream

AMD launched this powerhouse back in 2017 to replace the aging RX 480. This budget beast packs 36 compute units in total. Each of these computes units have 64 cores. So in total, there are 2304 stream processors in the AMD RX 580.

This graphics card is built upon AMD’s 4th generation GCN or Graphics Core Next architecture. The RX 580 has a base clock frequency of 1257MHz. And it can boost up to 1340MHz. It is available in one variant only.

It comes with 8 GB GDDR5 memory. The memory interface is 256-bit, so it is capable of providing 256 GB/s bandwidth. However, the effective memory speed is 8 GB/s.

What Should You Mine With AMD RX 580

No matter how good a graphics card is, it cannot perform equally well in all cases. And it has to be true with the AMD RX 580 also. There are a few cryptocurrencies the RX 580 mines very efficiently. But there are also some cryptocurrencies, mining those are not very profitable.

The majority of the cryptocurrency market is dominated by a handful of hashing algorithms or protocols. These protocols include Ethash, Equihash, Cryptonight, etc. So we will be putting special attention towards these.

But there are a few other protocols, too, like NeoScrypt, Lyra2REv2, etc. I will also be including them in my research.

Let’s put all of these into tabular form for better understanding. I have highlighted the important protocols.

As you can see, the RX 580 is a budget beast when it comes to mining cryptocurrencies. It can prove to be very profitable in the long run. Because this card doesn’t even hog that much electricity.

From the table above, you can see that it is capable of mining Equihash at 290 h/s. Equihash is the cryptocurrency protocol that powers popular cryptocurrencies like Zcash, Zclassic, Hush, Bitcoin Gold, etc. For delivering this hash rate, RX 580 consumes only about 120 – 125 W of power.

While mining Cryptonight based cryptocurrencies, the RX 580 can achieve 685 to 690 h/s. Privacy-based mineable cryptocurrencies like Monero, Sumokoin, Electroneum, etc., all use Cryptonight. I have noticed the RX 580 to consume not more than 115 W of electricity while mining Cryptonight.

But RX 580 shines the most while mining Ethash based cryptocurrencies. Ethash is the combination of two cryptocurrency protocols called Dagger and Hashimoto. Ethash is a memory heavy hashing protocol; that is why it is somewhat ASIC resistant.

Mainly Ethereum uses this protocol. But there are also other cryptocurrencies like Ethereum Classic, Pirl, Ellaism, Expanse, Musicoin, etc., which use Ethash.

AMD cards have always been the best choice when it comes to mining Ethash. And the RX 580 model is not an exception. You can expect a very high hash rate of 30 Mh/s while mining Ethash with an RX 580. And for that, it only draws 130 – 135W of power.

For the sake of comparison, the GTX 1070 from Nvidia produces the same performance while mining Ethash. The GTX 1070 is at least $200 more expensive than the AMD RX 580.

PAYBACK PERIOD

As the price of ETH has reached new highs this year, you can expect the card to be paying itself in less than 140 days.

I suggest mining Ethash based cryptocurrencies with the RX 580. Because this is where the RX 580 beats all of its competitors and even higher priced cards, while mining Ethereum with this card, you can expect to make about $3 profit per day. I have calculated this profit amount after subtracting the expected cost of electricity.

So let’s assume you are making about $3 a day, and the price of Ethereum remains the same as well as electricity. In that scenario, you will be making $90 a month as a profit. And considering the current price of this graphics card, it will pay itself back within 4 to 5 months of mining.

*Market has gone crazy so that you might get outstanding returns on the card.

If you cannot mine Ethereum for some reason, you can also try mining Ethereum Classic, Pirl, or Musicoin. Alternatively, you can lend your hashing power to the Nicehash platform. You get very competitive rates on Nicehash. So it is a perfect choice too.

Cryptocurrencies To Avoid

Now that I have suggested to you the most profitable cryptocurrency to mine with this card let’s talk about the ones you should avoid at all costs.

The first one on my list is Equihash. When it comes to Equihash, Nvidia cards are the better performers compared to AMD ones.  So AMD cards will not be as profitable as an Nvidia card while mining Equihash. That is why you should avoid cryptocurrencies using this protocol. This means avoiding mining cryptocurrencies like Zcash, Zclassic, Bitcoin Gold, etc.

It would help if you also avoided Cryptonight cryptocurrencies like Monero and Electroneum. The best cards for mining Cryptonight is the two RX Vega variants. So other cards are not as profitable as these two.

As an RX 580 miner, you should be focusing on Ethash based cryptocurrencies and nothing else because everything else will not be as profitable as Ethereum or any other Ethash based cryptocurrencies.

Conclusion

This brings us to the end of another informative article on Coinsuggest. Please do keep in mind cryptocurrencies are incredibly volatile. So the calculations and predictions I did in this article might not happen.

For example, I calculated the payback period while keeping the maintenance cost and price of the cryptocurrency static. In reality, the maintenance cost may stay static. But the price of a cryptocurrency won’t.

Cryptocurrency prices fluctuate very rapidly. And with that, the payback period will increase or decrease accordingly.

I hope this article was a good read for you. Please share your opinions with us down below in the comment section.