Using MacBook Pro M1 Pro “digging” ETH coins, “profits are beneficial but teeth are gone”

Apple’s new MacBook Pros are packed with powerful custom chips, the M1 Pro and M1 Max, with dramatic strides in graphics and processing performance over their predecessors. This makes some people wonder: Is it possible to use them to mine cryptocurrencies?

This is also the question of many Reddit members: ” With comparable bandwidths between RX 6700 XT and RTX 3060 Ti, can M1 Max mine ETH with a hashrate of 55MH/sec (Megahash per second)? ” – ” If the M1 Max could mine with a hashrate of more than 40MH per second, I would order a MacBook Pro M1 Max instead of the M1 Pro .”

One big advantage in Apple’s processors that many people expect from cryptocurrency mining is their level of energy efficiency. The power consumption of the M1 Max and M1 Pro is much lower than that of discrete GPUs while the bandwidth and performance are similar, so many people expect their ability to mine cryptocurrencies.

Another Reddit user even tested this possibility and said: ” I have a MacBook Pro using M1 Max 16 64GB, when running in high performance mode I get a hashrate of 10.25MH/sec with ETHminer-m1 version. Not fast at all, but it’s amazingly energy efficient and the W per hash rate is exceptionally good .”

Of course people want more specific numbers on this task. YouTuber UFD Tech decided to test it with his M1 Pro chip version.

There are already a lot of applications that compile binaries so that the M1 Macs can mine cryptocurrencies, in this case to mine Ethereum.

The first thing you need to note is that cryptocurrency mining should not run in the background on the machine and do other work. Cryptocurrency mining is always one of the tasks that consume a lot of computer performance and even for simple web surfing, the experience is extremely bad. Therefore, it is best to only mine cryptocurrency when you do not need to use your computer for anything.

In the above test, the MacBook Pro using the M1 Pro chip only achieved a hashrate of 5MH / sec. Too slow for many people’s expectations, but in return, its power consumption is amazingly low – only 17W – much lower than a Windows computer that produces similar results.

Most important is the level of profitability of this activity. After deducting the cost of power consumption, this machine brings in a profit of 12.82 USD per month – that is 42 cents per day. If you wanted to buy a MacBook Pro just to mine cryptocurrency, it would take you 17 years to break even.

More realistically, you need to include the resale value of the machine after using it for 4-5 years. Then maybe your profit will be higher, but not as much as expected. That is not taking into account the damage to MacBook components during cryptocurrency mining – this is still the task that consumes the most computer performance, the damage or reduction of life after a long time of mining. is unavoidable.

Even with the M1 Max chip, with mining performance that can be more than twice that of the M1 Pro, and assuming the price of the digital currency does not fluctuate, almost no one buys a MacBook to mine cryptocurrencies.

Before that, many people speculated that Apple might enter the crypto game, or invest a huge part of its cash in this area, allowing the use of cryptocurrency in the Wallet app, or even even create an e-wallet hardware. While Mr. Tim Cook has ruled out some of these possibilities, he also recently revealed that he has invested his own money in this area.

Refer to 9to5Mac