Why is NVIDIA allowing GeForce RTX 3060/3070 Laptop GPUs to be sold as desktop mining cards?
We have mentioned this issue before, but the scale of this problem outgrows expectations.
Chinese OEMs are now selling NVIDIA’s own GeForce RTX 3060 and 3070 Laptop GPU… as a desktop card. Except this is not some weird card for gamers. On a contrary, it’s a simple way to avoid Lite Hash Rate restrictions of the desktop GPUs. In other words, those are pure mining card and are even advertised as ones.
NVIDIA RTX 3070 Laptop GPU sold as desktop cards, Source: Taobao
One could say that after the LHR has been cracked, it should no longer a problem, and that’s certainly true. However, mobile GPUs should never go into desktop cards in the first place. In fact, the only purpose here is to avoid mining restrictions. And this procedure has been going for months now, without any sign of NVIDIA cracking down on it.
NVIDIA RTX 3060/3070 Laptop GPU sold as desktop cards, Source: Taobao
In the end, it’s gamers that are at a loss, because even fewer mobile RTX 30 GPUs go into laptops (RTX 3060M is also affected). Shady OEMs are repurposing those GPUs for desktop mining cards and making a profit in the process. Taobao listings show hundreds of such cards on sale, most with advertising materials focusing on mining performance (which is around 60 to 65 MH/s for 3070M).
Meanwhile, NVIDIA has done absolutely nothing to stop this from happening for months. So if you were ever wondering why 3060/3070 laptops are still so expensive, here is your answer.
