14:18Machine-translated from Azerbaijani by AIRead in Azerbaijani
A 60-Manat Mining Rig Ran a 35-Billion-Parameter AI Model
Reddit user markpronkin bought an old cryptocurrency mining rig that had been sitting in a garage for 3,000 rubles. That is approximately $35 (60 manat). The rig was rusty, and the seller did not allow it to be tested beforehand. Nevertheless, all 9 Nvidia P106-100 graphics cards worked during the initial test. The cards have a total of 54 GB of video memory. This means each 1 GB of memory cost the buyer approximately 65 cents (1 manat).
In its first local artificial intelligence test, the rig ran the Qwen3.6-35B-A3B model using the Ollama software. The system processed more than 30 tokens, or units of text, per second. The model is approximately 24 GB in size and has a total of 35 billion parameters. However, only 3 billion of them are activated for each task. This architecture helps the model run faster even on low-end hardware.
Each P106-100 card has 6 GB of GDDR5 memory. Technically, this model is similar to the GTX 1060 6GB. Each card provides a memory transfer rate of approximately 192 GB per second. Released in mid-2017, the cards were designed primarily for cryptocurrency mining. However, the weak Celeron processor and limited RAM reduce the system’s overall speed. The PCIe 2.0 x1 slots also limit data transfer.
Software support for the old Pascal generation is gradually declining. CUDA 13.0 no longer compiles software offline for these cards. The 580 driver branch is the final version that supports them. Security updates will continue until October 2028. As a result, additional adaptation may be required to run new software on the rig.
The 8-bit version of the Qwen3.6-35B-A3B model fits within 54 GB of video memory. The 4-bit version of the Llama 3.3 70B model can also run within the same amount of memory. This model requires approximately 42.5 GB of memory. However, the expected speed would be approximately 4.5 tokens per second. By comparison, the RTX 5090 has 32 GB of memory. The card went on sale in 2025 for $1,999 (approximately 3,400 manat). Its memory transfer rate is approximately 9 times higher than that of each old card.
Another drawback of the rig is its high electricity consumption. Together, the 9 graphics cards theoretically require 1,080 W of power. However, the buyer said he does not pay for electricity. In the next phase, the hardware will be moved into a case supporting 32 GB of RAM and an Intel Core i7-7700K processor. The case has room for 12 cards. If 3 more cards are added, the total video memory could reach 72 GB.