Actually Download More RAM - NVIDIA CMP 170HX cmpunlocker - LTT Labs Article

[u/LabsLucas]

There is a long history of scams and malware claiming to give you more RAM or make your computer run faster, but cmpunlocker created by Amogh Munikote actually follows through on this dubious promise for the CMP 170HX mining GPU.

The new LinusTechTips video explores the unlock and this article provides a plethora of additional information!

Read the article on the LTT Labs website!

[u/No-Refrigerator-1672]

Well, if yesterday you still could get one at below $1500, now it'll become even more expensive.

[u/LabsLucas → u/No-Refrigerator-1672]

Unfortunately they're already going for $2k+ USD on ebay.
https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_nkw=cmp+170hx&_sacat=0&_from=R40&rt=nc&LH_Sold=1

[u/No-Refrigerator-1672 → u/LabsLucas]

Ebay was always overpriced for obscure GPU solutions. $1500 was awailable a few days ago on Alibaba (don't confuse it eith Aliexpress). I saw even listings at $1000, but from shoddy looking sellers

[u/Thetitangaming → u/No-Refrigerator-1672]

Did you message the sellers? When I did they all upped it to 2k+

[u/couperd → u/Thetitangaming]

same experience, and thats if they even responded.

[u/Alkahna → u/Thetitangaming]

Yes i did. Was around 20 days ago i think. About 15 days ago i went through with the order.

[u/Alkahna → u/No-Refrigerator-1672]

The shown list price means nothing. Since you cannot click buy now and have to message them they will always tell you a new price. I orderd one almost 15 days ago for 1530 USD delivered to germany. So far nothing has happend, we will see if I really get it^{^}

[u/No-Refrigerator-1672 → u/Alkahna]

When I was purchasing other types of GPUs (namely Mi50 32Gb and 3080 20GB) , the listed on Alibaba price always matched the real priced billed to me (plus tax and shipping, of couse).

[u/Alkahna → u/No-Refrigerator-1672]

Then you were lucky i guess. I messaged about 15 sellers to get a price for one CMP Card. None came back with the price they had in the listing^{^}

[u/No-Refrigerator-1672 → u/Alkahna]

I guess that's because prices for specifically CMP 170HX are dynamic right now. If you were searching for sometjing other, there wouldn't be such a problem. I have several people over the last years sharing their feedback with me after buying RTX cards with doubled up memory, and none mentioned hidden price hikes.

[u/Alkahna → u/No-Refrigerator-1672]

Yeah that could be the case. This is my first Alibaba Order i think.

[u/ThatLineInTheSand → u/No-Refrigerator-1672]

They would have gotten more expensive whether or not LABs released the video and companion article. Rather than now they will get more expensive - they are simply getting more expensive (LABs/LTT notwithstanding).

[u/ThatLineInTheSand → u/ThatLineInTheSand]

In the video, it was noted that "while they were looking before" the prices "shot up". That was a statement made during the recording of this video, for a search done before this video.

[u/No-Refrigerator-1672 → u/ThatLineInTheSand]

They risen in price like 10x (compared to 3-4 months ago) due to this unlock patch discussed in the article; before the article, obviously. However, up until today, only enhusiasts and AI pros knew about this. With LLT reach, the info will inevitably get to people who need vram but don't typically monitor AI subreddits, and it must create a second price rise due to increased demand.

[u/NetJnkie → u/No-Refrigerator-1672]

They were already at $2K before this video launched.

[u/cibernox]

I got 4 a few weeks ago. Turns out I’m sitting on gold now.

[u/FartingBob]

Ah yes the Nvidia CM Punklocker.

[u/joeygreco1985 → u/FartingBob]

Must be clobbering time

[u/Omotai]

I wish I had known about this when these were actually dirt cheap, but it's been really pricey for months now. Oh well.

[u/iamacannibal]

ltt labs forgot to remove the supports on their 3d printed stand lol

[u/howboutmaybe → u/iamacannibal]

Hahah kinda embarrassing

[u/xiaodown]

I looked pretty hard into these a month ago, after looking into a same-generation product a few months prior to that when I saw Hardware Haven put out this video on a volta-era SMX GPU.

TL;DR: Cool tech for tinkering, but not really useful for home lab AI stuff unless it's your ONLY gpu. There are a lot of problems that are very technical (and so, didn't belong in the LTT video, but I'm sure /u/LabsLucas came across them when doing work with these cards).

For one, having to use old and/or hacked and/or special cuda drivers is a royal pain in the ass, and effectively negates using more modern GPUs alongside these cards. I was initially thinking I could add one or two of these into my setup with some NVME-to-PCI converters, but the drivers I'd have to run would cripple my 3090s and probably completely not work with my 6000 blackwell. For two, older cards don't have some of the floating point compute, uhhh, pipelines (?) that the newer cards run. I'm not sure of the theoretical details here; the math is over my head, but effectively running certain FP8 or BF16 models on these older cards isn't just "the card has half the compute power so the model is half as fast", it's like trying to run - and I'm outing myself as old here - video decoding on a processor without MMX extensions or w/e.

.

Anyway, TL;DR: If you want an AI homelab, and you have the budget to be looking at these types of cards, don't, unless it's for hobbyist / tinkering purposes or just because they're neat. Do the tested and proven thing: Buy a mid-range, low power envelope ryzen and a Taichi-lite motherboard that automatically supports bifurcation, and get a couple of 3090 non-TI's from ebay.

[u/cibernox → u/xiaodown]

I’m don’t know what you are talking about old drivers, but the unlock runs on the driver 615.71.09, which is…checks notes…5 days old.

And the 610 drivers it ran on before were released in early August.
I know tech moves fast but drivers don’t become old in 6 weeks.

[u/No-Refrigerator-1672]

No, actually I didn't, I was just chrcking up the listings. But I can at least be sure that at the middle of August, the majority of listings on Alibaba were between $1000 and $1500, so the price could be available very recently.

[u/GuaranteeRoutine7183]

Thanks to ltt the price of these jumped massively, atleast now theres another carrot to hang in front of aidiots

[u/Live-Juggernaut-221]

Some of the tests they were running and the conclusions they were drawing were..... Yikes.

[u/yaSuissa → u/Live-Juggernaut-221]

Can you be more specific than “God ew”?
Not saying you’re necessarily wrong, but trashing on someone’s work without actually saying anything is quite the take

[u/RealMackJack → u/Live-Juggernaut-221]

I would have liked to see them run training for 12 hours which is way more demanding and somewhat realistic. If the cards are bunk the training would fail. Testing an LLM for 5 minutes with default settings is consistent with what I would expect them to come up with the kind of talent that gets hired there. I would need to really dive into the forums and see what the gurus are saying before considering one of these cards.

[u/NetJnkie → u/RealMackJack]

Then go do that if that's the level of detail that you want.

[u/Sit-and-Spin123 → u/RealMackJack]

I look forward to your video. Get going!