Mining · The maths
Is GPU mining still worth it in 2026?
Updated 19 July 2026 · about a 9 minute read
Short version: no, not for profit, unless your electricity is unusually cheap. At a normal 10 cents a kilowatt-hour, nearly every coin worth mentioning runs at a daily loss on both a 3090 and a 4090 - and the famous names people ask about, Kaspa and Alephium, aren't even GPU coins any more. The ASICs took them. What's left, the overclock settings if you're doing it anyway, and the handful of reasons it can still make sense - that's this page.
I ran a GPU mining farm for years. I went big, quickly, and going by the numbers at the time I was on for an ROI in around ten months. The market that produced those numbers is gone, and the tables below show how far.
So is it worth it?
Since Ethereum stopped using GPUs back in 2022, there hasn't been a single big, ASIC-resistant, valuable coin to anchor GPU mining. What's left splits two ways, and neither is good. The coins with real value and liquidity get ASICs built for them within a year or two - that's what happened to Kaspa, Alephium, Nexa and Radiant, and it turns a graphics card into a paperweight overnight. The coins that stay purely GPU-only stay tiny, so their rewards are tiny too. There's no middle any more.
So at a normal power price, you pay to mine. The only coins showing a profit are obscure new algos earning a dollar or two a day - I haven't mined any of them myself, and I can't tell you whether their numbers survive their first real difficulty spike; my guess is they don't, but it is a guess. Break-even for the classic coins sits around 4 to 6 cents a kilowatt-hour, so unless you've got cheap hydro, solar, or power included in your rent, the numbers don't work.
The numbers
Profit per day after electricity at 10 cents a kilowatt-hour, from WhatToMine in mid-July 2026. Prices move daily, so read these as a snapshot and a shape, not a promise.
| Coin | Algo | RTX 4090 | RTX 3090 | Note |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Pearl (PRL) | Pearl | +$1.38 | +$0.23 | GPU-only, but a brand-new nano-cap. Volatile. |
| Qubitcoin (QTC) | Qhash | +$0.88 | +$0.14 | Low-power, tiny cap. |
| Ryo (RYO) | CryptoNightGPU | +$0.78 | -$0.05 | Deliberately GPU-favouring. |
| Ravencoin (RVN) | KawPow | -$0.46 | -$0.57 | ASIC-resistant workhorse, but under water. |
| Ergo (ERG) | Autolykos v2 | -$0.25 | -$0.43 | Low-power, ASIC-safe. The least-bad classic. |
| Kaspa (KAS) | kHeavyHash | -$0.58 | -$0.36 | ASIC-captured. GPU mining is dead here. |
| Alephium (ALPH) | Blake3 | -$0.84 | -$0.43 | ASIC-captured since 2024. |
Source: WhatToMine RTX 4090 and 3090 pages, mid-July 2026, at $0.10/kWh. The profitable coins are nano-cap novelties; the coins people actually ask about are the red ones.
What is still GPU-mineable
Two of the classics are still all-GPU, ASIC-resistant, and liquid enough to matter. Both lose money above cheap power, but they're the ones to know.
- Ravencoin (RVN), KawPow. The workhorse - proper ASIC resistance, good liquidity, and it's never been captured. KawPow leans on both the core and the memory of your card, so it wants a strong GPU all round. Its DAG has grown past 4GB, so 6GB-plus cards only. The same settings carry over to its cousins: Neurai, Neoxa, Meowcoin.
- Ergo (ERG), Autolykos v2. The one I mined myself, and still the one I'd reach for. Low power draw, still ASIC-safe, and unusually it runs on old 3 to 4GB cards because the memory footprint is small. It's core-bound rather than memory-bound, the opposite of KawPow, so you tune it completely differently. The least-bad of the classic coins on a 4090 purely because it sips power.
The rest of the famous names - Kaspa, Alephium, Nexa, Radiant - are ASIC territory now. You can point a GPU at them, but you'll earn nothing and you're racing purpose-built machines that do thousands of times your hashrate. Mine them only if you already own the hardware and specifically want the coin.
The settings people run
If you're doing it anyway - for the heat, or because the card's already spinning - here are the overclock and undervolt starting points people actually use. They're starting points: silicon varies, so tune from here and watch your temperatures, especially GDDR6X memory on the 3080 and 3090, which overheats quietly and drops your hashrate after a few minutes.
KawPow (Ravencoin and friends) - max the memory, then find the lowest stable core:
| GPU | Core | Memory | Power | Hashrate |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| RTX 3060 | +100 | +950 | 130W | ~21 MH/s |
| RTX 3070 | +100 | +950 | 155W | ~30 MH/s |
| RTX 3080 | +100 | +950 | 260W | ~42 MH/s |
| RTX 3090 | +100 | +1000 | 330W | ~45 MH/s |
| RTX 4090 | low PL | +1000 | 330W | ~67 MH/s |
Autolykos v2 (Ergo) - core-bound, so lock a moderate core and keep the power low; memory does little:
| GPU | Core | Memory | Power | Hashrate |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| RTX 3060 | lock ~1450 | stock | 115W | ~125 MH/s |
| RTX 3070 | lock ~1550 | +1800 | 130W | ~165 MH/s |
| RTX 3080 | -200 | +2000 | 225W | ~245 MH/s |
| RTX 3090 | low, low PL | stock | 260W | ~260 MH/s |
| RTX 4090 | low PL | stock | 200W | ~260 MH/s |
KawPow figures from NiceHash's community overclock guide; Autolykos from 2Miners and Hiveon forum field reports. Software: T-Rex or GMiner for KawPow, lolMiner or T-Rex for Ergo. Pools: 2Miners, WoolyPooly, HeroMiners. The single biggest lever is dropping your power limit to 70-80% - most cards lose under 5% hashrate for 20-30% less power.
When it makes sense
All of it comes down to whether the power is nearly free to you.
- You want the heat anyway. A mining rig is a space heater that pays part of its own way. In winter, if you'd be heating the room regardless, the coins are a partial rebate on a bill you'd pay anyway.
- The card's already there and idle. A gaming PC doing nothing overnight has a marginal cost of just the extra watts. That's a very different sum from buying cards to mine, which you should not do.
- You want to hold the coin. If you believe in Ergo or Ravencoin and would rather earn them than buy them, mining at a small loss is a form of dollar-cost-averaging with extra steps.
- Your power really is cheap. Below about 5 cents a kilowatt-hour - solar, hydro, some flat-rate rentals - a 4090 on Ravencoin or Ergo can scrape a small profit. Above it, you're back to paying for the privilege.
Or point it at AI instead
This is the whole reason this site has two halves. The graphics card you're thinking of pointing at a dying coin will teach you more, and probably be more fun, pointed at a local AI model instead - it's what my own bench does all day now. The RTX 3090 that was the mining favourite is now one of the best used cards for running LLMs at home. Same card, same rig, same skills with overclocking and cooling; the difference is you're no longer racing purpose-built ASICs.
So by all means mine for the heat, or the hobby, or a coin you love. Just go in knowing the maths. And if you fancy the other path, the GPU comparison ranks the cards for AI, and the run-an-LLM guide covers the setup.