CPU Mining

CPU mining died on Bitcoin in 2011 and on most coins shortly after, outcompeted by GPUs and then ASICs. It survives — and thrives — exclusively where the algorithm is designed for it: Monero's RandomX exercises caches, branch prediction and floating-point units so thoroughly that a general-purpose CPU is the optimal hardware.

Modern AMD Ryzen and EPYC chips with large L3 caches dominate. CPU mining's appeal is accessibility: no special hardware, no fan noise farms — any desktop can accumulate XMR, with profitability hinging almost entirely on electricity price.