{
  "id": 19643396,
  "title": "Techie uses voltage glitching hack to turn $2,500 Nvidia 8GB cryptomining GPU into a full-fat $20,000 A100 with 80GB of VRAM",
  "url": "https://urgent.news/2026/11/12/techie-uses-voltage-glitching-hack-to-turn-2-500-nvidia-8gb",
  "topic": "tech",
  "section": "Tech",
  "published": "2026-11-12T10:30:00.000Z",
  "source": {
    "name": "Tom's Hardware",
    "slug": "tom-s-hardware",
    "url": "https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/gpus/techie-turns-usd2-500-cmp-170hx-8gb-mining-card-into-a-full-fat-a100-80gb-with-voltage-glitching-carefully-blowing-onboard-fuses-to-unlock-entire-vram-and-shader-modules"
  },
  "original_language": "en",
  "account": "A tech enthusiast has developed a method to transform an 8GB Nvidia CMP-170HX mining GPU, purchased for $2,500, into a high-performance 80GB A100 GPU. The hack, called CMPunlocker, involves exploiting the microcode of GA100 cards and disabling protective fuses, allowing access to additional VRAM and performance features. The process requires a custom circuit board with an STM32G4 microcontroller to manipulate voltage signals, effectively bypassing the card's security measures. While the mod does not enable all the features of a full A100 GPU, such as ECC, NVLink, or multi-instance GPU support, it unlocks the card's full potential, providing PCIe 4.0 speed with the complete set of features. The cost of a CMP-170HX 8GB GPU is around $3,000, while the 10GB variant is $2,500. In contrast, a full-fat A100 80GB GPU can cost $20,000 or more. The tech community is abuzz with the discovery, as another person independently found the same issue and Kate has informed Nvidia about the vulnerability.",
  "summary": "A techie turned a $2,500 CMP-170HX 8GB mining card into a full-fat $20,000 A100 80GB by carefully blowing onboard fuses to unlock entire VRAM and shader modules.",
  "key_points": [],
  "editors_take": null,
  "illustration": null,
  "coverage": {
    "outlets": 1,
    "also_reported_by": []
  },
  "ai_generated": true,
  "disclaimer": "Summaries, key points and the editor’s take are written by software from other outlets’ reporting and may contain errors — always check the linked original."
}