CMP 170HX 40GB Price & Used Prices: Which Local LLMs Can It Run?

• Memory40 GB · HBM2e
• Bandwidth1,560 GB/s
• FP16 / BF16202 TFLOPS
• INT8404 TOPS

Bus width

5,120-bit

Architecture

Ampere (GA100)

Cores

4,480

Tensor cores

280

Ecosystem

CUDA

Interface

PCIe 2.0 x4

NVLink

Not supported

Power

250 W

Power connector

8-pin CPU (EPS-12V)

Slots

2

Length

267 mm

Type

Data center

Launch date

Sep 1, 2021

Model	Size	Cards	Total price	Total VRAM	Speed t/s	Total power
Qwen3.8 Flash Next176B (6B active)	111.3 GB	4 cards	$11,736	160 GB	121.9	1,000 W
DeepSeek V4 Flash284B (13B active)	155.1 GB	8 cards	$23,472	320 GB	93.4	2,000 W
Hy3295B (21B active)	182.2 GB	8 cards	$23,472	320 GB	50.2	2,000 W
GLM 5.3 Flash320B (18B active)	199.7 GB	8 cards	$23,472	320 GB	70.2	2,000 W

Full calculation rules are on the Methodology page.

1. 1

   The 40GB is unlocked, not soldered on

   The “40GB” sellers advertise isn't the card's factory spec. The CMP 170HX ships with only 10GB enabled (another version has 8GB); the rest of the memory is actually inside the chip package, locked by firmware, and flashing the BIOS can't change that. Unlocking relies on the open-source tool cmpunlocker, which patches the driver to release the locked memory at boot, while also lifting the compute cap and raising PCIe to Gen2. So the patch lives in your computer's operating system and the card itself is unchanged: moving to another machine or reinstalling the OS means installing it again. In theory the 10GB version can be unlocked to 80GB, but the community reports that's unstable, so the tool uses the 40GB setting for 10GB cards.

2. 2

   Linux only, with limited driver versions

   The patch has very specific system requirements: Linux x86-64, root access, and Secure Boot turned off (the modified driver module isn't signed). It accepts only a few nvidia-open driver versions on its list (currently the 610 and 615 series); if your installed version isn't on the list, the install script simply exits. You need to reinstall it after upgrading the kernel or driver. There's no such patch for Windows, where the card can only be used at its factory 10GB.

3. 3

   Test the memory while you can still return it

   Unlocked memory isn't necessarily all good: Tom's Hardware warns that the locked portion may have been defective to begin with, and wccftech notes that some cards are only stable at a smaller capacity. When the card arrives, use a tool like cmp_memory_tester to fill and test all 40GB from start to finish while the return window is still open.

4. 4

   The board is nearly identical to the A100's

   Taken apart, its circuit board is almost the same as the A100 40GB PCIe's, just with some components left unpopulated, so A100 water blocks fit directly (one user went with the Bykski N-TESLA-A100-X-V2). Like the A100, it takes power through one 8-pin CPU (EPS) connector, and the card has no fan and no video output.

Spec	CMP 170HX 40GB	A100 40GB PCIe	CMP 170HX 64GB	GeForce RTX 4090
Memory	40 GB	40 GBSame	64 GB60% more	24 GB40% less
Bandwidth	1,560 GB/s	1,555 GB/sSame	1,493 GB/s4% lower	1,008 GB/s35% lower
BF16 / FP16 compute	202 TFLOPS	312 TFLOPS54% higher	202 TFLOPSSame	330 TFLOPS64% higher
INT8 compute	404 TOPS	624 TOPS54% higher	404 TOPSSame	661 TOPS64% higher
Qwen3.8 27B speed (2-bit)	101.9 t/s	101.6 t/sSame	98.1 t/s4% slower	69.3 t/s32% slower
Largest dense model (4-bit)	65B	65BSame	107B65% more	37B43% less
Power	250 W	250 WSame	250 WSame	450 W80% higher
GPU interconnect	Not supported	NVLink 600 GB/s	Not supported	Not supported
Interface	PCIe 2.0 x4	PCIe 4.0 x16	PCIe 2.0 x4	PCIe 4.0 x16
Released	2021-09	2020-06	2021-06	2022-10
eBay median	$2,934Buy CMP 170HX 40GB	$7,750Buy A100 40GB PCIe	$3,000Buy CMP 170HX 64GB	$3,758Buy GeForce RTX 4090

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