GPU Mining Machine

c0rk3r

1. What is your budget? €1500 - €2000-ish

2. What will be the main purpose of the computer? Mining; Bitcoin, Ethereum, Dash, litecoin

3. Do you need a copy of Windows? [Yes]

4. Can you use any parts from an old computer? no

5. Do you need a monitor? No

5a. If yes, what size do you need.

6. Do you need any of these peripherals?

7. Are you willing to try overclocking? No

8. How can you pay? Bank Transfer/debit card/paypal/bitcoin

9. When are you purchasing? Week or two

10. If you need help building it, where are you based? I Should be alright

I'm aware of the risks involved in bitcoin mining. This is more of a hobby, investment, secondary income were I don't really need to do anything except front cash. All and any advise welcome

Quick Edit - I was thinking of a 6 card system


thanks in advance!

ED E

Location: London

Is this accurate? If you're in the Republic dont bother, power is too expensive.


And just to be sure, you're aware that the difficulty spike and PoS are both pending which will crucify the €1/week you might make?

BloodBath

It's viable tbh when you do the math. Etherium has taken a hit in the last few weeks though but it's still very viable. The main part is getting the cheapest energy rates you can get.

Energia are doing a 1 year contract at 12.67 cent (Inc VAT) per KW/h at the moment which would net you around €400 a month (At Etheriums current value) in profit with a 160MH/s system.

You will get at least half to 3 quarters of your hardware investment back within 2 years if you want to sell it on. A decent 6 card system will pay for itself within 3-6 months even in Ireland. Everything after that is profit.

The problem is everybody and their granny is doing it so the best cards for it have jumped up in price. You will be lucky to get 6 cards alone for your budget atm unless you can find good deals on RX 470/480 570/580.

c0rk3r

No I'll be in the Republic



Am i missing something ?

BloodBath

25MH/s at 100w is a bit optimistic. You are looking at around 150w per card when optimised. My calculations were based on 1000w power useage in a 6 card system with a total output of 160MH/s with Etherium.

If you are smart about it you could exhaust the heat from it in winter to heat a room in the house while turning a tidy profit.

ED E

Thats closer to reality (Eur != USD)

So at a constant profitability (unlikely) thats €56.42/mo output. Spend €2000 buying ETH, sell it when it hits double that and dont have a room of your house that sounds like a 737 on its take off roll.



Note: I was an LTC miner years back, but getting in early is crucial. You're late to the party.

K.O.Kiki

>6 cards
>€1500-2000


HAHAHAHAHAHA

c0rk3r

You've gone from €1 a week to €338.53 a month. Cool

Build suggestions welcome

c0rk3r

K.O.Kiki wrote: »

>6 cards
>€1500-2000


HAHAHAHAHAHA

Christ. Make it €4k, now can someone put something together ?

K.O.Kiki

c0rk3r wrote: »

Christ. Make it €4k, now can someone put something together ?

I don't want to learn about GPU mining; IMHO they are a horrid waste of resources & represent a real low in capitalism.

Therefore I will refrain from adding to this thread.

srsly78

Anyone that needs advice on hardware spec for mining should probably not bother with it.

IK09

I built my first 5 card rig for just over €1600 using R9's. 111mh/s. 1200w power draw. My second rig using 6 x rx470's for about €2,200. 168mh/s. 900w power draw.

c0rk3r

srsly78 wrote: »

Anyone that needs advice on hardware spec for mining should probably not bother with it.

I could spend X amount of hours researching it or just ask... I chose to ask.

I know this forum is mainly used for gaming and media rigs and i may have rubbed people the wrong way requesting a mining rig.

You got the specs for it IK09 ?

wshouldieat?

Hi mate, its very very hard to find cards right now with a lot of the rx 500 series cards all being out of stock or overpriced to the point of where it won't be worthwhile in terms of ROI for mining. The best cards for mining are the 500 series cards like the 580, but, they're gold dust.

wshouldieat?

srsly78 wrote: »

Anyone that needs advice on hardware spec for mining should probably not bother with it.

I disagree with this, looking for advice is not a bad thing. I mean OP could have looked up hashing rates, but posting in a forum and searching is effectively the same thing.

srsly78

Well building and speccing the machine is really easy. Still needs lots of technical knowledge to install, run and maintain the software+hardware.

c0rk3r

srsly78 wrote: »

Well building and speccing the machine is really easy.

Be my guest. That's why we're all here in the PC building and Upgrading forum.

srsly78

https://www.cryptocompare.com/mining/guides/how-to-build-an-ethereum-mining-rig/

As the lads have already posted, the trick is what GPU to choose. Prices fluctuate like mad now so the optimal config changes frequently. Choice probably dictated by what online supplier you prefer.

After the rig is built the fun begins, then it's all about overclocking cards and maximising hash rate etc.

Matt Simis

ED E wrote: »

Is this accurate? If you're in the Republic dont bother, power is too expensive.

Makes me shudder!
I dipped into bitcoin twice in the past, something like 6years ago and again 4years ago. Used that logic each time, not accounting for the rise in value.. it was completely incorrect. I would be $$ now had I not looked at cost of power in the moment vs value at the time. Even if I held my Litecoin privately instead of selling some then loosing the rest to some scammy asshole online Litecoin wallet I would have like $20k.

I cant say where it will go in the future, but the power cost is IMO, irrelevant as either you make a few dollars now or they go up in value massively and you make real money later. Risk/Reward is heavily tilted to investing and sucking up the power costs.


PS: To clarify Im not advocating mining Bitcoin, just in general.

alb

Matt Simis wrote: »

I cant say where it will go in the future, but the power cost is IMO, irrelevant as either you make a few dollars now or they go up in value massively and you make real money later. Risk/Reward is heavily tilted to investing and sucking up the power costs.
.

You're saying the electricity is irrelevant but the entire mining is irrelevant is you're relying on an increase in the coin values for your profit. You need to measure your profits in coins not euros or dollars.

Consider this example:
A Bitcoin costs $500
John buys 1 bitcoin and sits on it.
Bob buys a mining rig costing $500 instead, and mines.

Bob mines 0.9 bitcoin over the lifetime of his rig. At what price of Bitcoin has Bob's choice been more profitable than Johns?

Matt Simis

alb wrote: »

You're saying the electricity is irrelevant but the entire mining is irrelevant is you're relying on an increase in the coin values for your profit. You need to measure your profits in coins not euros or dollars.

Consider this example:
A Bitcoin costs $500
John buys 1 bitcoin and sits on it.
Bob buys a mining rig costing $500 instead, and mines.

Bob mines 0.9 bitcoin over the lifetime of his rig. At what price of Bitcoin has Bob's choice been more profitable than Johns?

My interpretation of that is unless John's miner can create/find more than 1BTC in a reasonably short period of time and for little other costs, then they should both be buying BTC. But thats a rough quick answer, there is opportunity cost of lost funds for John vs residual value of hardware for Bob that actually make that assessment much more interesting than first looks, assuming you dont really mean BTC as in bitcoin but some other coin.

However what Im proposing is people buy BTC (and ETH and other established coins) but mine other coins where they can actually generate significant coin # amount now even if their current value places them underwater in a cost analysis currently. Im my examples I had the HW already to do the coins I looked at, the cost would have been cents a day to mine but generated hundreds of coins. Yet I didnt do it as (eg) mining cost 10cent more than the value of BTC back then. Had I invested the electricity "cents a day" (which back then wasnt possible) into BTC it would have indeed been better than doing nothing but still not exactly meaningful $$.

Mine the coins you cannot easily buy, not everything is on exchanges or simply available. Buy the coins you can buy outright.
Or run miners that cover all your electricity costs (and ETH and Zcash does right now) and count it as having free power and heating.

Cuddlesworth

Difficulty went up 25% today, price dropped by 20% for Eth. Only going to get worse for new entrants into mining, who need to pay off the capital costs.

BloodBath

It's still profitable but Etheriums price has halved in the last 2 weeks. Litecoin is a much better mining option now.

c0rk3r

Well lol in the space of 2 days my return on investment changed from 6 months to 12 months.

This wasn't about a get rich quick scheme. It was more about me learning about cryptocurrency, new hardware and new software. This explosion over the last few months has been incredibly interesting and i wanted to learn about it and be apart of it.

I would describe it more as me taking my pan to the river every Sunday and sifting for gold rather than forking out €200,000 for equipment, moving to Alaska and hoovering the ocean floor desperately trying to get my return back. For the moment ive simply dipped by toes in the water. The current volatility and the direction of the market make this too risky an investment at the moment. I'll hold off until August and look into it again.

Bit disappointed that there was not 1 build suggestion

farna_boy

Jesus if I were you I'd be thanking people in here because they didn't give you a build option, otherwise you could have already dropped what, originally 2k followed quickly by 4k and be left totally out of pocket.

c0rk3r

I wanted the build option. Then i would of decided if it was viable or not but there was never a build option even though we;re in the PC building & Upgrading forum.

With bitcoin losing -9.62% value, Etheruem losing -28.23% value and litecoin losing -16.23% value over the last week I was never going to pull the trigger just yet. Someone even suggested putting €2,000 into bitcoin and watching it double. That 2k is now worth €1790...

Requesting a build in a build forum, you expect a build option

farna_boy

What you got was experience and people telling you your sums were wrong. People didn't give you a build option because of this and the fact that the optimal cards to get couldn't be bought regardless of price right now, never mind value.

Just be grateful you didn't get caught. You came here for experience and knowledge, don't blame us that you didn't like the answer.

c0rk3r

That's fair enough

Matt Simis

c0rk3r wrote: »

Someone even suggested putting €2,000 into bitcoin and watching it double. That 2k is now worth €1790...

Requesting a build in a build forum, you expect a build option

Well I invest and build (with the profits of investing, spending real money on it is not a good idea). Investing pays off about 10x what building and mining does. Actually, well over 10x. Quoting your EUR2k in BTC would be now be EUR1790 in the middle of a price crash, days after said hypothetical investment is a bit disingenuous btw. Investing is way way more sound, tho not much of a hobby.

If you really want to build, skip ETH and do something else. My current plan is:
- build 2x watercooled 6GPU systems
- bid and buy used parts on eBay to minimise capital costs. Buying new for anything other than GPU is a fools errand.
- building up two XPS 700 (love that old case) systems with X99 motherboard + 6 GPU, drilling out the 1x slots to fit 16x cards in there, using a bunch of Aquacomputer and EKWB used watercooling parts, running 10 to 16 core Xeon's to do CPU mining on the side.
- GPUs will be an array of GTX 1050Ti (cheap, low power) watercooled/overclocked with universal blocks and 980Ti and Maxwell (as they are available as they are sub-optimal for mining) Titan X's watercooled and overclocked to the hilt.
Im spending very little vs your layout but it will be vastly more powerful and flexible. I already have a HTPC with a GTX 1070 and main PC with twin 1080Ti's, but they would exist outside of mining anyhow.

Cant say its a good investment tho, at worst it will heat rooms and dry clothes.