Is Mining a profitable endeavour

If you can get what used to be fairly decent old servers with respectable (old) processors like 32 core Intel Xeon CPU X7560 at near free is Mining a profitable activity or will all you earn be lost to Electricity bills.
If it is a marginally profitable activity when does it start to make sense? 1 server, 10 servers, 100 servers, etc...
Obviously the CPU is not a GPU and not anywhere near cutting edge now.

unkel

haphaphap wrote: »

If you can get what used to be fairly decent old servers with respectable (old) processors like 32 core Intel Xeon CPU X7560 at near free is Mining a profitable activity or will all you earn be lost to Electricity bills.
If it is a marginally profitable activity when does it start to make sense? 1 server, 10 servers, 100 servers, etc...
Obviously the CPU is not a GPU and not anywhere near cutting edge now.

CPU mining is generally not profitable, I wouldn't bother. But GPU mining is very profitable at the moment. Even taking into account the absurd (second hand) prices GPUs now go for.

But if you have a half decent graphics card in your gaming PC, let it mine for you, an older card will make about $4 per day, a mid range newish one about $8 a day and a top of the range card near enough $13 per day, with only a fraction of that going towards your electricity costs

dougal0691

unkel wrote: »

CPU mining is generally not profitable, I wouldn't bother. But GPU mining is very profitable at the moment. Even taking into account the absurd (second hand) prices GPUs now go for.

But if you have a half decent graphics card in your gaming PC, let it mine for you, an older card will make about $4 per day, a mid range newish one about $8 a day and a top of the range card near enough $13 per day, with only a fraction of that going towards your electricity costs

work is throwing out 3 old cad workstations, roughly 12 years old. would the gpus in these be profitable for mining?

unkel

No. Minimal useful card you'd need is an RX470 / RX480 / RX570 / RX580 8GB (or nvidia equivalent, but these tend to cost more but hash less). These cards now go for around the €250 mark, but make $4 per day in coin (while costing about €0.50 in electricity roughly, depending on your rate, etc.)

stefanovich

haphaphap wrote: »

If you can get what used to be fairly decent old servers with respectable (old) processors like 32 core Intel Xeon CPU X7560 at near free is Mining a profitable activity or will all you earn be lost to Electricity bills.
If it is a marginally profitable activity when does it start to make sense? 1 server, 10 servers, 100 servers, etc...
Obviously the CPU is not a GPU and not anywhere near cutting edge now.

Monero is where it’s at for mining these days.

ToxicPaddy

stefanovich wrote: »

Monero is where it’s at for mining these days.

Curious about this, whats a decent midrange GPU card for mining monero?

Could potentially host 4 of these in my workstation at moment but might just build an open frame mining rig, less intensive heat build up.

grindle

ToxicPaddy wrote: »

Curious about this, whats a decent midrange GPU card for mining monero?

If you're paying for electricity a 5700 and above. If you're not, anything from 390 and above.

fatherbuzcagney

I can sell you this old miner if i can find it:p.....december 2013 i managed to mangle this together ...i recall it generating roughly 14euro per day of litecoin for a few days but difficulty increased rapidly and only burning electricity after that....It was only for a home experiment to see if i could get a miner configured and working .........very enjoyable experiment .

Graham

fatherbuzcagney wrote: »

I can sell you this old miner if i can find it:p.....december 2013 i managed to mangle this together

An Indesit mining rig, :eek:

just look at the size of it.

fatherbuzcagney

Graham wrote: »

An Indesit mining rig, :eek:

just look at the size of it.

:pac: ..only looks small when it crammed in the little utility room...when spread out over the kitchen table for a week it look huge:D.....it was nearly the cause of a divorce.....pity I didn't leave it there:P

Graham

fatherbuzcagney wrote: »

:pac: ..only looks small when it crammed in the little utility room...when spread out over the kitchen table for a week it look huge:D.....it was nearly the cause of a divorce.....pity I didn't leave it there:P

The porthole window on the front was a stroke of genius. How else could you watch the little miners at work.

Exhaust pipe looks a bit on the flimsy side though. :pac:

unkel

stefanovich wrote: »

Monero is where it’s at for mining these days.

No, it's not. Ethereum is still the most profitable coin to mine. Nothing changed on that in the past 4 years.

grindle wrote: »

If you're paying for electricity a 5700 and above. If you're not, anything from 390 and above.

You can't say that, it depends on how much you can buy the cards for. Availability of cards is a problem. And a 5700XT sets you back at least €700 these days, which is insane. At least with a €300 RX580 8GB it can only drop about €200 in value when this madness ends. The 5700XT could drop a good bit more.

All cards are very profitable, electricity costs is only a fraction of what the mining revenue is. The risk to the cards dropping in value is far more of a worry

pioneerpro

unkel wrote: »

No, it's not. Ethereum is still the most profitable coin to mine. Nothing changed on that in the past 4 years.

You can't say that, it depends on how much you can buy the cards for. Availability of cards is a problem. And a 5700XT sets you back at least €700 these days, which is insane. At least with a €300 RX580 8GB it can only drop about €200 in value when this madness ends. The 5700XT could drop a good bit more.

All cards are very profitable, electricity costs is only a fraction of what the mining revenue is. The risk to the cards dropping in value is far more of a worry

If you're going 1 GPU and underclock/undervolt them a bit they're honestly fine. Its only the silly DIY @ home crowd flipping artifacted cards on the market after OC'ing and then burning them solid for ~3% increase in hashrate that gave it such a bad name.

Would be interested in knowing what small blocked finite capped smaller market cap altcoins would be worth a punt dedicating a 1660 Super to these days. Anything with a usecase really, just so long as I don't have to get into mining pools. More interested in accumulating some stuff to hold as lotto tickets than flipping for the miniscule profit i'd get mining pooled ETH after CGT is taken out of it.

fritzelly

unkel wrote: »

But if you have a half decent graphics card in your gaming PC, let it mine for you, an older card will make about $4 per day, a mid range newish one about $8 a day and a top of the range card near enough $13 per day, with only a fraction of that going towards your electricity costs

I was looking at this the other day - what are you using to make that much a day?

unkel

fritzelly wrote: »

I was looking at this the other day - what are you using to make that much a day?

RX470 / 570 / 480 / 580 all make about $4-5 per card per day and these are 2016/2017 cards. These are perfect cards for mining if you don't want to spend a fortune

Even the older R9 390 makes that and that is a 2015 card! The last one I bought cost me €55 here on adverts.ie a few months ago

BTW all my cards were mining 100% on the sun for several hours today. And it's only February. PV in Ireland works great and it's very cheap, particularly if you DIY (most of) the install, I can highly recommend it.

fritzelly

I meant what software

FobleAsNuck

https://ethermine.org/start

thunderdog

I’m on 4gb rx 580s at the moment. I was mining ethereum until the DAG limit went over the 4gb mark. I left it too late to switch to 8gb gpus so I switched to mining ravencoin. While not nearly as profitable as mining ethereum it’s still decent enough at the moment with the recent rise in price for ravencoin

unkel

fritzelly wrote: »

I meant what software

Operating system or mining software?

Over the years I've tried most of the dedicated Linux mining distros but I now mostly use Windows 10 Pro as my OS of choice for mining. Funny enough Windows is just as stable and actually is more efficient (even though there's a lot more going on). I have also tried most mining software but the last while I have settled on Phoenixminer, about the fastest speed and their take is a bit lower than most

thunderdog wrote: »

I’m on 4gb rx 580s at the moment. I was mining ethereum until the DAG limit went over the 4gb mark. I left it too late to switch to 8gb gpus so I switched to mining ravencoin. While not nearly as profitable as mining ethereum it’s still decent enough at the moment with the recent rise in price for ravencoin

Risky strategy though, Ravencoin could drop drastically in value compared to Ethereum, I don't follow it, but it probably already has over the last few months?

If I were you I'd sell the 4GB cards (still popular with gamers) and buy 8GB ones instead. The difference per card is roughly about €100 in value or thereabouts. Crazy though that I bought several 8GB cards in November / December for €90-€110 including shipping. Now worth >€300

thunderdog

unkel wrote: »

Operating system or mining software?

Over the years I've tried most of the dedicated Linux mining distros but I now mostly use Windows 10 Pro as my OS of choice for mining. Funny enough Windows is just as stable and actually is more efficient (even though there's a lot more going on). I have also tried most mining software but the last while I have settled on Phoenixminer, about the fastest speed and their take is a bit lower than most



Risky strategy though, Ravencoin could drop drastically in value compared to Ethereum, I don't follow it, but it probably already has over the last few months?

If I were you I'd sell the 4GB cards (still popular with gamers) and buy 8GB ones instead. The difference per card is roughly about €100 in value or thereabouts. Crazy though that I bought several 8GB cards in November / December for €90-€110 including shipping. Now worth >€300

Out of interest, where are you typically picking up your cards (I might have asked you this before actually). I’ve been tracking some 8gb gpus on eBay (uk) and they are typically going for 250-280 sterling

unkel

Pretty much all of them on adverts. I did some super deals last May / August when crypto values were low and some miners stopped (because the electricity bills keep coming at you and mining is loss making at times - it's not all glory)

Not as good a deal but picked up a good few cards in November / December as well for around the €90 / €100 mark, all 8GB

thunderdog

unkel wrote: »

Pretty much all of them on adverts. I did some super deals last May / August when crypto values were low and some miners stopped (because the electricity bills keep coming at you and mining is loss making at times - it's not all glory)

Not as good a deal but picked up a good few cards in November / December as well for around the €90 / €100 mark, all 8GB

Cheers I’ll keep an eye out for some

fritzelly

Jaysus the prices people want for the RX580 - cost me under €200 18 months ago, asking 450 on Adverts
Shoulda bought a pallet of them!

unkel

fritzelly wrote: »

Jaysus the prices people want for the RX580 - cost me under €200 18 months ago

That's because mining back then was loss making. Now it is very profitable, hence the high selling prices.

ToxicPaddy

unkel wrote: »

That's because mining back then was loss making. Now it is very profitable, hence the high selling prices.

Yeah I was looking at buying a few 8GB cards for a rig and just doing some rough maths i was looking at 2.8k..

I started mining Ethereum last week and I'm making around $180 a month with my 3060 Ti. I got it at pretty much normal price because the shops in Vietnam only sold them if building a new PC. Overclocking the memory and underclocking the core makes it go from 52 to 61 mh/s.

Have no interest in it long-term. Just some handy money from a PC I bought for gaming.

Rob2D

Deleted User wrote: »

I started mining Ethereum last week and I'm making around $180 a month with my 3060 Ti.

Wow really, that much? I didn't really think mining was worth it anymore. But now you're making me think. I have a TITAN in my rig at home that sits there doing nothing for 18hrs a day. Would it be worth starting a mine every morning before I go to work I wonder????

unkel

Of course! That card will have paid for itself in no time if coin value stays similar or goes up even further and with difficulty only rising slowly (as there simply aren't enough graphics cars being made worldwide). Do not underestimate that your electricity bill will go up drastically though. A 6 card mining rig of RX470/480/570/580 as was a typical big rig until the arrival of higher end cards recently, uses close to 1kW at the wall, which means that rig alone will use more than twice the total annual electricity of an average Irish household! In other words your consumption in units will go up by over 200% :eek:

Rob2D

Rob2D wrote: »

Wow really, that much? I didn't really think mining was worth it anymore. But now you're making me think. I have a TITAN in my rig at home that sits there doing nothing for 18hrs a day. Would it be worth starting a mine every morning before I go to work I wonder????

Set it up and have a go. It's really easy and you can check profitability based on your hash rate right away.

Rob2D

Deleted User wrote: »

Set it up and have a go. It's really easy and you can check profitability based on your hash rate right away.

Yeah I'll try it for the craic. That phoenix one mentioned above sounds good.

ToxicPaddy

unkel wrote: »

Of course! That card will have paid for itself in no time if coin value stays similar or goes up even further and with difficulty only rising slowly (as there simply aren't enough graphics cars being made worldwide). Do not underestimate that your electricity bill will go up drastically though. A 6 card mining rig of RX470/480/570/580 as was a typical big rig until the arrival of higher end cards recently, uses close to 1kW at the wall, which means that rig alone will use more than twice the total annual electricity of an average Irish household! In other words your consumption in units will go up by over 200% :eek:

Jaysus :eek:

Might have to stash it in the data centre in work

Rob2D

Tried it out there. Was getting 36MH/s until I found out my card's memory is a bit different (1080ti&TitanXp). So had to enable -straps in Phoenixminer to boost the memory timing. Went to 40MH/s. Then messed around with clocks on afterburner and got to 44.8MH/s. Still a bit low as from what I've seen I should be able to get 50-55. Will try to tune it a bit more tomorrow.

Interesting though. And to think, this card could have paid for itself many times over by now since I got it :pac: Live and learn.

Daithi40

evening, firstly I only know what you guys have posted here on mining, but I got thinking that I built a pc a few years back and that I remember the graphics card was OK, so checked it this evening and it has a Radeon HD 7900 Series sitting on an i5 processor. vram 3072mb, gddrs 1250 mhz.

Am I right in assuming that this is completely underwhelming and there's no point in even considering trying a bit of mining...thanks in advance

having said all that, the recent discussion on this thread has me interested... work in IT, so it's probably the nerd in me that finds it interesting

fritzelly

I'm no expert but that is a very weak card - not even listed here https://www.nicehash.com/cpu-gpu-mining

Will cost more to mine than you make

seannash

Would you not be better staking. You still earn the coins without mining them yourself.

Daithi40

seannash wrote: »

Would you not be better staking. You still earn the coins without mining them yourself.

thanks Sean, I am staking but i have this thing that it would be wonderful to be earning money passively 24/7 while I sleep, I don't have the time to be watching candles... am I way off in thinking that if I bought some mining gear/ gpus etc and have the fun of setting them up, that if prices stay where they are today that it might be worth investing 10k in a rig? looks to me that it's about a 3/4 month investment before you see profit here in Ireland? that about right?

fritzelly

Electricity in Ireland is expensive and GPU prices are thru the roof

Use the link I posted above to work out how long it would actually take to make your money back and then hope the mining market is even still profitable by then...

seannash

Daithi40 wrote: »

thanks Sean, I am staking but i have this thing that it would be wonderful to be earning money passively 24/7 while I sleep, I don't have the time to be watching candles... am I way off in thinking that if I bought some mining gear/ gpus etc and have the fun of setting them up, that if prices stay where they are today that it might be worth investing 10k in a rig? looks to me that it's about a 3/4 month investment before you see profit here in Ireland? that about right?

You could just buy crypto with that money and add it to a pool on pancake swap and earn up to 137% return on it (more if you compound it daily)
The rate may change but personally id go this route.

As for the profitability in mining I'm clueless. But i do get that its an itch you have that may need scratching

unkel

fritzelly wrote: »

Electricity in Ireland is expensive

Common misconception. It's not too bad at all. I am with Energia and I pay 8c night rate (for 9 hours per day) and 14c day rate (for 15 hours a day) both including VAT. There are currently even better deals available

And of course mining could be a good trigger to push yourself to install solar PV. It's currently 9AM in the morning, in winter. And I am already producing over 1kW of solar PV. Enough to run the base load of my house plus a 5 card miner totally on the sun. I have also a home attached battery, which helps a lot on mixed days in summer where you can have some sunlight which produces far more PV than I need, it will store it in the battery, then when a few clouds come over, my house uses electricity from the battery. I can also load up this battery at night with cheap night rate

unkel

Producing over 3kW now.

That would power several big heavy duty rigs...

ToxicPaddy

unkel wrote: »

Producing over 3kW now.

That would power several big heavy duty rigs...

What battery system do you have in the house Unkel?

ToxicPaddy

I looked at a 4.8kw PV and Sonnen battery system setup but as the house is new I don't get a grant so it's going to cost around 10k, not sure if I would get a RoI from mining with that sort of outlay required plus the cost of the rig.

unkel

No grant here either. I use a Sofar ME3000SP battery inverter and I built my own battery with LiFePo4 cells and a Daly BMS

Have a look at the renewable energy forum, several lads over there have a very similar setup to mine

unkel

And a blatant shill here if anyone is interested, I have a rig for sale on adverts

Linky

Rob2D

unkel wrote: »

And a blatant shill here if anyone is interested, I have a rig for sale on adverts

Might want to post it over in the personal for sale on PC building forum too!

Or on second thought, they might run you :pac: