Mining stories

vapor trails · 02-10-2017 7:44pm #1

Any miners here ? Currently myself and my brother are doing around 1.6 Gigahash on the Ethereum network. Using a variety of cards in the process. Mining has made me look forward to the winter. Was very difficult mid summer trying to keep the mining room cold and you could see a drop off in card performance.

Recently took a delivery of the ASUS Mining P106. New mining specific cards made by NVIDIA.

tniazi · 02-10-2017 9:06pm

I have heard that Bitcoin mining is much more profitable than investing. Is it right?

DeVore · 02-10-2017 9:28pm

Vapor, what does your mining setup look like? (both physically and technologically)

vapor trails · 02-10-2017 10:35pm

We used these self assembly office racks for the big rigs. Can fit around 24 cards on each tear. We are in the process of bringing a couple back to the house to heat the place during the winter.

Just use any mother board with 6 PCI slots and have a few corsair power supplies. Really find cooling the most important part of any rig.

This link below show you a break down of all the cards, hash rates, power consumption, average temperatures etc of all the rigs we mine with.

We are mining ZCash on one rig so thats why the total hash rate at the top says 3200 or so. But on Ethereum we are on about 1.5-1.6 gigahash.

http://blocks.ethosdistro.com/

unkel · 02-10-2017 11:25pm

Anyone care to do a few sums: revenue vs detailed cost breakdown

I'd gotten the impression that at this stage ETH / BTC mining would only work if the labour rates you are paying are near zero and the electricity kWh rates are extremely low (so in China basically) but maybe there is still money in it?

allybhoy · 03-10-2017 12:27pm

vapor trails would you be interested in doing a "how to guide" on getting started... Id be very interested in looking at this... might have access to some spare rack space in a DC. What equipment is required... deploying rigs, potential returns etc etc

unkel · 03-10-2017 12:35pm

And if one were to buy a mining rig second hand say on adverts. What would be a good one (value for money). Let's take this one for €1,500. Seemingly a plug and play system. Switch it on, register for mining sharing and start making money?

Linky

How many ETH/year would you expect to mine if it is on 24/7 (with 90% uptime)

unkel · 03-10-2017 12:48pm

I forgot Google was my friend. And apologies for n00b questions

Above rig is advertised as 70 MH/s, using 440W. Here is a calculator:

Linky

That calculates the monthly revenue as USD93 (with ETH being $292 at present) and electricty costs ($0.20/kWh) at $63, so a gross profit (before depreciation, etc.) of $30 per month. With a payback period for the rig of 5 years. With uncertainties in the crypto market and chances of premature hardware obsolescence, that is far too long. Not a wise investment.

Interesting angle is that my electricity use is free for the next 12 months. Meaning a gross profit of $1100 per year or a payback time of about 1.5 years for the hardware. Now that is more interesting

grindle · 03-10-2017 12:51pm

unkel wrote: »

I'd gotten the impression that at this stage ETH / BTC mining would only work if the labour rates you are paying are near zero and the electricity kWh rates are extremely low (so in China basically) but maybe there is still money in it?

The revenue/profit style of mining is for people who want to sell straight to fiat every time a deposit is made.

Many miners are mining with the view that the value will grow, which makes any current revenue/profit calculations redundant.

unkel · 03-10-2017 12:55pm

I see your point, but I wouldn't agree it makes the calculations redundant. Instead of investing in mining hardware, a miner could chose to invest his hard earned fiat in cryptos.

People blindly trusting that their second homes (that they rented out for less than they paid in mortgage) would go up in value was the main cause of our recession...

BloodBath · 03-10-2017 1:04pm

unkel wrote: »

I forgot Google was my friend. And apologies for n00b questions

Above rig is advertised as 70 MH/s, using 440W. Here is a calculator:

Linky

That calculates the monthly revenue as USD93 (with ETH being $292 at present) and electricty costs ($0.20/kWh) at $63, so a gross profit (before depreciation, etc.) of $30 per month. With a payback period for the rig of 5 years. With uncertainties in the crypto market and chances of premature hardware obsolescence, that is far too long. Not a wise investment.

Interesting angle is that my electricity use is free for the next 12 months. Meaning a gross profit of $1100 per year or a payback time of about 1.5 years for the hardware. Now that is more interesting

Your calculations are massively off.

The typical 6 graphics card mining rig (Using RX 580's) will use around 900w @ 175 MH/s and energy costs can be got as low as around 11c.

unkel · 03-10-2017 1:13pm

BloodBath wrote: »

Your calculations are massively off.

The typical 6 graphics card mining rig (Using RX 580's) will use around 900w @ 175 MH/s and energy costs can be got as low as around 11c.

My calculations are not off. Did you read my post carefully?

I used figures provided in the ad I linked to (for mining rate and energy consumption) as presumptions. Then I used the calculator in the link I provided. The rate of $0.20 (€0.17) is about the average paid in Ireland. Obviously it can be got cheaper if you have a night rate meter. In my own case, my marginal tariff for electricity is €0.00 (yes, free), which could make this interesting for me.

What rig on adverts is good value for money in your view? Or what would you build / buy right now?

donegaLroad · 03-10-2017 2:39pm

would building or investing in a small domestic windmill be of any use?

unkel · 03-10-2017 3:01pm

No. Unless you plan to use a huge amount of electricity, but only when it is windy. And don't mind a steep investment (think 20 grand) and live on top of a very windy hill. So in short, no

BloodBath · 03-10-2017 3:09pm

unkel wrote: »

My calculations are not off. Did you read my post carefully?

I used figures provided in the ad I linked to (for mining rate and energy consumption) as presumptions. Then I used the calculator in the link I provided. The rate of $0.20 (€0.17) is about the average paid in Ireland. Obviously it can be got cheaper if you have a night rate meter. In my own case, my marginal tariff for electricity is €0.00 (yes, free), which could make this interesting for me.

What rig on adverts is good value for money in your view? Or what would you build / buy right now?

Ah I didn't see the rig link there but your energy rates are off.

Energia offer day rates of under 14c, night rates of under 7c inc VAT. If you go bigger scale and use a lot of energy you can get it even cheaper.

It's a volatile market but it's still very profitable. I wouldn't be too excited by the rig in that advert though. You could build a 175MH system for about €1000 more.

More than double the hashrate with around double the power consumption but you would want that to see any reasonable return.

You have other problems then. Can your sockets at home handle 900w continuous power draw. Do you have a spare room? 6 cards blasting out in an open system at 100% 24/7 is not gonna be quiet and will throw out a fair bit of heat.

Then the other problem is trying to get your hands on 6 x 570/580 cards. They are constantly out of stock or being sold at massively inflated prices. Sometimes you can pre order at a cheaper price but they limit the amount of cards per order to stop the miners taking them all.

unkel · 03-10-2017 6:15pm

Oh, believe me I know all about the energy rates that are available

My limit would be a rig of around 450W. I would get free electricity for this. And I would need to be up and running in the next few days. Are you saying that within these parameters, a rig like I linked to is poor value? If so, what other, better, setup could I have ready within a few days?

BloodBath · 03-10-2017 8:13pm

It's not necessarily poor value. You just won't see much of a return.

At current prices it might net you around €50 a month which would take 30 months to cover it cost. Who knows what the market will be like in 3 months time, nm 30 months. Granted it will retain a reasonable resale value but it's hardly worth it.

A 175MH system would be closer to €150 per month profit which would only take around 15 months to cover the cost with better hardware that will hold its value more.

Granted with 0 energy costs it's more appealing. You would get around €90 a month with the 75MH system in that case. It's still going to take 15+ months to cover the cost but you have an asset that can be resold at any time without losing too much of it's value.

unkel · 03-10-2017 10:16pm

BloodBath wrote: »

Granted with 0 energy costs it's more appealing. You would get around €90 a month with the 75MH system in that case. It's still going to take 15+ months

I'd only be able to do it for 12 months though. My unlimited electricity deal will not be renewed after that for the same price

So with a prudent 40% depreciation on the hardware during this year it is only going to make me €90 * 12 - 40%*€1500 = about €500 net profit for the year. Not really worth the hassle and the noise...

vapor trails · 03-10-2017 10:44pm

One thing people need to be aware of is mining difficulty. The Ethereum network has seen a significant jump in network mining difficulty recently. As more miners come online the network has these pre determined mining difficulties set given the total network hash rate. This is done in order to keep block times consistent. You can see a chart showing Ethereum network difficulty here: https://www.coinwarz.com/difficulty-charts/ethereum-difficulty-chart

Drumorig · 04-10-2017 6:33am

Unkel, what the calculators don't do is factor in difficulty. It changes the ROI significantly.

Better off just buying crypto...

unkel · 04-10-2017 11:46am

A small domestic windmill. For €5 million?

h0neybadger · 05-10-2017 9:22am

Currently setting up a mining farm.

What we currently have

20 ethereum rig's.
13 GPU's in each rig.

60 Avalon BTC miners.
20 d3 miners.

Arriving in 2 weeks, 80 Antminer s9's.

Electricity rate is .037c per KW.

Not in Ireland anymore, and cooling is the biggest issue at the moment. But winter months will make it easier

Once the s9's arrive, we'll be nicely set.

We sell a portion of mined coins, to cover electricity and pay ourselves. And HODL the rest

ToxicPaddy · 11-10-2017 6:20pm

I spent most of the summer playing around with basic mining setups using 3 x decent spec work stations I had at home and a vast array of graphics cards that I seemed to have acquired over the years. None of which are anyway decent spec, but it was more of a test run to see how much time it would require to maintain, manage and obviously do some calculations on power consumption and roi.

Until I get a decent size place and proper room to to build, store and run rigs, I'm gonna stick with building my knowledge and experience, while investing and trading a variety of crypto currencies.

Dropping a few grand on a used rig isn't something I'm prepared to do. I'd prefer to build my own rig with maybe 1 or two cards and build it up over time, adding cards and then upgrading to newer cards as they become available. With all the talk of dedicated energy efficient GPU mining cards becoming a possibility in the near future I think buying over priced cards that eat electricity is a non runner for me.

unkel · 11-10-2017 6:54pm

h0neybadger wrote: »

Electricity rate is .037c per KW.

Not in Ireland anymore

Where are you? In Norway at the bottom of your private waterfall?

h0neybadger · 11-10-2017 8:03pm

unkel wrote: »

Where are you? In Norway at the bottom of your private waterfall?

Outside the EU

cnocbui · 12-10-2017 10:24am

unkel wrote: »

I forgot Google was my friend. And apologies for n00b questions

Above rig is advertised as 70 MH/s, using 440W. Here is a calculator:

Linky

That calculates the monthly revenue as USD93 (with ETH being $292 at present) and electricty costs ($0.20/kWh) at $63, so a gross profit (before depreciation, etc.) of $30 per month. With a payback period for the rig of 5 years. With uncertainties in the crypto market and chances of premature hardware obsolescence, that is far too long. Not a wise investment.

Interesting angle is that my electricity use is free for the next 12 months. Meaning a gross profit of $1100 per year or a payback time of about 1.5 years for the hardware. Now that is more interesting

My son and I have a mining rig doing 60 Mhs. I'm doing it as a way of reducing my heating bill. I think that is the main aspect that makes it worthwhile. As a plus, you aren't liable for any tax on money saved on heating.

unkel · 12-10-2017 11:20am

The heat (in a country like Ireland) is more of a benefit than a drawback

I've changed my mind. I've ordered 2 RX 580 cards (just over €500 delivered in total) and I'll use parts I have to build a 50Mh/s rig. Even with just 80% uptime, this investment will have fully paid for itself within a year (given my free electricity and presuming ETH price stays at todays level for the year)

Worst case scenario: ETH will be worthless, I lose all the coin I have mined. My total loss is then limited to the depreciation on the GPUs, which won't be all that much.

h0neybadger · 12-10-2017 11:31am

Realistic scenario, your Eth will be a nice investment to hold for a few years.
Once mining isn't profitable, sell the rig for what ever you can get.
1 year free electricity, gives you a nice bit of heating in the room!

nice cosy winter

cnocbui · 12-10-2017 11:37am

unkel wrote: »

The heat (in a country like Ireland) is more of a benefit than a drawback

I've changed my mind. I've ordered 2 RX 580 cards (just over €500 delivered in total) and I'll use parts I have to build a 50Mh/s rig. Even with just 80% uptime, this investment will have fully paid for itself within a year (given my free electricity and presuming ETH price stays at todays level for the year)

Worst case scenario: ETH will be worthless, I lose all the coin I have mined. My total loss is then limited to the depreciation on the GPUs, which won't be all that much.

Would you mind sharing where you are sourcing the cards from, pm would be fine? That is a good price. We are after a fourth card to fill an available slot.

PS. We are only getting 20 MHs per card with 8Gb Rx 480s.

unkel · 12-10-2017 12:02pm

Amazon.co.uk. Availability is pretty poor on most 470/480/570/580 cards but I found 2 yesterday (RX 580 4GB) at £220 each incl free shipping. I had hoped to spend a little bit less on them, but that seems unrealistic at the moment

Many people seem to get 29MH/s on the 580, but I'm aiming for about 25MH/s each. System won't be that hot with just 2 cards and hopefully an old PSU I still have here will do the trick. My old mobo can take 5 GPUs, so there is scope for upgrading, but need a heavy duty PSU then

Built a test mining rig last night with 10 year old parts, booted up from a 64GB USB with EthOS and it seemed to work fine, although my GPU is too old to do any mining

cnocbui · 12-10-2017 12:32pm

unkel wrote: »

Amazon.co.uk. Availability is pretty poor on most 470/480/570/580 cards but I found 2 yesterday (RX 580 4GB) at £220 each incl free shipping. I had hoped to spend a little bit less on them, but that seems unrealistic at the moment

Many people seem to get 29MH/s on the 580, but I'm aiming for about 25MH/s each. System won't be that hot with just 2 cards and hopefully an old PSU I still have here will do the trick. My old mobo can take 5 GPUs, so there is scope for upgrading, but need a heavy duty PSU then

Built a test mining rig last night with 10 year old parts, booted up from a 64GB USB with EthOS and it seemed to work fine, although my GPU is too old to do any mining

Thanks. That seemed like a really good price for 8GB cards. We are after another 8GB card, as it's all about the memory, and looks like we will just get another one from Germany for €316 plus postage. Please do post the MHs you get as my son has tried a lot of different configurations and we can't get more than 20 MHs and the memory clocks are running at 9Ghz. He's seen the 29 MHs claims too, but can't replicate that.

unkel · 12-10-2017 12:36pm

cnocbui wrote: »

Thanks. That seemed like a really good price for 8GB cards.

Except they are 4GB cards

From benchmarks I've seen there isn't that much in MH/s between any of the 470/480/570/580 4GB or 8GB cards I thought?

h0neybadger · 12-10-2017 12:50pm

depends on the memory that's inside them.

I've got a load of rx 570 4gb with Hynix memory, and they get 27.5MH/s on Ethereum. that's with modded bios flashed to the cards and an OC profile in afterburner.

cnocbui · 12-10-2017 1:02pm

h0neybadger wrote: »

depends on the memory that's inside them.

I've got a load of rx 570 4gb with Hynix memory, and they get 27.5MH/s on Ethereum. that's with modded bios flashed to the cards and an OC profile in afterburner.

Thanks. My son didn't want to flash due to the possibility of bricking the cards.

cnocbui · 12-10-2017 1:14pm

unkel wrote: »

Except they are 4GB cards

From benchmarks I've seen there isn't that much in MH/s between any of the 470/480/570/580 4GB or 8GB cards I thought?

The 8GB cards have a higher memory clock speed capability which should mean about an 18% higher hash rate. https://steemit.com/ethereum/@cryptos/what-is-the-ethereum-eth-mining-hashrate-of-the-new-radeon-rx-470-gpus

unkel · 12-10-2017 1:19pm

That's the 470 though. And I'm not really that concerned what hash rate I get. Would be more than happy with around 25MH/s. Should be no problem out of the box if the memory is Samsung, slightly smaller chance of it if the memory is Hynix. Main reason for getting the 580 over 470/480 is that the resale will be higher (limiting my worst case scenario loss)

I would be willing to flash the BIOS on the cards. Hell, I've flashed almost every bit of hardware I have ever owned

unkel · 12-10-2017 1:29pm

6 * RX-580 4GB Hynix getting 29MH/s each with minor tweaks. That'll more than do me, can probably get a few MH/s higher if the memory is Samsung

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Di8Jid4eo4

cnocbui · 12-10-2017 1:43pm

unkel wrote: »

That's the 470 though. And I'm not really that concerned what hash rate I get. Would be more than happy with around 25MH/s. Should be no problem out of the box if the memory is Samsung, slightly smaller chance of it if the memory is Hynix. Main reason for getting the 580 over 470/480 is that the resale will be higher (limiting my worst case scenario loss)

I would be willing to flash the BIOS on the cards. Hell, I've flashed almost every bit of hardware I have ever owned

Same for the RX 480, higher memory speed on the 8Gb version. My son bricked his LG G2, a feat supposedly impossible, hence his concern. :rolleyes:

ricimaki · 13-10-2017 12:38am

I've a gaming PC, and have dabbled in mining. I started with a gtx 970, and upgraded to a gtx 1070 recently, with the original intention of selling the 970. The gtx 970 gets about 265 SOL/s with the EQM miner, which equates to roughly 67c worth of bitcoin every day. The 1070 gets 400 SOL/s with EQM, or roughly €1.02 per day. I've only really run the mining for a few hours a week, as a lot of heat is generated, and the fans on the GPU's can get a bit noisy. I haven't really payed attention to electricity usage, but haven't noticed any major increase.

I've recently installed Nicehash's mining software, which is an easy to use miner with a GUI, with support for multiple algorithms. There's also a version for AMD GPU's, but i haven't used it. I'd recommend it if you want to quickly set up and see what mining is like.

Just to be aware, if you intend on mining on your main PC, it can be very stuttery, with even mouse movement being jumpy. Playing a youtube video took a few SOL/s off the mining performance, and was nowhere near smooth to watch. This only seems to occur if you mine on the GPU your monitor is plugged into. I have played games with the gtx 1070, and had the 970 mining, with no noticeable performance issues.

unkel · 13-10-2017 8:46am

ricimaki wrote: »

The 1070 gets 400 SOL/s with EQM, or roughly €1.02 per day. I've only really run the mining for a few hours a week, as a lot of heat is generated, and the fans on the GPU's can get a bit noisy. I haven't really payed attention to electricity usage, but haven't noticed any major increase.

Check out what your electricity rates are. A typical rate in Ireland would be about 16c/kWh incl VAT. Let's say your rig with the 1070 maxed out uses about 500W. So that's 500/1000 * 24 hours * 16c = €1.92 per day

So you would be losing €0.90 per day by mining...

ricimaki · 13-10-2017 12:27pm

unkel wrote: »

Check out what your electricity rates are. A typical rate in Ireland would be about 16c/kWh incl VAT. Let's say your rig with the 1070 maxed out uses about 500W. So that's 500/1000 * 24 hours * 16c = €1.92 per day

So you would be losing €0.90 per day by mining...

As I said, I only mine for a few (less than 8, normally 4 or less) hours a week. I don't mine with the intention of making money, but more to play around with the setup. I am considering building a dedicated mining rig at some stage though.

unkel · 13-10-2017 12:36pm

Fine of course to play around with it for a bit, but in your current situation, for every hour you mine, you lose money. And that is not even taking into consideration the depreciation and opportunity cost of money relating to your hardware (as you already owned it)

Be very careful though and do your sums. And have realistic expectations. For many people mining means losing money at this stage (unless of course the value of the coin keeps going up - in which case it makes more sense to actually just buy the coin)

unkel · 23-10-2017 5:16pm

Well I'm up and running for about 4 days now. Built a rig with parts from my old PC in an open wooden frame. Currently using 3 * RX580 8GB Hashrate 83Mh/s
All three flashed with a faster BIOS that brought the hashrage up from 24.2 to 27.6

The rig is using about 530W and is nicely heating up our conservatory, which is a very cold room in winter. Radiator in there is switched off now

In less than 3 days I received my first payment, 0.05 ETH

Ordered more cards, so maybe I'll build another rig. Or two...

cnocbui · 23-10-2017 7:15pm

Are those the average hash rates reported by a mining pool or peaks?

My son says he doesn't know why we are only getting 20 mhs average. We are using basically the same cards and our unflashed rate is a full 4.2 mhs per card lower.

unkel · 23-10-2017 11:32pm

Average. The cards are all between 27.4 and 27.7 (with fans at 55%, temps early 60s - not noisy at all)

You need to flash the BIOS though. Makes a big difference.

Stuck a card into my PC this evening for a play with the Claymore miner for Windows. Works fine and the PC is still fully usable, which is good, but the hash rate is only about 25.2 and the temps are late 70s. And it is very noisy. Open rigs FTW...

Thargor · 24-10-2017 11:25am

Are you mining more than the electricity bill?

unkel · 24-10-2017 11:27am

Thargor wrote: »

Are you mining more than the electricity bill?

Not sure what you mean. Did you read my post #8?

moonlighting · 24-10-2017 11:29am

does mining take up much broadband bandwidth

cnocbui · 24-10-2017 12:28pm

moonlighting wrote: »

does mining take up much broadband bandwidth

Yes, but then my BB is slow at about 8 mbps.

unkel · 24-10-2017 12:34pm

It's negligible afaik. Less than 1 mbps I would have thought. I guess if you have only 8 mbps contented adsl (which in practice is often just 2 or 3) it does make an impact. But for most people with modern broadband (several hundred mbps) it makes no difference.

cnocbui · 24-10-2017 1:22pm

unkel wrote: »

Average. The cards are all between 27.4 and 27.7 (with fans at 55%, temps early 60s - not noisy at all)

You need to flash the BIOS though. Makes a big difference.

Stuck a card into my PC this evening for a play with the Claymore miner for Windows. Works fine and the PC is still fully usable, which is good, but the hash rate is only about 25.2 and the temps are late 70s. And it is very noisy. Open rigs FTW...

Thanks. We obviously have a major problem somewhere. What mining software are you using?

Mining stories

Comments