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Topic: ASIC and video card recommendations ($30 to best answer) (Read 1084 times)

hero member
Activity: 587
Merit: 500
I've been thinking about branching into SHA mining(again) and the best viable option, bitmain aside is the avalon miners from Canaan(https://canaan.io/).

If you take the parameters and then put them into here: https://bitcoinwisdom.com/bitcoin/calculator you'll get a decent estimate on earnings. Input anywhere from 2-5% on the difficulty estimate and then see where it brings you. The free power will be your strong point here.

I wouldn't rule out GPU mining. Ethereum and altcoins are taking a battering, but I used to find myself running calculations on what would be the best/worst outcome if I started GPU mining again. As it happens a few friends got to together and stumped up the money for a GPU farm. I had a small number of rigs back in 2013 and if I hadn't of turned them off and mined through the low profit days, I'd be laughing all the way to the bank now. I look at it in the same way the early bitcoin adopters must of felt, mining even though they were losing power.

I'd look at Nvidia 1070s if you are looking to Mine and play VR games, it'd give you a nice balance of hashrate and VR capability.

I'd look here for some cards and their hashrates: http://www.buriedone.com/gpuhashrates.html
Then put them values here: https://www.cryptocompare.com/mining/calculator/eth?HashingPower=30&HashingUnit=MH%2Fs&PowerConsumption=0&CostPerkWh=0

Then figure out the best way to go about your business.

Let me know how you get on.
full member
Activity: 175
Merit: 100
With respect to your first question, look for used Avalon A6/A7 721 miners or get new A7 units from http://canaan.io. They currently have an A7 741 and might have an 761 unit in the future. https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/quick-avalon-a721-review-1683396, https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1673843.380
sr. member
Activity: 328
Merit: 250
Nihaomike wins by default!  Send a bitcoin address.  If anyone wants to post a more complete answer that actually attempts to answer all the questions, I will send more bounty money, depending on how good I rate the answer, up to $50.
full member
Activity: 236
Merit: 250
Given you have free electricity, your first move is to start mining with what you have. You can use Nicehash and have it autoselect which altcoins to mine and have it automatically convert to Bitcoin, or you can "cut out the middleman" and figure it out for yourself. The latter is likely to return more profit, but obviously takes a lot more work.

They even have a calculator so you can estimate how much you'll make. It's useful even if you do not plan to use Nicehash, since it's better to err low on expected revenue.
https://www.nicehash.com/?p=calc

As for ASIC miners, just take the TH/s figure and divide by how much the miner costs. (Optionally add in the cost of PSUs and other accessories, but they can be reused so I don't consider that the same.) Do note that S5s are fairly noisy (can be modded to be quieter) and anything newer even more so. That really pushes things towards altcoin mining, even if you have free electricity.

The GPU coins I mine are Curecoin and Foldingcoin (they can be "merge mined"). While they might not give the best profit, they do have the nice side benefit of helping to find cures for cancer. Basically a way to get paid to help save lives.

HDD coins like Burstcoin, Sia (might have a GPU part to it as well, don't know much about it), and Storj along with smartphone coins like (defunct) Perk are good for energy efficiency, which is clearly not a priority in your case.
sr. member
Activity: 328
Merit: 250
I will pay $30 to whoever has written the best answer by noon EST on June 26.  I will also consider paying something to runners up if they provide additional good info.

1) What are some good options for ASIC miners to buy, used or new?  I have free electricity and therefore only care about price/TH, not power efficiency.  I am mainly interested in non-bitmain miners because I don't want to support Jihan, but competitive bitmain options should also be listed.  Focus is on Bitcoin miners, but if Litecoin or Sia or any other ASIC is currently way more profitable, I'd like to know about it.  Which coins can be mined with ASICs either currently or in the near future?  

2) I am about to build a new computer to play games on my Vive.  What video card (and processor if those still mine anything well) should I include in my build in order to mine crypto when I am not gaming, with my free electricity?  What are the best coins to mine currently, and is there a website that will tell me what is most profitable to mine right now?  What kind of hash rates and profitability can I get with your recommended video card?  I don't want to spend a lot of time screwing around with configuring crashy miners, like I had to when I mined several years ago.

In addition to plugging the hash rate into a calculator at current difficulty, based on your past experience or math, please estimate a few different scenarios of how profitability might change based on future price action and more mining power coming online.
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