With the current and projected rise in difficulty one clearly needs a higher hash rate at lower power consumption to stay profitable or reach a positive ROI at all. The train for starting small scale mining now may already have passed, most will tell it definitely has, especially if energy costs are an issue.
Despite the fact that the best price on energy I can get here is 0.11 EUR/kWh ~ 0.15 USD/kWh (excl. VAT, considering that I can let our company purchase and run the hardware) I am still considering to give it a try with a couple of the latest
Antminer S3+ (my initial plan was to purchase 6 pieces and two EVGA1300 power supplies) or one SP30, both due to in September (20th September or earlier in case of the S3+, no date in September known for the SP30).
I know it seems ridiculous to pay for a SP30 in advance, and I previously did not consider this as a viable option, but now with Batch 7 of the S3 sold out and S3+ estimated at 20th September it's waiting either way. Although I have my concerns, Spondoolies-Tech is not considered to be a rip-off company, and hardware is actually being delivered (after all they got a
rating of 85 by dogie).
You can play around with numbers forever and never get to a conclusion, I nevertheless gave it a try:
Device | # | S3+ | # | S3+ (OC 250 MHz) | # | SP30 |
Power Efficiency | # | 0.78 W/GH | # | 0.80 W/GH | # | 0.67 W/GH |
Price Efficiency | # | 0.85 $/GH | # | 0.77 $/GH | # | 0.93 W/GH |
Profit Calculation S3+ (extrapolated to 4500 GH/s)Profit Calculation S3+ overclocked to 250 MHz (extrapolated to 4500 GH/s)Profit Calculation SP30However you turn the coin, the SP30 wins, especially as it's unlikely that you get all S3+ to overclock to 250 MHz, and there is no better hardware in sight anytime soon.
Thoughts?