Author

Topic: Electric Cost (Read 732 times)

donator
Activity: 305
Merit: 250
April 06, 2012, 02:59:54 PM
#5
Can you link me to these Spartan-6 boards? I would like to research them a bit more.

There are two current commercial Spartan 6 options that I know of:
1. X6500: https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/x6500-custom-fpga-miner-40058
2. Ztex: https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/ztex-usb-fpga-modules-115x-and-115y-215-and-860-mhs-fpga-boards-49180

The Icarus is discontinued and only available for bulk orders.  ngzhang's plan is to have a new board "Lancelot" out in May(?): https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/fpga-development-board-icarus-discontinued-important-announcement-51371
legendary
Activity: 1372
Merit: 1003
April 06, 2012, 01:58:00 PM
#4
Hey, in the UK its expensive for electric. It costs 16 pence (25 Cents) per 1kw hour. Is there any hardware I can buy that will earn more than the cost of electric?

Thanks!

I went with Utilita pre-payment pay-as-you-go and Trier two electricity costs are £0.11186kWh and yes Spartan6 FPGA boards are you best bet as 400MH/s worth of them will make you about 1.75BTC a week at current difficulty for less than £0.40 of electric.
copper member
Activity: 36
Merit: 0
April 06, 2012, 08:49:50 AM
#3
Can you link me to these Spartan-6 boards? I would like to research them a bit more.
donator
Activity: 1218
Merit: 1079
Gerald Davis
April 06, 2012, 08:43:11 AM
#2
FPGA are really your only option.

Still energy costs still matters so you may want to look into buying shares in an FPGA mining company which has lower energy costs than you do.  Over time FPGA will displace GPU.  When that happens FPGA in low energy environments will be more efficient than FPGA in high energy environments.

Still my guess is that is a couple years away so the competitiveness risk is minimal for FPGA if you feel the need to own your own hardware.

I got cheap electricity and I feel the competitive pressure of rising difficulty, looming block cuts, and more FPGA being sold.  Running GPU (3-4 MH/W) on $0.25 is just economic suicide.  You likely don't want to even look at BFL singles (10MH/W) and instead want to look towards Spartan-6 based boards (20MH/W) or wait for next gen 28nm boards (~40MH/W). 
copper member
Activity: 36
Merit: 0
April 06, 2012, 08:33:43 AM
#1
Hey, in the UK its expensive for electric. It costs 16 pence (25 Cents) per 1kw hour. Is there any hardware I can buy that will earn more than the cost of electric?

Thanks!
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