Topic: Exploring real mining costs...input needed (Read 2010 times)

Then here is the deal. Mining is an applicance. You put up some rigs you run your own proxy to manage them centrally. If you spend mor than an hour per month per system something is wrong. SERIOUSLY wrong. Not including build times, but this is not running time. Including repairs - things should not break often.

Most of the monthy your maintenance time for a rig should be exactly 0.

Two comments:

(a) you are a low wage earner
(b) ah - 15 hours per month for overlooking a computer that is not accepting external connections behind a firewall? SERIOUSLY? This is more time than I spend to maintain a virtual server host + 30 servers including all updates. Replace that with 1 hour and you can talk. if after 2 months you still need to look after it for 15 hours a month something is REALLY BROKEN. With 1 hour per month you should be able to handle a RACK full of thouse computers.
[/quote]


Heh,
Im not a miner, dont intend to be, Im an investor. 
Im attempting a fundamental analysis like one would do determining the worth of a company and shares based on assets and float.
As im trying to put my finger on these numbers, Im thinking of the average miner.
Im guessing 20-35 Year old, may be in college or grad school, or freshly out, either underemployed or unemployed.
Has to build the system, no racks, very impromptu.  This community stereotype is what I envision the current float of BTC has mostly been built off of.
Now I know there are some enterprise operations, and they are significant.  Thats a whole other can of worms. Im shooting for the lowest common denominator in this factoring, where the ROI is probably the worst.  Of course Im making some broad assumptions here, but that is why Im asking for corrections.

Electricity can vary from one miner to the next based on how the rates are structured, especially if there are tiered rates that were intended to boost conservation.

But here's a table:
 - http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/electricity/epm/table5_6_a.html

As predicted however, with $500 graphics cards now only available for purchase at a price closer to $1,000, ... profitability has more to do with having a source with the equipment in stock and available for sale and also to access to cheap capital than it does have to do with access to cheap electricity or inexpensive labor.  

Should the BTC/USD plateau however and difficulty continue to rise, those electricity and labor factors will invert, and instead the cost of electricity will again be a more significant factor to a miner.

Internet access should be in there somewhere too.

Two comments:

(a) you are a low wage earner
(b) ah - 15 hours per month for overlooking a computer that is not accepting external connections behind a firewall? SERIOUSLY? This is more time than I spend to maintain a virtual server host + 30 servers including all updates. Replace that with 1 hour and you can talk. if after 2 months you still need to look after it for 15 hours a month something is REALLY BROKEN. With 1 hour per month you should be able to handle a RACK full of thouse computers.

Heres a revision of the math based on the new input...

COSTS:
Cost of average rig : $2875 - $239 /per month (4 x 6990 at 3000 mh/s.)
Electricity: $150/month
Overhead/rent: 1/10 of rent @ $600 month = $60 month
Time invested: 15 hours a month @ $20 an hour = $300 month

total investment: $749/month
Taking away the labor expense the total monthly expenses are $449/mo.

RATE:
bring in 5.5 bit coins a day X 30 = 165 per month
assume 10 usd /day
55 dollars x 30 days = 1650 bucks.
current rate : 18.25x165= $3011.25 month

at the current rate you need to discover  41.04 BTC per month to cover expenses including labor costs, or 24.602 to cover capital investment and overhead costs only. 
Profit per month= 14 BTC

estimated market value of one btc based on these figures- $749/55btc per mo. = 13.62USD
Price to increase with difficulty.

Good input.  This helps define some averages. Im trying to arrive at the value of BTC based on real inputs.
These new numbers will help. 

rent should be calculated as a percentage of space the operation takes up, Im guessing it might at most take up 10% of usable floor space. 
if average rent of say an apartment is $600/.10=$60, this is a real cost although "hey I have some spare room"  may apply.

i would need to know the rig specs of how many mh/s it could do before i can even
think about how much it could possibly make. Say 4 x 6990 is 3000 mh/s. That could
probably bring in 5.5 bit coins a day. Which is, assuming 1 btc = 10 dollars.. about 55 dollars
a day.

55 dollars x 30 days = 1650 bucks.

but as everyone will mention shortly.. that does not take into account difficulty increases,
pools screwing up, hardware screwing up causing downtime, btc price falling to 5 dollars per btc,
etc...

so many variables.. and if you do not fire that puppy up yesterday it just gets worse.

What's "1 rig"?  That could be a $300 barebones system with one 5830.  

You say $2800 for a rig.  I guess you could spend that but it sure wouldn't be average.

Your electricity cost is WAY low.  A $2800 system would be like 4x 6990s and drawing close to 1.5kW x 24hrs/day x 30 days/mo = 1080kWh.  That would be $108 in the cheapest parts of the USA, $162 where I live.

Overhead/rent - different for everyone, but irrelevant unless you are renting a place specifically for mining, and then you can't calculate it per system since it's mostly fixed costs and doesn't matter much if you have one or fifty systems.  The only overhead you should have at home would be air conditioning.

The very first computer you set up may take close to 15 hours if you have to learn everything from scratch.  After that I would say 2-3 hours max, and then maybe 1 hour a month of monitoring/rebooting/etc.

I am trying to determine the real costs of mining bit coins.

Im looking for the average numbers across the country (USA). Id like to create a monthly cost of operation.
the factors below all have a price tag, here is my initial assessment, please correct me if these numbers seem wrong.

These numbers are for one rig.

Cost of average rig : $2875 - $239 /per month (is this about average?)
Electricity: $30/month
Overhead/rent: 1/10 of rent @ $600 month = $60 month
Time invested: 15 hours a month @ $20 an hour = $300 month (how many hours directly applied to rig set up, etc?, what is a reasonable wage, does this work?)
total investment: $629/month

Taking away the labor expense the total monthly expenses are $329/mo.

at the current rate you need to discover 33 BTC per month to cover expenses with labor costs.
or 17.31 to cover capital investment and overhead costs only. 

looking for confirmation or objections....

thanks