Topic: Free power access. Mining opinions wanted, thanks in advance for guidance (Read 227 times)

I feel that you are not particularly good at electronic equipment, I think you can buy a second-hand S19 series hydro machine for mining, it will be very quiet with liquid cooling equipment

Antminer R4, Gekkoscience ASICs, some Futurebit ones ; or as phil mentioned Antminer L3+ with 1/2 board (and a strong computer PSU) ; all these represent a nice solution for people mining in apartment, or who want to avoid loud noises.

Of course it won't be as efficient as other ASICs, but it is still a good way to mine if you like "silence" and especially when you have free/almost free electricity.

-My Antminer R4s are less noisy than their PSU, the fan used is very efficient regarding to the noise. I replaced the fan of the APW7 PSU with some Noctua fan to reduce noise. With Braiinos's firmware I have 10.5-11.3 Th/s (depending of each R4) and around 990w.
-Gekkoscience is creating small ASICs, which are very good to solo mine, or to discover sha256 mining. Hashrate are pretty low but they are nice and very very stable.
-Futurebit did some BTC nodes with integrated sha256 miners, which are almost silent. Like Gekkoscience ASICs, hashrate is low.
-The L3+/L3++ is good when combined with a Corsair PSU. You can search on the forum, I think phil made some good topics about it some time ago, maybe even some youtube videos if I remember correctly

You could even modify the firmware on some Antminer S9 to reduce noise, but in my opinion, they stay pretty noisy even with a good firmware and some good settings. But I could be wrong, S9s are not my prefered ones and I didn't took a lot of time setting up them.

Thanks for all the responses. I was so excited for this. Then the more I read the noise level would sound like a vacuum on 24/7 which my wife said would drive her crazy.  I wish there were silent ways to mine.

sent you a pm about s15

If it's anything I can help with, I'll gladly do it free of charge.


To clarify the subject further, S15 will run just fine with anything between 200 and 240 VAC, it won't run on 110v even with 1 hash board inside.


Not a bad idea if the price is right, I'd just make sure the other 2 dead boards are inside the miner, or else the miner will run pretty loud as air will "prefer to" travel through the least resistant area which will be 66% of the miner, so the remaining little air will need to increase to cool the working board and thus increase the fans and the power consumption, if the dead boards are not there, then OP needs to do some modifications to the miner.

One thing to keep in mind, S15 has only two fans on the intake, none on the exhaust side, the S19 has 2 on each side, so the S15 is a lot quieter to run, especially during the boot/fan speed test cycle.

Or why not a S19 with only 1 hashboard  connected? It doesn't cost a lot of money to buy a broken S19 online, and could give a good ratio BTC/kwh. But I totally agree with the L3+ or S15 idea.

Do you have any reseller having good (hashing) S15s ? I am looking for some since a moment and my sellers doesn't own any in stock.

you want an antminer l3+

you can set it to do 600 watts 24/7/365

so 24 x .6 = 15 kwatts a day

or 450 kwatts a month.

it will earn 1 dollar a day or 30 a month

point to nicehash it will send you btc.

it is fairly quiet and suits your needs close to perfectly.

You can get it for about 200 with a quiet psu shipped to hawaii.

note you possibly could get an antminer s15 and run it on low speed

but it will pull 900 watts and about 700 kwatts a month

it will earn about 2 dollars a day. you must use  240 volts.  i think it costs about 400.

if you want more info about these older units shoot me a pm.

note the antminer L3+ uses 120 volts it is okay

the s15 use 240 volts it may be better.

Thank you so much for the thorough answer. Is the USB quiet method very expensive?  Can they be run, or can any systems be run without any cooling if they sit in an air conditioned room that’s about 78°?
I read something old online that said the Goldshell KD2 is the quietest mining equipment at 55db but I don’t think it mines Bitcoin, or maybe it does.
Regarding your question about the 600kwh a month accumulation… I could let it accumulate for several months at a time and then run the equipment. Basically near the end of the year I’ll have 7,200kwh to use. I could run the mining equipment for a month straight and then turn it off for several months.
Your analysis was excellent. Thank you. If I do figure out an option and do get a setup, any chance I can tip you to help me get it?
I’d really like quiet as possible and not requiring fans and extra cooling.
Does the equipment require 220v or 110v with really high amps?
Thanks.

I am going to help you run some math first, 600kWh is really nothing as far as miners with decent profit-creating ability are concerned, the average will be in the 3kw range which means nothing more than 200 hours a month, guess what? this does match your $60 a month based on today's number, 100th M30s++ or S19 pro will make you 60$ roughly 37.5 cents an hour, so that x 200 = $75.

But let's look at the downside, that gear will cost you nearly $1500, so you are looking at 1.7 years ROI (everything else not taken into account), besides, those gears are pretty loud if they run on stock air cooling, so more money will have to be spent on some other type of liquid cooling.

You could be looking at the small USB sticks that need 200-300w and do 2-3 terahash, those are expensive, very low in hashrate, but are indeed very quiet.

If you could overcome the noise issue and can do large miners, things might be doable with some underclocking, better efficiency, and lower noise, a possible shot at getting ROI in less than 2 years then keeping the miners alive to generate some income, or, buy old gears, 3 S9s for pretty cheap (probably 400$ for 3 of them) underclocked to 10th each, they can run for 230-240 hours and make you 20-25$ a month, this will be a bit faster ROI, and less initial investment.

Also, I am not sure how your 600kWh is reached, but it would be best to let it accumulate and then run the miner in the last 7-8 days (you are going to run some math) instead of the on-offs which can damage your mining gears.

Is there a low power usage (like 20 kWh a day or throttleable power, or mining that can be turned on and off), not too hot, not too loud, not too expensive hardware system to slowly mine Bitcoin?
I purchased a new house with an overkill solar system. I’m also on a grandfathered net metering electric company plan where they store any power as credit I can use for up to a year at no cost.
I generate an extra 600kwh more power each month than I use. Right now I have a credit of 7,200kwh that I can use and I get another 600kwh each month (even with charging my ev). It’s use it or lose it.

Is there a slow mining, low power usage or possible one that can be turned on or off, with a timer, and not loud system, that’s not crazy expensive to slowly mine Bitcoin? I live in a very expensive power area (Hawaii 40 cents per kw) and I just let this power go to the power company for free. Even if Bitcoin mining slowly only effectively makes me 10 cents per kW then it’s still $60 a month. 
A serious thank you in advance of anyone can give guidance and opinions on this.
Aloha.