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Topic: If you're thinking buying mining hardware, read this first - page 2. (Read 92715 times)

full member
Activity: 182
Merit: 100
Fourth richest fictional character
Does everyone agree with Delmonger's assessment of Cointerra's hardware profitability?

Seems very nice if it's attainable.
full member
Activity: 140
Merit: 100
full member
Activity: 210
Merit: 100
Good thought from you, you just save my ass.
sr. member
Activity: 462
Merit: 250
Firing it up
Always bet on GPU first then more specific. Even the specific fails, You still have GPU to do other things.
newbie
Activity: 48
Merit: 0
Bitcoin ASIC devices are still being developed so there's quite a bit of prices ranging from $26 or so for 333MH/s on Ebay to Cointerra with their 2 TH/s for $14,000.00  so which one should you get?  

WARNING:  if you care to look at how I come to the numbers I have on estimated difficulty and price read on, if not, skip to the... ---

------------------------------

Well if you take a look at the electricity efficiency, the cost of the device per GH, and also considering the times that these devices will arrive to you, it may help you to see the bigger picture.  Which device is likely to be the most profitable after a years time from today?

Estimations are roughly based on the following difficulty estimates (these estimates are based according to devices pre-sales and other factors including TH to Difficulty conversion rates):

https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/estimate-of-asic-pre-orders-13-to-15-phs-diff-18b-to-21b-by-end-of-2013-283820

September Average: 125,000,000
October Average: 700,000,000
November Average: 840,000,000
December Average: 1,260,000,000
January Average: 1,372,000,000

After this I added the last growth between December and January, 112,000,000 per month

January   1,372,000,000
February   1,484,000,000
March   1,596,000,000
April           1,708,000,000
May           1,820,000,000
June           1,932,000,000
July           2,044,000,000
August   2,156,000,000
September   2,268,000,000

While these numbers for difficulty are likely to be fairly accurate, I would give them a +/- 300,000,000 from Oct-March on and +/- 500,000,000 from April - Sept.

Now for Price estimates:

This estimation on bitcoin value is harder to gauge because it's largely based on acceptance/demand.  The more this currency is accepted the more likely the demand will increase.  Also as the difficulty to obtain more bitcoins increases the rate in which the value increases (yes I said increases twice on purpose  Smiley).

So here's the pricing estimates based on the difficulty estimates and historical behavior to situations.  Difficulty estimates although in the long run will likely increase the value of the bitcoin.

When mining difficulty grows in difficulty at first you may notice a price drop, because many of those who have invested in mining machines want to sell some/all of their bitcoin gains to recoup the costs of the machine they invested in which increases supply (i.e. that is what I believe happened from sept 2 - today sept 10 http://bitcoincharts.com/charts/mtgoxUSD#rg60ztgSzm1g10zm2g25zv).

Bitcoin Value estimations:

September   130
October   140
November    150
December   160
January   180
February   220
March   230
April           240
May           240
June           250
July           250
August   250
September   260

Too many factors are included to give an accurate gauge with a reasonable +/-.  But you can decide for yourself how accurate you believe these numbers to be, and add or subtract accordingly.

Keep in mind these are all estimations, and are therefor likely to be 100% inaccurate for exactness in accuracy.

Ok now finally the fun part the results:

Depending on how much you can afford, or want to, will determine which rout you may want to go:

                               Cost        GH Rate      Month available      3 Months Revenue      Revenue in 1 year      ROI (100% = break even)
USB Miner                  $28           .333           Now (Sept)                  $3.86                          $9.23              33%
Mining W/ Hosting       $249           25             December                    $155                        $494                199%
BFL                          $4,680        600            February                     $3,970                    $9,496               203%
KNCMiner                  $4,999        400            November                    $3,888                    $8,856               177%
Cointerra                 $13,999       2,000          December                    $12,400                  $39,570              283%

Also it may be good to note, that if Bitcoins continues to become increasingly valuable, in 2017 I expect a large jump in price as the populace realizes that coins are going to be even more difficult to find as they did in 2013 (but maybe this time with a little less volatility due to past experience in the change).

I personally would recommend cointerra if you can afford it because of the ROI and its energy efficiency.  Otherwise I'd consider looking at the link below for the Mining w/ hosting since you can get basically get the quantity you desire.



Links:
USB Miner $28
Mining w/ hosting $249
BFL $4,680
$4,999
[url=http://cointerra.com/product/terraminer-iv-2ths/]Cointerra
$13,999
legendary
Activity: 4354
Merit: 3614
what is this "brake pedal" you speak of?
If the thought of spending hours and hours of constantly tinkering and improving and setting up mining computers does not appeal to you, you'll probably really regret get into this .

back in cpu/gpu days initial setup and tuning did take time, but once set up, its just blowing the dust off every few months, and updating the miner software.

now with asic, you plug it in, run the miner. blow dust out every few months.

with bfls firmware out now you can go further and tune your sc stuff (I will be doing that) but its optional.

I monitor my rigs with anubis and kanos miner.php  (I use cgminer) via a WAMP server on one of my rigs. just click one link on any of my computers/smartphones/whatever and all the stats for all my gear is there on one page.

there is no more "constant tinkering" unless you want to for the fun of it. electronics is my hobby, so...



newbie
Activity: 28
Merit: 0
fair enough, thanks for the insight!
member
Activity: 106
Merit: 10
So, I just wanted to say with economies of scale taken into consideration is it even possible to be a profitable beginning bitcoin miner anymore?

It depends on the resources you currently have available to you, the cost you pay for power, and how much you would need to earn to consider yourself profitable.

If you happen to have free power and a gaming PC with a 7970, then just download cgminer and you are good to go.
newbie
Activity: 28
Merit: 0
So, I just wanted to say with economies of scale taken into consideration is it even possible to be a profitable beginning bitcoin miner anymore?
legendary
Activity: 1064
Merit: 1000
Bitcoin is too valuable to be used as a currency
newbie
Activity: 25
Merit: 0
Every time I consider buying mining hardware I just jump over to http://www.coinish.com/calc/ and enter the numbers, pretty much every time the return on investment is NEVER.

This is one of the few calculators where it takes into account rising difficulty.
hero member
Activity: 2912
Merit: 604
CoinMetro
legendary
Activity: 2156
Merit: 1018
Buzz App - Spin wheel, farm rewards

[/quote]

7950's turned up yesterday. Took me 60 minutes to pull my PSU out and plug the cards up and replace my fans.

This morning I loaded up guiminer and joined a pool. My client is reporting 1500mhash and Slushpool is telling me I'm doing 1600.

And that is with a -s wait enabled, as I didn't want to leave them running at 100% whilst I was away at work, so they are ticking around 90%.

I don't intend of spending hours and hours tinkering, ever.

Oh and I've made 0.03btc already Smiley
[/quote]

Well you either got lucky, or I got unlucky Smiley  Good on you...

For myself had a heck of a time getting everything going somewhat optimally. About a 30/30/30 split between the hardware, rebuilding some systems out of spare parts, installing new OS's etc, and then after that, figuring out some cgminer problems and power problems (burnt out 2 old psu's in a week!) then had a hell of a time finding a reasonable pool. Wasted tons of potential earnings on pools with 30% stale rates until finally finding a reasonable pool with 4% stale. No joke was 6 or 7 pool I tried.

Anyways did enjoy myself though and did most of this with a beer in hand Smiley
full member
Activity: 168
Merit: 100
Quite a few new posters lately on the board with really good posts, including this one. Welcome.

I just wanted to add:

6. Cost of lost opportunity. Consider what you could have earned if you were doing something that you do professionally instead of tinkering with arcane software and hardware. Or maybe how much fun you could have had if you've spent this time with your friends and family. How much interest you could have earned on the money you've spent on mining rig, or how much interest you would not have to pay to bankers, or how much profit you could make if you invested it into something else. YMMV, of course.



Very, very, very good point, but not everybody has the same goals/ideals/beliefs, whatever one wishes to call it.

People tend to spend LOTS of time on these hobbies/past-times/activities because they enjoy it. They are here for the buzz.

I tend to spend a crazy number of hours creating game bots and hacks. Not for any financial gain, but just for the buzz of it.

I spend hours every week in the gym and running in the morning, but where one person might exercise to improve themselves physically another may be in it just for the endorphin hit. I'm the latter Smiley Endorphin junky Smiley

I thoroughly enjoy studying (currently doing an Open degree with the OU), but have no intent to use my qualifications to improve my job prospects. It's just a great buzz to study Smiley

Mind you, I do have a serious problem with authority, which no amount of qualifications will ever help, lol.

Now I'm rambling....

Temporary insanity.... priceless Wink



sr. member
Activity: 462
Merit: 250
If the thought of spending hours and hours of constantly tinkering and improving and setting up mining computers does not appeal to you, you'll probably really regret get into this .

7950's turned up yesterday. Took me 60 minutes to pull my PSU out and plug the cards up and replace my fans.

This morning I loaded up guiminer and joined a pool. My client is reporting 1500mhash and Slushpool is telling me I'm doing 1600.

And that is with a -s wait enabled, as I didn't want to leave them running at 100% whilst I was away at work, so they are ticking around 90%.

I don't intend of spending hours and hours tinkering, ever.

Oh and I've made 0.03btc already Smiley
legendary
Activity: 2156
Merit: 1018
Buzz App - Spin wheel, farm rewards
Conversely, if you are a professional IT / hardware nerd, and you are some sort of freak who really enjoys tinkering for hours with software and hardware to improve performance, then mining is a fantastic hobby.

If the thought of spending hours and hours of constantly tinkering and improving and setting up mining computers does not appeal to you, you'll probably really regret get into this .
member
Activity: 98
Merit: 10
Mine hard!
Quite a few new posters lately on the board with really good posts, including this one. Welcome.

I just wanted to add:

6. Cost of lost opportunity. Consider what you could have earned if you were doing something that you do professionally instead of tinkering with arcane software and hardware. Or maybe how much fun you could have had if you've spent this time with your friends and family. How much interest you could have earned on the money you've spent on mining rig, or how much interest you would not have to pay to bankers, or how much profit you could make if you invested it into something else. YMMV, of course.



+100
legendary
Activity: 952
Merit: 1000
Well for starters, yes almost anything that has a CPU can mine Bitcoins. People have actually compiled CGMiner to run on their android phones, and they have even gotten a few KH/s. Not really worth it, but interesting nonetheless.

When I say that computers will be useless for Bitcoin mining by summer, I mean that several vendors will be shipping ASICs by then. ASICs designed to mine Bitcoins have actually been in development for quite a while now, and will be the last step in the evolution of mining hardware. It's basically a device that you plug into a computer's USB port, and has a chip inside whose sole function is to mine Bitcoins. It can't do anything else except mine Bitcoins, but it does that one job exceptionally well.

People started mining Bitcoins years ago by using CPUs. Then they figured out how to mine Bitcoins 10x faster by using a video card (GPU). Now, ASICs will be 100x faster than a GPU, or 1000x faster than a CPU.

3 different manufacturers have offered pre-orders for ASIC hardware for Bitcoin mining: Butterfly Labs, BTCFPGA, and Avalon. Each device has their pros and cons, but they will all be leaps and bounds of any hardware that is out today.

So that's why I said that if you aren't even planning on buying anything until the summer, you should really just wait and see which of those 3 ends up being the best deal for you. Right now, it's a lot of speculation about which is going to be the most profitable, but in 6 months when you decide to order, you will have a lot more information to be able to make an informed decision.

Well for starters, yes almost anything that has a CPU can mine Bitcoins. People have actually compiled CGMiner to run on their android phones, and they have even gotten a few KH/s. Not really worth it, but interesting nonetheless.

When I say that computers will be useless for Bitcoin mining by summer, I mean that several vendors will be shipping ASICs by then. ASICs designed to mine Bitcoins have actually been in development for quite a while now, and will be the last step in the evolution of mining hardware. It's basically a device that you plug into a computer's USB port, and has a chip inside whose sole function is to mine Bitcoins. It can't do anything else except mine Bitcoins, but it does that one job exceptionally well.

People started mining Bitcoins years ago by using CPUs. Then they figured out how to mine Bitcoins 10x faster by using a video card (GPU). Now, ASICs will be 100x faster than a GPU, or 1000x faster than a CPU.

3 different manufacturers have offered pre-orders for ASIC hardware for Bitcoin mining: Butterfly Labs, BTCFPGA, and Avalon. Each device has their pros and cons, but they will all be leaps and bounds of any hardware that is out today.

So that's why I said that if you aren't even planning on buying anything until the summer, you should really just wait and see which of those 3 ends up being the best deal for you. Right now, it's a lot of speculation about which is going to be the most profitable, but in 6 months when you decide to order, you will have a lot more information to be able to make an informed decision.

Not really sure why you decided to quote my previous post in this very same thread, but thanks? Next time try using the quote button, tho.
newbie
Activity: 28
Merit: 0
Well for starters, yes almost anything that has a CPU can mine Bitcoins. People have actually compiled CGMiner to run on their android phones, and they have even gotten a few KH/s. Not really worth it, but interesting nonetheless.

When I say that computers will be useless for Bitcoin mining by summer, I mean that several vendors will be shipping ASICs by then. ASICs designed to mine Bitcoins have actually been in development for quite a while now, and will be the last step in the evolution of mining hardware. It's basically a device that you plug into a computer's USB port, and has a chip inside whose sole function is to mine Bitcoins. It can't do anything else except mine Bitcoins, but it does that one job exceptionally well.

People started mining Bitcoins years ago by using CPUs. Then they figured out how to mine Bitcoins 10x faster by using a video card (GPU). Now, ASICs will be 100x faster than a GPU, or 1000x faster than a CPU.

3 different manufacturers have offered pre-orders for ASIC hardware for Bitcoin mining: Butterfly Labs, BTCFPGA, and Avalon. Each device has their pros and cons, but they will all be leaps and bounds of any hardware that is out today.

So that's why I said that if you aren't even planning on buying anything until the summer, you should really just wait and see which of those 3 ends up being the best deal for you. Right now, it's a lot of speculation about which is going to be the most profitable, but in 6 months when you decide to order, you will have a lot more information to be able to make an informed decision.
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