If you're thinking buying mining hardware, read this first - page 6.

film2240

legendary

Activity: 1022

Merit: 1000

Freelance videographer

Quote from: proudhon on April 26, 2011, 04:38:07 PM

Quote from: sniper_sniperson on April 26, 2011, 04:28:51 PM

Quote from: proudhon on April 26, 2011, 02:03:12 PM

Depends on your electricity costs. At full load a 5970 system will probably end up pulling ~500W from the socket (remember that PSUs are not 100% efficient). During the summer, and taking into account home AC and the second watt problem, at $0.12/kWh you're looking at $86 a month.

Wrong. 5970 system shows for me ~350W power consumption cause I tried to be the smart half in the relationship between electricity bill-my wallet.

If ~350W is really the full system draw at the socket then at standard US rates you're looking at ~$60/month.

I have a question about power consumption of a card I'm planning to upgrade to.Radeon HD 6950.How much would a pc with this setup cost per month to run in US $ then in UK £:
Core i7 920 @2.67ghz stock (3ghz OC'd and 1.53GHZ max power savings mode) CPU
6GB RAM
3 HDDs
Asus P6T SE mobo (chipset also in max power savings mode with deep voltage drops)
Radeon HD 4670 currently but will be upgraded later on.
620W Enermax Liberty PSU

I want to know (an estimate if possible) of power use in the following scenarios:
1.I Continue with the above setup with no upgrade (as Power is only 145W at the wall)
2.I swap out hte 4670 with 6950 GPU

How much will my power usage rise at load when the gpu is upgraded from the wall?
How much will this cost me in US $ and UK £ if possible.

I have joined a pool now to make things work faster.Pool is Bitcoin.lc.

ny help would b appreciated guys.

stillfire

full member

Activity: 124

Merit: 100

If difficulty ever starts to go down you should absolutely not buy new mining hardware as the equilibrium will tend towards profitability for those already invested. There will be very little headroom for new investment during the lifetime of the existing mining hardware.

Jack of Diamonds

sr. member

Activity: 252

Merit: 251

Quote from: dayfall on June 06, 2011, 11:18:54 AM

I just bought parts for yet another mining rig. I did this calculation for 1Gh/s at current difficulty and assuming a 100% increase in 20 days :

days -
0
20
40
60
80
100
120
140
160
180
200
220
240
260

BTC/day -
0
1.77
0.89
0.44
0.22
0.11
0.06
0.03
0.01
0.01
0.00
0.00
0.00
0.00

power $ -
0
91.2
182.4
273.6
364.8
456.0
547.2
638.4
729.6
820.8
912.0
1003.2
1094.4
1185.6

BTC Total -
0.00
35.4
53.1
62.0
66.4
68.6
69.7
70.2
70.5
70.7
70.7
70.8
70.8
70.8

If I am even close to calculating returns, a 1Gh/s rig will only net about 70 BTC ever. Can someone verify? Does this mean a 1Gh/s rig must cost under 70BTC right now to be feasible. Otherwise just buy the BTC.

Difficulty is dynamic. When mining becomes unprofitable for even ASIC farms and botnets, difficulty will go down in a linear curve with thash/s of the network, until optimal amount of blocks are generated.

dayfall

sr. member

Activity: 312

Merit: 250

I just bought parts for yet another mining rig. I did this calculation for 1Gh/s at current difficulty and assuming a 100% increase in 20 days :

days -
0
20
40
60
80
100
120
140
160
180
200
220
240
260

BTC/day -
0
1.77
0.89
0.44
0.22
0.11
0.06
0.03
0.01
0.01
0.00
0.00
0.00
0.00

power $ -
0
91.2
182.4
273.6
364.8
456.0
547.2
638.4
729.6
820.8
912.0
1003.2
1094.4
1185.6

BTC Total -
0.00
35.4
53.1
62.0
66.4
68.6
69.7
70.2
70.5
70.7
70.7
70.8
70.8
70.8

If I am even close to calculating returns, a 1Gh/s rig will only net about 70 BTC ever. Can someone verify? Does this mean a 1Gh/s rig must cost under 70BTC right now to be feasible. Otherwise just buy the BTC.

bitbitcoincoin

full member

Activity: 167

Merit: 100

Quote from: tomcollins on May 08, 2011, 06:47:52 PM

Quote from: Grinder on May 08, 2011, 12:33:49 PM

Quote from: tomcollins on May 08, 2011, 12:12:52 PM

Mining just needs to get more efficient. You don't need that much more attention. Some technological breakthrough similar to GPU mining when it came out would destroy the difficulty. New cards that are more efficient could come out. There are a lot of things that can make difficulty grow fast.

That would give the opposite effect of what the messages I responded to were predicting. I'm saying that difficulty will increase almost no matter what happens.

An extreme price drop will make difficulty get easier, but besides that, I agree.

It appears this thread/discussion ended(5-08) when the value for BTC were around 3-4 USD each, and today's mt-gox listing currently at 16.3. Interesting to see if the difficulty increase has been proportionate with the BTC value increase to make mining still a worthwhile endeavor. Still new to the site and working through all the great info here.

Also of course investing is always better IF BTC prices continue to rise, but if you don't want to invest in the coins themselves(for whatever reason) it's pretty irrelevant to the "is mining profitable" discussion even though it took up the majority of this otherwise helpful thread.

finnthecelt

full member

Activity: 140

Merit: 100

Quote from: njloof on May 07, 2011, 11:27:30 AM

I appreciate your work too, JJG -- raising all of the risk factors of mining is very helpful, and every market needs its contrarian

Welcome to the club....

I guess that's the last we'll hear from you!!

mmortal03

legendary

Activity: 1762

Merit: 1010

This thread should be made a sticky.

tomcollins

full member

Activity: 182

Merit: 101

Quote from: Grinder on May 08, 2011, 12:33:49 PM

Quote from: tomcollins on May 08, 2011, 12:12:52 PM

Mining just needs to get more efficient. You don't need that much more attention. Some technological breakthrough similar to GPU mining when it came out would destroy the difficulty. New cards that are more efficient could come out. There are a lot of things that can make difficulty grow fast.

That would give the opposite effect of what the messages I responded to were predicting. I'm saying that difficulty will increase almost no matter what happens.

An extreme price drop will make difficulty get easier, but besides that, I agree.

Grinder

legendary

Activity: 1284

Merit: 1001

Quote from: tomcollins on May 08, 2011, 12:12:52 PM

Mining just needs to get more efficient. You don't need that much more attention. Some technological breakthrough similar to GPU mining when it came out would destroy the difficulty. New cards that are more efficient could come out. There are a lot of things that can make difficulty grow fast.

That would give the opposite effect of what the messages I responded to were predicting. I'm saying that difficulty will increase almost no matter what happens.

tomcollins

full member

Activity: 182

Merit: 101

Quote from: Grinder on May 07, 2011, 06:39:00 PM

Quote from: ?? on ??

Bitcoin hasn't even had it's first publicity in a "big" media outlet yet.

The point is that the publicity has to get bigger and bigger to feed the exponential growth that is required to keep the difficulty at bay.

Mining just needs to get more efficient. You don't need that much more attention. Some technological breakthrough similar to GPU mining when it came out would destroy the difficulty. New cards that are more efficient could come out. There are a lot of things that can make difficulty grow fast.

Grinder

legendary

Activity: 1284

Merit: 1001

Quote from: ?? on ??

Bitcoin hasn't even had it's first publicity in a "big" media outlet yet.

The point is that the publicity has to get bigger and bigger to feed the exponential growth that is required to keep the difficulty at bay.

Grinder

legendary

Activity: 1284

Merit: 1001

Quote from: bitcoinharvester on May 07, 2011, 04:27:00 PM

That's perfect!
As long as the price goes up before the difficulty the miners are in the money.

Unfortunately there's no guarantee for that. In February/March the price fell almost 50% from the top while the difficulty tripled. Unless there is a regular flow of publicity in big media outlets the difficulty will rise much more than the price.

bitcoinharvester

newbie

Activity: 29

Merit: 0

That's perfect!
As long as the price goes up before the difficulty the miners are in the money.

Grinder

legendary

Activity: 1284

Merit: 1001

Quote from: bitcoinharvester on May 07, 2011, 02:11:42 PM

Let's just hope the price follows the uptrend with the difficulty. It has historically up to this point.

No, generally the difficulty follows the price, which follows the level of publicity Bitcoin gets in the media.

bitcoinharvester

newbie

Activity: 29

Merit: 0

Sounds about right to me. Some hype in the media as well driving some of the market.
If you look at the charts the picture is fairly clear (at least until some outside entity tries to cause problems).
I say KEEP ON MINEN!!

allinvain

legendary

Activity: 3080

Merit: 1080

Quote from: bitcoinharvester on May 07, 2011, 02:11:42 PM

Let's just hope the price follows the uptrend with the difficulty. It has historically up to this point.

That without a doubt is the big hope of all bitcoin miners, but it doesn't necessarily have to be so. My gut feeling is that we will see another rally as soon as the next difficulty rate increase comes around.

bitcoinharvester

newbie

Activity: 29

Merit: 0

Let's just hope the price follows the uptrend with the difficulty. It has historically up to this point.

JJG

member

Activity: 70

Merit: 20

Thanks for the support. This is certainly a nice change from a week ago when I was quite the villain.

I still encourage everyone to run their own projections, models, and numbers. Just be realistic about it, and most importantly don't forget to factor in rising difficulty!

stillfire

full member

Activity: 124

Merit: 100

To those who think JJG is somehow a "sock puppet" of Vladimir: that makes very little sense. Vladimir is in the business of leasing mining hardware, based on the idea that your opportunity cost might be high so it could be cheaper to outsource.

When mining is unprofitable, his business will be less attractive.

Note that this is not meant to advice for or against mining contracts. If you run the numbers and it turns out that the average difficulty over the next 4 months will be at such a level you'll make more coins, at today's value, than the price, with interest, for 4 months of a contract, you could choose to do that. Especially if it'd be expensive to set up your own shop. Vladimir can reap the benefits of 'mass production' to some extent and if your opportunity cost is high you might actually make more money using contracts during good times than doing it yourself.

My point is merely that you would not see Vladimir arguing against the profitability of mining.

njloof

member

Activity: 73

Merit: 10

I appreciate your work too, JJG -- raising all of the risk factors of mining is very helpful, and every market needs its contrarian

Topic: If you're thinking buying mining hardware, read this first - page 6. (Read 92665 times)