Topic: Is it too late to mine BTC? (even with free electric) (Read 1795 times)

Its a good hobby, but if you want to be rich (even if you have free power) i guess trading would be the way.
Mining Bitcoins is impossible because of the diff and other coins could be interesting, but are not worth all that much.

electric price is fixed
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/--372502

UPDATE!

I found a power supply for $329 that a pro miner who would know assures me will handle 3x 7990: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817153154

He says even a 1200 watt would probably work. However, I'd err on the side of caution/overcapacity, since you are less likely to make some noob mistake and fry something if you have an adequate power supply, and also I have read somewhere that PSUs operate at maximum efficiency when putting out 50% of the power they are capable of putting out, and efficiency above 80% starts going way down because of heat reducing efficiency. (as a conductor like copper heats up, its ability to conduct electricity goes down)

Also, I've been told by this same pro that I shouldn't "piggyback" power supplies on top of other power supplies, but I do it anyway! 8D You can do it with a paperclip or one of these: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16812201037

smf is a real piece of shit.

I've tried to post a worthy response about 12 times and it will not allow me. 

Newbie restrictions ftw

Sorry I don't know much about the cards. When building a desktop on alienware (dell lol), the 8990 was the best option. It'll be my 3rd AW, I like the logo & flashy lights  

This would be my temporary miner until I can get the parts for a real rig.

8990, isn't that just OEM branded 7990. I think Dell uses them.

http://www.techpowerup.com/gpudb/2389/radeon-hd-8990-oem.html

On topic: I would do alt-coin scrypt mining with that card.

Yes you would need a lot more than 600ks to make it worthwhile to solo mine even a new coin

With my 2 current machines I can pull only around 600Kh/s combined. I tried to solo mine digibyte over night, but gained 0.
No matter how new the coin, I should just stick to pools, correct?

The most profitable coins to mine are alt coins.

You can see their profitability compared to bitcoin at: http://www.coinwarz.com/cryptocurrency

Of course they are more high risk too as the prices are even more volatile than bitcoin  

I believe it will be a very good experience, since you have free electric,too :-) Good start!!

Why not, it's a great hobby and you will learn so much.   Nothing really to lose but will gain a lot of knowledge.  Then there's always the plus side that you could be mining an Alt coin that takes off

Unfortunately work is outside 100% of the time, no work done on the computers. I appreciate the replies this will definitely help.

If you are on the road all the time, your laptop and the work you do on it is important. I wouldn't mine on a laptop for work, cos mining shortens the life of a laptop so badly that it may stop working when you most needed it.

The coins you mine from your laptop is not worth the risk of losing a client.

But hopefully the OP has warranty for replace because from time to time the GPU stop working after mining extensively (or even running with bad miner settings)

Also note: If the rumors are true and the 8990 is really a thing, you should know that the 8990 is a rebranded 7990. It will be slightly higher quality, but the exact same chipset, and you aren't likely to see much more hashpower (if any) out of it when compared to a 7990.

If you are on the road a lot, you definitely DO NOT want to buy a bitcoin ASIC. I mean sure, you can, but you'll want to leave it at home so it is plugged in 100% of the time and running, making bitcoin, 100% of the time. If the thing is not plugged in even 30% of the time, you are likely to lose your ass on the investment.

For whatever this gaming rig is you plan on buying, you should know that short of a liquid cooling solution, you'll need to open the side of the case and direct a fan at the card(s) or your shit will overheat and your khash will drop dramatically. Without liquid cooling, you'd have to have an insane case with insane airflow to avoid the open-case-and-bigass-fan solution.

Electricity costs don't figure into it anymore for ASIC miners for bitcoin. The electricity cost is negligible compared to the value of the bitcoin. The cost is in the up-front cost of the hardware to mine with.

For Litecoin and other scrypt coin and other altcoin, electricity costs may also often be dwarfed by the profits. You gotta do the calculations, and there are many fine websites for that. Coinwarz, coinchoose, wheretomine, etc.. Since you have "free" powar, you can enter $0.00 for your power cost.

If you are new to cryptocurrency, I suggest you ignore bitcoin and get into the altcoin markets. You generally do this by getting an inexpensive but relatively new computer with PCI-e slots, and then buy some sick video cards to hash with. I suggest the following cards:

RADEON 7990, 7950, 7970, 280x, 290, and possibly 290x. Check https://litecoin.info/Mining_hardware_comparison for more info.

There are also some new and interesting developments with CUDA miners for NVIDIA cards, but if you are a newbie I suggest you go with one or two of the RADEON cards and get the hang of it before you delve into the dark and fuzzy corners of the cryptocurrency underground.

With $3000, I would build a rig like this:
Three (3) 7990 from ShopBLT or TigerDirect or somewhere: ~$2000
ivy bridge motherboard + modest cpu (celeron G1610) + 16 gb RAM (4x4gb) + SSD: $120 + $42 + $158 + $80 = $400
A really crazy awesome power supply: $300 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817153155
You will need to piggyback an extra ~700 watt power supply for the 3rd card: $80
3x powered risers: $50
Milk crate case and box fan: $50
keyboard/mouse/cheap monitor = $100
good surge protector = $50
Linux Mint 13 LTS = $0
TOTAL COST = ~$3000.00
TOTAL KHASH = >4000

Note: If you want a more powerful CPU for the purposes of gaming, I suggest you go with AMD, not Intel. You do have a 3k budget, after all.    

Note: You may want to go with 4 to 6 of the cards listed below, instead of 3x 7990 cards. 5 cards should easily fit in a wide milk crate case:
6x 7950 >3500 khash  (7950s are the most energy efficient and easiest to manage heat) [but make sure your motherboard has 6 PCI-e slots]
5x 7970 >3500 khash
5x r9 280x >3500 khash
4x r9 290 >3200 khash
...depending on market conditions.
I suggest you not "mix and match" too much. It is OK to get 4x r9 280x and throw in 1 r9 270x, but I wouldn't include r9 cards with older 7xxx series cards in the same rig, or you're likely to run into driver troubles, especially if you are new to this.

If you don't want to go with a bulky milk crate (or otherwise custom roomy much airflow) case on the road, I suggest you buy 2 of these:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814131543
along with the rest of the liquid cooling system, and be prepared to wait a while to see any profit. (~1800 khash)
ALTERNATIVELY, you can get 2x 7990 plus 2 water blocks, remove the original coolers, replace with water blocks and rest of the expensive liquid cooling system (LCS) and if you tweak the cards right you should be able to get 2800 khash/s out of the rig. All of this is possible for under $3000 if you aren't silly about your CPU and motherboard requirements. Maybe I'm being a little silly about the RAM requirement... you could probably get away with 8gb, I'm not sure. As for the $300 PSU, you can shop around and/or piggyback 2 power supplies on your main, and probably save some money up front, but talk to a pro and they'll probably recommend a very nice power supply like the one I linked.

I'M JUST A NOOB!

Cheers and happy trails!!!1

With just a GPU you are definitely better off mining in a scrypt altcoin pool.  Bitcoin difficulty is too high now for your gaming laptop.  Good luck!

It's never too late if the power is free.  Turn up the hotel air conditioner and go for it. 

Like many said..mine FOTM ALTCOIN.. Sell for bitcoin

It's never too late although you would likely only mine tiny amounts.

I would mine an alt and convert