Topic: Only have enough $$ to buy one mining rig... SHA-256 vs Scrypt Mining?! (Read 12361 times)

it seems like this is a topic for the ages. I decided to go with Scrypt because of the lower power and more variety of coins. I like litecoin more as well at the moment. I have offices where I can run the machines so it at least can cover rent and electricity. I would consider what your options are. Mining is more of a hobby rather than an investment. I still like Baikal Miners since they are multi-algorithms.

The problem with shelving it was you put nice video cards on a shelf for 18 months, that means they lost value sitting there as new generations of GPU's come out.  And they do always keep coming out with new GPU's.

I personally am more likely to sell GPU's (which I did on almost all my rigs) and buy back in if I want.  ETH has a lot of fan's but has not convinced me to build any new rigs/buy back GPU's.   And I could be missing a big opportunity... but I have a hard time shelling out for GPU's at current point.  I would need to see long term gains personally.

The op is long gone and this was a 2015 thread.

But with eth coin gpu mining now can make money again.

There is a lot in favor of gpu alt coin mining if you game and have a gaming machine you will discount your gear.

If you build a rig correctly it can last for years .

My ltc rig sat on a shelf for more then 18 months.  I finally got around to firing it up and mining eth coin.
Cost was zero. Now the rig is earning money every day.

Do I think I should build a lot more rigs no I do not but I will run this until it no longer earns a profit then shelf it.

And I always thought Litecoin had a good chance.  If you ever get the chance to hear a talk from it's creator I highly suggest going, it's been a few years since I heard him speak but he really did a lot to make Litecoin fair and a good long term bet.   

I thought when he got a Coinbase job ( i believe it was) that we would see something new with Litecoin and prices jump.... but never happened.   I have played with alts for a long time at this point it's hard to convince me long term on alts.  I like to stick to BTC after playing with them for a while.  You see some go up... and down.   None seem to ever take long term traction.

There are a few merchants that take Litecoin, but it's nowhere near the adoption of Bitcoin - NOTHING else is anywhere near the adoption rate of Bitcoin.
Doge used to have a few merchants that took it, but I don't know if they still do since Doge went the merged-mine road.


 The trick on video cards is to max the hash/W and hash/$ as best you can - sometimes you have to trade off a bit on one to get the other. Usually the top cards are nowhere near the best on a hash/$ basis and most cards of one maker and one generation are a tossup on hash/W so it's usually hash/$ that matters - and generally 1-2 steps DOWN from the top card is the best place to be on hash/$

 Right now, for Nvidia cards the sweet spot seems to be the GTX 960, with the 970 and 950 VERY close on the basis of (CUDA Cores x clock) / $ basis, which equates pretty closely to hash/$

 I'm not sure where that point is for current AMD cards, as most of the projects I want to throw serious crunchrate at are better optimised for Nvidea (RC5 is an exception, but I'm already crunching at top100 rates there with my older gear).
 In the 7xxx generation it was usually the 7850 or 7870 that was the "optimal" point in the curve for most projects (scrypt mining in perticular most big rigs went 7870 per many folks talking about their setups).

 Oddly enough, except for the Fury (HBM memory) line, the 7xxx archetecture is pretty much still keeping up with the R2xx and R3xx series (most of the R2xx cards were rebadged 7xxx series, with perhaps some minor tweeks at most after all) and when you can find used 7xxx cards they're usually inexpensive.

I don't think cheap and powerful really go together.  It is expensive and more power on most GPU cards, you can buy cheaper cards but you are getting less hash.  So you are giving something up to save money.  And even the cards mentioned by the time you buy 6 for a good rig your talking a decent amount.

I can remember selling off all my GPU rigs long ago.  It is not much fun as a lot sell at once (could happen here).  Not to mention dealing with a good amount of ebay auctions for the most money.   So again I see lots of risk, and not the reward/security I want personally to invest right now.  Maybe one day.... but not yet.

Ether is infinitely risky right now because Ether could collapse at any time and requires a large investment to actually make a few pennies. That said, the best cards for Ethereum tend to be cards that are cheap and also powerful; 750, 750 ti, 950 all work well, however the first two are much more economical than the latter. AMD also produces powerful cards, and cards like the R9 285,  290, and all of the R9 300 series crank out enormous hashrate for one card. Keep in mind of the large risk and initial investment, but the reward is mind-blowingly high right now. Ether ASICs might come out eventually, but looking at the stability of Ether, it may not last long enough for that to happen.

 Between those two choices with free electric, I'd go for the Antminer - much more likely to last a long time. The Thunder ran VERY hot and wasn't efficient, though by current standards the S3 isn't efficient either.

 Ignore the moron talking about using a GPU to mine Scrypt with. You'll never make enough to pay for the card before it dies.
 Figure the best GPU setup generates LESS than 1 MH/sec while eating 200+ watts (most were closer to 700kH/sec at appx. 250 watts for the most EFFICIENT setups back before the Gridseed GC3355 ASIC showed up).
 At current difficulty, it takes a little over 100 MH/sec to genrate one Litecoin/day. 1MH/sec generates about 3 CENTS worth of Litecoin per day with current difficulty and price, YOU figure out how many DECADES it will take to pay back the cost of a GPU that can achieve 1MH/sec even with free electric.


 It's likely the current high-end AMD cards will manage more than 1MH/sec - but they're also going to cost quite a bit more than the old "efficient" setup using 7870s would today. Nvidea cards were never good at Scrypt - it wasn't complex enough for them to take advantage of their higher-compexity compute cores, similar to the reason AMD cards CRUSH Nvidea on RC5 work (but not by quite as wide a margin on Scrypt).


 Innosilicon has ALREADY announced a "next-gen" scrypt miner, due in June/July, with better efficiency than anything else on the market (some estimates have their A2-based units generating more Scrypt hashrate than everything else COMBINED right now). I anticipate a significant climb in Scrypt difficulty starting in late June, though current-gen ASIC gear like the A2/Alcheminer/Titan should still be profitable for a while with cheap-enough electric.

If you are mining GPU's chances are it's a ETH rig currently.  That seems to be the new "it" alt coin for gpu miners, I still hold reservation's and have not built any new rigs to mine it.  I just don't want to build then quickly after be forced to sale.

That being said pure scrypt has asics... they beat the heck out of GPU's.  So were talking about algo varients of scrypt that are GPU resistant.  And sha256... I still tend to mine BTC been a long time since I have mined an alt on it.

Buy the GPU's for scrypt and other non-SHA256 altcoins, point them at multi-pool with auto mining feature. Profit! SHA-256 mining is a race to the bottom due to rising diff for bitcoins, while scrypt mining with GPU's do not have this fast rising diff problem at present time. Unless someone comes out newer scrypt miners, even then you can mine altcoins with non-scrypt/non-SHA256 algo.

Don't forget there are sha-256 alts as well. Best of luck!!!




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So... if you're wanting to buy a machine which, when properly tended, prints lots of money. Versus buy a machine which, when properly tended, supports an economy actually worth something in the long run.

Go with your gut feeling. Mining for scrypt coins may give you the best bang for your buck; it certainly seems like you have chance at generating many coins quickly with scrypt coins. Quantity has a quality of its own.

SHA is the easier one.  I would suggest it for starting.  If you go Scrypt you have lot's of options of coins but it takes some research and luck to get max profit.

if you believe some scrypt coins will make profit if you mine it, buy scrypt hardware
but it's too risky compare to sha256 hardware
most of scrypt coins dying quickly
i don't think there are. many scrypt coins (and mostly alt coins) just for pump-dump scheme in market.

Nope!

All alts pump and dump scam copycat gimmick coins



Great, I guess if you have the patience and timing, and daytrade to BTC when an Altcoin is at a higher value.  Probably requires constantly refreshing these 2 websites over and over:

http://dustcoin.com/mining

http://www.coinwarz.com/cryptocurrency

Are there any scrypt coins that are actually used for something other than converting into BTC and/or dollars?

You would still be getting a loss. Used ASICs would get lower price than new ones. It is better to make the decision before buying. As said, both of the coins are volatile, the price may drop suddenly.

Buy a rig for both and see which one is better for you. Then dump the other one on ebay.
 Don't forget there are sha-256 alts as well. Best of luck!!!

Okay, well then mining is certainly an option for you. However you'd better ask your mom, dad, boss, landlord, dorm manager or whoever is paying the bill about it beforehand, just make sure you won't get kicked out or fired when they find out that your "investment" return is actually coming from their expenses

As for scrypt vs SHA256, it depends on your belief in the altcoin markets, I guess.

Oh yea sorry, If I were to get the rig,, It will be

SHA-256--)AntMiner S3 ASIC Bitcoin BTC Miner 440 GH/s

Scrypt--) Zeus Thunder X3 28-30MH/s Scrypt ASIC Miner


Electricity is not an issue.

Can someone tell me if I'm in the green, I truly believe Scrypt is the way to go

Assuming that you are mining for a profit (vs just a hobby or experiment) and that you are not getting "free" power from your mom's garage or something, then what you heard is obsolete. It was only valid until the moment when it became CHEAPER for the "home miner" to buy coins on the market rather to mine them.

Let's assume that you have $230 to invest right now. Buy 1 BTC with them. If BTC price goes up 10x, then you'll have made $2,300 with your $230 investment.

If you buy mining gear instead, and take let's say half of it ($130) for the hardware, and the other half for electricity, then you will never be able to make anything even *close* to 1 BTC (guessing at most 0.2-0.3 BTC right now). Again, if BTC goes up 10x, then you will only have made $460-$690 with your initial $230 investment, instead of $2,300 with the buying BTC option.

EDIT: the same goes for scrypt coins, AFAIK it's even worse. And be careful with altcoins, they carry BTC instability + their own...

I really feel like mining is the best option for me, Now that I know that there is different mining hardware for Scrypt and SHA-256, I also heard that mining litecoins, dogecoins and other scrypt coins will make your profit since you can mine a substantial of them in a short time and are not worth alot, but if the value of one goes up, profit will occur. Should I buy a Mining rig for bitcoins(SHA-256) or Dogecoin/litcoin (Scrypt)?