Topic: Size of your mining farm? - page 2. (Read 2507 times)

Well as I said it is all arbitrary as what constitutes small depends on the person and situation. If I tell someone off the street who knows nothing about mining that I have 50 GPUs running in my house, you're right they are going to think 1:) that's a lot of GPUs and 2:) that I am crazy.

Now if I tell a fellow miner the same thing, I think most of them will consider that still "small" as it would only consist of 8-10 dedicated rigs with an average of 5-7 GPUs each. Putting this into the context of a mining "farm", I think that is still a small amount as many here are likely to fall into the medium to large categories.

I also considered the investment requirements and likely income aspects, as 50 GPUs will net you around $50/day or about $1.00 each (after power) in income (depending on many factors of course) which while a nice side income I still consider this small for most people. I am basing this on a US viewpoint, and realize in some parts of the world this may be a lot, but in the US at least it is probably not enough to live solely on.

As far as the investment aspect, simplifying this as I know there are other hardware expenses, but saying a roughly $200/GPU investment on a 50 GPU farm would be around a $10,000 investment. While this is a good deal of money, as far as investing it is probably considered small as you would not expect to make enough off of a $10k investment to live off of or retire on.

While with a medium farm you are looking at a $10,000-$30,000 investment, med-large $30,000-$60,000, large $60,000-$120,000 and so on. Again these are simply arbitrary buckets to lump investments into, but I think they will work for our purposes.

interesting as to what is small  as 50 gpus  is pretty big for small.

my 4 card rigs pull 400 watts and do 700 h at zec

I have 33 cards running

so 40 cards = 4000 watts

50  cards = 5000 watts

I suppose  that is a good number to use 5000 watts or less = small.

I am curious of the makeup of the forum users and what size farms they have and how many GPUs they are current running.

The sizes are arbitrary but I think are still fairly representative of what the expectations would be if someone described themselves to someone else who was also a miner. I am counting the number of GPUs only as rigs can come in many sizes from 1 GPU for a gaming rig that mines on off-hours, to a dedicated 7x GPU 24/7 miner.

For example, I feel a hobbyist is someone new to mining cryptocurrencies and may be using their main rig with 1 or more GPUs to mine with. They may also have additional rigs they cobbled together from old equipment, or possibly took the plunge and setup one or two dedicated rigs.

A Micro Farm is someone who is taking a little bit larger stance and dedicating 3-6 rigs full time with 4-7 GPUs in each rig.

Small is someone who is starting to invest seriously into mining as it is doubtful at this point you would still be building out of old hardware and your purchases are geared toward ROI and making a small amount of side income.

Medium is again someone going further and looking to seriously start supplementing their income and treating mining as a side job. At this level you are probably also starting to dedicate areas of your house or property specifically for mining and either upgrading your power and maybe considering switching to 240V if you haven't already. Cooling also starts to become a concern at this level.

Medium-Large I broke this out as a separate category as I think you would still be a bit too small (at the low end) to rely on mining for a full-time income, but you are definitely looking to seriously supplement your income and invest heavily in mining. At this point even with 7x GPU rigs, you are maintaining 20-40 rigs and have probably addressed and mastered issues such as cooling, power, as well as automated much of your management duties such as monitoring, software updates, restarts, etc.

Large is someone who may very well be relying on mining for a large portion or all of his/her income. At this point you are probably beginning to add rigs in batches and starting to negotiate your purchases with wholesalers. You buy in bulk and take advantage of this to lower your build costs. You may even been looking to host your rigs in a dedicated location outside your home.

Professional is where you have mastered everything below and most likely are not only are earning all your income from mining, but perhaps hiring help as well to administer and maintain your farm. At this point you are also likely to be setup in a dedicated location to host your farm to take advantage of lower power costs and well as other infrastructure issues such as cooling, security, and a redundant internet and possibly power providers.