Topic: Too Late to Join the Party? (Read 7837 times)

I think its not too late as long as your electricity costs are low.

This is less of a factor for some us now. The temps where I live are starting to drop. Right now its 65 degrees so I've been able to use a window for the majority of the day and I'm running 3 ghash which is a lot of heat.

I myself did it for the learning. I know people keep talking about downloading command line software and off you go.

However, What about the research you do in your purchases. GPU's, CPU's. etc. Trying to keep up to date on what is coming out. Flashing a Bios. Writing your own scripts for linux for monitoring and setup.

Sure these might be small things but I will tell you this. Being in the I.T. business knowing whats hot in hardware and linux scripting is VERY valuable!

So if your looking at doing the minimum.. read what to buy only.. set it up and leave it. Well I know I wouldn't have bothered.

But if you like a challenge and will further read on how to tweak your rig just 10 more mh/s find ways to auto reboot after a power outage and run all scripts.. over clock and change fan speed.. (linux) then sure why not.

I guess at the end of the day it's whatever you make of it. I thought it would be worthwhile setting up an Arch install specifically for mining (I'd only had limited experience with "Linux" (Ubuntu) up until that point) - I learnt a great deal about the internals of Linux from doing that, and it's definitely been worthwhile as I am now using a fresh Arch install for just about every project that I've done since then.

Mining is only really profitable if you don't have to pay for power (directly or indirectly).  Children living at home may read this and think 'sweet, dad pays the bills not me', but dad is likely to notice a few hundred dollars of extra power use on the quarterly bill.

Don't forget to factor in the cost of air conditioning, hardware and opportunity cost too.  If you would not be setting up the mining PC and taking care of it, could you be doing something more useful?  If bitcoin is fun for you then great, but don't expect to learn a lot from it.  Downloading free command line software and getting it running isn't exactly highly educational.

The BTC exchange rate is hovering just over $8 and is on a downward trend.  Unless something makes bitcoins very attractive I don't see that changing in the medium term future.  Others may disagree and think we'll return to the party days of $30 bitcoins.  If so, mine away.

And no, I don't have dozens of mining PCs therefore I would be trying to turn away new miners from mining.  I sold off most of my PCs a month ago and turned the last one off a week ago.

I have to say, a couple months down the line from making this thread:
Initially I thought it might be possible to use mined BTC to fund part of my gapyear travels later in the year, but it dawned fairly quickly that this is pretty unrealistic. Yet I'm still mining BTC now. Why? Because it's a bit of fun and a challenge I guess - I've cobbled together an assortment of old parts lying around to reduce the costs as much as possible, and I've had a great time trying to get 110% out of this pile of shite!

So although it's not at all profitable (at least for me), the vibe here is just great, and I'm very much looking forward to spending my hard-earned BTC @ BitBrew.net.

That certainly was a great laugh at the end of the thread. Crypt has a point, you need the cards, why not have fun and dabble with electronics.

or worth 0.1

Never too late to try, especially when the subject is bitcoin.
Today he is worth 10, tomorrow could be worth 100.

 

From what I understand... It's now ILLEGAL to mine bitcoins.  The government is sending out bots to gather IP addresses of anyone running *bitco*.* anywhere in their system. 

LEAVE NOW, SAVE YOURSELVES... I will stay on long enough to detract them.  Like the designated drunk driver, I'll lure the fed's off your trail, BUT YOU MUST LEAVE THE BITCOIN MINING WORLD NOW!!!

lol

I suppose I've a skewed perspective...

I was going to buy a computer anyhow...it's just that time.  I have a high-end laptop that I was using, but no tower type PC; so, I was buying a computer anyhow (mining or not). And a year ago, I didn't even know what a bitcoin was!  However, something I've always known, is that for my primary purposes of using a computer (emails, Word, PPT, watching DVDs, browsing the web), most off-the-shelf computer systems were MUCH more powerful than what I was using them for...

Now enter bitcoin --  at least, in some small way, I can get at a minimum, a novelty return of some sort, even if it's miniscule.  However, now that I do know about bitcoin, I opted to get a 'gamer' system, enter the:

CyberpowerPC Gamer Ultra 2062 Desktop PC Phenom II X4 965(3.4GHz) 4GB DDR3 1TB HDD Capacity AMD Radeon HD 6870 Windows 7 Home Premium 64-Bit. 

I got it in less than 10 days - delivered to a remote Contingency Operating Station in Iraq, with shipping for less than $900.  Note that it includes the elusive AMD Radeon HD 6870 - which in none tweaked form, out of the box, in less than an hour, was generating ~300 Mhash/s -  just GPU, I've not even start trying to manipulate the CPU cores yet.

It helped that I'd already been experimenting with my laptops NVIDA GX card (a measly 24Mhash on the GPU, 4.1 Mhash/s on the CPU).  So now, I'm making like .21 BTC per day; and I'm not paying for electricity, so... I can't complain.

Not for nothing, but rather for $1500.00 - I did actually jumped on that 'bitcoin bandwagon', and to that end, have bought 2 HD 6990 cards (albiet on back order) @ PC Connection.  When they come in, I may have to get creative, but the CyberpowerPC Gamer Ultra 2062 Desktop PC has the pci slots (and supposedly the harness rotates out) necessary to run these. AND the system even came with all of the Crossfire cabling and mounting brackets I might need (and I didn't even ask them for it).

So far, I'm more than pleased, but back on topic... so suppose someday I do have to return to a land where I have to pay for electricity (at least noone will be trying to launch rockets and mortars at me, so there's some intangible value in that too), even if I do have to pay for electricity, I WILL AT LEAST be making some sort of return! Something, as opposed to nothing, EVEN if it only partially compensates - it's still more than NOTHING!!!

I understand from a purely ROI perspective - but come on guys... You buy cars (video cards) and pay for gas (electricity) to go from point A to B (cruising the web) and MOST people don't stop to think... hhmmmm is my having a car really a money making endeavor?

So money making aside... if you've a computer, and electric service, then AT A MINIMUM what you gain, which is priceless, is a more indepth knowledge of how rpc works, how computers in general work, how to access the cmd window on your GUI based windows box.  I think, if nothing else, bitcoin awareness is rising the mark on the 'how a computer works' tideline.

Anyways, I just spent .0022435 BTC worth of electricity typing this so...

Thats my  0.002 BTC worth on the subject.

Happy mining all.
CRYPT

Sorry for the necro-bump, just wanted to thank everyone that replied for their helpful advice.

Totally weak but whatever. I have no response for that trite. You win.

Except you won't have sweet gaming stations.  5830, 5850, and 5870 are last gen technology and were not the best technology to boot.  Gaming-wise the 69xx series or NVIDIA HW are much better gaming platforms.

Also, putting money in bitcoins (and mining rigs) is not investing, it is speculating.  Bitcoins have no real income stream other than people buying them thinking they may be worth more in the future.  They don't throw off interest, have no real assets behind them, and are not guaranteed by anything.  Putting money in bitcoins or mining HW is nothing like buying stocks, bonds, CDs, etc. - it is strictly a speculation that there is someone else out there who is willing to spend even more money in buying bitcoins than you did.

When I invested in BTE in 2008 I had no experience drilling for oil (and none since), but I made 10s of Ks of $ selling BTE 1.5 years later.  Your statement that one has to DO something to know if it will work is thus proved false.  You don't have to do something to figure out if it is a good investment or not.  You do research, examine the fundamentals/trends, and put your money in or not. 

Nonsense - I know lots of scientists, the experiments/tests they run are built on top of on the data and studies of others. Pretty much nobody except pure mathematicians start from nothing and prove/test everything all the way up (and the maths guys just do it to show how cool they are).  One can make a decision about bitcoin mining without actually participating in it.

There are lots of contradictions in what people say, but consider this - if you go to a gold investing forum (e.g. Kitco forums), where most people there own gold/are buying gold, do you expect the majority to say gold sucks and is a terrible investment, or to say gold is awesome and well worth buying?  Obviously the latter - just like in the Bitcoin mining forum the majority says/thinks Bitcoin mining is a good idea.  People talk their wallet, it is human nature.

Well said.

I've spent a lot of time reading this forum over the last few days and I don't agree with your statement.

I have found so much negativity, conflicting points of data, defeatism and what seems to be disinformation. Sr. members and experienced miners contradicting their data points and profatibility estimates....oi!!! What's a newb to do?

I for one will be getting a rig and will ignore the naysayers. If I lose money I'll have some sweet gaming stations. Being a gamer I don't care. Also, being an investor I'm prepared to lose money.

But for the other newbs, if I had listened to everyone who had opinions before I made certain investments 3 years ago, I would have been out on 10's of K's of $. You have to DO something for yourself to figure out if it's going to work or not.

I'm not questioning the moral integrity of the majority of members of the board, but logic would dictate that when two or more (1?) people get together you immediately have conflicting agendas and emotion will cause logic to stray. One of the first rules of being a scientist, never trust your own data. Test, test, test.

I was wondering this as well

5850 and 6950 refurbs are the same price locally. which would be best?

I've got a few 6850's. Already have one installed and i get ~237 MHash/s...
Dont think its worth mining with these. They are great for gaming, but not for mining. Why is that?

So, should i go and mine with these badboys? What do you think?

the party is over.