Topic: You have a 5k budget to spend on mining equipment. What do you do? (Read 446 times)

Depends on the electricity price. I would say the only reasonable options are RX 580(or 570) and GTX 1070 Ti. I personally prefer Nvidia, but if you calculate the profitability, Amd is probably better. I created a while ago a site where I tried to build different tools that can be useful for miners. I did it first for myself because I have excel and for me was easier to code in js than excel. You can use the ethereum mining calculator to calculate the profitability for each configuration based on the electricity price and a few other factors.  You can also find on the site a mining rig builder which might be useful to calculate the price, consumption and hashrate for each configuration without missing a component; for the moment you can get the cheapest amazon prices for cards here. I wanted to integrate all 3 in only one tool but I think it would be too complex so for the moment I left them as separate tools. I hope you will find them useful.

I would say you could build a 6x 1070 Ti rig from scratch for just about 5k with no problems.  I just finished up writing an article for my blog about building different rigs and the 1070 Ti version came out to be just a hair over 5k but I think depending on the prices you could obtain you could most likely get the whole thing built and running for under 5k.  The hardest part is finding the deals and ensuring you are saving as much money as you can to knock down as much time as possible to achieve ROI.

So why are you reading/posting in a altcoin mining forum?

Please. Offer something constructive to the subject of the thread, or find another thread to post in.

I dont buy mining equipment, i invest it in bitcoin 

Thanks for the quick replies. I see the same 1070 and 1070ti are fairly close in price. Is the ti price premium justified?

Nvidia all the way if you don't want headaches and an early grave.  If you have nothing but time on your hands to troubleshoot all sorts of issues then go ahead with AMD.  

$5K?  I would probably do a mix of 1080 and 1080 TI.  I would probably buy bitcoin with the $5K and then use purse.io to make the purchase to save some money on amazon for the video cards.  I would try to do around $450 per 1080 card (with discounts) and $650 per ti (discounts).    Go for a 6-card rig so 1350+1950 for $2350.  Then look at dropping around $500-650 on other components (risers, mobo, cpu, ram, rig frame, PSU etc). Don't cheap out on the PSU and maybe even consider a solution with a nice CPU.  There have been some nice all-in-one server solutions with nice CPU/PSU specs that support 8 GPU for around $500. 

Look for a mobo solution that supports at least 8 GPU in case you want to add a GPU or two later.

With the remaining $2K, I would look into an ASIC to diversify your mining operation.  Depending on how much the ASIC costs you may have some left over to get another GPU or two.

If you don't do the cash for bitcoin thing, just shop around on slickdeals.net and take full advantage of tricks like discounted gift cards, ebates, retailmenot, groupon tricks, etc.

1080 ti there better then AMD and i was one who thought AMD was the best, till i bought two 1060 3 and 6gb and 2 1070 one is the normal 1070 and one is a ti  an one 1080 so far there great and much better then AMD but some will debate that but I'm talking from experiencing it .I wish I had held out for NV cards when i bought 8 AMD cards and bought 4 to 5 NV cards an got more hash over all using less power with 3 to 4  nv cards then what 4 AMD cards do . Like i said some will debate that but they do and are better then AMD, i was a hard core AMD user.

I haven't bought a Vega yet,that's next on my list, just to see what it does ..

if you buy ASIC you can resell it but no were close what you paid for it in a year but more then likely it will have reached ROI by then or little longer if that's your end game when mining . so it's still worth it but then other issues may come up one being they are very loud now and unless you have a sound proofed mining room in your house or a building out back some place your best bet is GPU mining unless you can live with the noise, if you plan do it in your home, an 5k or more  worth of GPU gear will fit about right in any home GPU mining .  an do pretty good. I still plan to buy one A4 + full miner next year and use it in my home but also have a sound proofed room i use a A4 not Plus in now no one hears.

you can per order a L3 + from bit main off there site for 1651 USD or  0.12035730 BTC; 1.21528122 BCH; 11.84276594 LTC but won't get it till March ....right now.I wouldn't order anything that far into next year because a company in Japan might start selling there new 22 th miner with 7 nm chips about then or a little later and you can bet a better LTC miners won't be to far behind.. so you will be getting F*** unless you can get it now then buy it now but not for then.

http://Https://shop.bitmain.com/productDetail.htm?pid=0002017120420234742243Sqqip70697

You can consider the option Vega 56-64. Now they are good enough. New cards will not be known when, and the price for them will initially be overstated

I would build Nvidia 1070 rigs. The prices for them are finally getting reasonable and they are great at many algorithms for which they use less power than pretty much any alternative. I think they are the sweet spot GPU right now.

ASICs are too specific and can't be re-purposed when something suddenly becomes profitable, and as pointed out - you have to wait until the Chinese will trickle them out to you.

If you want to sell use 1070s in a year I think they will hold value reasonably well (meaning you should get at least 50% back) but try selling an ASIC that is a year old and you won't be able to give it away.

If you want to mine altcoins, you buy better/more GPUs.

If you want to mine Litecoin, you buy some L3+ with the money. (It'll take a few months to get these.)

If you want to buy Bitcoin, you buy some Avalons, S9s, or other in stock miners with it - but it'll take a few months for you to get them.

With the recent price spike up to 19k, I was lucky enough to be sitting in front of my PC at the right time and cashed out part my initial investment into crypto. I'm now looking to diversify by putting that capital back into mining equipment.

Vega? 1080 ti? ASIC? Wait for the next best GPU?

Ive got 4 rx480s running now for the least few months, so I have a base of mining knowledge. Just not sure in which direction to take the next step.

Thanks in advance!