Ignoring what? Ignoring the fact that you can't get your numbers without sacrificing game time?
Even if you mine 12 hours a day instead of 24, that's $50 a month. It's not about $50 a month but the principal. Why should I pay for a slower product that doesn't make $ when the alternative costs less, makes $ and is faster?
Ignoring the fact that I've been mining for the last 12 hours without a break and the room my PC is in even with a floor fan is like a sauna?
So you do not have air conditioning? I am having a hard time believing a 225W GPU has suddenly turned your room into a sauna.
It's only a factor if you actually do it, is it not? Not everyone needs to scrape out $100 a month off their gaming PC via never actually using it to game.
Get 2-3 GPUs, what's the problem? Then you can dedicate a single 7970 to gaming when you use it and use all 3 GPUs for mining when not gaming.
Even with 1 GPU, a lot of people work from 9am to 5pm, then they come home and eat, spend time with family. In your case if you play games 24 hours a day, OK mining doesn't make sense.
It takes forever, you need more than one gpu to get anywhere, the payout is slow, it requires a lot of wear and tear for little return... Oh and it's strikes most people as a scam, just to name a few reasons why the vast majority of people don't actually do it.
Proof? Same argument is used for distributed computing (F@H, Milkyway@H). My 470s were used for DC and all my cards before go 24/7 in either games, DC projects or mining. None has ever failed from over usage. Also, videocards are meant to be used. That's the point. No one sane enough intends to keep them for a lifetime.
If you get a card from Gigabyte or MSI, you get 3 year warranty. You can use your 7970 24/7 @ 100% load all you want. Who cares if the card runs 24/7 @ 100% OC for 3 years. Throw it out, get a new one. It's paid for with btc in 4 months and until the 3 year period, it's under warranty.
Cons1: The downside is the heat, tiered electricity bills, wear and strain on your components. Did I mention it's slow? You spend 18 hours each day beating the hell out of your hardware for a couple dollars?
3 7970 @ 1150 mining for 18 hours a day at $122 make $239 a month after electricity or $1400 in 6 months. OK let's see, take $1,400 of GPU hardware doing nothing but pressing a button on the desktop, vs. paying $1,400 for GPUs out of pocket. :hmm:
Cons2: You never get to shut your PC down, increasing degradation among many other things.
Not a factor. We are not talking about GTX570 or 590s. Cards like 7970 or GTX470/480 are built like tanks. My 7970s have been running for 1.5 years OCed without a hickup. Before that 470s have been going strong in Seti@home, no problem. Also, who buys their GPUs/CPUs thinking of babying them? Really now on an enthusiast forum where we overvolt & overclock? If anything, the whole point is using your hardware, not running benchmarks for e-peen. I'd rather run my GPU completely into the ground making $$$ than running 3dMark scores for e-peen. :biggrin:
Massively increased carbon footprint due to possibly the least efficient way to use a PC to earn money.
Least efficient way for PC to earn money? It requires no operator since the PC does the work. That makes it pretty efficient since it requires a person to start the system and the rest is done automatically. If you care about carbon footprint, start air drying your laundry, ban your wife from using hair dryer for her hair in the morning, sell your desktop for a laptop, etc. What kind of an argument is that?
It's basically unskilled illegal alien wages for almost nothing, you can't do something better to earn a couple extra bucks a day? Why not skip a pop/bottled water or two and maybe that fries you don't actually need, you'd make as much and not increase your carbon footprint at the same time.
Alternatively, do all of those things you described + bitcoin mining. The free money from BTC will then be used to purchase goods and services in the economy. That money will go to companies making products, including future GPU upgrades, or any other products. The employees working at those companies will get paid which means their families have $ to eat, have a place to live, etc. Your argument about carbon footprint being negatively impacted is negated by the positive benefits of having a stronger economy driven by consumer spending. A strong economy has a positive impact on social welfare for society as employed labor force is less likely to engage in violent crime (etc.) or be depressed. BTC is then used to purchase various goods and services and the companies making those goods and services pay taxes to the gov't. If you are that worried about carbon footprint, wouldn't you stop playing videogames since your argument automatically assumes that if I choose btc mining selfishly over carbon footprint, you do the same by choosing videogames over carbon footprint? I do not understand your point because it assumes that it is OK to burn electricity for videogames but NOT ok to do so for generating coins (or doing any other GPU related work such as distributed computing, etc.).
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