Cryptocoin Mining?

[LightRider]

1. It's current value roughly $6. You can argue otherwise; but then i can try to convince you that the rock i found yesturday in my yard has a value of $1,000,000,000 since i can use it to hit intruder over the head and potentially save my life.

Well, at least we can agree that "value" is a figment of our imagination.

 

[pcm81]

Well, at least we can agree that "value" is a figment of our imagination.

If to you bitcoins have "value" in excess of $6.6 please let me know. I'll buy some and resell them to you.

 

[taltamir]

Well, at least we can agree that "value" is a figment of our imagination.

Perhaps, but as a figment of the imagination of society as a whole it can be quantified, you saying "it should be worth more" doesn't matter, as a singular person who is not exceptionally wealthy or powerful you cannot change it.
Money traders explicitly make their profit in cases where there is a discrepancy in value in different regions/currencies and quickly equalize it (as people basically catch on and become willing to pay more / willing to pay less until it equalizes).

If to you bitcoins have "value" in excess of $6.6 please let me know. I'll buy some and resell them to you.

Exactly.

 

[Puppies04]

2. There are energy sources that do not cost money.

Your parents basement?

 

[taltamir]

Your parents basement?

You would use your parent's money like that? Also, if you are stealing from your parents you still get a choice between spending it on bitcoin mining or just keeping it.

 

[LightRider]

If you don't think rocks are "valuable", try living on Jupiter.

 

[taltamir]

If you don't think rocks are "valuable", try living on Jupiter.

who are you talking to?
Also, if you tried living on jupiter you would die.
No breathable atmosphere, no food, no water, not the right temp, too much gravity, and no actual ground to live on (its a gas giant, you keep on falling until you are crushed to death by gas pressure).
Best you can do is low orbit around it in the future some day.

 

[pcm81]

So, i spent last 16 hours mining. Got 0.54 btc. This comes out to be about 0.78 btc per day. Which is about $4.5/day. Now i have unbearably hot office and i am sure my AC+PC electic bills will eat that $4.5 right up. shutting down.

 

[Dark Shroud]

If you were mining on all four of your GPUs you should have done better then that.

 

[pcm81]

If you were mining on all four of your GPUs you should have done better then that.

Mined on 3 gpus 1.15GHash/sec . Using primary gpu for a long time sometimes causes system to not wake up from screen saver after long "left alone mining session". I spent about 2 month mining non-stop in 2011 on this system.

 

[Vesku]

Sounds about right at 1.2GH/s. Doesn't make sense if you have to run AC nor if running an enthusiast CPU like he is.

 

[pcm81]

Sounds about right at 1.2GH/s. Doesn't make sense if you have to run AC nor if running an enthusiast CPU like he is.

Doing some basic math it woult take me 10 months of non-stop mining at current profit margins to break even on any new hardware builds including FPGAs. Not worth the hassle or the risk of investment.

 

[taltamir]

I want to hear from someone who tried running this in the winter to subsidize his heating.
In theory it sounds like a good idea and free money.
I never mined but I will next time its really cold.

 

[pcm81]

I want to hear from someone who tried running this in the winter to subsidize his heating.
In theory it sounds like a good idea and free money.
I never mined but I will next time its really cold.

Your main system would essentially be a 300 watt heater that pays you $1 per 24 hr to run it minus electric cost.

 

[Chiropteran]

So, i spent last 16 hours mining. Got 0.54 btc. This comes out to be about 0.78 btc per day. Which is about $4.5/day. Now i have unbearably hot office and i am sure my AC+PC electic bills will eat that $4.5 right up. shutting down.

I'd be shocked and amazed if running one computer increased your electric bill by over $120/month.

But then again you apparently have a CPU that uses 200W idle, so maybe you are a special case.

 

[Chiropteran]

I want to hear from someone who tried running this in the winter to subsidize his heating.
In theory it sounds like a good idea and free money.
I never mined but I will next time its really cold.

I did this last year. I live in a 750Sq ft condo, and I *never* turned on the gas furnace last winter. My mining computers kept the temperature comfortably warm.

However, it was something of a mild winter.

 

[pcm81]

I'd be shocked and amazed if running one computer increased your electric bill by over $120/month.

But then again you apparently have a CPU that uses 200W idle, so maybe you are a special case.

its from the future... the cpu that is.

You do the math: my UPS reports 1.1-1.2 KW draw; add in the AC cost with 75F - 80F outside temp.

electricity here is 14c/kwhr and i get 1400MHps with this rig.

 

[taltamir]

I'd be shocked and amazed if running one computer increased your electric bill by over $120/month.

He ran it on 3 GPUs not one CPU.
So thats about 900 watt right there and goes from turning off at night to on 24/7.
So if you average those extra hours of idleness in too you get basically 1000 watt extra. +~500 watt for AC (average) to move that heat outside. Its 1.5kwh per hour. So 1080 kwh per month. @ 10c per kwh its 108$/mo
At 14c per kwh (last years national average) its 151.2$/mo.

Your main system would essentially be a 300 watt heater that pays you $1 per 24 hr to run it minus electric cost.

Right, which is more money in my pocket.

EDIT:

my UPS reports 1.1-1.2 KW draw

I guess my estimation was too low then. How much does it idle at? Did you turn it off at night or does it run 24/7 regardless?

Also, is that 1.1-1.2 KW from the wall or from the devices connected to the UPS? Cause the UPS itself introduces further inefficiency and increases the draw at the wall (And produces heat).
Its worth checking, if you could please plug an electricity monitor like kill-a-watt and let me know I will give you exact math.

 

[pcm81]

He ran it on 3 GPUs not one CPU.
So thats about 900 watt right there and goes from turning off at night to on 24/7.
So if you average those extra hours of idleness in too you get basically 1000 watt extra. +~500 watt for AC (average) to move that heat outside. Its 1.5kwh per hour. So 1080 kwh per month. @ 10c per kwh its 108$/mo
At 14c per kwh (last years national average) its 151.2$/mo.



Right, which is more money in my pocket.

EDIT:


I guess my estimation was too low then.
Also, is that 1.1-1.2 KW from the wall or from the devices connected to the UPS? Cause the UPS itself introduces further inefficiency and increases the draw at the wall (And produces heat).
Its worth checking, if you could please plug an electricity monitor like kill-a-watt and let me know I will give you exact math.

the 1.2 kw is the output of ups. This is for running 4 GPUs, so 1400MHps at 1.2+ KW. I have 2 APC UPS units in parallel, not exceeding power rating of either. I'd guesstimate efficiency of ups is 95-98 percent... since post of the time its just a pass-through, not charge/discharge cycle.

Bottom line; it would cost me money to mine, unless i turn off A/C. With A/C off i'd pay $4 per day electric and make about $4.5 in bit coins. $15/month profit is not worth hot office.

FPGAs which yield 800MHash at 80watt cost $560 and would take about 8 month to pay off.

EDIT:
Actually FPGAs would take 10mo to break even since yu have to add in the power cost of pc they are connected to.
http://bitcoinx.com/profit/index.php

 

[Chiropteran]

the 1.2 kw is the output of ups. This is for running 4 GPUs, so 1400MHps at 1.2+ KW. I have 2 APC UPS units in parallel, not exceeding power rating of either. I'd guesstimate efficiency of ups is 95-98 percent... since post of the time its just a pass-through, not charge/discharge cycle.

Bottom line; it would cost me money to mine, unless i turn off A/C. With A/C off i'd pay $4 per day electric and make about $4.5 in bit coins. $15/month profit is not worth hot office.

FPGAs which yield 800MHash at 80watt cost $560 and would take about 8 month to pay off.

Are you sure you are even reading the UPS correctly? What is your computer doing when the UPS reports total power usage at 1.2kw? What does the power usage go down to at idle?

I'm not calling you a liar, but power usage fluctuates a LOT on any typical computer, as unused parts (CPU, or GPU) will not pull nearly as much power while idle.

I just don't see 1.2kw making any sense from mining alone, even given dual 6990 video cards. Are you under-clocking the RAM? Are you reducing voltage? There are lots of standard practices that make bitcoin mining more efficient that you could be using.

What is your computer doing when you aren't bitcoin mining? I can understand being upset about the power usage if you are talking about going from 0W to 1200W, but if your computer is drawing 900W idle and 1200W mining the difference isn't nearly as significant. Given your overclocking and dual GPU setup you don't come across as the kind of person who turns off the computer every time you walk away from it, but maybe I'm wrong.


Simple napkin math says a 6990 should use around 375W max, so 750 for the two of them. That is absolute max, like you get from playing with furmark, bitcoin mining doesn't stress the card that hard. Also that is stock, if you are properly underclocking the memory and reducing voltage for mining it should be significantly less. CPU *should* be 20W or less at idle. All in all with proper mining tweaks you shouldn't be anywhere close to 1.2KW, you should be around 700W max.

 

[IGemini]

I want to hear from someone who tried running this in the winter to subsidize his heating.
In theory it sounds like a good idea and free money.
I never mined but I will next time its really cold.

How well a machine heats will depend on the space you're heating, among other things.

Bitcoining last winter kept my room fairly warm ~70F without using any additional heat, which is roughly 10'x12' with two full-sized DH windows. That one night when the poclbm bug kicked in, the temp dropped by 10 degrees.

 

[pcm81]

That is absolute max, like you get from playing with furmark, bitcoin mining doesn't stress the card that hard.

That is where you are wrong. 3DMark uses Xfire, so GPU0 schedules overhead tasks to GPUs 1,2,3. As the result GPU0 runs at 100% while other GPUs are much lower. Bitcoin mining runs separate tasks on each GPU using 100% of each GPU power.

For reference i had 18 degrees C difference on main GPU from running 3d mark to running BOINC client, which is similar load to bitcoin mining. The 18 degree delta was on air, so probably less with my water cooling. The point is that 3dmark does not stress your GPU as much as bitcoin or any other GPU compute app does.

 

[taltamir]

For reference i had 18 degrees C difference on main GPU from running 3d mark to running BOINC client, which is similar load to bitcoin mining. The 18 degree delta was on air, so probably less with my water cooling. The point is that 3dmark does not stress your GPU as much as bitcoin or any other GPU compute app does.

Which is why its such a load of hork that nvidia and AMD are calling those REALISTIC testing programs "power viruses". I have even played video games that stressed my GPU more then 3dmax did. And any realistic compute project will stress it far more then any game, maxing it out.

 

[Chiropteran]

That is where you are wrong. 3DMark uses Xfire, so GPU0 schedules overhead tasks to GPUs 1,2,3. As the result GPU0 runs at 100% while other GPUs are much lower. Bitcoin mining runs separate tasks on each GPU using 100% of each GPU power.

For reference i had 18 degrees C difference on main GPU from running 3d mark to running BOINC client, which is similar load to bitcoin mining. The 18 degree delta was on air, so probably less with my water cooling. The point is that 3dmark does not stress your GPU as much as bitcoin or any other GPU compute app does.

FURMARK.

I never said 3dmark.

Anyway, any comments on the rest of my post? Is it 1200W full load or idle? There should be a difference between real full load and GPU fully loaded with CPU idle.

 

[pcm81]

FURMARK.

I never said 3dmark.

Anyway, any comments on the rest of my post? Is it 1200W full load or idle? There should be a difference between real full load and GPU fully loaded with CPU idle.

My bad, I glanced at is and read it as "FutureMark".. which is 3dm...
The difference between mining and full load would be about 150W.

~1.1KW is mining
~1.2KW is full load

More at the wall since that is the power draw ratings of UPS outputs.