Bitcoin Forum

I have a problem.  I currently have a 7970, 3 6950s, a 6870, and a 6770 hashing LiteCoins for me at right about 2.00 Mhash/sec all in.  Maybe a bit more.

I know someone who wants to sell me his 4 6950's upgraded to 6970 specs for $600.  This would nearly double my hash rate, and I have enough computers laying around to support the GPUs. 

But I don't want to spend the money.  I have it, that's not the problem.  I just want to get the 4 6950/70s AND keep the money in the bank.  Can't figure out how to do that.

Sure, I could just sell the GPUs when I get tired of mining, but that's money that could be in my bank account now.

Yes, LiteCoin will eventually go up in price, so mining as many as I can now could pay off nicely later.

And I'm moving across the country in 2-1/2 months, so there'd be a lot of disassembly, packing, unpacking, and setting up all over again involved.

Talk some sense into my stupid head.  What would you do if you had the money and wanted the GPUs?

You got that in writing? :)

"Help! I'm addicted to buying GPUs!"

The first step is admitting you have a problem.  ::)

The old adage "You can't have your cake and eat it too" seems apt here.

GPU mining is pretty much Dead. Its all Asics now.

An given comparison.

You can go and spend $45-$55 per Usb Block Eruptor in the Bitcoin market.
And it will yield you about 333 Mhash/Sec. They consume 2 watts each
and the size of your thumb.

Now you can go spend $300 pick up a HD 7970 at rates of 600 Mhash.
Alt mining is generally ~300% profitability, sometimes more.
http://www.coinchoose.com/

600 *3X(Profitability of scrypt) = 1800 Mhash equivalence at Bitcoin mining.
So its like 1.8 Ghash in equivalence basically for $300.

333*6= 1998 Mhash.
2Watts 6=12 Watts.


So you get more Hash rate, About 15 times less power, silent.
Size of your thumb, and its just more convenient.

GPU is DEAD. You need to move away from it.
And switch to Usb block eruptor if you want to continue mining.
And even so there are even more efficient mining ways out there.

Vinne - true, it is a risk and an investment.  It could go up or down, although from my research I believe it'll be a gradual increase in LTC price over the rest of this year.

Chaz - Yes!

Lightlord - You are referring to mining BTC, I am mining LTC.  I wouldn't put a penny into BTC mining now, ASICs or not.  

LTC difficulty - 921 this morning.

BTC difficulty, FIFTY FRICKING MILLION 800 THOUSAND!  Not.

I am not being sarcastic when I say its the size of my thumb  :)

http://puu.sh/43ABB.jpg
http://puu.sh/43ApT.jpg
http://puu.sh/43AEA.jpg
http://puu.sh/43AHF.jpg

This makes no sense, if Litecoins are going up in value you are better off buying and holding them.

If you buy them now you shield yourself from the difficulty rising and making your GPU's even more pointless.

Instead of mining $600 of Litecoin over the next several months, you can take out the variance and just buy the whole lot.

Disregard everything I said if your GPU purchase will mine $600 of Litecoins in 1 - 2 months, or if you have reason to believe that the difficulty will start to drop.

asics are only good for mining - once mining is too difficult, unless you plan to mine alt coins, you have a door stop...  at least with a GPU you can sell it (just don't tell them that you've run it, overclocked, 24/7 for the last XX months!).

Not that I'm suggesting you buy GPUs, I'd agree that mining with GPUs is on life support.

Difficulty is already factored into profitability. Litecoin's power inefficiency cancels out the higher profitability. It's like arbitrage - profitability for the latest mining tech will trend ever closer to break-even. The only way to win as a miner is with early access to new tech or huge volume that is constantly being upgraded. Selling ASICs seems to work too.

This.  Mining gear should always be measured in coins not fiat.  It doesn't matter if you are buying the GPU in fiat they have an equivelent value in LTC.

Why measure in coins?

An example say you could buy some GPUs for 100 LTC.  Now lets say over their lifespan they only mine 99 LTC.  YOU LOST.  The exchange rate in the future doesn't matter.   Why?  Because instead of spending 100 LTC on Miners you could just buy 100 LTC and thus in the future would have 100 LTC not 99.

To the OP the only reason I could see buying the 6950s would be to sell off their other cards to consolidate and simply your operation.  A long time ago (back when Bitcoin miners ran on steam power) I consolidated a hodgepodge of various cards for uniform 5970s.  3x5970s per rig. 8 rigs exactly the same.  24x 5970s = 48 GPU cores.   It would worth it from a management standpoint.  

I'd get em.  I'm crazy though and like to mine and buy coins.

With all the alt-coins out there, some are crazy-pump-and-dump-profitable, and there is money to be made with GPU mining.

Never mind the silly folk like lightlord that spout GPU mining is dead.  It's as if they don't even know that alt-coins or Cryptsy exist... lol

GPU mining is dead ... for BTC.  Not for scrypt coins.  GPUs are the only option for scrypt coins for the foreseeable future.

Now, some had mentioned simply buying the LTC and holding it.  Here's why that is a bad idea.

Let's say I take $600 and buy 200 LTC (using round numbers for this example).  I now have $600 of my money tied up in LTC.  

If LTC prices fall, sad face :(, if the price rises, happy face! ;D

But my dollars are at risk, creating mental tension, of which I don't need more.  Plus it's kinda neat to come home to an apartment of computers whirring away (I'm single and the girlfriend doesn't know JACK about computers).

Now if I buy the GPUs, my money is in them, but it can be extracted in a later eBay sale.  Then there are the mining costs, such as electricity and buying the computer hardware to run the GPU's, but that is a lot less $.  

The GPUs make me money by mining LTC, AND they have their value intact.  So I can gain money from the LTC I mine, and still have my original $600 at much less risk of total loss.

Read the book "Rich Dad Poor Dad" sometime, the guy who wrote it uses a lot of this method of letting your money work for you to make more money, which is essentially what I'm doing by mining LTC.

  

The above calculation only considers the present situation. It does not take into account the huge rise of difficulty of BTC, but small rise of difficulty in alternate coins such as LTC. At present, mining profit of alternate coin is 3 times of BTC, but in the future, it could 10s or 100s of times.

With some altcoins having 200%-300% the profitability of BTC, why is anyone even mining BTC anymore?  They may be committed to it now, having just waited a year for their ASIC to arrive, but even so, I'd eBay the thing and go where the money is.

This weekend, my side business of computer repair work has jobs scheduled that will get me $580 in CASH income.  So one point of view would be to say that since this is easy work for me, just pretend like these computer jobs didn't happen, the money just showed up, then the GPUs are essentially FREE!

Then the other train of thought kicks in and says YOU IDIOT, that is $600 that could be in your bank account right now!

This is the mental torture I am dealing with right now.

Well given the average interest rate of bank accounts... YOU IDIOT! :)

I'd rather have 6 BTC than $600 just sitting around in my bank account...

Because if you want bitcoin to have value, you need to have someone doing the work, keeping the transactions flowing, even if the payout is minimal.

As far as value, GPUs would be a safer bet, they won't decease (or increase) as much as BTC could. But if BTC remains strong, it could just as easily be profitable to just bank the BTC in the long run.

First of all, don't buy used 6950s for $150 each when there are plenty of deals for NEW 7950s that are $220.

Would agree with this. 5xxx series or 7xxxx series will be much more efficient.
If you're using GPU's to mine, I'd suggest mining on middlecoin or something similar (i.e. Multipool). At least you'd earn much more BTC than you would mining straight BTC.

I know this has nothing to do with mining but you could join a PC gaming forum and build yourself the ultimate gaming rig or rigs and sell them for double what the rigs cost you. The more power, the more a gamer will want it.

Trust me, I am half gamer and half miner.

GPUs ARE AWESOME!!! YOU NEED TO BUY MORE!!!!

Wait, what?  Building PCs is so easy... people pay THAT much of a premium for a prebuilt computer?

I looked a few years ago into making that a hobby/business, but it seemed like the mark-up just wasn't significant without a cool custom case a la Alienware.

I'd say skip the 6 series and get some 7 series cards.

I've got 24 7970s and 7 7950s, and I sill find myself looking for deals on local classifieds for more. I'm addicted.

I'm looking at newegg and tiger direct to find the best deal on 7950s.  eBay is ridiculous, 7950s are selling there for nearly new prices.

Yeah, I'd advise NOT going through ebay for new cards (though, great for ancient cards like the 5xxx series).
Main reason would be, you don't get the rebates, free games, accessories, warranty, etc. You can just sell the games for a few bucks and it'd be a better deal new than used on eBay.

Its not profitable sadly. Unless you get amazing deals on components.

There are a few companies that have made it doing it this way but I have tried and the margins just were not there.

I did however take my old mining rigs. Spend $100 upgrading them and sell them for close to my purchase price. After the components had payed themselves off of course. I had picked up some budget low power phenom 2 x6's for $90 each. Those payed for themselves with YAC alone mining the first 3 days. Then my 5850's payed for themselves mining CHN and FTC in the first few days. I just went out Bought a bunch of cheap motherboards 4Gb ram per rig. 800w power supplys, semprons and a ton more 5850's. 4 cards per rig. Undervolted and slightly overclocked 1.4Mh (scrypt) per rig

Now im upgrading the cpu, downgrading the PSU, buying cheap cases and selling half as 2x5850 with a 6 core for $500 to buy some 7950 rigs

You must be new to this subforum.

just negotiate 400 bucks and you'll be fine.

LiteCoin might eventually go up in price, but there is also possibility of going down in price.

You're missing something important. Is the 300% profitability constant? or will it increase over time. For example lately LTC is hovering around 900 difficulty lately, not changing very much. it's possible that you can still mine about the same ballpark amount of LTC in 6 months as you do now, however the BTC difficulty is going up like crazy, you will definitely get much much less BTC for GH in future. Food for thought.

In summary: Dear everybody doing mining maths, the mining numbers right now can not be use to calculate future profits without taking into account changes in difficulty.

A box from Newegg showed up yesterday with 3 brand new HIS Ice-Q 7950's in it.  $703 total !   :o

hehe, good luck. I've had the same GPU addiction for years, however cooling costs are what have prevented me from completely filling my house with rigs.

I have partially solved my cooling issue. :)

I took an old trunk, like the kind your grandma keeps at the end of her bed and fills it with blankets and stuff. I attached a furnace blower (squirlcage fan) from a fullsized house furnace. I then stuck my 2x milkcrate rigs inside. I have a hole in the opposite end. It pumps so much air its crazy. I put the hole thing out on my porch that is pretty open, lots of windows. Even at 100f outside the hottest card is only 83c and the coldest being 64c.

I'm going to make some custom mounts with 1x1s in the box and put the components directly in the box, this should allow me more cards and more boards. I'm thinking I could put atleast 12-15 video cards in that old trunk and keep them all below 85c at 110f outside. :D

My ac went out so I had to macgiver this shit.

http://youtu.be/0de0aEpyTJQ
 (http://youtu.be/0de0aEpyTJQ)
http://i67.photobucket.com/albums/h320/hendo420/IMG_20130824_133620_zps68543864.jpg (http://s67.photobucket.com/user/hendo420/media/IMG_20130824_133620_zps68543864.jpg.html)

http://i67.photobucket.com/albums/h320/hendo420/IMG_20130824_134045_zps0c6a4837.jpg (http://s67.photobucket.com/user/hendo420/media/IMG_20130824_134045_zps0c6a4837.jpg.html)

http://i67.photobucket.com/albums/h320/hendo420/IMG_20130824_134041_zps780d363b.jpg (http://s67.photobucket.com/user/hendo420/media/IMG_20130824_134041_zps780d363b.jpg.html)

Yes, those barrel fans will move air like a 'MA!

(barrel fans, squirrel cage fans, furnace fans, etc - same thing different names)

Lotsa volume! ;D