Bitcoin Forum

I'm just curious how many people are at the point where their miners have mined enough to get a free rig. For those miners did you go for reliability (buying from newegg) or go for cheap (buying used). The reason I ask is because I'm almost to the point where I can created a free rig and I'm curious what other people's strategies have been. In all honesty I'm thinking of just going for newegg so I have a warranty and buying 6950's that are reference card and the shaders can be unlocked. I realize this goes against conventional wisdom of 6950's are inefficient but I'd prefer it to used 5870's.

So what have you guys done?

It is only free if you ignore http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opportunity_cost

Pushing that to the side I've always been curious what card do you tend to use the most or is it a mix? I know you have a huge megahash or should I say gigahash but I have never heard what you use. Also did you take your original roi out so at the very least it didn't cost you anything?

Too busy gossiping on forums, so I have not calculated my roi yet  ;)

I mostly use 5970, 5870, 6990's

He started out (more or less) by selling hashing power contracts, which significantly helps ROI (if you rent 1GHash for 3 months at a price that buys 1GHash of hardware, that's basically a 3 month ROI guarantee).

I have a pair of 5770s, so I'm slowly mining, but my coins are being used for putting together a new gaming machine.  I'm getting together things like case/power-supply and things like that right now that don't lose value as quickly and can last a few years as-is, and then will try to earn roughly $1000 worth of coins overtime to get a kick-ass (or pair of kick-ass) video cards, and then maybe a new proc/mobo/ram around that time, too.
 
My wife doesn't like my gaming hobby, so this is legit since to her I'm not spending "real" money (minus electricity costs)

That's gonna take you a while.

I've lost most of my savings through BTC from buying hardware and I don't think I'll ever get that money back.

That's unfortunate what kind of rigs did you build? and when did you start building these rigs?

Bought our rigs for free... wat?  ???

I meant through bitcoins. If you have mined enough to build another rig with the coins you mined.

We have mined enough to build about 10 additional rigs after covering initial rig x 4 costs. We did not build beyond initial 4 rigs though, just holding now.

Oh... well, sorta.  Not through Bitcoins though, but I've made more than I've spent on my HW from mining Ixcoins and Solidcoins.

i sold 30 coins at 30$ each during the last rally and built a new gaming machine..i5 2500k, p8p67 motherboard, 4gb ram and 2 reference 6950s unlocked :)

oh wait..i already had one 6950..

my original rig was two 6870's, which has paid for itself over the last four months.

i used my last cash out to buy a 5830 for my PC. so essentially, all my BTC hardware is paid for (even calculating in cost of power).

Well, looks like the gravy train just derailed.

$4.80 per Bitcoin now!

With my 20 cards, I'm making about $2.75 a day now TOTAL, counting electricity (but not counting fees).

Yup sad day, about the same for me making like 1 dollar today, 9 dollar bitcoins are looking so good right now

hey guys, just wondering cos I'm curious.... but what.... I say "WHAT?" in the wild world of fu**ing sports ever possessed you to buy all that mining gear thus invest so much?

I ask as I've done some stoooopid things but usually when drunk.... such as getting my motorbike license

20 cards?!? really??

Some of them date back to late May of this year, others to June.

I still have 27% of my investment to recoup -- don't know that I'll be able to do that now, outside of selling equipment.
I only bought equipment though at good prices, and when there was money to be made. I stopped expanding right before the big crash of August 6.

Note -- that 27% figure is counting ALL expenses, with the utmost precision. An accountant couldn't be more anal than my spreadsheet  ;)

Want to know whose sanity you should question?  The guys who bought 2, 4 or even 8 $500 5970's from NewEgg TWO WEEKS AGO when BTC was only $8 or $9 and seemed to be trending down.

I mean, you can't sell a $500 card very easily on the aftermarket. People with that kind of money would prefer to pick their own card, buy NEW, and get a warranty.

Much easier to sell a $100 or even $200 card used.

fair comment AngelusWebDesign, your talking about large mining deployment through thoughtful investment.  I'd imagine though you made that investment in the hope of returns.

TBF I was initially too, but then common sense kicked in and I've kept it to within "hobby" costs ever since.... my £40 GBP on electricity would only be spent on Vodka anyways :-)

whats w/ all the cosby hackers where are my coins bill

the forum got hacked, bro.

All my rigs have been fully paid for by BTC and NMC mining, plus a 4 day trip to Amsterdam, which involves copious amounts of cream ;)

I have over 2 dozen cards.  And alot of hardware that was bought haphazardly when I originally started.  Like 5 750TX power supplies which was originally bought but then replaced with 1200 watt ones.  Alot of extra 'others' sitting around as well.  I never bothered to return them and just keeping them cause I'll find uses for them eventually.  Including some good cases that was bought as well.  UPS, a very good quality dell switch, KVM and some extra AC units... basically everything I needed for a data center install.

Everything (even the extras) all bought new from newegg.  Been running for awhile and I've been running pure profit now.  Everything I've bought has been paid for.  So it's all just free money now.  (Electric is free for me)

I don't even bother tweaking or overclocking my cards.  Stability is rock for me.  I've only had to touch the rigs once in the past 2 months.  I was worried about Irene, but nothing.  UPSes kept everything going strong all week long.

I know things can be improved easily.  Lots of things I got are considered 'wasted' for bitcoins but I like toys.  UPSs, KVM, smart switches were all a completely unnecessary expense but what the hell?  I figured after everything is done I'll still have those left over which can easily be used elsewhere.  Figured at the time I bought it, if I recouped my costs, then it's just free hardware.  I calculated everything very conservatively at the time of purchase and figured it be great if I can break even.  But to cross that line and now actually make money... GRAVY!

Now please point out WHEN you started --

Let's put it this way -- I bet you didn't buy most of your stuff in July (nevermind August) or you would NOT have broken even by now, especially with the extra, non-necessary hardware you mentioned purchasing.

I slowly built up, starting in late May, and I'm still only 74% paid off.

How do you manage to get free electricity for 25 or more cards?  
That basically means that somebody doesn't miss $450 to $500 every month because, as everyone knows, electricity is never FREE -- though sometimes someone else pays for it.

Your parents too rich and/or proud to hit you up for the $450+ it's costing them every month?

Seriously, that should be more than a blip or "noise level" for most power bills -- even a company should notice that, nevermind an individual.

Bought a 5970 which died about a week later then I bought a 5850 which is still going strong but I don't think I'll ever get my money back on that with the electricity prices around here.

Yeah, anyone buying in as a BTC miner from July will have not have made their money back, and will take a good long time doing so, but they can

1) monitor the different cryptocurrencies and move to the most profitable
2) take risks by buying the currencies and hope they go up in value (the best way to make money... but takes balls of adamantium)

That's exactly what I have done since getting in on this at the start of April. Just need to keep on monitoring the market, and take the odd calculated risk or two with funds you can afford to lose.

It was the NMC bonanza way back that made my money back on my equipment. Luckily I had discovered it some weeks beforehand, and took a risk on gathering a good amount of coin. Then people on this forum found out about it and slowly but surely the message spread, then NMC mining went through the roof and so did the price. Amazing! I made a crazy amount of money in that time. Then there was the two day boost we had with NMC... made a nice bit then.

And just recently, the SLC run gave me another nice lot of money... made a couple of hundred on IOC as well, but that does not look too healthy at the moment. It needs far better promotion and support. I completely missed the IOX one, if there was one.
Just in case anyone is interested, SLC has been halted for 2 weeks while security updates are applied http://solidcointalk.org/topic/211-solidcoin-shutting-down-at-block-35250/
I think you can still mine coins, but all the ones you gather after block 35250 are not counted.

One thing that amazes me, AngelusWebDesign, is that this whole crypticurrency thing is still an earner. I would have bet that it would have been dead by now. For miners at least.

At the moment, even though IOC has been flagging and is in dire need of decent support and development, I have most of my miners gathering that coin. Worth a gamble :)