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Just as the title implies, are the singles worth it if you dont have to worry about electricity costs? I know they are very efficient compared to GPUs in terms of mh/w but I have a set cost for electricity where I live sooooo...?

I ordered one even though I pay a fixed monthly price for electricity. I don't have the room to keep machines all over the place (my fiance would kill me) and the heat from cards causes problems in the summer. So I'm just running two 6970's in my main PC and then will run one of these.

FPGA's really only make sense because of their cost savings over time due to power savings.

If you have fixed rate or "free" power, GPU's are going to be your best bet because Mhash/w doesn't come into the equation for you. The only factor you'd be looking at would be Mhash/$.

Simply put: no.

If you have free electricity (and thus free AC to cool them) then GPU offer higher MH/$ which is all that matters.

A couple of exceptions:
a) you have free electricity but it is limited.  FPGA would allow more MH/s before hitting you free "cap".
b) you have free electricity but that may change in near future (say <1 year) like a student about to graduate.
c) you have free electricity but a low WAP*.  Nearly silent FPGA can operate a much lower WAP than a buzzing, heat puking GPU farm can.


* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wife_acceptance_factor

The SI unit would be the SOAS (Significant other acceptance factor) but lets face it Americans are never going to accept metric.

I would add:

d) you have free electricity but low current service

I'm in a high rise condo and don't have 200 amp service like many houses.

So even though I have "free" electricity, I only have so much I can pull. I certainly can't add another air conditioner to deal with the extra heat.

Haha, but wouldn't that be WAF and SOAF? ;)

I think you should be considering the self acceptance factor for the same reason that your wife might not like the GPU farm. :) My wife didn't really mind the GPUs, but I was the one most wanting to turn them off. If I had free electricity, they would probably still be on, though...

Thank you for all the replies, Do you guys have any recommendation for a card to buy in place of the BFL single?

5970 would be a good one to look at.  I think it pulls something like 600 MH/s.

It will easily pull much more than that when overclocked...
And is efficient in terms of MH/W compared to most other cards.

And searching for one will drive you insane. Good luck!

e) you don't like the noise/heat of a rig with GPUs
f) you want to mine in your regular computer while you use it
g) you want to buy lots of them (since you stack them all in the same computer, it would probably be cheaper than the equivalent Ghash/s in GPUs+Mobo+PSU)

Has anyone confirmed that a computer game could be played just fine while a BFL single mines in the background?


I get 750 mhash/s with my 5970 and I think that 700-800 mhash/s is typical.

I've always played computer games while my computer mines.  I use an old guiminer though, so it's not quite as fast in terms of MHs as some of the latest and greatest miners, but it lets me play games while mining, so I don't have to try and remember to turn it back on when I'm done.

What we had in mind were other issues of GPUs such as noise, heat, complete GPU failure due to heavy load, Fan failure which
seems to be common, equipments required to get the GPU to mine (MB, RAM, PCI-E Slots and/or risers), expensive PSUs which
must feed the whole system and space occupation. I'm not sure how accurate this statement is, bust most of the time you need
to Flash the card, some overclocking on the GPU itself and underclocking in its RAM is also involved. Some sort of heat evacuation system
is also required if you are in a closed area. Summer seems to be problematic as well, as it will be more difficult to cool down a 300W
Graphic card in the summer. 

The difference is that with 10 singles, you will have 8,320MH/s processing power at 830 Watts (Less if you use a very high efficiency PSU).
It will not generate unbearable noise or overheat. Only a single low-end computer is needed, and your're ready to mine...


Regards,

Can you provide a link to one of these very high efficiency PSU?

Well the Bitcoin community has a lot more experience in heavy duty PSU. Any PSU that has
above 90% efficiency, is a high-efficiency PSU I would say.


Regards,

Even with "free" electricity you quickly run into the fact that your house is probably not wired for unlimited draw so you quickly realize that you can't run all the ACs you'd need to cool massive amounts of mining power.  Even just mining with 2 GPUs going my apartment gets quite warm (though my apartment is warm in general).  Probably gonna put my next rig somewhere cooler than my own apartment but nonetheless you do run out of power at some point.

Read my previous threads, I outline whether it's worth it or not.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=67701.0

Based on your imaginary 5.5 cent electricity?  I thought you had stopped all that nonsense?

That's about what I pay for my peak rate, per kWh.  Off-peak is about $.01 cheaper, but I also get stuck with a "demand" fee of something like $15 per kW.  During the summer my electric bill was still around $300-400 with my 900W mining box and a/c going 24/7 :(

WTF are you a retard DeathandTaxes? I clearly told you that you are on my ignore list, now stop trying to talk to me retard.

What the fuck is so goddamned imaginary about 5.5 cents kWh for 5 years.

Yeah but he linked to his actual cost which was 4.2 cents (w/ 5.5 cent cap) on GENERATION ONLY.  :)  The link he provided clearly said transmission, distribution, connection, demand charges, taxes, and fees extra.  Still he likely was too busy making a million dollars a second playing online poker to actually read his own link (even after it was pointed out to him).

The most attractive property of FPGA miner for me is low heat and low noise. Of course with advanced cooler or even water cooling, the problem could be less for GPUs, but still an issue

Yeah, a lot of people don't seem to understand that their base rate goes on top of aquisition and transmission charges, which are usually the lion's share of the bill. I sure as hell wasn't getting $.0702 electricity in central LA...worked out to more than double that in reality.

Read this page: http://www.ladwp.com/ladwp/cms/ladwp004844.jsp and this page: http://www.ladwp.com/ladwp/cms/ladwp002256.jsp to see what I am talking about.

With the thermal issues you guys have already been having, what makes you think that the singles won't be prone to the exact same issue, perhaps even an exacerbated version of it? Or are your fans special?