Bitcoin Forum

Please see the second post of this thread for the full story. The first post now contains records of current and past loans and current and inbound hardware.

I currently have the following hardware running:
14x HD 5830 generating 4300 MH/s
5x HD 5870 generating 1800 MH/s
4x HD 5850 generating 1300 MH/s
4x HD 5970 generating 2800 MH/s
1x HD 6870x2 generating 600 MH/s
Total: ~10800 MH/s.

I have the following inbound as of April 28th:
Gigabyte 990FXA-UD5
AMD reference socket AM3 CPU heatsink

Parts in stock:
4x HD 5970
2x HD 5850
Maximus IV Gene-Z + 2600K
~3500 MH/s.

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Loans requested:
March:

• 50 BTC to fund two HD 5830s from a lot I am purchasing.
• Receive 50 BTC on 20th of March.
• Pay 55 BTC on the 19th of April or earlier. Repaid as one lump sum.
• Fulfilled.
• Paid.

April:

• 162 BTC to fund a 2x HD 5970 rig.
• Received 162 BTC on 9th of April.
• Pay 183 BTC on the 23rd of May or earlier. Repaid over two payments.
• Fulfilled.

May:

• ~200 BTC to fund 2x BFL Singles.
• Will line up funding early May. Plan to order the singles by mid May if BFL delivers their rev 3 Singles by then.
• If BFL fails to deliver rev 3 Singles I will invest in another 1.5 GH/s of GPUs.

• Funding from outside the BTC community was sourced. Future BTC loans are currently not needed.

Loans acquired:
162 BTC from anonymous. Acquired April 9th. 183 BTC to be paid by May 23rd.

Loans repaid:
50 BTC from IBM (http://"https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=61756.0"). Acquired March 19th. 55 BTC to be paid by April 20th.

This was the original post. Archiving to the second post.

With the cards inbound and the existing cards this should put me somewhere in the 7-8 GH/s range. That, at current difficulties is just a tad over 5 BTC/day.

Since I have zero reputation within the BTC community, I'd like to start small and gradually work my way to the point where I am funding large scale expansions of this farm. Eventually I'll be shifting over to FPGA builds as I close in on the power cap of the building and my own ability to pay the power bill between cycles of selling BTC.

Ideally I'd be looking at loans starting near the middle of the current month and ending near the middle of the following month. This would give me time to assemble the inbound hardware and have it mine towards the loan principle and interest. Loan sizes would be slightly underneath the total BTC capable of being mined within a 1 month period so that the existing hardware will fund the principle and the inbound hardware would fund the interest. Excess coins would be saved for the next expansion or sold to cover rent/power.

I believe that covers it. I've been warned there'll be a fair share of trolling due to my noob status within the community so.. bring on the trolls.

Q/A:
How can we trust you?
I'm a supermod over at XtremeSystems -> link to profile (http://"http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/member.php?17665-XC-gomeler")
I have a relatively inactive heatware account. Still shows a long history of good sales. -> link to account (http://"http://heatware.com/eval.php?id=64527")
If you need more evidence I can provide it. Those two should be a good start.

Why not get a loan from a bank?
Banks don't accept BTC. By funding through the BTC community I can receive small loans very quickly that will fit the expansion schedule that I expect to maintain for this summer. Short of a massive spike in difficulty within one of the loan periods, I will be able to cover the loans and interest from the output of the mining operation.

Why not invest in a mining coop?
I like mining as a hobby. The logistics around running such a setup and wringing out every bit of efficiency out of the hardware is a bit cathartic after spending years overclocking hardware for raw MHz. I'm just trading a shockingly large liquid nitrogen bill for an equally large electricity bill.

Why not start with FPGAs?
MH/$ is currently too low. I plan on sucking up cheap 5830s at ~2.7 MH/$ and reasonable 5970s at ~2.2 MH/$ to quickly expand my income while I wait for 22nm based FPGAs to hit the market in Q4/2012-Q1/2013. Once that happens I'll likely liquidate my GPU farm and roll the proceeds in to a FPGA farm hosted in my residence.

If any other interesting questions pop up I'll append them to this.

Is your pool able to provide some type of verification that you are mining within a reasonable expected rate for those cards? (graphs showing MH/s over time, which is available for us to view would be great!)

I currently mine for BTCGuild although as I scale out I will need to look in to either solo mining or mining for a pool with fewer/no fees. Need to cut out that 5% loss that I currently suffer with BTCGuild. Have you any suggestions?

Seems more legit then other lendees lately.

edit: lendees not lenders, thanks Patrick!

How many coins per month are you pulling in?

He pm'd me earlier  (John, it's lendee rather than lender - the lenders know what we're like).

Sensible approach - looking to establish credibility.  Watching for now.

EclipseMC is hop-proof and operates on purely optional fees. Inaba's a pretty decent fellow, too, and quickly solves problems. There's p2pool, but I haven't tested it enough to know how payout compares.

Giving us your BTC Guild API key would allow us to be sure you're mining there at the speed you claim, making the loan seem pretty safe. AFAIK (and asked other lenders), there's no risk to you in sharing that outside of us being able to snoop.

ETA: Damn. BW jumped on this first.

Surprised(or not) that this forum doesn't permit attachments. Will upload the output graphs from BTCGuild in a few after I hammer out this fitment issue.


I've been mining for the last ~2 months with a 3 5970s and 6 5830s. Had some issues with a pair of 5970s that I bought but over the weekend I reconfigured the rat nest that was my waterloop and have 4 WCd 5970s on one rig. I am now re-working the rat nest that was my 6x 5830 rig to fit another card and make it easy to transport to this my new mining location. If this 7x 5830 rig works it'll likely form the building block for my farm.

That doesn't quite answer your question but I honestly have no clue how many coins I've mined in the last few months due to changing difficulties. I just pulled out 120 BTC from BTCGuild to fund some of the cards I've purchased in the last 36 hours and that took somewhere between 1 and 2 months I believe.


Yup, took your advice and posted a public thread to fund this.

IBM has sent you a PM.

I have accepted an offer from IBM for this round of funding. Original post updated with documentation. Will use this thread to contain various posts relating to this farm expansion. I'll pull down/host the graphs from BTCGuild tonight/tomorrow. Kludge and Burt can verify my output and as it changes.

Verified.

p2pool is hop-proof and fee free as well, although it has higher variance compared to centralized pools. its advantage, of course is that it's decentralized.
seconded

Going to temporarily use Dropbox for image hosting until I find a more permanent solution that I'm happy with.

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/7088842/BTC/BTCGuild_Perf_March_20_2012.png

The Gomeler_HD5970x1 is my WCd 5970 rig that I'm currently adjusting for optimal efficiency. Gomeler_HD5830x1 is temporarily hosting a pair of 5830s as I re-wire/configure the 7 slot board to host all 7 5830s. These two rigs will be the first installation in the new location and will comprise ~5 GH/s.

Ordered a pair of GD-70s and Semprons. I'm going to use these boards to host the incoming 8 cards that I've ordered in the last few days and reserve the C4F and M4A79T for testing cards/configurations at home. Liquidated all remaining BTC and am contemplating picking up another 8 HD 5830s with resulting USD + personal cash. The incoming cards minus possible HD 5830s should add another 3 GH/s and will give me a good chance to monitor thermals at the new location. No sense immediately expanding to 10 GH/s and roasting everything.

Next update over the weekend as I assemble rigs.

Minor informative bump. 3/4 of the debt from the first loan has been generated. All my hardware will be moving to the new location one week from Saturday. Looks like I'll be installing around 11 GH/s of GPUs(if this last batch shows up in time) in the new location while running 1.2 GH/s of GPUs at home. Will update in a week. Expect to pay back the first loan around the 12th of April. Now back to watching various tracking numbers like a hawk  :D

Moved some gear to my new location.

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/7088842/BTC/CCC_Farm_April_8_2012.JPG

Up to around 8.5 GH/s with gear split between two locations.

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/7088842/BTC/BTCGuild_Output_April_8_2012.png

Loan principal has been accumulated from mining efforts. The interest will be worked off tomorrow and paid in full to IBM on ~Tuesday.

Sitting on another ~3 GH/s of GPUs, just need a pair of PSUs. At my remote location(the image above) I'll be rotating the current shelf 90 degrees when I add another shelf. These will then have a pair of box fans to get some circulation going. When I eventually thermally overwhelm this location I'll begin venting heat out a pair of windows near this corner. Ambient temperatures are around 50 degrees Fahrenheit during the day and around 30 degrees Fahrenheit at night and will be that way for the next two months or so. Suffice to say the cards are quite happy with the fans barely turning over.

Very nice looking setup.

That is a big-ass fan. How hot do summers get in your area?

That's a basic box fan.  They don't blow as much as you'd think for their size.  :)

Thanks. Hoping to cram 6 rigs on 3 shelves and have a pair of those at that location by the end of April.


I'll have a high of around 80F outdoors. I've been told the interior stays in the 70s due to it being shaded and partially sunk in to the mountainside.


Yup, just using the boxfan to achieve some general airflow over the systems. They're currently setup in a less than optimal corner and I didn't want them to cook.

I wasn't faulting you, I use them as well.  WalMart special for $16.

I have updated the first post. The 50 BTC loan from IBM has been repaid. A 162 BTC loan has been secured from a party who wished to remain anonymous. This weekend should see the setup of another ~2 GH/s of hardware to push me just over 10 GH/s. Do I get a prize?

Pending news on whether BFL is actually going to ship rev 3 Singles I may or may not place an order for a pair in May. My goal was to gradually transition to FPGAs by the reward drop and this just might be the time to do it. The ~200 BTC loan mentioned for May will be sourced if 1) BFL can deliver 2) my daily income will generate greater than 200 BTC in 30 days.

Be back in a few days with updates on the 2 GH/s expansion.


No worries, I was just explaining just in case someone wasn't familiar with box fans and their purpose in life.

Repaid early, great customer, would lend again.

The expansion has been a bit slow. Suffered a mysterious board death when I was disassembling the pair of quad 5970 rigs. It was a R3E that had already suffered horrible corrosion damage from condensation during some GPU overclocking. Oh well, replacement board inbound.

Right now I've moved everything except my 5970s to my remote location. The GPU stack below is generating ~7.6 GH/s, pulling ~3.2kw from 3 20 amp breakers. I'll be adding 1 more rig with a pair of aircooled 5970s to bring it up to ~9 GH/s and ~4kw. Just trying to keep the load on each breaker below 15 amps for safety.

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/7088842/BTC/CCC_Farm_April_26_2012.JPG

Next week, once the replacement board arrives, I'll move the last 6 watercooled 5970s and bring that location up to ~13 GH/s and ~5.5kw. That'll bring me within 10 amps of tapping out the 120v breakers so I'll have to look in to utilizing the 240v connection for the next GPU expansion.

Currently exploring various options to increase my MH/w efficiency. Considering adding 4 to 5 BFL Singles as a start. Would like a mini rig but $15k is hard to fund.

Forgot, I have accumulated about 60% of the principal on my April loan. I'm generating around 6 btc/day at the moment so I project I'll have the April loan paid off about 10 days early. That date will move forward when I add the other 6 5970s.

I moved another rig out there today. Looking at just over 10 GH/s sustained with very exciting peaks around 11.5 GH/s seen with the variances in mining. I appreciate the messages with offers for my upcoming May round of funding. I have temporarily struck the listing from the original post as I am in negotiations over the terms for a loan. If my ability to take on more debt for expansion changes I'll bump this thread. Will update again when I move the last of my GPUs and bump throughput to the expected 13 GH/s.

Second to last post for this thread. I have nearly generated the sum to repay my current outstanding loan. Suffered a grid power failure over the weekend so I lost about 40 BTC of potential work as I wasn't able to make it out to my farm for a few days.

I have also secured funding through more traditional means at more favorable rates and will no longer require lending services from the community. I had hoped to keep my borrowing within the bitcoin economy but it did not make financial sense. Given my end goal of expansion, I needed lots of capital now versus a steady stream over the next 6-12 months. I appreciate those individuals who came forward to offer me loans, they were most appreciated. Those loans helped prod me along to invest more capital into bitcoin mining. The good news coming out of all of this is that p2pool should see a nice bump in the coming months. Thanks for everything guys.