Bitcoin Forum

Hey forum!

I'm heading off to school soon and I have no use for my desktop computer anymore, I'm wanting to sell it in the near future and invest in a nice yielding mining rig/setup (disregarding the electricity bill). If the #'s are right i'm willing to spend a couple K on a rig.

If anyone know where I should start please let me know!

Honestly mining is a rough business because of difficulty and electricity but if you are not going to be paying for electric, you will be essentially robbing your college. You may not be directly paying for the electric but someone is. You may just have a higher tuition next year, and if others have the same idea it could be a significant increase. It wont be long until places start to wake up and put kilawatt meters on apartments, dorm rooms, and other lease space. I know if I rented out a place and planned on including rent it would have a kilowatt per month limitation. I don't think its right but good luck with your mining.

Are you inquiring about a Bitcoin mining ASIC rig that you would bring to college with you, or are you looking for recommendations on a PC setup for the same?  If it is the former, understand that any rig you purchase will generate both heat and noise.  You can purchase stand-alone rigs like the Antminer S1/2/3, Dragons, etc that don't require a separate controller (although the S1 and S3 require you to supply the PSU).  Of the rigs I've owned, thus far the S3 is the least intrusive of them.  The S1s are a bit noisy and put out enough heat to keep a small room warm.  The S2 is louder and will keep a large room quite warm.

You can also go for rigs that require a separate controller like the Rockminers.  Some come with, others don't.  You could even go for stick miners, but those also require something to plug into.

There is no PC rig that will be effective for mining BTC.  You might do alright on alt coins like X11 and X13-based ones using a powerful CPU/GPU machine, but you'd have to do some research in the alt coin forums for recommendations.

In any case, I agree with joshraban76.  Just because YOU aren't directly paying your electric bill, somebody certainly is.  You can probably justify the smaller rigs only pulling a few watts as "normal usage"; however, if you're considering plugging in something drawing 1kw... that's just plain old stealing.

OP,
you are already paying for electricity one way or another, feel free to use it as you please, it is not stealing. If you were to do it at your job, that would be a diff story.
Gawminers has nice prices for scrypt miners and have sales and take credit cards and have very good reputation. Oneminer.com has a daily sale for miners. It's like a JV of gaw and zen hosting

If electricity is no problem, getting into mining is easier. There are plenty of miners out that would ROI in a couple months if you don't have to pay for electricity.
I would look around and try to find a miner that is less than $1 g/hash, and it should be profitable within 120 days.

this is simple buy 2 s-3's and a good psu.

  it will use 640 watts.   it will hash at about 820gh.  underclock a tiny bit.  freq 212.5 vs stock 218.75


here is a good psu can run  it can run 3  s-3's with under clock  at freq 212.5  it will pull 975 watts



http://www.rakuten.com/prod/evga-supernova-1300-g2-1300w-power-supply-110-v-ac-220-v-ac-input/249973555.html




I assume   you take all responsibilities .  for fires, electrocution , gear theft,  the university getting mad you burn 1k an hour  24/7.

at 10 cents a k-watt that is $ 2.40 a day.

I pick this gear since it will reboot after a power outage/switch pools if a pool fails.  1000 watts makes a lot of heat  keep that in mind if you choose to run 3 of them.

Since electricity is free, you might as well buy AntMiner s1 cheaply from ebay.

If you have no roommates then I guess you could pick up an S3.

If you have roommates I would suggest dropping the whole idea until you get a feel of what your roommate is like.

For the time being, sell you system and buy Bitcoin with it right now.

In a dorm room, I really wouldn't recommend anything more than 500W. Even that may be too much.

ignore this answer.   he just gave you his own referral link  ..


 you have free power get the s-3's.  if two are too hot , run one sell  the other one  on ebay.

Wow, how much fun would it be running a hair dryer (or two) in a tiny room with two people trying to sleep and study? The heat and noise would bring so much excitement and joy! And the $2.00 a day that you earn will really help with expenses too.  ;)
   

I wonder what university you're attending.  Honestly, I would bet soon they will have a policy for this type of thing because it's going to get out of control with people burning so much "free" electricity.  It's like how when I was on college, Napster was allowed, and then they started blocking sites like that.  

I'd also second the idea of waiting to see what your roommate will be like.  Honestly, you'll want to be on good terms with the roommate, so keep open communication about your mining ideas.  Especially in the hotter months I would have gotten annoyed if my roommate did something like add an extra heater!  And you might be thinking "well that's too bad for the roommate" and I'm saying you want to have fun in college, you want to get along with your roommate, so whatever you mine will NOT be worth it if it pisses off the roommate!

Like everybody is saying, ASIC miners produce sounds which will disturb your roommate(if any). If you are buying, then try to buy S3 as it power consumption and bit higher technology.
Is there any restrictions on electricity? Did you check about it? Are you sure that, you will not involve in a major problem? The electricity bill will be high when you use ASICs. Make your decision wisely. :)
Kindly,
       MZ

Do some research before you melt your dorm's power plug. U don't wanna overload it..

Simple power fuse check will say most importan things, since i doubt hes thinking about something serious.
But OP, keep in ming that there is also noise, heat , and i doubt that "no fee" policy is as shallow as you think, if they found out what ure doing, im pretty safe they will stop you.

When I went to college I stayed in one of the nicer dorms but some of the older dorms had no AC and the wiring in there was definitely lacking.  One of my friends actually melted the wiring with a 2 cubic foot microwave - don't assume dorms have proper modern 12guage wiring and arc fault sockets.

We knowingly throw small children into metal cans (school buses) without seatbelts and send them down the highway. And now I have to worry about out most precious commodity sleeping in poorly-wired tinderboxes?

Won't someone think of the children?!   ;D

Well this wasn't some historic school from 300 years ago that might have had 150 year old housing - this was UCLA.  Rieber Hall, for example, had a fire when I was there because somebody was running a full size fridge, speakers and amplifier, and a TV off of one outlet.  That can't have been more than 20A off a 120V line - that's childsplay with ASICs.

What says your room-mate won't also bring his/her own ASIC rig? Who gets to use the outlet?

Electricity may appear free, but it isn't.

I agree. There wasn't any reply from him. I think he is watching the thread quietly. I don't think his roommate allow to run an ASIC as it has sound which will disturb him. Won't there be any problem in college if the electricity increase a lot?
Kindly,
      MZ

Running 2 ASICs like 2 S3s isn't going to increase the bill for a large dormitory. If every student did it then yes it would, but one guy won't be singled out.  The problem I was stating was the 1 guy could burn down the dorm, or at the very least bother his roommate with 800W of 2 S3s running 24/7.

Question one is whether you want to try to have fun in college and get along with people,  or you want to try to make a few bucks at the expense of friendships, etc.  Because your roommate won't want that running in your room, unless you want to split half of the profits with him possibly.

Next there is the worry about the heat issue.  Rooms or hot and cramped enough as they are.  I applaud your idea but it doesn't seem worth it. 

You did not mention Noise or heat and inside a student room with probably a room-mate to disturb maybe this is a problem.
My suggestion since its for small student room it would be a  Jupiter November KNC miner 750 G/hs.
Total silence like a computer and reasonably priced nowadays.

The heat and noise issue can vary from roommate to roommate. My freshman year, I ran two gaming machines 24/7 and my roommate didn't mind at all, minus his requests for me to turn the LEDs off at night. However, the power consumption can become an issue. Running those two desktops as well as an assortment of other electronics, I tripped the breaker for room several times, requiring me to call maintenance to reset it every time. The following year, I lived in a on-campus house (actual house and not dorm) and did not have any problems running any extent of power.

For those saying we are stealing....I don't think its stealing if we are being charged $60K+ a year, especially when housing is overpriced, to use an additional few hundred dollars of power....the quote of a poor college student LOL

It's not stealing if you're running 1 unit since many students use their PCs and other equipment to fund their income as a student.  Students who do makeup and  spa-work in their dorm use hairdryers and lights.  People who run a website use the bandwidth and electricity.

The problem arises if you plug in 5, 10, 15 miners and are pretty much there to make an income rather than learn - then you are violating the housing agreements.

This is all irrelevant to a roomate who will put things in your bed if he/she is unhappy with you...check your toothbrush before putting it in your mouth.

of course, there is an extent to which its not stealing. if you are running an entire 'farm' in there with a whole shelf of miners, then yea, that's stealing. but 5 or 10 marginal miners (S1's?) i think would be fine....when on-campus housing costs twice as much as off-campus and you're required to live on-campus, in terms of what you make off mining, probably won't even make up for the differnce in cost of housing, simply trying to support my education.

I don't see how there's a trade-off between making an income and learning. I can see tehre being a trade-off if mining requires you to pay constant attention and you're skipping classes to mine, but that wouldn't (or atleast, shouldn't) happen. Also, I don't think your own lack of learning violates any housing agreements, different case if you were disturbing others.

as for roommate...case-by-case...was with the same roommate for 3 years running, no problems at all, maybe I'm just lucky.

10 S1s will earn about $900 per month without factoring difficulty increases. It will likely be much less than $800 per month in September and $600 in October.

But I do think it's highly unlikely that any on-campus housing will be able to handle the electrical load of 10 S1s. Maybe 3 or 4 max.

Most older dorms should be assumed to be 15A rated, so not more than 1.4KW continuous load.  That's 3 S1s.  If you have a large dorm maybe you get 2 circuits - so at most 6 S1s with not other devices plugged in - that means no TV, fridge, hairdryer, etc.

I've been out of college for over 10 years but I doubt it has changed much as far as housing and I can see a lot of students getting kicked out for trying to make $300 mining - I would rather grow a certain plant with that electricity  :D

Thanks for the reply's everyone!

Plans actually changed, i'm now living in a apartment (on campus) with a shared living room/bathroom and 3 separate bedrooms inside the apartment. (I'm just wondering if considering it's not actually a "dorm", if the ampage in the living space will be larger?. Hmm

I'm capping my limit on a ASIC to $2.5K. I'm just curious on how I could be careful with my power output. I've been looking on Ebay and I came across some 1.5TH/S KNC Jupiters///Avalons///S1 Antminer farms for sale. Just curious on people thoughts about buying on ebay, let along these rigs.

Now i'll keep more up to date considering it's my last week to decide on what to do@!

All input appreciated!

As everyone will tell you, mining is not the best game to play. However, the antminers are very promising if you do decide to look into mining. They would probably be my top choice.

If you buy BTC now with the $2.5K you'll get 4.32BTC.  If you purchased a fleet of S3s and psus you might have about 4.6-5BTC after all the costs.  Buying the above noted eBay equipment will give you more hash but will cost you terribly with electricity costs and the resulting heat from the inefficient old beasts.

If you have the tolerance to mine go with S3s, otherwise spend 1-2 days circling an exchange like a hawk and buy BTC on a dip and then enjoy school and not have to worry about heat and noise.

You should worry about the heat, most college don't have good ventilation...

http://gawminers.com/

Is this site legit? I will be ordering this week if it is!

Yes, it is! You can buy from it. Buy carefully as there is cloud mining option. :)
Kindly,
    MZ

Is it true that If I don't want the cloud mining option you have to wait 30 days to receive your equipment? I sent out a email but they haven't responded!

They will send the equiment when you ask them to ship it if you buy a hosted miner. Would be wiser to run it for the 30 days, then get it shipped after if you got for a hosted miner.