Hey don't mean to throw the thread off topic, pm'd you a few times about the motherboard/cpu/H100 and wasn't sure if you received them.

Anyway just wanted to check if they're still available before I sent payment? Thanks!

Thanks. Yes I thought about doing this, but was wondering what would happen if you sent straight from the Transactions -> Send Money tab to the address of the recipient you'd like to pay. Would there be no way to confirm with them that it was sent by you? I'm not sure why a new address is even created for your purchase if it's empty.

Just received my first small purchase from them last night, came through as expected in 5 business days. Need to purchase more so now I know what to expect. Kinda wish I had purchased more as the waiting period is a bit annoying.

My only question is how do I spend my balance? I figured I'd receive a new address with the balance in it, but the new address is empty. I'd like to send a payment, but how would I tell the recipient what the sent from address is to confirm? Would it be the new 0.00BTC balance address that was created?


Thanks for any help .

So if you're in the US, you can't purchase direct? Or is there a minimum order? I contacted support and they just told me purchase from one of the resellers even for large orders. 

Offers in BTC only or USD as well? Seems the newer type is currently .17BTC in group buys, so I'd have to base my offer with that in mind. Thanks!  

I believe they've fixed the power and price errors?


Just did a few quick calculations with it. I set the shipping to the actual cost from their site, set the Misc costs and pool fee to 0, changed the kW/h costs to .12 to assume cheap electricity, and start in Sept if you'd even receive it by then. Looks like the difficulty increase % went down to 46% from 62% by default.

• Jalapeno 5GH/s
• 30W
• $274 + 34 shipping
• $20 ROI

• Little Single 25GH/s
• 150W
• 1,250 + 34 shipping
• $356 ROI

• Single 50GH/s
• 300W
• $2,500 + 68 shipping
• $711 ROI

• Mini Rig 500GH/s
• 3,000W
• $22,500 + 348 shipping
• $9,950 ROI

This is all assuming they're in your hands by Sept, and difficulty only increases 46%.

I've been looking into the same question myself for the past few days, and was going to make a thread as well. It's indeed a very good question that should be stickied in some form at the top of this section for all new people to read, as I don't believe enough people actually take the time to figure it out before dropping pretty big bucks on them.


As mentioned earlier the profitability calculators are a good way to figure this out:

http://mining.thegenesisblock.com/


After trying many different things in the calculators I believe I can safely say no, you'll never see a ROI on these even at the new "low" prices. Difficulty is just increasing too fast. At 50 bucks for one you'll end up paying $12 to run it for 6 months at which point it'll consume more in power than it makes. I feel sorry for the poor saps who just a few days ago payed .90 BTC/$80 for them. At that price, if they bought 5 they'll pay like 200 bucks to run them for 6 months. Basically they're paying to increase the network hash rate and drive up difficulty even more, therefore making even less ROI.

The way these things sell in group buys you'd think they're magic money machines, and I was almost ready to drop $300+ into BTC to purchase some of these before I actually did the math and used the calculators to help, so I can see how easy it is for new people to get swept up in this thinking they're going to profit. The only ones really profiting at these prices are the manufacturers selling them.

To actually be profitable they need to come down into the $30-35 range, or increase their has rate quite a bit. Doubling would probably do it. Even at $30 each on something like the K1 nano you'd only make like 20 bucks running 5 of them. Maybe 50 if you could manage a pretty good overclock, but difficulty increases will likely kill that as well if you're starting in Aug.

I believe I'll just hold out myself and see what happens. If they drop to a lower price where I could even make 20 I'd probably pick up a few just to have fun, but I'm certainly not going to pay to run them.

Thank you for the help. I made sure Misc costs were 0, set shipping at the actual 25 for the correct 275 total, and set the pool fee at 0. Getting a $78 loss now.

I changed the profitability decline at BitcoinX to .003 and it's changed quite a bit. It now says $120 loss after 6 months and staring to lose money after that.

How is the decline represented in the bitcoinx calculator? I thought it was a percentage decrease in decimal form, but that doesn't seem to be the case.

Anyway so are these things indeed this bad of an investment? With how well they sell I figured there was at least a small profit margin to be made. Up until yesterday I've seen quite a few people buying them for nearly 1 BTC each  . 

I did some messing with the numbers to see if I could make them profitable, and apparently at about $30 each at stock speeds I could make 20 bucks . At their current price however even if you could overclock them to a very unlikely 450MH/s with liquid cooling you wouldn't see a return .

Thanks

Good job keeping up with the current hardware prices. Erupters and K1 nano already have their price drops reflected.


My only concern is the profitability calculations I'm getting for 5 K1 nanos are very different from the BitcoinX calculator. Specifically it's saying I'll never make my money back, and actually lose 80 bucks. Where as the other one says I'll at least make some profit. I didn't mess with the difficulty increase predictions on either, as I'm a noob in that regard.

I have both the calculators set up with exactly the same info, except bitcoinx measures difficulty increase different(Profitability decline as a decimal). I also removed any hardware costs to make sure they start with the same total hardware cost. For some reason the difficulty is defaulting to 26M, so I changed it to 31.26M to mirror what bitcoinx has.

This is the info I entered:

• 5 x K1 nano @ $275(250 + 25 shipping)
• Same 10W power @ .12kw/h cost
• 1.75GH/s | 1775MH/s Hash Rate(Assuming an overclock @350MH/s)

Here's where things get interesting. According to this calculator, in 6 months I'll still be about $80 in the hole. Where as bitcoinX says I'd have made 152 bucks, with the hardware paying itself off roughly at the end of month 3. I'm a bit confused because one says I'll spend more than I'll ever make, while the other says I'd make an okay profit.

Not sure which I should believe? 

Not sure where would be best to ask, but I'm sure others are wondering as well. How does the overclocking work on these? Is it done through the firmware, or just a command switch when staring CG miner?

Just wondering since I was seriously considering ordering 5+ of these from the direct site, but would like to know the likelihood of being able to get them to 333Gh/s to at least match the Erupters since they just had a price reduction to around $50. At 55 each shipped these just don't seem like as good of a deal unless they can at least match or better yet surpass the Erupters.


Thanks! 

So how is the overclocking on these done exactly? Is it through the firmware, or a cgminer command switch?

Also what's the likelihood of being able to get them at 333Gh/s to at least be able to match the Block Erupter sticks?

Was seriously considering ordering at least 5 of these which is around $55 each shipped, but the price on the Erupters just went down to ~$45-$50(.47-.55BTC) shipped depending on quantity and they're shipping now. I like the idea of being able to overclock them and such, but without a solid 333Gh/s at least it's just not looking like as good of a deal.

I believe someone has quite a bit of reading ahead of them .


As far as mining hardware basics(ASIC,FPGA,GPU):

https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Mining


Here's a comparison between them which should help explain why GPU mining is becoming unprofitable for the difficulty and power consumption:

https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Mining_Hardware_Comparison


As far as pools, I believe it's a good idea and all the mining software I've used always asked for a pool address and username/pass. I'm really not sure how to go about it solo, which is only a good idea if you have some serious hardware. Here's a link which lists some popular ones and compares them:

https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Comparison_of_mining_pools

At this point I wouldn't worry too much about picking which one specifically. If you just want to test it out some of them don't even require signing up and let you use your bitcoin address as the username.



I've never tried to mine on Linux, but I'd assume OpenCL + CUDA come with the proprietary Nvidia drivers. At least they do on Windows. After that it's pretty much just run the program and enter your pool info and it should start going at it extremely slow in your case. 1.6Mh/s. 

Mining software and the operating systems they're available for:

https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Mining_software


The last time I attempted to mine on my GTX260, futile endeavor mind you, I just ran BFGminer from the command prompt and entered my pool's address and my login details and it started mining away.


Hope all that helps