going to put together a LTC mining rig.. need advice.

[sublime5447]

I decided I am sick of dicking around trying to get people to sell ltc to me so i am going to put together a mining rig. I have everything I think I will need other than the Gpu's. I was wondering what kind I should buy? I have 3k or so to put into it. Any advice would be great.  

[cdog]

I also would like advice as to whether to get a 5970 or 7970 for LTC mining, I see some people have issues with LTC and the 7970 and I dont want to hassle with configs/tweaks all day trying to get good, stable performance.

[smoothie]

look for Mother Boards with 5 to 7 PCI-e slots for dual GPUs (5970, 6990, 7970) cards. Get pci extenders.

This way if you ever want to add hashing power you can do so without having to build another rig. Just add cards etc

[sublime5447]

Thanks smoothie great advice.

I really was hoping that my rig would not need any constant adjustments. I am going to set it up in raleigh NC and i live about 2 1/2 hours away. I have access to a  mini data center that my dad's software company uses as a test bed for his data center management system. It has overhead power 240v with metered power strips and they have one server cabinet in the test bed area there is a second cabinet I could move in there as well, I am not sure how many server blades are installed? and a network rack as well. The test bed has a huge warehouse fan for cooling and my dads software can manage it. They do remote monitoring of data centers, I can check the temp, power usage, and can even turn servers off and reset them remotely.

I really dont know much at all about this stuff.  So feel free to talk to me like a 5 year old when it come to suggestions. 

[sd]

Any advice would be great.  

If you are doing this as a hobby that's fine but if you expect to make money out of it then you will be disappointed.

If you must have LTC buy it on btc-e, it's cheap now. Just be aware that there is a pretty good chance it's going to continue downwards, not upwards.

[sublime5447]

If there is a list of what is needed to  build a rig some where that would be great.

[crazy_rabbit]

Any advice would be great.  

If you are doing this as a hobby that's fine but if you expect to make money out of it then you will be disappointed.

If you must have LTC buy it on btc-e, it's cheap now. Just be aware that there is a pretty good chance it's going to continue downwards, not upwards.

+1

Not only that, mining LTC runs your GPU's much hotter and draws more power. If you want to mine for the hobby aspect of it, more power to you- but it's a lost cause at this point. The trend is downward, and if it weren't- you would be quickly overwhelmed by massive GPU power that previously was mining bitcoin. So it's a lose/lose situation. Do it if you enjoy it and you must, but you will lose money on it.

EDIT: Any GPU mining rig for Bitcoin will mine Litecoin. So search that and you will find what you need. Basically just a computer and a GPU card. They all mine, just depends on how powerful their hash power is. That said, the more seriously you take it, the more money you will lose at this point. I know it's a sad statement, but the GPU mining days, especially for the small miner, are nearing the end.

[Simran]

Selling my 2 HD 6770's for $95!

[sublime5447]

Any advice would be great.  

If you are doing this as a hobby that's fine but if you expect to make money out of it then you will be disappointed.

If you must have LTC buy it on btc-e, it's cheap now. Just be aware that there is a pretty good chance it's going to continue downwards, not upwards.

+1

Not only that, mining LTC runs your GPU's much hotter and draws more power. If you want to mine for the hobby aspect of it, more power to you- but it's a lost cause at this point. The trend is downward, and if it weren't- you would be quickly overwhelmed by massive GPU power that previously was mining bitcoin. So it's a lose/lose situation. Do it if you enjoy it and you must, but you will lose money on it.

EDIT: Any GPU mining rig for Bitcoin will mine Litecoin. So search that and you will find what you need. Basically just a computer and a GPU card. They all mine, just depends on how powerful their hash power is. That said, the more seriously you take it, the more money you will lose at this point. I know it's a sad statement, but the GPU mining days, especially for the small miner, are nearing the end.

I will make money mining them I can sell as many as I can mine for 8 percent above spot in fairly large quantities. The price is going to go up! I need a flow of coins not just what I can send wire transfers for.

I thought these things were mined with cpu's? what happened?

Why does it take more power to mine litecoins?

[sublime5447]

Any advice would be great.  

If you are doing this as a hobby that's fine but if you expect to make money out of it then you will be disappointed.

If you must have LTC buy it on btc-e, it's cheap now. Just be aware that there is a pretty good chance it's going to continue downwards, not upwards.

It isnt going to continue down.

[sublime5447]

EDIT: Any GPU mining rig for Bitcoin will mine Litecoin. So search that and you will find what you need. Basically just a computer and a GPU card. They all mine, just depends on how powerful their hash power is. That said, the more seriously you take it, the more money you will lose at this point. I know it's a sad statement, but the GPU mining days, especially for the small miner, are nearing the end.


How much would I have to spend to not be a small miner?
So there should be GPU's every where that arent needed because the ASIC's have taken over right?

[crazy_rabbit]

Any advice would be great.  

If you are doing this as a hobby that's fine but if you expect to make money out of it then you will be disappointed.

If you must have LTC buy it on btc-e, it's cheap now. Just be aware that there is a pretty good chance it's going to continue downwards, not upwards.

It isnt going to continue down.

Thats why it's a lose/lose situation. If it continues down you will lose money. If if doesn't continue down, and instead increases, then invested GPU miners with large hash-power will jump onto LTC (as they did before when the value was higher) and drive the difficulty sky high way before you would have a chance at recouping your investment. Thats why it's lose/lose. You won't make your money back either way.

If you buy 3x 6950's for about $700 lets say, at the current "LOW" hash rate you'd mine about 60 coins per day. Which lets assume $.07 per LTC is $4.2 per day IF there is enough volume to buy that many coins at a constant rate (big assumption) meaning 166 days to pay back JUST the GPUS- not the rest of the computer, nor your power costs (which are higher when mining LTC).  Or you could buy 10,000 LTC for $700, and if the value really does stop dropping as you hope, and goes up, lets say to be wildy optimistic- DOUBLES in the next 166 days. You would have a profit of $700 USD having bought the LTC outright. With building a rig you would have paid off the GPU's but you would still be in the hole for your power costs, and the rest of your computer.

See what I mean? It could be a labor of love, sure, but by any economic measure, its a hole you're going to throw money into.

EDIT: Hmm, to not be a small miner I would say you would have to buy at least 50 GPUS. But it doesn't make sense. Unless you have free industrial power, your electricity bill would be in the thousands of $$$ each month.

Even then, if you did all that, you would be competing against other big miners who have long since paid off their investment of GPUS and who would mine LTC as long as they could sell the LTC to cover their power bills. Which means they would be seriously depressing the LTC market. Even as we speak, BTC-E is down and there is effectively no place to sell your LTC in any serious volume. Not even BTC has seriously LTC volume anymore. Which means your competition, which has lower over head then you would have, can afford to sell LTC cheaper then you can, which means they will always depress the price below what you can economically afford.

I know it's sad, but it's the truth. You could try one of the other alt-coins that have low hash rates, but it's a labor of love and speculation. LTC unfortunately is past the speculative mining phase, but not quite at the big time.

[crazy_rabbit]

EDIT: Any GPU mining rig for Bitcoin will mine Litecoin. So search that and you will find what you need. Basically just a computer and a GPU card. They all mine, just depends on how powerful their hash power is. That said, the more seriously you take it, the more money you will lose at this point. I know it's a sad statement, but the GPU mining days, especially for the small miner, are nearing the end.


How much would I have to spend to not be a small miner?
So there should be GPU's every where that arent needed because the ASIC's have taken over right?

They aren't needed because they can't compete. Asics do it cheaper and do it MUCH faster. GPUs aren't needed because at the difficulty that ASICs create, your GPU burns electricity for nothing. :-(

[sublime5447]

Sounds like I might need to buy someones gpu rig that they were mining btc with, but not using on litecoins? I am not worried about the price. I can sell them.

[tacotime]

Bought 3x 7950s and a 6970 about 6 months ago. All paid off plus $750 or so.  Only been mining litecoin.

Haters gonna hate, miners gonna make 200% return on investment.

[sublime5447]

that is what I was thinking too. Taco time.


"IF there is enough volume to buy that many coins at a constant rate (big assumption)"

crazy rabbit what do you mean by this? 

[Simran]

Drop the it's not gonna pay off attitude. LTC is going up! You BTC'ers or other Coin'ers need to check out. You gotta go! Front desk callin' yo ass! Let someone else take them GPU's!

[sublime5447]

I'll take those GPU"S  

[sublime5447]

So why can't I mine with cpu's again?

[sd]

So why can't I mine with cpu's again?

CPUs are slower. GPUs are faster. I thought everyone knew that by now.

If what you said about being able to sell at 8% over spot is true why not just buy LTC on btc-e and sell them on at the higher price? A better question is why doesn't the person willing to pay market+8% buy them on btc-e himself and save the 8% premium?

I think you are relying on hope not good sense but it's your money to burn.