Is it still profitable to build a mining/gaming rig at this time?

[diamondsea]

I've been looking at it and it looks like BTC mining averages out to roughly 100MH/sec per $100-$150 spent.  It's not a bad investment until the ASICs hit the market and crush the GPU miners.

Litecoin mining seems to be about the same, 100KH/sec per $100-$150 spent.  It's not a bad investment until the ASICs hit the BTC market and all the GPU miners switch over to Litecoin mining and skyrocket the difficulty.

Both seem to have about a 3 month payoff period and its profit after that. 

So, basically your betting whether the ASICs will hit big time in the next three months or not.

If you think they will, you're better off just buying coins.

If you think they won't, go for mining.

If you're going to actually use the computer for gaming and mine during your non-gaming hours, then the mining is basically free and you should go for it.

Hope this helps!

 - Brian

[p0rkbelly]

I've been mining solidly for a week about now. I happened to have a 6870 already, without having any thought about mining.

I have made about .18 BTC and lived with a lot of noise and increased power. It was fun, but the way the market it is, I feel that I could make more money on an exchange...

[kingofmoon]

I've been mining solidly for a week about now. I happened to have a 6870 already, without having any thought about mining.

I have made about .18 BTC and lived with a lot of noise and increased power. It was fun, but the way the market it is, I feel that I could make more money on an exchange...

But then we have the problem with the exchanges charging 0.6 % per transaction, which comes down to 1.2 % per trade.
Now that is all fine and good as long as the bitcoin is flying all over the place, as soon as it doesn't though...

[p0rkbelly]

I've been mining solidly for a week about now. I happened to have a 6870 already, without having any thought about mining.

I have made about .18 BTC and lived with a lot of noise and increased power. It was fun, but the way the market it is, I feel that I could make more money on an exchange...

But then we have the problem with the exchanges charging 0.6 % per transaction, which comes down to 1.2 % per trade.
Now that is all fine and good as long as the bitcoin is flying all over the place, as soon as it doesn't though...

Exactly. But When you're seeing the price fluctuate by $10-$20 a day on average...

[dazzle]

I've been mining solidly for a week about now. I happened to have a 6870 already, without having any thought about mining.

I have made about .18 BTC and lived with a lot of noise and increased power. It was fun, but the way the market it is, I feel that I could make more money on an exchange...

But then we have the problem with the exchanges charging 0.6 % per transaction, which comes down to 1.2 % per trade.
Now that is all fine and good as long as the bitcoin is flying all over the place, as soon as it doesn't though...

Exactly. But When you're seeing the price fluctuate by $10-$20 a day on average...

Unless you can predict the rise and fall, income will not be as good.

[Vorksholk]

Hey. Some people are gonna try to steer you clear from building your own machine by saying that GPU mining will soon become outmodded by ASICs, however there are still alternate cryptos (Feathercoin, Litecoin . . . ) that you can mine with your GPU that the impeding ASICs will not mine. An investment into $2000 worth of BTC should be a good investment, however if you have that kind of budget there is nothing wrong with having some mining fun as well.

You could build a machine that would hit between 1.5 and 1.9 MH/s (litecoin mininG) and 1.5 to 1.9 GH/s for bitcoin mining for your mentioned prices.

I'd look into snagging a simple MSi or ASUS board with 2 or 3 PCI-e 16x (size, not speed) slots. Grab a cheap Sempron 145, and make sure your mobo has the AM3+ socket. Unless you want to use it for a lot of gaming, consider going low-end on the hard drive and grabbing a 250GB magnetic, or perhaps a 128GB SSD. It's not a bad idea to leave a 2 or 3-gpu system out-of-box. My company sells mining units in PC cases to go with the idea of modular design as well as allowing for easy shipping, and easy deployment. However, if you are doing the build yourself, you may want to consider running your stuff out-of-box if you don't need to have it on a desk.

As for RAM, 4 GB would be plenty for mining, 8GB would convert it to gaming. For cards, if you intend to do scrypt mining at some point you may want to look into MSI Twin Frozr 3 GD cards, namely the 7950s. 7970s are a bit of a headache to do stuff with unless you really know your way around litecoin/NVC/FC mining .

For the PSU, get a PSU that is Bronze or above, the higher metals have better power efficiency. Always leave yourself headroom on your PSU, and try to plan your PSU for future plans (If you want to start with two cards, and decide to upgrade to three, it's nice to not have to fork over a bunch of cash to get your self another PSU! A good number is 300W per card. This is a bit high sometimes, but if you are doing good overclocks you can hit it. My 3x7970 machine draws 860-940W at wall and is an 80+SILVER.

Go cheap on the Optical drive if you intend to get one (unless you want fancy blu-ray stuffs), and make sure you get an extra SATA cable or two, you never know when a HD or optical won't come with one.

Good luck!

[meathelix]

Hello Vork.

I am wanting to invest into mining myself I have around 5k to spend what would be the best way to use this? I was thinking once massive rig with 3x 7970's in it on water cooling, And also this rig would be mainly used for Mining only.

Thank you

[Vorksholk]

Hello Vork.

I am wanting to invest into mining myself I have around 5k to spend what would be the best way to use this? I was thinking once massive rig with 3x 7970's in it on water cooling, And also this rig would be mainly used for Mining only.

Thank you

Personally I would split it a bit. With 5k I would throw at least a thousand into buying the currency itself, however you mentioned wanting to invest it all in mining.

You could get a 3x7970 setup for around $1900, although if you decide to go litecoin mine you may want to look into 7950s instead. 3x7950 would cost you around $1700-ish and put out around 1.8MH/s if properly tuned. You could grab three of these for 1700x3 = 5100 and make some great mining proceeds. If you want to buy ASICs, I would go with two BFL singles (50GH/s).

If you are planning to enter into Litecoin mining, keep in mind ASICs will not do this. As well, it will take some good tuning to get your cards to run optimally. Some people on the forums (myself included) sell pre-built miners that come already optimized for you.

If you were to go this route, you could get 4 machines, each with 2 7950s (so, for $60 less, you are talking about missing one 7950 as opposed to making the units yourself), tweaked to reach close to their best potential. That would run you around $5000 as well, assuming you live in the US.

[meathelix]

I live in Australia, I was considering in mining litecoin since the ASCI machines are going to be rolling out for the rest of the year for Bitcoin. But I would not mind mining bitcoin at this moment in time then move to litecoin once the price has dropped for bitcoin with the new ASCI machines.

I am wanting to make some money back on the rigs I pay for, that way I can start making a profit. Maybe I can pay you a little extra to help tweak the machines? I used to own my own computer store in Syndey. So I know how to overclock and stuff. " Got 2nd in the world for overclocking the old E6600 to 5.0ghz on nitro "

But back to the topic, Your saying I could get 4 rigs out or my 5k. With 4 different rigs would it be faster then one massive one with 4 cards. I was thinking it would be the same.

[Bitmunitions]

I just started mining bitcoin last week. With my current computer, I am only get about 130mhash.

I am thinking of customizing a mining rig with the best video card on the market. My budget is around $2000.

Please don't tell me to buy ASIC from BLY or Avalon, BLY is not even delivering, Avalon is not even selling now.


My logic of making a gaming machine is that, in the event that it is no longer profitable, at least I still own the machine and can play games with it. If I buy bitcoin now and the price drop, I am going to lose everything.

Can someone please guide me or recommend me?


For example:

Best motherboard:

Best RAM:

Best graphic card:

etc…

I really appreciate your input trying to help a newbie like me.

A friend of mine has a great guide over at BitcoinSBS.wordpress.com that I would highly recommend checking out. He even has a book located on Amazon.

[Vorksholk]

I live in Australia, I was considering in mining litecoin since the ASCI machines are going to be rolling out for the rest of the year for Bitcoin. But I would not mind mining bitcoin at this moment in time then move to litecoin once the price has dropped for bitcoin with the new ASCI machines.

I am wanting to make some money back on the rigs I pay for, that way I can start making a profit. Maybe I can pay you a little extra to help tweak the machines? I used to own my own computer store in Syndey. So I know how to overclock and stuff. " Got 2nd in the world for overclocking the old E6600 to 5.0ghz on nitro "

But back to the topic, Your saying I could get 4 rigs out or my 5k. With 4 different rigs would it be faster then one massive one with 4 cards. I was thinking it would be the same.

Personally, I would build either 3x3 7950 or 4x2 7950 rigs, if you are doing out-of-the-box mining (no case, aka) I would opt for the 3x3 7950, better deal for hardware, get around 12-18% more bang for your buck if you have good enough cooling and such.

Sounds like you know how overclocking works then Just follow some of the guides around the Alternate Cryptocurrencies forums, there are some good guides for doing the clocks yourself there

I wouldn't go much more than 3 cards in a rig simply to keep it manageable, however if you don't mind using risers and such you could easily get 4 cards in one system. Being that you used to own your own computer store, I'm sure you're more than versed in PSUs and such, just get an efficient one

Sounds like your question was probably more intended towards "is it profitable" not the "how" side of it, but short answer is right now it's very profitable to mine with GPUs, and as time goes on, while coins will get harder to mine, simple supply and demand economics (think of Bitcoin like a commodity . . .) show that supply stays the same while demand increases (and arguably, supply decreases as each person can mine less...) so the $200 of coins you might earn this week could be worth $2000 later on.

Congratz on that overclock, that's insane! xD

[bitminer1]

As Vorksholk posted.  I just complete a 4 x7950 rig.  Knowing that if bitcoin isnt where its at for mining.  I can go over to lite coin or have one hell of a gaming rig.

[meathelix]

Sorry to say but ATI Drivers suck for gaming if you have more then 1 card.  But yea Volk the 3x3 7950's sounds good I have a huge desk that will fit them on it. I shall do my research on what cheap boards and cpu's are the go maybe AMD since they are bang for buck.

[vurkolak]

if you have free electricity than you can use it to mine ltc profitably.

Alot of people complain about the power of electricity but my PC is always on anyway. I understand that there will be a nominal change after adding a AMD 7970 card but is it really that much?

[hugmuffin]

Kind of curious about the power issue as well. Have only been mining for a couple days and I am hoping that there isn't a big impact on the bill!

[PopeSeanV]

My advice would be to buy BTC with the fiat, hold half of the BTC, and transfer the other half of the BTC to a securities exchange like BitFunder.com where you can invest in professional mining operations.

[Vorksholk]

In order to calculate what the affect of your mining will have on your elec. bill, I'd suggest grabbing a Kill-awatt, it measures power draw at the wall. Plug your unit into it, plug the killer into the wall, and find a good stable average. This will be in WATTs. Your bill likely states how much you pay per kWh (kilowatt hour). Divide W by 1000 to get your total kW.


Example: You pay $0.13 per kWh, and your miner pulls 960W at the wall. Your miner runs 24/7 for a month. How much do you pay in electricity?
0.13*0.960*24*30 = 89.856

Therefore, your 960W miner (probably talking 3x7970 for that) at a cost of $0.13 per kWh, would cost around $89.85-$89.86 per month in electric. You would probably get 1800-2000 kH/s out of that machine, which with litecoin mining would get you $541.37. Subtract electricity, then divide into the price of your unit to get projected (but not accurate at all, things change all the time!) ROI. Yay math!

As far as looking into the future, I personally see Litecoin hitting $5 in a month (if not a week!!) and hitting at least $10 over the summer. However, difficulty, I feel, will scale with this.

[meathelix]

 " As far as looking into the future, I personally see Litecoin hitting $5 in a month (if not a week!!) and hitting at least $10 over the summer. However, difficulty, I feel, will scale with this."

$5 a month? that sounds like no profit at all

[Jackin Jill]

Hey. Some people are gonna try to steer you clear from building your own machine by saying that GPU mining will soon become outmodded by ASICs, however there are still alternate cryptos (Feathercoin, Litecoin . . . ) that you can mine with your GPU that the impeding ASICs will not mine. An investment into $2000 worth of BTC should be a good investment, however if you have that kind of budget there is nothing wrong with having some mining fun as well.

You could build a machine that would hit between 1.5 and 1.9 MH/s (litecoin mininG) and 1.5 to 1.9 GH/s for bitcoin mining for your mentioned prices.

I'd look into snagging a simple MSi or ASUS board with 2 or 3 PCI-e 16x (size, not speed) slots. Grab a cheap Sempron 145, and make sure your mobo has the AM3+ socket. Unless you want to use it for a lot of gaming, consider going low-end on the hard drive and grabbing a 250GB magnetic, or perhaps a 128GB SSD. It's not a bad idea to leave a 2 or 3-gpu system out-of-box. My company sells mining units in PC cases to go with the idea of modular design as well as allowing for easy shipping, and easy deployment. However, if you are doing the build yourself, you may want to consider running your stuff out-of-box if you don't need to have it on a desk.

As for RAM, 4 GB would be plenty for mining, 8GB would convert it to gaming. For cards, if you intend to do scrypt mining at some point you may want to look into MSI Twin Frozr 3 GD cards, namely the 7950s. 7970s are a bit of a headache to do stuff with unless you really know your way around litecoin/NVC/FC mining .

For the PSU, get a PSU that is Bronze or above, the higher metals have better power efficiency. Always leave yourself headroom on your PSU, and try to plan your PSU for future plans (If you want to start with two cards, and decide to upgrade to three, it's nice to not have to fork over a bunch of cash to get your self another PSU! A good number is 300W per card. This is a bit high sometimes, but if you are doing good overclocks you can hit it. My 3x7970 machine draws 860-940W at wall and is an 80+SILVER.

Go cheap on the Optical drive if you intend to get one (unless you want fancy blu-ray stuffs), and make sure you get an extra SATA cable or two, you never know when a HD or optical won't come with one.

Good luck!

+1 for this; good advice

[Vorksholk]

" As far as looking into the future, I personally see Litecoin hitting $5 in a month (if not a week!!) and hitting at least $10 over the summer. However, difficulty, I feel, will scale with this."

$5 a month? that sounds like no profit at all

That's $5 a coin Current price is nearly $4 .