Size of your mining farm?

[Za1n]

I am curious of the makeup of the forum users and what size farms they have and how many GPUs they are current running.

The sizes are arbitrary but I think are still fairly representative of what the expectations would be if someone described themselves to someone else who was also a miner. I am counting the number of GPUs only as rigs can come in many sizes from 1 GPU for a gaming rig that mines on off-hours, to a dedicated 7x GPU 24/7 miner.

For example, I feel a hobbyist is someone new to mining cryptocurrencies and may be using their main rig with 1 or more GPUs to mine with. They may also have additional rigs they cobbled together from old equipment, or possibly took the plunge and setup one or two dedicated rigs.

A Micro Farm is someone who is taking a little bit larger stance and dedicating 3-6 rigs full time with 4-7 GPUs in each rig.

Small is someone who is starting to invest seriously into mining as it is doubtful at this point you would still be building out of old hardware and your purchases are geared toward ROI and making a small amount of side income.

Medium is again someone going further and looking to seriously start supplementing their income and treating mining as a side job. At this level you are probably also starting to dedicate areas of your house or property specifically for mining and either upgrading your power and maybe considering switching to 240V if you haven't already. Cooling also starts to become a concern at this level.

Medium-Large I broke this out as a separate category as I think you would still be a bit too small (at the low end) to rely on mining for a full-time income, but you are definitely looking to seriously supplement your income and invest heavily in mining. At this point even with 7x GPU rigs, you are maintaining 20-40 rigs and have probably addressed and mastered issues such as cooling, power, as well as automated much of your management duties such as monitoring, software updates, restarts, etc.

Large is someone who may very well be relying on mining for a large portion or all of his/her income. At this point you are probably beginning to add rigs in batches and starting to negotiate your purchases with wholesalers. You buy in bulk and take advantage of this to lower your build costs. You may even been looking to host your rigs in a dedicated location outside your home.

Professional is where you have mastered everything below and most likely are not only are earning all your income from mining, but perhaps hiring help as well to administer and maintain your farm. At this point you are also likely to be setup in a dedicated location to host your farm to take advantage of lower power costs and well as other infrastructure issues such as cooling, security, and a redundant internet and possibly power providers.

[philipma1957]

interesting as to what is small  as 50 gpus  is pretty big for small.

my 4 card rigs pull 400 watts and do 700 h at zec

I have 33 cards running

so 40 cards = 4000 watts

50  cards = 5000 watts

I suppose  that is a good number to use 5000 watts or less = small.

[Za1n]

interesting as to what is small  as 50 gpus  is pretty big for small.

Well as I said it is all arbitrary as what constitutes small depends on the person and situation. If I tell someone off the street who knows nothing about mining that I have 50 GPUs running in my house, you're right they are going to think 1:) that's a lot of GPUs and 2:) that I am crazy.

Now if I tell a fellow miner the same thing, I think most of them will consider that still "small" as it would only consist of 8-10 dedicated rigs with an average of 5-7 GPUs each. Putting this into the context of a mining "farm", I think that is still a small amount as many here are likely to fall into the medium to large categories.

I also considered the investment requirements and likely income aspects, as 50 GPUs will net you around $50/day or about $1.00 each (after power) in income (depending on many factors of course) which while a nice side income I still consider this small for most people. I am basing this on a US viewpoint, and realize in some parts of the world this may be a lot, but in the US at least it is probably not enough to live solely on.

As far as the investment aspect, simplifying this as I know there are other hardware expenses, but saying a roughly $200/GPU investment on a 50 GPU farm would be around a $10,000 investment. While this is a good deal of money, as far as investing it is probably considered small as you would not expect to make enough off of a $10k investment to live off of or retire on.

While with a medium farm you are looking at a $10,000-$30,000 investment, med-large $30,000-$60,000, large $60,000-$120,000 and so on. Again these are simply arbitrary buckets to lump investments into, but I think they will work for our purposes.

[Za1n]

I suppose  that is a good number to use 5000 watts or less = small.

I like your watt idea too for classification. I put everything discussed so far into a little summary for comparison:

Hobby 1-12 GPUs, < 1,800 watts, < $2,500 investment, $1-$12/day expected income

Micro Farm 13-25 GPUs, 1,800-4,000 watts, $2,500- $7,000 investment, $13-$25/day expected income

Small 26-50 GPUs, 4-8 kw, $6-12k investment, $26-$50/day expected income

Medium 51-150 GPUs, 8-24 kw, $12-40k investment, $51-$150/day expected income

Medium-Large 151-300 GPUs, 24-50 kw, $40-80k investment, $151-$300/day expected income

Large 301-600 GPUs, 50-100kw, $80-150k investment, $301-$600/day expected income

Professional 601+ GPUs, > 100kw, > $150k investment, $600+/day expected income

[bathrobehero]

Power consumption should definitely be the main factor, not the number of cards. I mean efficiency is roughly the same but you could have tons of low power cards (e.g. GTX 750 Ti).

Also, I should expand my mining "enterprise". Too bad power prices for businesses are waaaaay higher than residential prices where I live so it's hard to get a lot of electricity from one location without the power company getting suspicious.

[Za1n]

Power consumption should definitely be the main factor, not the number of cards. I mean efficiency is roughly the same but you could have tons of low power cards (e.g. GTX 750 Ti).

Also, I should expand my mining "enterprise". Too bad power prices for businesses are waaaaay higher than residential prices where I live so it's hard to get a lot of electricity from one location without the power company getting suspicious.

Here is an interesting calculation based off of that idea. Most residential homes in the US come wired for 240v and somewhere around a 150-250 amp breaker panel. This would yield a maximum capacity of 36,000 VA to 60,000 VA, which pretty much equates into watts for sake of this argument. So using 60% of these values, you need 20% for other things in your house, and the other 20% is for the safety overhead (no more than 80% total), a typical house could host 22,000 - 36,000 watts of mining equipment. This would put they survey's medium and lower categories firmly into sizes you can run out of your home, and the larger categories would start to require additional power typically found in more commercial environments. So using watts or GPUs, I think the groupings are still sized appropriately enough for this simple survey.

[Prelude]

I'm using about 30,000 watts of an available 96,000 watts with GPUs mining at home.

[riser]

12x Gpu R9 390

[bathrobehero]

Power consumption should definitely be the main factor, not the number of cards. I mean efficiency is roughly the same but you could have tons of low power cards (e.g. GTX 750 Ti).

Also, I should expand my mining "enterprise". Too bad power prices for businesses are waaaaay higher than residential prices where I live so it's hard to get a lot of electricity from one location without the power company getting suspicious.

Here is an interesting calculation based off of that idea. Most residential homes in the US come wired for 240v and somewhere around a 150-250 amp breaker panel. This would yield a maximum capacity of 36,000 VA to 60,000 VA, which pretty much equates into watts for sake of this argument. So using 60% of these values, you need 20% for other things in your house, and the other 20% is for the safety overhead (no more than 80% total), a typical house could host 22,000 - 36,000 watts of mining equipment. This would put they survey's medium and lower categories firmly into sizes you can run out of your home, and the larger categories would start to require additional power typically found in more commercial environments. So using watts or GPUs, I think the groupings are still sized appropriately enough for this simple survey.

Fucking hell and here I am with a 32 amps breaker on 230v which I almost had to fight for.

[Amph]

I'm using about 30,000 watts of an available 96,000 watts with GPUs mining at home.

96K watt at home for residential? where? never heard of that, usually residential can go to 6K here in europe, maybe it can be extended to 12k but not 96k for sure

[QuintLeo]

30 assorted GPUs + 5 Innosilicon A2 ASIC units currently running.

 I am NOT counting the GPUs of my A10 APUs that are mining as the income from them is very small.

 My farm has been making me enough to live on for almost 6 months now - but I won't say I've got lots of spare income, and my cost of living is fairly low while my cost of electric is in the "VERY VERY LOW" range which helps the profitability quite a lot.


 96 kw is VERY high for a residential setup - 400 Amp service is actually pretty high for a small BUSINESS and I've seen some multi-story business buildings that only had 600.
 In the US, 200 Amp 220 (nominal) volt main service is probably the most common for a home, some older homes are on 150 or 100 amp service, some older mobile homes are still on a 50 amp PLUGIN main service.
 Apartments are commonly on 50 amp service, possibly 70 80 or 100 if they are in an "all electric" area.

 I'm in a "house converted to a duplex" setup right now - have a 90 amp breaker feeding my panel, but the "whole house" hot water heater is on "my" panel (20 amp 220v circuit) while the 220v electric heaters (2x 1kw and 1x 2kw) are on the "other" panel (40 amp circuit feeds all the heaters in the entire "house").

 I have one circuit for the kitchen (20 amp 110 circuit) that runs the fridge, microwave, coffee maker, and a hotplate.
 I am VERY CAREFUL to never turn on more than one of the last 3 at a time - but it won't affect my miners if I do mess up and pop the breaker.
 That's also the circuit I use for my vaccum cleaner.

 I set up a secondary panel plugged into the outlet for the range (220v 30 amp circuit on a 50 amp standard range outlet) split into 4 x 15 amp circuits so I'd have enough outlets to plug my miners into.
       (Don't do this at home if you don't know what you're doing - I spent a few years as a Union-trained Journeyman Electrician in my younger days, I KNOW how to do this safely).

 I pulled the electric heaters (they were spliced into the house wiring made it trivial to remove while being able to restore them "just as they were" before I move out) and installed 220v sockets - those run 3 of my ASIC miners at a bit over 3KW total which don't count against MY 90 amp limit.
       (SAME warning).

 
 I figure that leaves me about 120 amps at 110 volts as a maximum so a bit over 13 KW (less 20% for derating on a continuous duty circuit drops that to 9 kw) to mine with, as the only other power consumption in the place is lighting (LED or Flourescent) and my clock.



 $25-$50 is actually on the high side right now for expected income from 25-50 cards, though not a lot so. It will probably continue to drop as ZEC pricing drops down slowly towards it's eventual true "floor" price.



 I anticipate my next move WILL be into a place with at least 150 Amp and preferably 200+ Amp service available.

[AmDD]

Power consumption should definitely be the main factor, not the number of cards. I mean efficiency is roughly the same but you could have tons of low power cards (e.g. GTX 750 Ti).

Also, I should expand my mining "enterprise". Too bad power prices for businesses are waaaaay higher than residential prices where I live so it's hard to get a lot of electricity from one location without the power company getting suspicious.

Here is an interesting calculation based off of that idea. Most residential homes in the US come wired for 240v and somewhere around a 150-250 amp breaker panel. This would yield a maximum capacity of 36,000 VA to 60,000 VA, which pretty much equates into watts for sake of this argument. So using 60% of these values, you need 20% for other things in your house, and the other 20% is for the safety overhead (no more than 80% total), a typical house could host 22,000 - 36,000 watts of mining equipment. This would put they survey's medium and lower categories firmly into sizes you can run out of your home, and the larger categories would start to require additional power typically found in more commercial environments. So using watts or GPUs, I think the groupings are still sized appropriately enough for this simple survey.

This is the same sort of thoughts I had awhile back when I started building my small farm. The only real difference is that the garage I have is on a separate meter and billed separately and its only a 100a service (I think, not totally sure how to tell without calling an electrician to look at it). I currently am using about 25a @ 240v which gives me room to expand over time.

[Za1n]

This is the same sort of thoughts I had awhile back when I started building my small farm. The only real difference is that the garage I have is on a separate meter and billed separately and its only a 100a service (I think, not totally sure how to tell without calling an electrician to look at it). I currently am using about 25a @ 240v which gives me room to expand over time.

Usually there is a main breaker in the panel (fed from the meter) to cutoff all the other circuits, the rating of this breaker determines the size of the service. But yeah, 100A sounds about right for a dedicated garage or shed service. I might look into that option myself as I would rather not have to push my house circuits right to the limit all the time.

[AmDD]

This is the same sort of thoughts I had awhile back when I started building my small farm. The only real difference is that the garage I have is on a separate meter and billed separately and its only a 100a service (I think, not totally sure how to tell without calling an electrician to look at it). I currently am using about 25a @ 240v which gives me room to expand over time.

Usually there is a main breaker in the panel (fed from the meter) to cutoff all the other circuits, the rating of this breaker determines the size of the service. But yeah, 100A sounds about right for a dedicated garage or shed service. I might look into that option myself as I would rather not have to push my house circuits right to the limit all the time.

Well I guess thats the other issue, its an old style fuse panel, not a circuit breaker. It had two 60a fuses as the main and Ive never actually seen a 100a fuse like that. Im fine as is, if I were to double my farm then Id be more worried as to what I actually have.

[Prelude]

I'm using about 30,000 watts of an available 96,000 watts with GPUs mining at home.

96K watt at home for residential? where? never heard of that, usually residential can go to 6K here in europe, maybe it can be extended to 12k but not 96k for sure

I really doubt residential homes in Europe only have 6Kw of available power. That's only 26A.

96 kw is VERY high for a residential setup - 400 Amp service is actually pretty high for a small BUSINESS and I've seen some multi-story business buildings that only had 600.

Might be uncommon in warmer states, but here in Quebec it's getting more and more common. Older homes usually have at least 200A, While anything pre 1970 is usually 100-150A. A lot of new homes with 2+ floors are set up with 400A here. Hell, some really high end houses have 600-800A services. Some people actually have heated driveways for winter, ridiculous right? That's 200A right there.

As for businesses, well it really depends on what type of business it is doesn't it. Offices don't need big electrical supplies. Also, a lot of businesses will have a 600v service, so 600A goes a long way. A typical McDonald's location that doesn't use natural gas for the fryers and grills will have a 500A 600v 3 phase service, for example.

[Naughtis]

I'm using about 30,000 watts of an available 96,000 watts with GPUs mining at home.

96K watt at home for residential? where? never heard of that, usually residential can go to 6K here in europe, maybe it can be extended to 12k but not 96k for sure

I really doubt residential homes in Europe only have 6Kw of available power. That's only 26A.

96 kw is VERY high for a residential setup - 400 Amp service is actually pretty high for a small BUSINESS and I've seen some multi-story business buildings that only had 600.

Might be uncommon in warmer states, but here in Quebec it's getting more and more common. Older homes usually have at least 200A, While anything pre 1970 is usually 100-150A. A lot of new homes with 2+ floors are set up with 400A here. Hell, some really high end houses have 600-800A services. Some people actually have heated driveways for winter, ridiculous right? That's 200A right there.

As for businesses, well it really depends on what type of business it is doesn't it. Offices don't need big electrical supplies. Also, a lot of businesses will have a 600v service, so 600A goes a long way. A typical McDonald's location that doesn't use natural gas for the fryers and grills will have a 500A 600v 3 phase service, for example.

Those rich people who heated the drive way should install the miners below the driver way to save some energy and earn bitcoin.

[strasboug]

600+ GPUs, wow... do we really make money on it? I really doubt it, anyone can provide more info?

[Amph]

96K watt at home for residential? where? never heard of that, usually residential can go to 6K here in europe, maybe it can be extended to 12k but not 96k for sure

I really doubt residential homes in Europe only have 6Kw of available power. That's only 26A.

for household it's only 6kw here, for not you can increase it further but not 96kw

i'm talking about 230 volt, not 120...

600+ GPUs, wow... do we really make money on it? I really doubt it, anyone can provide more info?

sp has 100 rig and yes if you have 5 cent electricity, but 10 cent is also nice for a big farm

[DRaGoN RaNTaRo]

I'm using about 30,000 watts of an available 96,000 watts with GPUs mining at home.

i am a bit curious to know how much you are earning per day and what are the coins you are mining and how much you invested for your farm and if you could take a pic of your farm it would be cool.

[philipma1957]

I have two 30 amp 240 volt sockets

Thus I could do 24 x 240 plus the same or about 11200 watts.

Problem is the house would be too hot

So I run around 5000 watts.