Need advice for mining setup - have free electricity

[Desiato]

Hello all,

I'm new to the forum, but I have been following bitcoin mining off and on for a while, and several times I almost jumped in and bought the hardware to mine, but my town's high electricity costs have always stopped me. GOOD NEWS: I just moved into an apartment with all utilities included. It's above a restaurant so they have plenty of reliable commercial power (plus air conditioning in the summer, also free). I signed a 2-year lease, so I know I have at least that long with free electricity.

I will be mining at home, so I need gear that is relatively quiet. I have researched the Antminer R4, and while that looks great, it's pricey. I have a budget of $4k-$5k, so I'd like to get as many TH/s as possible with my combined miners. I am open to buying a bunch of older miners (of different brands, too) that are reliable, even if they are less efficient, considering paying for electrical power is not an issue.

Any suggestions would be welcome! Thanks!

[Finksy]

Someone has to be the Moral-Margaret here (or Negative-Nancy?), but I wouldn't recommend going too overboard on electricity that's included with your rent. If you start making changes to the wiring, or they see that you're using way too much power and costing them a fortune, they could try to evict you on the basis of electrical code violations, or the fact that you're essentially running a "business" there and it should fall under commercial leasing -which is much more lenient towards the landlord and eviction. Personally I would personally buy a couple R4's and claim that's how you're heating the place.  Purposely taking advantage of someone and causing them undue financial harm for your own benefit (because they were foolish enough to include utilities) really isn't right.

Now to answer your question, the S7 would be the most cost-effective miner for hashrate, but they are incredibly loud.  You could try to get away with lower CFM fans and down-clocking the S7's, it might put you ahead in hashrate vs the S9 or R4, which have been very unreliable anyways.

[Desiato]

Someone has to be the Moral-Margaret here (or Negative-Nancy?), but I wouldn't recommend going too overboard on electricity that's included with your rent. If you start making changes to the wiring, or they see that you're using way too much power and costing them a fortune, they could try to evict you on the basis of electrical code violations, or the fact that you're essentially running a "business" there and it should fall under commercial leasing -which is much more lenient towards the landlord and eviction. Personally I would personally buy a couple R4's and claim that's how you're heating the place.  Purposely taking advantage of someone and causing them undue financial harm for your own benefit (because they were foolish enough to include utilities) really isn't right.

Now to answer your question, the S7 would be the most cost-effective miner for hashrate, but they are incredibly loud.  You could try to get away with lower CFM fans and down-clocking the S7's, it might put you ahead in hashrate vs the S9 or R4, which have been very unreliable anyways.

Thanks for your response, Finsky. I hear what you are saying. I guess the way I look at it, I already don't use much electricity compared to some other people's daily use of a hair dryer, rolling iron, flat iron, toaster oven, regular oven, etc. I know it's not the same, but there is a tradeoff.

Also, I'm never going to set up a large mining farm, even it if starts making money for me down the road. I expect I would only ever have the hash rate equivalent of two or three R4s. With the large restaurant operation, I don't think the owner will notice the increase in electrical use. Mine is tiny compared to his, and my apartment and the restaurant are all on the same power account. Plus, it would balance out in the winter, saving on his heating costs 

[coolcoinz]

Do you have an agreement about the amount of electricity you can use? If not then check the fuse box. What rating is on the fuses in your apartment and how many are there? A miner needs to be constantly online, so you will need to separate a circuit with a fuse, to be able to run a miner and your home appliances at the same time. You will also need to check if the walls are thick enough or you may have trouble sleeping.

[Desiato]

Do you have an agreement about the amount of electricity you can use? If not then check the fuse box. What rating is on the fuses in your apartment and how many are there? A miner needs to be constantly online, so you will need to separate a circuit with a fuse, to be able to run a miner and your home appliances at the same time. You will also need to check if the walls are thick enough or you may have trouble sleeping.

Good point, coolcoinz. I will be plugging into a dedicated line from the breaker box, so I should be good there.

The noise thing is a bit of a concern, but not huge. I couldn't run an S9 at full clock, of course. But maybe a series of older miners, underclocked, could be quiet enough? I'm just guessing here - would like to know if others have done something similar.

[takagari]

I would get a the psu and break out boards from finsky, get a 4k or 8k setup on 220V
And buy up all the S3 miners you can find.
Should be really cheap and they are silent.

Antminer R4 if you can find but they are pricey!
Anything above the S3 is loud, but you can also underclock the 5 and 7... depends what you can find locally.

[sidehack]

I don't know how cheaply an S7 could be had these days, but they can be undervolted to downclock around 0.23J/GH and still get a decent hashrate, about a 25% efficiency boost over stock. Less power means less heat means less fan noise, still not S3 silent but probably 10-15db quieter than stock full-blast. Efficiency also means a longer viable lifetime before power costs obsolete 'em.

If you're looking for quiet PSUs, I also recommend the 4K setup. You'll have to scrounge up 120mm fans, but a bigger fan means less noise for the airflow. Server PSUs are good for high power, efficiency, reliability and cost savings but tend to have small noisy fans; the 4K setup uses external fans so doesn't have that problem.

[adaseb]

Thanks for your response, Finsky. I hear what you are saying. I guess the way I look at it, I already don't use much electricity compared to some other people's daily use of a hair dryer, rolling iron, flat iron, toaster oven, regular oven, etc. I know it's not the same, but there is a tradeoff.

Yes a toaster oven and hair dryer use the same amount of power as a R4, however they generally run for 2-3 minutes, not 24 hours a day.

If there are only 3-4 tenants living in that  building then most likely in 3 months when the restaurant or landlord gets their electrical bill (usually takes a while because a worker has to manually do a reading) they will get very angry.

So while its winter you can get away with running 1 or 2 of those R4 and just say you were using space heaters because it was cold, but if you get like 10-20 of those miners and rack up $1000-$2000 in monthly electrical bills they will most likely force you to pay that bill or evict you.

There are alot of people that take advantage of included electricity however they usually live in a dorm with 100's of other apartments, so running 2 miners evens out the building electrical usage out of the 100 units, but if there are only 2-3 neighbours living in that building then somebody will notice.

Good luck

[coolcoinz]

It's exactly like adaseb said. What I'd like to add is that every power line has its max current and that current is limited by 2 factors: the breaker (which is somewhere if not at your apartment then in the basement) and the thickness of the wire. There will always be a limit of what you can draw. Let's assume you are running a single phase, for a 4mm wire it's around 5500W of constant draw. A single s3 draws 366W, so with 3 of those you are completely fine and can go 24/7 along your home appliances, but a bigger farm with over 9 units would most likely trip the breakers sooner or later. Of course there's a possibility you have 3 phases, but  you should confirm that before you buy the miners.

[Sam San]

In addition to the problem with electricity is waiting for you a problem with heat.

[Stratobitz]

I would also take into consideration the way it would be viewed if/when you were found out.

I had a similar situation, a large amount of Amps, included in a commercial lease (like large amount). So we ran miners a few years back.

Well, the landlord did catch on. I stood my ground, as my company has research and development liceneses for technology from the state where I live.... HOWEVER,

The average Joe knows nothing about Bitcoin, except it's used to buy drugs and fund terrorism... This really is truth, most people, like landlords, know nothing but the few news stories they've heard on CNN.

So if you get caught- what honestly was most uncomfortable was not me arguing that I pay fair market rate for my lease, on time, every month, and the AC was included- but rather I honestly felt my landlord, whom I had (and still do now) have a good relationship with... did view this as "very suspicious / criminal activity). And then others found out, because people talk. And before you know it, I literally had people I work with in the area bringing it up "Hey heard something about... man don't go down that road, all that kind of talk".

Just a thought. The way it is viewed by the general public is nefarious, of no good use (which of course isnt true). But you may end up realizing the AC usage was the least damaging part--- rather your reputation.

Cheers,

Strato

[Stratobitz]

Also, I still have about 24 or so S3+ Units left, with PSUs. They all work, were batch 7. I know this post is off topic here - but you said you are looking to buy S3+ units.

All of mine work great. I could cube them into 6 packs and freight them to you. I'm in the Virgina/DC area.

I have turnkey setups for the S3+ miners, the PSUs, cables, antswitches. Just shelved it when I upgraded.

Let me know, if you'd like to talk more.

I can send photos.

Strato

[NotFuzzyWarm]

Just a thought. The way it is viewed by the general public is nefarious, of no good use (which of course isnt true). But you may end up realizing the AC usage was the least damaging part--- rather your reputation.

That misconception can only be fought with education. For one, the plain and simple fact is that being an open Public ledger Bitcoins are far easier to trace than Fiat and normal banking that use off-shore accounts. It's a safe bet that governments LOVE it when criminals use BTC as it makes it easier to track their activity.