One graphic card to run off solar, nVidia or AMD?

[stinger42]

Hi, I have solar panels on my roof and for the half the day I'm feeding electricity back into the grid and being paid 5 cents kw/h (so you could say that is the cost). Otherwise it is 20 cents. I have donated to distributed computing (SETI, Folding@Home, World Community Grid etc.) for over 10 years but only from my CPU and onboard Intel graphics. An energy efficient GPU (and not too noisy) could sit in there during peak daylight hours and mine for me (about 6 hours every day).

I have my desktop with PSU: 650W 80PLUS Gold and currently no graphics card.
My computer is under the desk in a Fractal Designs Define R5 case (so some sound insulation built into the design)

Locally I can buy:
Radeon 480 RX 4gb Asus Dual OC  $250
Radeon 580 RX 4gb Gigabyte or Sapphire $290
Radeon 580 RX 8gb Gigabyte, MSI, Asus or Sapphire $335


or
nVidia 1050Ti 4gb Gigabyte, Galax, Asus or MSI $180
nVidia 1060 6gb Gigabyte, Galax, Asus or MSI $300
nVidia 1070 8gb Gigabyte, Galax, Asus or MSI $450
nVidia 1080 8gb Gigabyte, Galax, Asus or MSI $550

So not a super serious rig but something that would be a good start that would give me some flexibility moving forward. All prices are is USD

My preference would be for nVidia with a CUDA so at a later date I can use it for distributed computing (donating for scientific research) again if I wanted (seems AMD only has a couple of models that you can use the GPU) https://boinc.berkeley.edu/wiki/GPU_computing

[antantti]

I have donated to distributed computing (SETI, Folding@Home, World Community Grid etc.) for over 10 years

Nvidia. FLDC.

[poby]

A single GPU will make around $5 a day so $1.25 for 6 hours which is a lot more than your feed in tariff.  Of course the revenue will fall from day one as difficulty increases but with the electric cost effectively only 5 cents a kwh, it should be profitable to some degree indefinitely.  It's an open question if you will ever make enough to pay for the card but I think it's not a bad idea overall as it gives you another interest in life and effectively a free albeit small income.

I suggest a 1060 or a 1070.

[ace24]

If you can really buy those AMD cards for those prices today, you should do it -- and forget mining, sell them on eBay. They are impossible to find right now (in the US), and going for 50-100% over retail cost on eBay.

[stinger42]

Thanks for the speedy response guys!

The FLDC is interesting and would be great to crunch although I suspect if I'm going to donate (ie not have a financial incentive) I'd be leaning toward SETI (search for aliens) at the moment as they seem to be getting swamped with the data the telescopes are producing: https://www.engadget.com/2017/05/25/listening-to-starlight-our-ongoing-search-for-alien-intelligenc/

Interesting comment on the AMD graphics cards, I might give the shop a ring, they are listing lots of models on their website.