Capital cost.

[sgravina]

I've just finished my first month of mining and have finally stopped buying computer stuff.

Capital                  $8,000    -    21 graphics cards running on 7 motherboards.
MHash/s                 7,000

So I paid $1.14 for each MHash/s capability.  How does that compare to others?

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[1bitc0inplz]

That's a lot more than I've spent.

I think my initial investment was $50, and I've continually reinvested the generated BTC back into my mining rig. I am currently up to 385 MH/s and only out of pocket my initial $50 

[sgravina]

I started with nothing.  So the cost you see is for everything, motherboards power supplies, etc.  $50 wouldn't buy you any computational power.

[1bitc0inplz]

I started with nothing.  So the cost you see is for everything, motherboards power supplies, etc.  $50 wouldn't buy you any computational power.

True, very true.

I was lucky enough to have an old Dell in my closet. I dusted it off and it had two open PCIe slots   So the $50 I mentioned was only to purchase my first GPU, it was a Radeon 5670 I believe.

However, if I were not so lucky, I would be a completely different situation.

[bcpokey]

Not to make you feel bad, but you'll almost definitely not ever see that back. $1.14 / Mhash is way too much.

Admittedly I bought in the heyday and got lucky in many ways, but my Price was about $2.41 / MHash, or $0.41 / MHash, buying in about 101000 difficulty, and it took me roughly 45 days to cover costs.

The difficulty is now > 10x higher than that, and you're paying almost triple per mhash. It will be rough for you my friend. Admittedly price is higher now but it also varies quite a bit and is not on the up up up that it once was. Best of luck to you though.

[Adam]

For the systems I currently have online I paid around $2200 for 3200ish Mhash.  That's 11 5830s and various other components.

[Big Time Coin]

I've just finished my first month of mining and have finally stopped buying computer stuff.

Capital                  $8,000    -    21 graphics cards running on 7 motherboards.
MHash/s                 7,000

So I paid $1.14 for each MHash/s capability.  How does that compare to others?

That's not bad at all.  You counting the PSU?  My PSU cost 150-250 each, which is comparable to the mobo, cpu, ram, hd and case put together.  so you are looking at about $400-500 for the non-GPU parts, times 7 = $2800-3500.  That leaves around $4500-$5200 for the gpus.  21 gpus at about $200-250 each, what kind did you get?  5850, 6950?  Either way your MH estimate is pretty accurate if you OC and run aggressive command line args.  

The math works out for me, he spent what it costs and didn't overspend.  Obviously would have been better to buy 2 months ago when GPU costs would have been 1/2 or 2/3 of what they are now, but I don't think you can get much higher than $1.14 per M/Hash at today's prices.

Did you factor in the cost of shelving/computer storage, surge protectors/electrical wiring, fans, and A/C units?  You are going to need at least 20,000 BTU of cooling for that if you live anywhere south of Maine.  That all should run you another $1000 plus, easy.  Bring your total capital cost to more than $1.14 per MHash.  Then you got to factor in rent, unless you already have a sunk cost mortgage on a house with a usable workshop, garage, or extra bedroom.  Recalculate with all that and you might find closer to $1.50 per MH.

[SlipperySlope]

I paid about $1500 for three case-less mining rigs + UPS, 6 x 5770, 1200 MH/sec.  Draws 860 watts from the socket, in a non-airconditioned environment.

[mike678]

I've just finished my first month of mining and have finally stopped buying computer stuff.

Capital                  $8,000    -    21 graphics cards running on 7 motherboards.
MHash/s                 7,000

So I paid $1.14 for each MHash/s capability.  How does that compare to others?

I may be mistaken with what your trying to show but dollar per megahash (dollar/megahash) is a bit of an awkward ratio because the lower your number the better you did. If you go with megahash per dollar (megahash/dollar) you got .875 megahash for ever dollar you put in. This ratio makes a higher number a better number which is more comprehend able.

Capital                                   987
MHash/s                               1280
Megahash per dollar               1.30

[sgravina]

That's not bad at all.  You counting the PSU?  My PSU cost 150-250 each, which is comparable to the mobo, cpu, ram, hd and case put together.  so you are looking at about $400-500 for the non-GPU parts, times 7 = $2800-3500.  That leaves around $4500-$5200 for the gpus.  21 gpus at about $200-250 each, what kind did you get?  5850, 6950?  Either way your MH estimate is pretty accurate if you OC and run aggressive command line args.  

I built three rigs from scratch.  I bought three used gaming computers.  One computer didn't work so I bought a replacement motherboard for it, then I fixed the motherboard added the power supply, CPU, memory and that gave me my seventh rig.  So I have Three computer in cases and 4 sitting open on the table.

The Power Supplies were the most expensive part.  One was $250 and the cheapest was $190.

Did you factor in the cost of shelving/computer storage, surge protectors/electrical wiring, fans, and A/C units?  You are going to need at least 20,000 BTU of cooling for that if you live anywhere south of Maine.  That all should run you another $1000 plus, easy.  Bring your total capital cost to more than $1.14 per MHash.  Then you got to factor in rent, unless you already have a sunk cost mortgage on a house with a usable workshop, garage, or extra bedroom.  Recalculate with all that and you might find closer to $1.50 per MH.

Not counting any of that.  Just wondering about the capital.  I own my house. Most of my rigs are in my basement where it used to be nice and cool.  For about $30 I added 40 amps of outlets to the basement.  I haven't needed any cooling, just fans on all the open rigs.  I'm burning an extra 2.9 KWatts for about $340 / month.

[sgravina]

I paid about $1500 for three case-less mining rigs + UPS, 6 x 5770, 1200 MH/sec.  Draws 860 watts from the socket, in a non-airconditioned environment.

So you paid a bit more than me.  $1.25  for each MHash/s capability.

[fascistmuffin]

I made a rig for ~$600 (with a good case that was probably unnecessary and some already owned hardware) and it puts out ~580 MH/s. So that was 1.03$/MH, or .966MH/$

I also have a 5850 pushing 340MH/s on my gaming computer, but the 5850 was bought before I knew of BTC, so I consider that $0 investment. So that's givng me 0$/MH or InfinityMH/$

Edit: 9.66 MH/s is quite different from .966MH/$

[CYPER]

Capital                  $1360
MHash/s                 1748

$0.778 for each Mhash/s
1.285 Mhash/s for each dollar

[IlbiStarz]

$2100
2500Mhash/s

[zerokwel]

I decided to only buy with what I earned.

£25
800mhash

Already had a 5770 and a xfire mobo for my gaming needs so don't class that as outlay as it was before bitcoin

[bcpokey]

I'm amazed by how inefficient a lot of these builds are that seem to be the norm. I'm curious, how many of you guys at the 1Mhash/$ or below level are near having your setups repaying themselves?

[nebiki]

205 eur for 410Mhash/s. card has mined 10btc for me so far.

I'm amazed by how inefficient a lot of these builds are that seem to be the norm. I'm curious, how many of you guys at the 1Mhash/$ or below level are near having your setups repaying themselves?

quite far away from that, even though it's 1.4Mhash/$. problem is, each mined bitcoin costs about 3.20 eur for me (0.22 eur / kWh), so it will take quite a while to have the card pay for itself, if it's even gonna happen at all.

[V4Vendettas]

So far about £600 / $960 on 05/07/11

1050 MHash/s


Have a clone of this on order so I can do some side by side research with a friend.
All quality parts with good warrantys to so dont expect hardware failures to be an issue.

May well Dive in after that and get 8 more taking it to 10GHash/s and should cost me under £6000.

You lot in the US got it easy   stuff over here costs an arm and a leg.  

Plan is one hard drive to boot and rule them all. Lol see what i did   ok fail sorry.

Whole things caseless so will be buying an wheeled airport server case and a rather large fan. (not factored in these cost's yet)

Then I can stay at hotels for free   well as long as I don’t trip the MCB that supplies my floor.
Do uk hotels have fair energy use policy’s? I have some more research to do it seems.

[Zibbo]

Not to make you feel bad, but you'll almost definitely not ever see that back. $1.14 / Mhash is way too much.

Almost definitely? Never? Really?

So what's your best estimate on the probability that he will make back all that he invested (including accumulating electricity costs and possible hardware failures), in a scenario where he sells all of his bitcoins as they come along? "Almost definitely not ever" is so vague, but to me it sounds like 1% at most, possibly 0.1% or even lower. Is that about right?

[V4Vendettas]

Not to make you feel bad, but you'll almost definitely not ever see that back. $1.14 / Mhash is way too much.

Almost definitely? Never? Really?

So what's your best estimate on the probability that he will make back all that he invested (including accumulating electricity costs and possible hardware failures), in a scenario where he sells all of his bitcoins as they come along? "Almost definitely not ever" is so vague, but to me it sounds like 1% at most, possibly 0.1% or even lower. Is that about right?

Brake even isn't when you get your money back for your investment in my mind anyway.
Its when you have sold bitcoins and covered utillitys to the point that you can realisticly ebay off all your hardware and come out even.
The rigs are an asset dont forget.