help me with the parents

[geckogroove]

alright... im trying to convince my folks to let me run my computer 24/7 to mine... her issues atm


why do i want to mine? (help me find the best answer)

im worried it will slow our internet down (can someone help me with this?

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[Meni Rosenfeld]

why do i want to mine? (help me find the best answer)

1. Because you want to be a part of an incredible new technology that could change the world.
2. Because you want to utilize your existing resources to receive a source of income.

im worried it will slow our internet down (can someone help me with this?

It shouldn't slow down your internet at all, the bandwidth needed for pooled mining is negligible.

[JoelKatz]

why do i want to mine? (help me find the best answer)

For fun. As a hobby business.

im worried it will slow our internet down (can someone help me with this?

If you use a pool and don't leave the bitcoin client running, the bandwidth usage is miniscule. Nobody will notice it.

[jondecker76]

Make sure they understand the power draw and the increased electric bill that will happen as a result (there is a staggering difference in energy usage of an idle computer, and one that is mining bitcoins)

[spruce]

alright... im trying to convince my folks to let me run my computer 24/7 to mine...

Mining with a regular CPU at maybe 2 Mh/s? Not worth it if that is the case.

[geckogroove]

I have 2 radeon 5850's for mining and getting a third card soon... I'm offering to pay for my power usage to rule that out

[bitebitebite]

 Easiest to understand answer: Money

[spruce]

I have 2 radeon 5850's for mining and getting a third card soon... I'm offering to pay for my power usage to rule that out

Fair enough. That's much better! Good luck to you. I hope it works out OK. I bet it will if in a year's time the family is significantly richer because of your early interest.

[rearwheels]

Tell her there's Maths involved and this is a world wide mathematics project, but not related to school.

[Meatball]

I'd convince them it's an excellent hobby/learning experience.  Plus you can always make the financial argument.

3 5850's will use approximately 450-500W continuously while mining and your machine will add a bit more, but let's assume 500 for the sake of argument.  That's about 12 Kilowatt Hours/day * 30 days or 360 Kilowatt hours/month.  Multiply that by your KWH rate for electricity and you can guesstimate how much it'll cost.   So, at 10 cents a KwH you're looking at $36/month in electricity.

Those cards can pretty easily do 330-340 MH/sec, so let's say a flat 1 GH.  Using that against the current difficulty with $14 BTC prices (both of which are subject to change), you can expect to mine about 18 BTC or around $250 worth of BTC.  

Of course, you now have to deal with a loud/hot box in whatever room you stick it in and all the hassle of getting BTC sold and into your hands as cash but it's definitely worth it.

[geckogroove]

I'd convince them it's an excellent hobby/learning experience.  Plus you can always make the financial argument.

3 5850's will use approximately 450-500W continuously while mining and your machine will add a bit more, but let's assume 500 for the sake of argument.  That's about 12 Kilowatt Hours/day * 30 days or 360 Kilowatt hours/month.  Multiply that by your KWH rate for electricity and you can guesstimate how much it'll cost.   So, at 10 cents a KwH you're looking at $36/month in electricity.

Those cards can pretty easily do 330-340 MH/sec, so let's say a flat 1 GH.  Using that against the current difficulty with $14 BTC prices (both of which are subject to change), you can expect to mine about 18 BTC or around $250 worth of BTC.  

Of course, you now have to deal with a loud/hot box in whatever room you stick it in and all the hassle of getting BTC sold and into your hands as cash but it's definitely worth it.

my power cost is $0.28kwh and I got my single 5850 up to 400mhs I have another one in the mail and I believe you can mine using a pcie 1x slot, so I'll get a third soon

[jondecker76]

Sounds to me that you have educated yourself enough that you definitely deserve to be mining.   0.28/kwh is really high, but you could still turn a profit.
The biggest things that people tend to underestimate are:
1)  Difficulty increase
* if  were you I would plan on a minum of an .80 difficutly increase each time. If it turns out better, then great!
2) Difficulty in maintaining miners
* I am the autohor of smartcoin, if you're running on a linux box I recommend smartcoin or at least some monitoriing/control/backup system regardless of your OS)
3) Fraud prevention - Learn to be VERY weary  of everything!  A lot of users have been defrauded, whether it was from an exchange, a hack or even accidentally deleting your wallet.dat file.  Come up with a solid plan to protect your earnings and stick with it!

I hope you get the thumbs up, good luck!

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Mod note: Edited thread title to be more understandable to non-native English speakers.

[Meatball]

Yeah, that's really high for power, so figure that'll bump you up to $100 for electricity per month.  Still $150 profit a month, so it's not a huge deal.

You can use a x1 Slot to mine, but a normal video card is not going to fit directly in the slot.  You'll need some sort of adapter to either go from x1 to x16 or you can use an x1 to x1 adapter as long as the card side of the adapter has the end cut off.   You can also find most of these adapters on the cheap over at eBay if you don't mind waiting for shipping from China.

Theoretically you could lop off the end of the x1 slot on the motherboard, but I highly suggest not trying that.  Way too easy to damage the board.  Also, some motherboards may require you to short out some pins on the board for it to 'recognize' the card using the x1 slot.  Once again, I wouldn't suggest it.  I know it's worked for a lot of folks, but I actually killed a board doing that myself.

By the by, that's awesome you got those cards up to 400.  What clock speed/voltages are you using?  Just be careful.  While it's great to get an extra 10% or so hashing out of a card, in the long run if you kill the card in 3 months vs. 9 or 12, it's probably more cost effective to go a bit slower but not have to replace the card as quickly.

[geek-trader]

Be honest and up front with them:

* It's going to increase the power bill, but I'll pay for that (sounds like you already have this covered)
* it's going to generate some heat

but counter that with:

* I want to be part of this new technology that's just starting out.  I think it's going to take off.
* I think I can learn something about computer system administration and economics (that's 2 birds with 1 stone!)
* I think I can make some money.

[spruce]

3) Fraud prevention - Learn to be VERY weary  of everything!  A lot of users have been defrauded, whether it was from an exchange, a hack or even accidentally deleting your wallet.dat file.  Come up with a solid plan to protect your earnings and stick with it!

I assume you mean be very wary of everything. I agree with that sentiment of being careful.

[malevolent]

Depending where you live you might be able to persuade them to let you run the miner for free... because in winter you family will be able to save some money on heating.
But if you live somewhere close to the equator this argument will be useless

[evolve]

be 100% honest about electricity costs and wear and tear costs on the computer, and offer to pay for those costs with your profits (and live up to that offer)

[hmblm1245]

Show and explain the bitcoin hashing algorithm to them. they will be impressed with your understanding of advanced mathematics. https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Block_hashing_algorithm

OR they will be scared about what they dont know and tell you to turn it off now.