Miners that pay for electricity should seriously start reconsidering

[kokojie]

1. if you have to pay for electricity, you should not be getting into the mining game at this point, period.

2. if you have to pay for electricity, but you already have 1 or several dedicated rigs running, you should still mine, but start winding down your operation, start selling some rigs. You don't want to be selling them at a much lower price when the mass exodus begins (when difficulty reaches equilibrium with electricity cost, those who have to pay for electricity will inevitably start selling their rigs).

The fact of the matter is difficulty will keep rising until it reaches equilibrium with average electricity cost. The price of BTC will keep falling, because the supply of new BTC each day is overwelming the market, unless another wave of significant adoption comes, BTC price will continue to fall slowly. Until block reward is halved sometime in 2012.

[mike678]

I wont lie when I read the subject I was expecting a post from angelus lol.

[Cluster2k]

1. if you have to pay for electricity, you should not be getting into the mining game at this point, period.

Your advice is generally sound.  People paying more for electricity (25c/kwh) will get out much sooner than those paying 10c.  But ultimately, every miner will face a choice of continuing to mine with losses (in the hope of BTC's price rising in the future) or giving up.  We've already seen what happens when miners exit in droves from Namecoin.  Difficulty remains high for weeks as few miners can be bothered losing money to keep mining until the next reset.

The BTC market is already very well supplied.  We're creating thousands of new bitcoins per day that must find a buyer today, or a buyer tomorrow.  We could see a mad rush for the exits if people begin to think 'this is as good as it gets'. 

I scaled back a while ago and have only limited mining still churning away.  The hardware was sold off while it was still worth something.  It went for around 80% of new cost, which was pretty good. 

Looking at MtGox bids/asks at the moment, there's a reasonable number of bids, but at around $11.  Most asks are clustered around $13 and $13.50 with a long tail towards the current $11.60 strike price.  We could see some pretty dramatic moves in the next few days.  The only prediction I would make is that we won't be stuck at $11.50 in a couple of days.

[mike678]

Your advice is generally sound.  People paying more for electricity (25c/kwh) will get out much sooner than those paying 10c.  

I agree people who pay 25c/kwh will definitely see an end to serious profits soon. However people can still make good money off mining as long as they don't live in an area with hugely expensive electricity.

I feel its safe to say any frugal miner can build a machine for 1.5 megahash per dollar. Lets say they invest $1000 dollars today thats 1500 megahash. Lets double the difficulty just for the hell of it. I doubt it will get to 3,780,724 any time soon especially if the price drops any more but I feel like no one will argue if I am more then fair. At that difficulty you would make .4 btc.

Lets say the price stays around 12 dollars (if the price drops more I highly doubt even more then this I highly doubt we will reach 4 mill diff) thats 4.8 dollars a day before electricity.

1500 megahash would probably require about 1kw. If you don't agree I measured my watts used for 4 5830's and its ~888 and that gives me 1320.

At 1 kw and 10c/kwh it would cost 2.4 a day. That means 2.4 dollars a day in profit which is 72 a month. 72 dollars a month may not sound too great but thats months down the road and by then any hardware bought now should be easily paid for.

[1.21gigawatts]

Must be Anusgelus' other account.  I didn't see these posts yesterday.  Must be a sign to start buying

[Dargo]

It isn't clear at all that BTC price will reach equilibrium with electricity cost. It could do that for a short time, but in order for it to do that long term, I think it would have to be that case that everyone who continues to mine is just an enthusiast mining for fun. While there are a lot of enthusiasts out there, I don't think they would mine on a large scale. And of course if bitcoin completely fails to catch on as a currency, mining could become unprofitable even if the whole network drops to a few hundred Mhps. It may be that now is a good time to get out of mining altogether, but zero profit for mining strikes me as a relatively low probablility worst case scenario at this point. The price of BTC can and has been very volatile, so the price could drop to $8 next week, and be back up to $15 a few weeks later. If we do see an extreme price drop, personally I think it would be a good opportunity to pick up cheap GPUs or mining rigs from miners who get overly emotional about the situation and bail out.

[yochdog]

How can you possibly get 1500 MH/s for $1,000?  I would love to see where to buy this setup.  In fact, I will take 5 completed systems if you can do it at that price. 

[Starlightbreaker]

uh.

5850x4, overclock like there's no tomorrow.
buy everything used.

costs me like 875.
still gotta wait until all of the parts arrive though. 

[CanaryInTheMine]

How can you possibly get 1500 MH/s for $1,000?  I would love to see where to buy this setup.  In fact, I will take 5 completed systems if you can do it at that price. 

5850s:

These can do 400 MHashes each, so you need 4 @ 145 = $580 I personally bought some last week at this price.  you just need to look for them, they become available sometimes.   (you could also do 5 5830s if you find them under $110)

Can you fit the rest of components into $1000 - $580 = $420 (!) ?  I bet you could without breaking a sweat.

There you have it.  Go build your 5 systems.

[skyhigh]

kokojie thanks for the warning !

[yochdog]

So let me get this right:

step 1)  buy 4 video cards that are not readily available, and the ones that are easily exceed your claimed "price"  (at least 200 a piece)
step 2)  buy 1250 Watt PSU, 4 PCIx MOBO, processor, RAM under $420  
Step 3)  profit!

Foolproof.  

[mike678]

How can you possibly get 1500 MH/s for $1,000?  I would love to see where to buy this setup.  In fact, I will take 5 completed systems if you can do it at that price. 

There's a ton of ways you could achieve this but I'm too lazy to look up specific numbers. People above me have the right idea.

So let me get this right:

step 1)  buy 4 video cards that are not readily available, and the ones that are easily exceed your claimed "price"  (at least 200 a piece)
step 2)  buy 1250 Watt PSU, 4 PCIx MOBO, processor, RAM under $420   
Step 3)  profit!

Foolproof. 

I want to start by reposting what I said earlier.

I feel its safe to say any frugal miner can build a machine for 1.5 megahash per dollar.

Next I want to say the 5850 consumes a lot less power then a 5830. My 4x5830 set up consumes 888 watts so a 1000 watts for 4 5850's isn't out of the question. A 4 pcie mobo can be picked up for less then 100 dollars easily and a cpu only costs 30-40 ram is 10 so its extremely do able.

[yochdog]

I should have prefaced with this:  I DON'T WANT SOMEONES USED CRAP.

Show me where I can build a NEW system that gets 1500 MH/s for $1,000. 

[Mousepotato]

Wrd, the 5850s crap all over the 5830s for MH/s and power consumption. 

[CanaryInTheMine]

So let me get this right:

step 1)  buy 4 video cards that are not readily available, and the ones that are easily exceed your claimed "price"  (at least 200 a piece)
step 2)  buy 1250 Watt PSU, 4 PCIx MOBO, processor, RAM under $420  
Step 3)  profit!

Foolproof.  

3) I seriously doubt that you will ever profit!!!

2) no need for 1250 Watts.  if you are so bent on having 1250 Watts, then get 2 650-750 Watts PSUs ($140 total).

1) I bought 10 5850s last week for $1,492.64 (includes shipping) from ncix.com. you have to look for deals.  alternatively you can use 5 5830s as well (at a good price).

[newminerr]

I pay 5.8$ for 250 kw  

[Starlightbreaker]

I should have prefaced with this:  I DON'T WANT SOMEONES USED CRAP.

Show me where I can build a NEW system that gets 1500 MH/s for $1,000.  

similar deal.

i got 2 of the 5850 new for 174. ncixus had a sale....shipping is a bitch though.
mobo, 1x riser, cpu, ram..and/or HD, the total will cost you like 900somethingsomething.

if you want to get the same deal, well, gotta wait until it shows up again.


but then again, i don't care about using someone's used crap, as long as it can pay itself back.

if you have the $$ to waste, go ahead and buy new stuff.

[mike678]

I should have prefaced with this:  I DON'T WANT SOMEONES USED CRAP.

Show me where I can build a NEW system that gets 1500 MH/s for $1,000. 

Am I really going to have to list out links because your too much of a dumb ass to realize 420 dollars for non gpu parts can be easily done....
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819103944
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820134657
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820139292
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813138324
48 for extenders
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817256057

That leaves 78 dollars from the 420 budget....

[yochdog]

so you want me to use a MOBO with 2 PCIx slots? 

[mike678]

so you want me to use a MOBO with 2 PCIx slots?  

It's got 4 slots broseph do your homework before you start arguing.

PCI Express 2.0 x16 =2

PCI Express x1=2