This is just getting nuts

[fcmatt]

testing them and running them for days on end overclocked to the nuts are two very different things.
i would be hesitant to tell someone to expect more then 375 mh/s from a 5850 on average. A minor difference
from your 390 but it all adds up when discussing 5 of them.  For every time a card hangs and it takes you time
to realize it and fix it.. has to be factored into your mining results.

just my opinion. i realize some 5850s perform better then others but a 990-1000 core clock speed, stable for days and day,
is impressive on these 5850 cards.

This should be pretty stable though because they run at 75c and it isn't a 990-1000 clock speed. It only requires 960 mhz these days to get 390 megahash. Plus these aren't some shitty brand they are sapphire cards.

i prefer to run at 940 at 375 mh/s, sapphire btw, for simple stability reasons.
if you got a good batch of cards more power to you!

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[AngelusWebDesign]

I don't quite understand why people are still buying mining hardware. Currently it will take about a minimum of 4 months to pay off one card.

I picked up 5 5850's for 145 each and you cant tell me that is not a bargain. I have tested each and the average between them is about 390 megahash. That's .208 a day for this difficulty. I recognize that the difficulty will increase but I'm going to stick with this for simplicity sake.

Now I'm not a dumb ass and I am not selling at the listed price of around 11 dollars. I agree selling at 11 dollars would take a long time to get your roi. I plan to hoard until the price goes up to between 15-20 dollars. So in 30 days I'll have 6.24 bitcoins which is $93 dollars at 15 a btc or $124 @ 20 a btc.

If you take the cost of electricity the card costs $7.2 a month (I pay 6.7c a kwh) That means $86 or 117

Also a months time is only two difficulty increases so my profits wont get drastically lower. Since in a months time the cards will be more then half paid for it still is 100% worth it.

the 145 for a 5850 deal is pretty much the only thing that was worth buying. Anything else now would be way overpriced because AMD is getting very overpriced due to the ridiculously high demand, and Nvidia's relatively low demand.

+1

That was indeed an incredible deal. Viva NCIXus.com!

I browsed Amazon/Newegg for what mining cards are in stock -- there's just nothing to get me off my seat.  70 to 80 days ROI is borderline; 120 is obviously much worse! And that's about the ROI for most 6XXX series cards.

[Intertreuton]

@mike678 : Where the hell do you live to get electricity that cheap? Dammit, I am jealous 
Here in Germany mining has become nearly non-profitable.

[fastandfurious]

I don't quite understand why people are still buying mining hardware. Currently it will take about a minimum of 4 months to pay off one card.

I picked up 5 5850's for 145 each and you cant tell me that is not a bargain. I have tested each and the average between them is about 390 megahash. That's .208 a day for this difficulty. I recognize that the difficulty will increase but I'm going to stick with this for simplicity sake.

Now I'm not a dumb ass and I am not selling at the listed price of around 11 dollars. I agree selling at 11 dollars would take a long time to get your roi. I plan to hoard until the price goes up to between 15-20 dollars. So in 30 days I'll have 6.24 bitcoins which is $93 dollars at 15 a btc or $124 @ 20 a btc.

If you take the cost of electricity the card costs $7.2 a month (I pay 6.7c a kwh) That means $86 or 117

Also a months time is only two difficulty increases so my profits wont get drastically lower. Since in a months time the cards will be more then half paid for it still is 100% worth it.

You don't now economics. Most miners will sell at 11 dollars (still a very good profit) and you will be stuck with them when it goes to 10 then 9, 8, 7 etc.

[mike678]

@mike678 : Where the hell do you live to get electricity that cheap? Dammit, I am jealous  
Here in Germany mining has become nearly non-profitable.

The north east

You don't now economics. Most miners will sell at 11 dollars (still a very good profit) and you will be stuck with them when it goes to 10 then 9, 8, 7 etc.

We wouldn't be investing in bitcoins directly or mining if we didn't think the price was going to go up. I have seen plenty of people suggest buying bitcoins directly obviously those people think its the low end as well yet they don't get as much criticism.

[triforcelink]

Ultimately, what determines the profitability of mining is your actual sell price. I believe that the price of bitcoin will ultimately go up and therefore I can actually choose at what price I want to sell.

[bcpokey]

I'm still hilariously amused by the people who claim that paying off a card in 4 months is a bad idea.

Look at wall street, people consider a 5% positive ROI in a year as doing *very well*. Imagine that buying a card new depreciates its resale value instantly by 30%, if you pay off the card in 4 months, that's a 70% ROI in 4 months. Admittedly it's riskier, but isn't that the name of the game? Don't like risk, go invest in blue chips (not that they're doing great these days).

I don't want to keep motivating people to raise up my difficulty while my price is dropping, but let's get some perspective here, really.

[Cluster2k]

Now I'm not a dumb ass and I am not selling at the listed price of around 11 dollars. I agree selling at 11 dollars would take a long time to get your roi. I plan to hoard until the price goes up to between 15-20 dollars. So in 30 days I'll have 6.24 bitcoins which is $93 dollars at 15 a btc or $124 @ 20 a btc.

That's a pretty big assumption, that bitcoin will return to $15-$20.  The trend over the past 3 months has been nothing but down.  Do you feel confident that enough new adopters will be found for bitcoin to drive the price up?  What do you see as the catalyst for this happening, aside from difficulty rate which is irrelevant to bitcoin's value?

[Cluster2k]

Look at wall street, people consider a 5% positive ROI in a year as doing *very well*. Imagine that buying a card new depreciates its resale value instantly by 30%, if you pay off the card in 4 months, that's a 70% ROI in 4 months. Admittedly it's riskier, but isn't that the name of the game? Don't like risk, go invest in blue chips (not that they're doing great these days).

There are a couple of differences here.  Investing in the shares of a company is not like investing in bitcoin: the company does something and creates value.  Bitcoin is just a commodity.  Graphics cards are essentially worthless after 2 years.  Increasing DirectX versions make previous card version obselete.  A card may pay off itself in 4 months, but don't forget the case, PSU, CPU, ram, storage, and motherboard required to make that card work.  Payoff time is now much longer. 

[deepceleron]

I don't quite understand why people are still buying mining hardware. Currently it will take about a minimum of 4 months to pay off one card.

If I keep my $100 without spending it, how long until that $100 is free?

[mike678]

That's a pretty big assumption, that bitcoin will return to $15-$20.  The trend over the past 3 months has been nothing but down.  Do you feel confident that enough new adopters will be found for bitcoin to drive the price up?  What do you see as the catalyst for this happening, aside from difficulty rate which is irrelevant to bitcoin's value?

I feel like bitcoins will either be a huge success and go main stream or it will roll over and die. If it is a huge success and goes main stream it most likely will not stay at around $10 a btc. I'm here for the long haul and I'm willing to be patient and wait how ever long that may be. I'm not going to be the dude who spends 10k bitcoins on a pizza. I realize there's probably no chance for a jump that high but it's entirely possible people are selling for cheap now and in a month or two it will be back up.

In regards to bitcoins failing I don't mind because I'm a computer science major so this is my hobby. If I lose a grand or two it's not the end of the world because I thoroughly enjoy doing this.

There are a couple of differences here.  Investing in the shares of a company is not like investing in bitcoin: the company does something and creates value.  Bitcoin is just a commodity.  Graphics cards are essentially worthless after 2 years.  Increasing DirectX versions make previous card version obselete.  A card may pay off itself in 4 months, but don't forget the case, PSU, CPU, ram, storage, and motherboard required to make that card work.  Payoff time is now much longer. 

The graphics cards may become valueless over time but I'm pretty sure a lot of people would be willing to take a 2 year old corsair psu thats gold rated. As long as you have some quality parts you will be able to get money back.
As for how long it takes to pay off a whole rig. My 5850's can give me enough bitcoins to be paid off in around 60 days. That's about half the cost of the server so in another 60 days I'll have enough bitcoins to finish off the costs. That's 4 months which isn't bad at all.

[fcmatt]

all these calculations are making assumptions that could quickly prove to be no longer valid.
BTC could be 6 dollars in 3 weeks. Difficulty could still go up in the meantime even if just a slow climb.
That ROI could stretch past a year... or never.

That is the risk we are all taking if we decide to buy some new gear today. And it seems to me the chances
of that happening are not so bad.

[deepceleron]

all these calculations are making assumptions that could quickly prove to be no longer valid.
BTC could be 6 dollars in 3 weeks.

BTC could be six dollars in three hours...

[fcmatt]

all these calculations are making assumptions that could quickly prove to be no longer valid.
BTC could be 6 dollars in 3 weeks.

BTC could be six dollars in three hours...

Exactly. I was one of the people who started in early June. Thank goodness I have made quite a bit that
I can consider the experiment (investment?) successful. But I still have some hardware to pay off if I do not
sell it today and the time line to pay that off is a long long ways off at this current price of 8 dollars.

For example, if I have 800 dollars left to pay off and I am running at 2400 mh/s.. lets say that generates
a hypothetical 1 BTC a day for the next 100 days. Well multiply that 100 BTC times a price of 8 dollars and
I will be paid off. 100 days is 3+ months and I am not even taking into account my time, electricity, cooling,
possible hardware failure, outages from a card hanging or power loss, bad luck at a pool, etc..

So a some what conservative estimate would be 5-6 months to pay off when just several weeks ago that calculation
was much rosier when tossing in elect/cooling costs.

Pop in a price of 6 dollars.. and things just got worse.

We all run these calculations (i hope) when deciding to buy hardware but many people are not doing a worst case
scenario which appears to be taking place as I type this. Diff goes up, BTC price goes down. Welcome to bitcoin mining.

[CD-RW]

I never did any investments (except electricity) so this is extremely profitable.  

[deepceleron]

all these calculations are making assumptions that could quickly prove to be no longer valid.
BTC could be 6 dollars in 3 weeks.

BTC could be six dollars in three hours...

Boy, I hate being right...

[lemonginger]

Boy, I hate being right...

Look on the bright side, a difficulty decrease is almost assured now! No use mining for a buck or so a day in the middle of summer here.

[SmokeAndMirrors]

I don't quite understand why people are still buying mining hardware. Currently it will take about a minimum of 4 months to pay off one card.

If I keep my $100 without spending it, how long until that $100 is free?

I fail to see your point. Explain.

[release]

I don't quite understand why people are still buying mining hardware. Currently it will take about a minimum of 4 months to pay off one card.

If I keep my $100 without spending it, how long until that $100 is free?

I fail to see your point. Explain.

I think he's trying to say that if you keep $100 dollars, it won't pay for itself. All you have is $100. If you buy mining equipment with $x, at some point, assuming it's profitable, you'll have mining equipment and $x.

[skidz7]

I don't quite understand why people are still buying mining hardware. Currently it will take about a minimum of 4 months to pay off one card.

In terms of interest that's almost 300%. 

I think that this concept uniquely appeals to us computer "techie" types as well.  The fact that we can build a machine that essentially "creates" money is compelling.....as is having an excuse to buy more stuff and get pretty brown boxes from newegg.