Advice on mining

[Salavator]

Hi all,
Just decided to register on the forums because, although I have been aware of bitcoins for a while, only recently did I make a high end computer. The computer was not built with mining in mind and therefore it is a good all rounder rather than being graphics processing heavy.
The specs are as follows (as of yet nothing is over-clocked):
750
i7 2600k processor
asus p8z68-v pro mobo
2gb 6950 graphics card (potentially can be unlocked to 6970?)
16gb 1600mhz ram (ddr3 being at an all time price low)
3 * 1TB hard drives in RAID
1* Agility 3 120GB SSD
OCZ 850W  80+ GOLD RATED PSU
extensive air cooling

Is it worth mining with this rig, or investing in another 6950 in crossfire and mining, or would the power consumption be too high and negate significant profit.

Any help with really be appreciated,
Thanks

[TeaL]

That rig does have decent specs, and could be used for pooled mining. If you're comfortable with BIOS flashing, then I'd recommend you unlock the card as that will increase your hashrate. If you decide to get serious about mining, I'd recommend buying a second card. If it's purely for the purpose of mining, the 2nd cards don't have to be the same type. If you want it to also be a functional gaming / rendering box, then the cards do need to be the same.

If you do choose to add another 6950, don't crossfire them while mining, as you'll lose efficiency (crossfire can be disabled in CCC or through aticonfig).

If you don't mind my asking, how much did you spend on that setup? I ask because I recently built a comparable rig and would like to see how the specs stack up against cost.

[Salavator]

It was £1250 before OS
However that does include some unnecessary costs such as the HAF X case and raid system which where more for personal reasons than performance reasons (the friend I made it for wanted it to be something "special" ). Plus it was a little more than it could have been in return for making it very highly upgradeable.

[Gunderson]

I would not recommend buying any equipment you were not going to buy anyway. 

If you look here:

http://bitcoinx.com/charts/

you can see a chart showing how the profitability of mining is quickly disappearing.  Look at the chart that shows USD/24hrs for 100Mh/s. 

The only reason to bitmine anymore, is if you already own the equipment and you get free power or you can use the waste heat that the rig produces for free heating.  If that's not true for you, stay away. 

Truth in advertising, I am looking into this myself, but only because the above conditions are true for me.

I don't see any real price support for Bitcoin/USD until around $6.50 and there is no guarantee that it will hold there.  All of the price movement to date suggests that the price is still falling (I wish it weren't).  I used to trade stocks and options fairly seriously, so call this an educated guess.  I personally believe that Bitcoins have a real non-zero value based on utility and user base, but whether that value is 10 cents, $1, or $10 I couldn't say.  I doubt that it is currently over $10 though, and I would not be surprised to see it fall to $1. 

I imagine that a lot of the interest in Bitcoin so far has been from miners and speculators, and when both of those things become unprofitable we could see a collapse.  Hopefully the worst is behind us, but don't bet on it. 

Good luck

[Salavator]

so your saying that I should just mine with the computer as it is?

[TeaL]

@Gunderson:

The conditions that make mining profitable are also true for me (free power in residence at university).

I see the value of bitcoin sitting at no less than $4 - $5 USD when it returns to its mean. I believe its value comes not only from it's usefulness (which will all but disappear if people keep treating it like a commodity), but also from the difficulty to obtain it. Without pooled mining it's almost impossible for the average user to get any return from the bitcoin network, for this reason, bitcoin has value (because it's hard to get). It also has value because of the investment made by the people who are mining it. For this reason, Bitcoin will never drop below $1 USD, at that point it wouldn't be worth running a mining rig, and people would turn their processing power elsewhere.