Hi, I did the calculation and it seems that I would need about 7 month to get my money back based on the current difficulty and thats assuming the difficulty stays the same and the prices stay the same. Am I correct ? I understand that these are more efficient as far as power goes, but GPUs could be used for something else at the end of the day and these units can only mine.
Don;t get me wrong I think it is a great development that there are script asics, I am just questioning economics.
in dollars and cents these work well if you are like me a house with 9 gpus pulling 2500 watts of juice. sell some of them off and replace with these.
If you are a new miner and have a decent pc with room for a second gpu you can argue to buy the gpu.
Also, consider that GFX cards prices are now going down because miners are dropping them off. The major reason to go to ASIC at this point is to increase capacity for those of us who already pulling most of the juice from our meager power circuits at homes. There is also space issue. It's okay to setup 4-card computer. Going 5 or 6 is not trivial and you will spend a lot of time getting up (and continue) running. If you go through a lot of expensive hoops and get 6x R290 running, you will have around 5MH rig. It's pretty respectable. With these 350K grid seeds, you can build a higher density rig. It's not uncommon for people to run a hundred USB devices, but for the sake of comparison let's say you buy 15.
Cost of mining parts:
A. Tricked out GFX rig 6x880KH=5.3MH6x 290x 6x$600=$3,600
3x 800W power supplies (1PS per 2x cards) = 3x$120=$360
6x PCI-E extender cables 6x$20=$120
Total mining stuff, approx $4,100
B. Gridseed rig 15x350KH=5.23MH15x GS 15x$220=$3300
2x USB hubs 2x$30=$60
Switching 12v 350W power supply $30
Total mining stuff, approx: $3,400
The MAJOR difference is that the A pulls just about what you can put in a USA house (2,000W) before your breaker trips. (I tripped many times
). The B option will pull around 300W (if you use a computer instead of controller). Miners will account for a small fraction of total power at 15x5W, will round up to 100W.
This means is that for me to double my hashing power with option A, I need to load it on another 20amp circuit in the house (and potentially stop using a washer/dryer
) and spend money on another base computer setup (motherboard, hard drive, CPU, memory, etc). With option B, I can very simply buy another 15 miners, probably another USB hub and I still have more than enough on 350W power supply to run all 30. Option B will not require me to do anything with power circuits.
So, again, as philpma stated, if you are a casual gamer-miner then GFX is a good addition to your office/dorm room. If you are "into home mining" then ASICs are more appealing. Cheers.
