GPU Mining a good idea or not?

[ethereumnews]

I used to have a GPU mining rig, well, not mining rig but more of a gaming PC with 2x GTX 1060 6GB GPUs. I sold my GPUs for 25% profit when coins started going down in price 6-7 months back.

Now that prices have stabilized a bit, is it a good idea to get back into GPU mining? My PC can accomodate 3 GPUs and since I have 800W PSU, I should not have any problem, but should I?

I see two problems:

1) ASICs that can mine equihash and other algos. I used to mine ZEC and KMD.
2) Low prices

What's your take?

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[fanatic26_]

1. You need to post this in the altcoin section, this is for bitcoin mining only so you will not get many useful replies.

2. The market is in free fall, it is hard to recommend buying new hardware at this point.

[SCheek]

At Elite Mining we use a combination of GPU and ASICs amongst others to ensure good diversification.

[zepherius]

The thing about GPU mining is that it offers more options.

Short answer: yes ASICS mine better.

Long answer: an ASICS miner apart from mining is useless which means if for what ever reason you want to sell the hardware, selling your mining hardware will be hard if the market isnt going up. While a GPU you can still sell in a bearish market since its used in computers. Additionally, many GPUs support different algo's whereas a specific ASIC miner can only mine specific algo's. This again means that should something happen that you want to mine something else you can do this more easily using GPU (depends on the GPU as well so do your research).

And low prices can also be an opportunity, it means that hardware is likely also cheaper to buy.

[robyyw]

If I don't take both because for now, it isn't the right time to invest in hardware. I doubt the ROI and the uncertain market situation.

[Harai Goshi]

It's a great time!  Want to buy one of my rigs?  /joke

Buy the dip, sell the rip.  I wouldnt be so sure the prices have stabilized yet.  I'm keeping my farm running now only because power costs arent an issue.  As tempting as it is right now to buy into some more hardware at significantly lower costs, I'm waiting for confirmation that the bottom is in.  GPUs need altcoins to mine, how that market shakes out...what happens to prices in the alts, difficulties in the algos, which projects/algos can survive a $3000 btc/ $50.00 eth environment, etc...will effect what hardware I want to be running in the future.  It's not just ASIC vs GPU...you have to consider specific ASICs and specific GPUs...along with possibly FPGA. 

I do think the prices are pretty good to start thinking about buying in, though.  Just understand there is a significant chance the bottom isnt in on the market yet (IMO, I think BTC into the 3000s and another 8 to 12 months of a bear are likely), which means even at the current prices ROI on new equipment purchases is going to be a while. 

[swogerino]

Nvidias are good now to mine ethereum if you use the 6 GB version. The difficulty has come a bit down because of a fall down in price of ethereum so this can be a good thing.

Don't even try mining Zec with them, it is worthless now that Z9 and Z9 mini have taken over , the daily reward was in mbtc 0.03 with 3 such cards.

[leonix007]

The problem is this

Now that prices have stabilized a bit, is it a good idea to get back into GPU mining?

Coin prices are still at Bear side

a simple computation with regards to profit might be useful in deciding if you want to mine at this moment

[peterboy1]

if you have to ask, then no.

[shield132]

Currently I would forget ethereum and some other very popular litecoins for mining because they are already abused, did you understand what I mean?
So for this reason, I would avoid buying of asic and AMD GPUs.
Buy Nvidia GPUs, GTX1070ti and higher, they are amazing, consume less energy and is profitable because you don't depend on ethereum or zcash or on others, just visit whattomine.com set your setting and see how these Nvidia's GPUs are better than AMD ones and how freely you are in choice of choosing coin for mining.

[iSparta]

No one can predict the further movement of the market. Mining is not very profitable now, it justifies itself only at a low price for electricity and using heat from mining farms for space heating. But prices have now fallen very much, so if growth begins, then maybe there is a point in buying new equipment.

[swogerino]

Currently I would forget ethereum and some other very popular litecoins for mining because they are already abused, did you understand what I mean?
So for this reason, I would avoid buying of asic and AMD GPUs.
Buy Nvidia GPUs, GTX1070ti and higher, they are amazing, consume less energy and is profitable because you don't depend on ethereum or zcash or on others, just visit whattomine.com set your setting and see how these Nvidia's GPUs are better than AMD ones and how freely you are in choice of choosing coin for mining.

An easier way for those who don't know much about configuring miners is to use Winminer, it will automatically choose the most profitable coin to mine and it supports more altcoins than Nicehash does, in fact Nocehash is falling behind in this point.

Gtx series since 1060 are good enough but 1070 ti and higher are wonderful for mining during this time.

[adaseb]

Basically if you already own the gear and have free or cheap electricity, then go ahead and get back into mining.

If you don't have the GPUs and your electricity is greater than 10 cents a KwH then you should hold off for now and see where the future takes us. You should also take into account the next Ethereum fork upgrade which will reduce the issuance to 2 ETH per block from 3 ETH per block, so there is another mining profit reduction right there.

[zepherius]

The thing is though, a lot of people would say something like better buy the coins instead of mining them if you believe value will increase in the future. But if you already have the hardware and not a lot of cash laying around it might be a good idea to just mine the coins to hodl

[FloppyPurpleGherkin]

Basically if you already own the gear and have free or cheap electricity, then go ahead and get back into mining.

If you don't have the GPUs and your electricity is greater than 10 cents a KwH then you should hold off for now and see where the future takes us. You should also take into account the next Ethereum fork upgrade which will reduce the issuance to 2 ETH per block from 3 ETH per block, so there is another mining profit reduction right there.

Even power at 10 cents is barely breaking even now (btc at $3790 as I type)

On WTM if I input 85x 570's @ 10 cents the profit is $0.48 cents per day TOTAL. not per card lol 

[Metroid]

Basically if you already own the gear and have free or cheap electricity, then go ahead and get back into mining.

If you don't have the GPUs and your electricity is greater than 10 cents a KwH then you should hold off for now and see where the future takes us. You should also take into account the next Ethereum fork upgrade which will reduce the issuance to 2 ETH per block from 3 ETH per block, so there is another mining profit reduction right there.

What is happening right now is a lesson to all the greedy idiots who thought would be rich in few months by have borrowed millions of dollars and put into mining equipment and now they are selling all their coins to pay off the huge loans, they are the ones crashing the market, include the manipulators too.

I'm glad this is happening, is a good lesson.

[Za1n]

Basically if you already own the gear and have free or cheap electricity, then go ahead and get back into mining.

If you don't have the GPUs and your electricity is greater than 10 cents a KwH then you should hold off for now and see where the future takes us. You should also take into account the next Ethereum fork upgrade which will reduce the issuance to 2 ETH per block from 3 ETH per block, so there is another mining profit reduction right there.

Even power at 10 cents is barely breaking even now (btc at $3790 as I type)

On WTM if I input 85x 570's @ 10 cents the profit is $0.48 cents per day TOTAL. not per card lol 

Also consider that sites like what-to-mine use the most optimistic projections possible, meaning your pool never runs into a bad streak of luck, your miners also never get into a slump for guessing shares, none of you rigs goes off for more than a minute, and on and on. Highly unrealistic and is usually estimating your income to be about 2-3% higher than it will be over the long term.

In any case, with an estimated profit at roughly 0.5 cents per GPU, it is not even worth considering. Even at 8 cent power with the unknowns and unseen overheads factored in, it is still a wash. People with 6 cent power may be desperately clinging to low profits, but in all cases except for the free power grabbers, I think most miners are now mining at a loss or in the best case barely breakeven conditions.

[ROImarksman]

If you have really cheap power and can grab a bunch of cheap cards from the panicking miners - why not?
FPGAs seem more promising, though. But that's painfully not the "cheap" part.

[zepherius]

Basically if you already own the gear and have free or cheap electricity, then go ahead and get back into mining.

If you don't have the GPUs and your electricity is greater than 10 cents a KwH then you should hold off for now and see where the future takes us. You should also take into account the next Ethereum fork upgrade which will reduce the issuance to 2 ETH per block from 3 ETH per block, so there is another mining profit reduction right there.

Even power at 10 cents is barely breaking even now (btc at $3790 as I type)

On WTM if I input 85x 570's @ 10 cents the profit is $0.48 cents per day TOTAL. not per card lol 

Also consider that sites like what-to-mine use the most optimistic projections possible, meaning your pool never runs into a bad streak of luck, your miners also never get into a slump for guessing shares, none of you rigs goes off for more than a minute, and on and on. Highly unrealistic and is usually estimating your income to be about 2-3% higher than it will be over the long term.

In any case, with an estimated profit at roughly 0.5 cents per GPU, it is not even worth considering. Even at 8 cent power with the unknowns and unseen overheads factored in, it is still a wash. People with 6 cent power may be desperately clinging to low profits, but in all cases except for the free power grabbers, I think most miners are now mining at a loss or in the best case barely breakeven conditions.

Yea that is a very good point, most of the websites wont show the actual profit you ll be making. Since a lot of those coins are smaller coins so there is efficiency drop-off and also likely a small drop-off at the pool you might be using, not to speak about any fees. Of course mining 'bigger' coins provides more stability but maybe not 'maximum' mining profit

[Za1n]

If you have really cheap power and can grab a bunch of cheap cards from the panicking miners - why not?
FPGAs seem more promising, though. But that's painfully not the "cheap" part.

Here is a reason why not:

A 6x RX480 8 GB rig will earn $1.81 a day with free power. That is $0.30 per day, per GPU, of profit, again assuming you have zero electric costs.

Used RX480 8GB on eBay averaging around $120 (some cheaper some higher). That represents over a 400 day payback period just to earn your investment back before really starting to turn a profit.

Oh wait, I can already hear you say that the coin's price will recover by then making it a smart investment.

Well here is an idea, if the price is going to recover (probably well before the 400 days it would take to ROI on your used GPUs) why not just buy the coins outright, sit back and not worry about miners, electricity, heat, noise, etc., and profit?

Right now in today's market (may change in the future) it makes zero sense to invest in mining equipment even with free power. If you want to invest money, simply buy the coins.

Sure the prices may go down a bit more, but right now is the time to be thinking of buying coins. For less than the price of that used GPU ~$120 you can now buy a whole Ethereum coin, which would take you over one year to mine with the used GPU. I expect in the near future you may be able to pick up close to 2 ETH for that $120, so then would definitely be the time to jump in.

The super low coin prices will seem like everything is over but in reality they will represent the time of maximal opportunity. Opportunity that is for investing in coins directly, not in mining.