ROI figures for a mining rig?

[LordGreynick]

Has anyone done any figures with some standard ROI figures for an "average" mining rig?

[LordGreynick]

also - are there any established formulae that can be used for calculating x amount of m/hash = y amount of bitcoins generated per hour .. along these lines?

[vmg3]

you could check out http://www.btclog.com/discussion/3/determine-your-break-even-valuedifficulty-vd-ratio#Item_6

[ovidiusoft]

Or better: http://bitcoinx.com/profit/index.php

[nmat]

Has anyone done any figures with some standard ROI figures for an "average" mining rig?

A lot of calculations have been done. See this calculator for example http://tpbitcalc.appspot.com/

[LordGreynick]

Thank you everyone. I really appreciate the responses - there's most of the information I'm after.

Does anyone know if someone has put together a rig "sweet spot" database? IE most processing for the least amount of investment into the rig?

[runlinux]

a sweet spot rig would be 5830's when you could have bought them for 110$ each, and any board you could cram 5+ into while running a 40$, single core cpu.

i have seen ~1400$ get you ~2.5Gh/s if done right.

[DeathAndTaxes]

Another option (in US) is used 5970s from ebay.

Used they go ~$330 - $360 ea.  3x9570 is ~2.2GH/s for ~$1000.
Throw in new MB, RAM, Sempron CPU, 80 Plus PSU, and USB drive for ~$300+.

Depending on your costs you are looking at $1300 to $1500 per rig.  The 5970 also has a nice efficiency.    I get 2.2GH/s for ~860W (at the wall).

Nice thing is no extenders are necessary if you use a motherboard with slots like this

--- PCIEx16
--- anything
--- anything
--- PCIEx16
--- anything
--- anything
--- PCIEx16

If you can't get 5970s cheap (which some international users have told me) then yeah it doesn't work but I have never had a problem getting them from ebay.  Sometimes stores will offer a deal to closeout inventor for $400 ea new.

[LordGreynick]

Another option (in US) is used 5970s from ebay.

Used they go ~$330 - $360 ea.  3x9570 is ~2.2GH/s for ~$1000.
Throw in new MB, RAM, Sempron CPU, 80 Plus PSU, and USB drive for ~$300+.

Depending on your costs you are looking at $1300 to $1500 per rig.  The 5970 also has a nice efficiency.    I get 2.2GH/s for ~860W (at the wall).

Nice thing is no extenders are necessary if you use a motherboard with slots like this

--- PCIEx16
--- anything
--- anything
--- PCIEx16
--- anything
--- anything
--- PCIEx16

If you can't get 5970s cheap (which some international users have told me) then yeah it doesn't work but I have never had a problem getting them from ebay.  Sometimes stores will offer a deal to closeout inventor for $400 ea new.

I'd love to know where to get these 5970s - if you know, please message me. I will buy quite a few.

[LordGreynick]

Another option (in US) is used 5970s from ebay.

Used they go ~$330 - $360 ea.  3x9570 is ~2.2GH/s for ~$1000.
Throw in new MB, RAM, Sempron CPU, 80 Plus PSU, and USB drive for ~$300+.

Depending on your costs you are looking at $1300 to $1500 per rig.  The 5970 also has a nice efficiency.    I get 2.2GH/s for ~860W (at the wall).

Nice thing is no extenders are necessary if you use a motherboard with slots like this

--- PCIEx16
--- anything
--- anything
--- PCIEx16
--- anything
--- anything
--- PCIEx16

If you can't get 5970s cheap (which some international users have told me) then yeah it doesn't work but I have never had a problem getting them from ebay.  Sometimes stores will offer a deal to closeout inventor for $400 ea new.

hey mate, what motherboards do you use?

[DeathAndTaxes]

I use the MSI 870FXA-GD70.  Likely there are cheaper boards which will work but I had one lying around and once I got the first 3x5970 rigs I simply copied it exactly 4 times.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813130274

[TheFoxyShortBus]

That is a very nice set up with the 5970's.  Just curious, would you happen to know how many of those cards a linux distro will recognize?  Because I have an idea in my head for a custom built box with 8 of those cards (16 GPU's if I'm not mistaken) that would pump out some serious Ghash/s (about 5 GHash/s on math, but we all know that doesn't always work.)

Just curious if you happened to know that off the top of your head.

[DeathAndTaxes]

That is a very nice set up with the 5970's.  Just curious, would you happen to know how many of those cards a linux distro will recognize?  Because I have an idea in my head for a custom built box with 8 of those cards (16 GPU's if I'm not mistaken) that would pump out some serious Ghash/s (about 5 GHash/s on math, but we all know that doesn't always work.)

Just curious if you happened to know that off the top of your head.

I know from personal experience Linux supports 8 GPU.  I have heard from others that it supports 16 GPU but never tested it myself.  Just remember 8 5970 are going to consume ~ 2.1 KW plus another 100W or so for rest of system (CPU, RAM, MB, HDD, etc).  Board with 8 PCIe slots tend to be more expensive and you may need powered extenders because MB might not be able to deliver enough power to all 8 slots (The 5970 pulls about 30W through PCIe slot).  I found 2 smaller rigs to be more reliable and not much more expensive.  At best using a single board would save you about $200 (one MB, one CPU, one set of RAM) as the GPU and PSU are the expensive part.   However the cost of powered extenders, and more expensive board eat into those savings.  It would be cool simply from a "lets see how far I can push it" perspective.

[Red Emerald]

I wish these calculators had a section to put the amount of money/BTC that you have already made.  I guess it's easy enough to subtract the amount made from the cost.

[LordGreynick]

Thanks for all this really useful information. You've made my life so much easier

What motherboard/psu/processor/ram combo do you use?

Cheers and thanks again.

[DeathAndTaxes]

I use this board...

pricey but at the time it was the one I found which supported 3x 5970 with a space between each one and no need for extenders.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813130274

CPU is a Sempron 145 (cheapest AM3 CPU.  Watch out for cheaper OEM models they have no fan)
RAM is any pair of DDR3 2x1GB sticks.  It doesn't really matter.  You probably could get away w/ only 1GB per board but honestly that is only saving you <$10.

PSU I go high end.  1200W Gold-80Plus.  Unless your electricity is free you really need Gold PSU to keep your electrical draw down.  In hindsight I likely could have gone w/ a 1000W model.   I pull 870W from the wall and at 90% efficiency that is ~800W DC.  I bought the 1200W in case I wanted to switch to extenders and go 4x5970 per rig. 

[TheFoxyShortBus]

Yeah, I'm sure the extenders would need to be powered, which is perfectly fine, but open air rigs can benefit greatly especially if you have limited space.

I know the power requirements would be huge, but since its a custom box, you can just mount 2 1200W PSU's in there no problem.

But still it would be cheaper using open air because at 16 GPU's (for sake of it working.) thats 1 mobo/ram/cpu and no case and probably 3 to 4 hundred in extenders. using all prebuilts, that is at least 3 mobos with cpu and ram and cases, so that right there is at minimum 450 bucks (thats on a mobo with 5 PCI-E slots) plus non powered extenders, it just adds up real quick. plus then you'd have to buy a third PSU (granted wouldn't need to be as strong, but still)

Granted this only works if your willing and have to know how to put the energy into fabricated a case on your own and have ample cooling for such said box.  I'd just like to do it cause it would be a fun project to figure out how to make it work, but alas I don't have like 5 grand to throw down on a mining rig at the moment.

[mtminer]

Saw this on reddit awhile back.

Lists all ATI models and you can sort on which statistic is the most important.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AsSwOT3E1XTGdGtpa1BQcmJLN2x6TG1MRmxzb29BeFE&hl=en_US#gid=0

[LordGreynick]

Saw this on reddit awhile back.

Lists all ATI models and you can sort on which statistic is the most important.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AsSwOT3E1XTGdGtpa1BQcmJLN2x6TG1MRmxzb29BeFE&hl=en_US#gid=0

Brilliant. Just confirms the 5970 is the snizel

Thank you.

[nmat]

Saw this on reddit awhile back.

Lists all ATI models and you can sort on which statistic is the most important.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AsSwOT3E1XTGdGtpa1BQcmJLN2x6TG1MRmxzb29BeFE&hl=en_US#gid=0

Brilliant. Just confirms the 5970 is the snizel

Thank you.

You are aware of this article right? https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Mining_hardware_comparison

I have pasted this link here so many times that maybe I should put it in the signature or something.