Last year I started a 200+ GPUs farm for ETH mining. What happened?

[Xazax310]

Hey Guys,

So last year around this time I started a post, https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5153622.0 about starting a fairly large GPU mining farm by myself. I wanted to share today what exactly happened, did I ROI? Did I quit? Market crash took out my farms profitability? It's complex but let's start the Journey.

My mining farm
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NLd49pbd8WE&t=3s

Projected Revenue
https://whattomine.com/coins/151-eth-ethash?utf8=%E2%9C%93&hr=7200.0&p=19552&fee=1.0&cost=0.1&hcost=0.0&commit=Calculate

I want to start off by saying I absolutely love GPU mining and computer hardware. I'm a massive hardware tinkerer. For me Cryptocurrency mining was a fun, passionate way, to play with Graphics card, overclock, Achieve the best W/H ratio. I had come up with the plan for a 1 year(or less ROI) based off Ethereum price predictions and my ability to keep operating expenditures fairly low. I ran everything out of a garage of a house I bought on foreclosure. My friend, who was mining at the time, help setup the infrastructure to run it. He eventually wanted out and I bought his equipment. The total investment for GPUs was $20,000. Infrastructure was paid for and already in place by my previous mining in 2018. This was a consolidation and expansion.

I had a rough go of it. Some my expectations, such as using Claymore's STRAP features were not working. I had to BIOs mod the cards. However i was only achieving very low hash-rates of 27mh/s and lots of crashes/errors. It wasn't until I find the right BIOs mod that these cards came to life! I was able to achieve around 29-31Mh/s per card @ 120w per card. I did suffer some equipment failures and headaches. I had at least 2 or 3 Asrock H110 PRO BTC+ board totally die on me. Riser failures and even a few RX470's that died. The hardest part was I running everything by myself. If a miner crashed or we had a power outage I'd have to be the one to resolve it or get it back online. This wore on me a lot as I was working, trying to get out have a life, and date.

Sadly, by Dec of 2019 I decided to end my mining farm and sell everything off, including the foreclosed home. I was going to a rough break-up with a girl I was head-over heels for along with other personal issues(depression) that I just wanted to leave my city/state and pursue a new life. Everything was sold off, including the house, and i was set to leave. Obviously life events(Corona virus) have now forced me to stay where I'm living. On the positive note I did meet another girl and made some new friends, but sadly my one big passion, GPU mining is now gone.

So the question is Did I ROI?

Mining Farm Income
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/17mI2r4EJfb-VmEXN_XizkScRClhrt9CtQGm066RXsNs/edit?usp=sharing

I kept track of my income and how much ETH was sold to cover operating Expenses. In total for 2019 I mined 80 Ethereum, with 32 being sold to cover expenses. Leaving me with 48 Ethereum cleared. At present time ($245) Worth $11,760. If I sold during the last ATH of $290 in 2020, worth about $13920.

So I would have been half-way to ROI since the re-start of my mining farm. Sadly while even selling the equipment I didn't get my full investment back. The Unfortunate news for myself is that I had a NEXO Crypto-backed Loan (How I used to purchase equipment). I had put Whatever ETH I've mined into that loan to keep the LTV high enough to not get liquidated. But during the market flash crash of March 2020, all my Ethereum(Both bought and Mined a total of 170 ETH) was Liquidated to cover my loan (20,000~)

We all face failures, I'm not looking at that, But I wanted to say that by all accounts the farm would ROI by now(even with crash if I had continued to HODL Eth and keep mining), Proving that GPU mining farms can survive. The 4GB limit would of been reached this year but I would profitable by then and selling off the RX470's to ebay, then retooling to other GPUs(1660 SUPERs) or switching them to mine RVN's KAWPOW, would continued life for them.

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[badbart]

In any other business a 2 years to break even would be considered great.

[Metroid]

All for 20k, psu motherboards, gpus, cpus, that was an extremely good deal, that is why you almost broke even and yet you did not, now imagine those people who bought rx 570, 580 for $800 plus each in 2017, 2018. They will never roi. Trust me, a normal job gains a lot more money and no hassle and you have a lot more free time. Thank god you left it, do not be afraid to return if roi returns to 3 months time which for me is the right reward to make mining attractive.

[Xazax310]

All for 20k, psu motherboards, gpus, cpus, that was an extremely good deal, that is why you almost broke even and yet you did not, now imagine those people who bought rx 570, 580 for $800 plus each in 2017, 2018. They will never roi. Trust me, a normal job gains a lot more money and no hassle and you have a lot more free time. Thank god you left it, do not be afraid to return if roi returns to 3 months time which for me is the right reward to make mining attractive.

I had bought a lot of the Equipment in 2017 and 2018 when i was mining, so that was already in place and paid off by previous mining and selling during the 2018 boom, but i was fairly small only 50-75 GPUs then. RX580s and some 1070's.

[Metroid]

fairly small is not bad if the money is used wisely, only the people who bought rx 470 at released 2016, were the ones who won in the end. The bigger the farm the more money you need to spend on the infrastructure and space is expensive. GPU mining is a lot of hassle and  because of that you need to earn a lot more money than asic, good thing about asic is hassle free, you just put the asic put the ethernet cable and that is it, with gpu is a lot lot of things to do, gpu mining needs to be very profitable to be worth.

[adaseb]

I think mining itself is considered a pretty safe investment. As you said yourself, you almost got back your $20K if you wouldn't of been liquidated back in March 2020. The GPUs and equipment still hold some value and if you sold everything then you would of been in the green most likely.

In my opinion, miners should just stay miners and don't get involved with trading especially leverage trading. Miners always win... traders don't. I know plenty of miners who had hundreds of ETHs and dozen's of BTC back in 2017 but due to greed they lost it all to derivative trading when BTC hit $20K.

They made like $100K mining, decided to do some trading, turned $100K into $200K, got even greedier and turned that $200K into $0. When markets started crashing in 2018.

[AvPro]

Very neat. Did you at any point consider solo mining with your farm? or perhaps profit-switching to different algorithms/target-coins to maximise your revenue?

[lunobird]

In any other business a 2 years to break even would be considered great.

Not considered great if you got to liquidate and sell your equipment in two years to stay up to date.

That's called breaking even and never getting ahead.

. Rental properties is much more lucrative than mining. Good properties appreciate in value with time.

[Metroid]

. Rental properties is much more lucrative than mining. Good properties appreciate in value with time.

Yeah but I still think buy and hold give more money than anything else by many many times and eth will soon be staked which means like rental property, you will also get money from it while is appreciating in value over time.

[adaseb]

In any other business a 2 years to break even would be considered great.

Not considered great if you got to liquidate and sell your equipment in two years to stay up to date.

That's called breaking even and never getting ahead.

. Rental properties is much more lucrative than mining. Good properties appreciate in value with time.

Maybe depends on the location. In my area my rental property topped in value about 5 years ago. Prior to that it tripled in value within 10 year span. So if you bought it early then yes sure, it appreciated in value very quickly.

Right now the real estate is in a bubble in certain areas, the values might not come down but they won't double at the rate that it used to in the past. Too many people basically bought real estate as an investment and here we are.

[Gunday_07]

Damn that's a painful journey my friend, I'm a fan of mining rigs myself but no matter how hard I try to get back in the game the ROI is what keeps me off, it's better you don't sell those ETH yet, ethereum is very bullish lately, with the POS feature coming Ethereum can make it to 300$

[badbart]

. Rental properties is much more lucrative than mining. Good properties appreciate in value with time.

Yeah but I still think buy and hold give more money than anything else by many many times and eth will soon be staked which means like rental property, you will also get money from it while is appreciating in value over time.

My rigs have been running for over 3 years and I'm just started to sell cards to refresh.  If you have low electrical cost and don't buy over priced cards you'll do fine.  My electrical cost is low and I bought my cards open box or refurbished before the craziness in 2017 and 2018.

I'm selling my 1070s and replacing with rx 5700s.  I'll sell my 1070s for around 190-220 on ebay and buy refurbished 5700s XTs for around 339.  After I sell a 1070 and pay taxes and fees I'm paying 150 for a rx 5700 xt.  

I also hedge my earnings, sell short btc or eth in a down trend.

[Metroid]

My rigs have been running for over 3 years and I'm just started to sell cards to refresh.  If you have low electrical cost and don't buy over priced cards you'll do fine.  My electrical cost is low and I bought my cards open box or refurbished before the craziness in 2017 and 2018.

I'm selling my 1070s and replacing with rx 5700s.  I'll sell my 1070s for around 190-220 on ebay and buy refurbished 5700s XTs for around 339.  After I sell a 1070 and pay taxes and fees I'm paying 150 for a rx 5700 xt.  

I also hedge my earnings, sell short btc or eth in a down trend.

That is a good strategy, only you know if is worth or not, for me trading and buy and hold is better. The 5700 might be outhashed by the new nvidia gpu's, well, all depends of the prices the new gpu's will come too. Even if eth changes to progpow you can still mine with the 5700 and 5700 does almost double hashrate x 1070 on rvn.

[CjMapope]

Nice story OP, sorry to hear it didnt work out

Know that you are one of MANY that never survived during that same time period i have heard from now

i personally only continue to mine as my factors were different getting into it:  
i got in early so had "free "money to spend,
i benefit directly 30%+ from Canadian exchange rate (BTC is over 13k here as i type)
I also get government subsidies on my power bill for running small business (and living FAR up north)

one could never survive not taking advantage of SOME advantages in one way or another, a strictly power cost calculation will ALWAYS end this way sadly, mining is too competitive now otherwise

Good luckin all your future endeavors and thx for lowering the diff just a little bit for the rest of us instead of just mining at a loss like some people

[badbart]

Anyone serious about mining can also hedge their mining with eth or btc futures when you think a bull run is over.  They also have BTC hash rate futures, which would make a good hedge.  If I hedged back in 2018 & 2019 my profits wold have been much more steady, 2019 would have been better.

If mining becomes popular again and microcenter is packed with people be ready to hedge.

[stoniestfool]

To say gpu mining was not profitable is really not accurate. Your poor decision making was unprofitable. Any business that had the returns you did would be a good investment. To stop mining so soon after investing so much is just foolish.

[lunobird]

To say gpu mining was not profitable is really not accurate. Your poor decision making was unprofitable. Any business that had the returns you did would be a good investment. To stop mining so soon after investing so much is just foolish.

Well I think the overall story is that one can't just rely on whattomine and focus on just mining profitability.  There are soo many traps in crypto and decision making is the biggest factor weather you make money or not.

In this case it was crypto lending that got him but their are other things like exchange hacks or you getting phished and hacked.  You can really lose years worth of mining revenue.


I still would not try to compare other businesses to crypto mining as they are really different. To say mining is easy and your lucky to have a good return is quite untrue,  Equipment cost in crypto needs to be replaced far more frequently compared to other businesses. Running ongoing electric cost eats into majority of the revenue.  At the end of the day crypto mining your making very small profits if any.  I see a lot of miners here have a very hard time expanding or wanting to expand.  In the normal world businesses have more opportunity to expand and grow their business.  It's a tough game to play.

I hear entrepreneur running gold mines investing millions mentioned it was more profitable to actually buy the gold than to run a gold mine operation. Same is true with crypto for most people.