Buying a Bitcoin Miner

[OneManWorld]

I am looking to buy a bitcoin miner for a cheap price. I was really looking into a butterfly labs 10GH/s for $250 Link(https://products.butterflylabs.com/homepage-new-products/10-gh-s-bitcoin-miner.html) Is it worth it? I know a decent amount of information about bitcoins and such, but I dont have a big budget here. Only about $600 Max. What should I get or should I get one? If I get one I will be joining a pool. But how much bitcoin(s) can I make which a certain amount of GH/S? Thanks and I wish many bitcoins to you!! Feel free to respond and give me advice.

[DrG]

The current fair pricing for a miner right now is about $1 per GH/s assuming it can be delivered in a week, not some 3 month preorder.  BFL is probably the shadiest hardware provider to exist (this coming from a former customer).

Before people offer advice, what are your intentions to mine?  Do you want to make a profit or do you want to support the network and learn about mining?  Right now mining is a losing proposition economically but it can be fun and does teach you about Bitcoin.

[OneManWorld]

I would happily support the network if I earned some profit, but I cannot do it for free. Thanks for helping!

[DrG]

I would happily support the network if I earned some profit, but I cannot do it for free. Thanks for helping!

You will not be earning a profit most likely.  I can't guarantee that but considering what the manufacturers say they will be delivering you cannot profit.

Having said that, you can still buy some hardware.  I would start off cheap to get your feet wet and learn.  The R-box is a nice little miner and here's a review:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=639030.0

You could find an old Antminer S1 but they are noisy as hell but probably a better value keeping to the $1/GH rule.

Spend the rest of your $600 on an exchange and get some bitcoin directly from other miners.  Make sure to learn how to protect those coins.

[jjdub7]

I am looking to buy a bitcoin miner for a cheap price. I was really looking into a butterfly labs 10GH/s for $250 Link(https://products.butterflylabs.com/homepage-new-products/10-gh-s-bitcoin-miner.html) Is it worth it? I know a decent amount of information about bitcoins and such, but I dont have a big budget here. Only about $600 Max. What should I get or should I get one? If I get one I will be joining a pool. But how much bitcoin(s) can I make which a certain amount of GH/S? Thanks and I wish many bitcoins to you!! Feel free to respond and give me advice.

dude, just buy 4 Antminer U2's and overclock 'em to 2.5 GH/...should only cost you about $60 at this point...don't buy from Beyond Fuckin' Lazy unless you intend to start mining next November...

[jjdub7]

I would happily support the network if I earned some profit, but I cannot do it for free. Thanks for helping!

You will not be earning a profit most likely.  I can't guarantee that but considering what the manufacturers say they will be delivering you cannot profit.

Having said that, you can still buy some hardware.  I would start off cheap to get your feet wet and learn.  The R-box is a nice little miner and here's a review:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=639030.0

You could find an old Antminer S1 but they are noisy as hell but probably a better value keeping to the $1/GH rule.

Spend the rest of your $600 on an exchange and get some bitcoin directly from other miners.  Make sure to learn how to protect those coins.

I got my R-box using Amazon gift cards, so it was essentially "free" and I also have 4 U2's - brings in about 80k satoshi per block (and falling hella fast) mining on Bitminter.  That being said, its a great miner once you get it up and running (use a PC - if you can get that thing configured and running, you can get any miner set up).

[OneManWorld]

Thanks for all the help! What pool program are you guys in? Im in Slushes and Eclipsemc. I will most likely be buying the R-Miner! Its only $70  now. The R-Miner will work on EasyMiner, right? Thats the only program I have tried out. Its really nice since its so simplistic, Thanks for everything

[jjdub7]

No - you have to download ROCKminer's customized version of cgminer from their github.  You'll also need to buy a PSU (I use a 12V 5A 2.5mm computer charger that I bought for maybe $5 on Amazon including overnight shipping).

Dogie's guide explains the whole process: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=639030.0

Overall, a pretty decent miner.  It uses ASICMINER Gen3's, which I've found to be pretty reliable.  Share-solving variance can be pretty high, especially on stratum, meaning that the R-box's hashrate appears to bounce from ~26 GH/s to around 35 GH/s, depending of course on how you set up, cool, and configure for the computer you're using.

[-ck]

No - you have to download ROCKminer's customized version of cgminer from their github. 

Not at all. The current mainline cgminer supports R-Boxes.

[jjdub7]

No - you have to download ROCKminer's customized version of cgminer from their github. 

Not at all. The current mainline cgminer supports R-Boxes.

I don't know if its the SI Labs drivers or what (and I think it is), but I still haven't been able to get your latest release to recognize it on a Mac

[frigidformself]

I am currently using cgminer-4.3.3-update-v0.3.1 with my R BOX on a Win7 64bit if that helps.

[xstr8guy]

An R-Box is going to earn a whopping $0.63 per day for the next 11 or 12 days before it drops again. You should have a positive ROI in...

Never.

[DrG]

An R-Box is going to earn a whopping $0.63 per day for the next 11 or 12 days before it drops again. You should have a positive ROI in...

Never.

Well one thing to note for new people... we commonly refer to ROI as basically getting your money back.  If you spend $25 on a miner, you expect to make back at least $25.  But there's no point doing it other than to support the network if you don't make some profit.

ROI should be considered as making BTC net positive.... meaning you earn more BTC mining than you would buying coins.  Currently this is not possible with any of the miners.

You may be able to make more fiat if BTC prices go up, but ultimately buying coins seems like the more sound investment currently... hence the quoted truthful statement.