Am I wasting my time....

[B4ker83]

Fancied a crack at mining

Picked up 8 rockminers for 100 quid with psu's (hashing at 262gh using 500w)

Had them running 4 days and they've churned out 0.0133 (£3.27)

Paying 15p per kilowatt day and 5p on Eco 7

[TheRealSteve]

If you're trying to turn a profit?  Yes.

[B4ker83]

Not trying to turn a profit as such, just too get involved.

it would be nice to risk the house fire for a little bit of profit tho.

[TheRealSteve]

Oh, well in that case - and if you don't mind risking the house fire and the noise - the label of 'waste of time' is entirely at your own discretion

Obviously the hash rate is nothing compared to the big farms out there, or even the 'hobby' miners who throw money at several Thash/s, but 262Ghash is still reasonably good enough to not be relegated to the margins of most pools.
I'd say mine at a solo pool (if you don't want the hassle of setting things up to mine against a local server) - might as well play the lottery, right?
Just to break down the profit bit:
You say you got BTC0.0133 in 4 days.  By your own calculations, that's about £3.27.  So for the remainder of this, I'll assume £/BTC to be about £245.85, and not bother with any mining calculators for the details.
You paid £100, so with that same fiat you could (presumably) have purchased BTC0.407

Let's ignore your power costs - so assume you don't even pay anything to run these.
Let's also assume that the current difficulty stays current.

With all those things going for you, it would take an additional 118 days for you to break even on that investment.
If the BTC/£ goes up, that would be faster, but then the hypothetical purchase of BTC0.407 would have been worth more in fiat as well.

Unfortunately, you do have power costs.
Looks like Eco7 just means you get 7 hours of lower rates every day, so:
Revenue: £3.27/4 days = £0.8175/day
Power Expenses Eco7: 7 * 0.5 * £0.05 = £0.175/day
Power Expenses Regular: 17 * 0.5 * £0.15 = 1.275/day
Power Expenses Total: £1.45/day
Net loss: £0.8175/day - £1.45/day = £0.6325/day
Time to break even: n/a

Add to that the difficulty changes which are still more likely to go up than go down, and it doesn't get any prettier.

[momode]

In this case, yes you are

[philipma1957]

Not trying to turn a profit as such, just too get involved.

it would be nice to risk the house fire for a little bit of profit tho.

okay with normal luck in normal pools at current prices you are a loser.  but there are other pools you can try.  you can go to this pool


http://solo.ckpool.org/

developed by the writer of cgminer software.  it is an all or nothing pool.  you hit the block you get 24.5 coins the pool runner gets .5 coins

this is the thread.

http://solo.ckpool.org/

you don't want all or nothing.  do that pool 1 day a week  if you hit a block you are a  god,  a stud ,a lucky mother fu----! The other six days mine at a normal pool.

hold every coin you earn at the normal pools so that if coins shoot to the moon you can turn a profit. 

 if you hit on your seventh 'lucky' day pool solo mining you can turn a profit.

So two ways to turn a profit.
You will get some of your investment back.
You get involvement.
You get some heat from those miners this winter.

good luck buddy!

 BTW I mine 1 of six s-3's at the solo pool

here is my 1 s-3
http://solo.ckpool.org/users/1JdC6Xg3ajT3rge3FgPNSYYFpmf53Vbtje

[ranochigo]

Definitely, not only you are wasting your time, you are also wasting your money. Mining is a game for bigger companies with big datacenters, efficient ASIC, cheap electricity rates. If you are looking to mine to understand Bitcoin, sell those and get a USB block erupter and buy bitcoins with the remaining money. They are slow but they can still allow you to learn more about Bitcoin.

[philipma1957]

Definitely, not only you are wasting your time, you are also wasting your money. Mining is a game for bigger companies with big datacenters, efficient ASIC, cheap electricity rates. If you are looking to mine to understand Bitcoin, sell those and get a USB block erupter and buy bitcoins with the remaining money. They are slow but they can still allow you to learn more about Bitcoin.

Your method allows him to earn a profit if coins go up.

But if he does your way he should sell 9 of his 10 units buy  coins and hold.

the one unit left he can mine 1 day a week at the solo pool and 6 days a week with a 'safe pool'

[bitzcointalk]

Yes, you are wasting your time.
http://www.vnbitcoin.org/bitcoincalculator.php

[Gumbork]

Fancied a crack at mining

Picked up 8 rockminers for 100 quid with psu's (hashing at 262gh using 500w)

Had them running 4 days and they've churned out 0.0133 (£3.27)

Paying 15p per kilowatt day and 5p on Eco 7

Sell your miner before they became junk..... you are making a negative ROI..

[B4ker83]

Could they be used to mine any other coin?

Not really up on other coins

[TheRealSteve]

Could they be used to mine any other coin?

Sure, any other coin that uses the same mining techniques; NameCoin for example.  There's some pools out there that will do merged mining of Bitcoin and NameCoin (and possibly some others).  Note that this still isn't going to be profitable (most of the replies above seem to still focus on that bit.)

[xstr8guy]

Could they be used to mine any other coin?

Not really up on other coins

UNO, PPC, TRC and MZC are about the only other SHA coins worth a crap. And they are usually way less profitable than BTC. So you can mine them but it's not really worth the hash.