New to Bitcoin

[adamg83]

Hello all

My first post.  I am brand new to Bitcoin and am looking into mining, just as a hobby, although it would be nice to make a few Btc to go spending.  I am trying to work out the profitability of some miners, I would be really grateful is someone could let me know if i'm working this out correctly.

two Antminer s3's, as they can only be ordered in twos -

cost - $398 (£253)
shipping to UK - $150 (£95)
20% ish import tax - $79 (£50)
1 x 1000W PSU?  to run both $188 (£120)

Total - $815 (£518)

My electric is $0.17kWh (£0.11)

So if I work out a months electricity for 2x355w that would be $88 (£56)

Bitcoin wisdom website tells me I will make 0.362btc a month at 960GH/s and at current price that $124 (£79)

So thats a monthly profit of $36 (£23)

So with the total outgoing of $815 (£518) it will take me 22.5 Months to ROI

Am I missing something?  Is it because my electrics expensive? Even if my profits were twice as much it would still take a year to ROI?

Are there any miners out there that are much lower Watts per GH?  Looking at spondoolies they seem about the same time to ROI.

Anyway, end of post - I will look through other parts of the forum and try and get some ideas on how to earn or buy some Btc.

Adam

 

[cryptocoiner]

Not this shit again =(
Mining is not profittable for small miners, for a long time already.
You better start using bitcoin as money, sell and buy stuff and services with btc.
Remember gold rush? Not a single person become rich from mining gold. Bankers becoming rich.

[adamg83]

Thanks for the welcoming reply

As you can see, I am new here, this is my first post, so how would I know what "this shit" is? 

[cryptocoiner]

Sorry. Just trying to say that mining is not good anymore. Especially for newcomers.

My advice to you. Start using bitcoin as currency. Start with selling goods and services for btc. You will not regret it. The price of btc will rise in several years. Try to make you fist bitconis from faucets first, moonbit.co.in for example. Then you try to make some btc here on bitcointalk. You can try to make some btc on signature campaigns.

Just use bitcoin as a currency. Same as dollar or euro etc. And forget about ZOG. =)

[notlist3d]

Your electricity is a little high sadly.   That and a VAT will make it harder for you to ROI.

With that being said i would look more at the SP20 with it being able to be underclocked.  I think electricity efficiency will be a big thing for you.

[RodeoX]

Hi Adam.
What people are trying to say is that bitcoin mining is no longer at the hobby level. Even the ROI in you calculation is likely to be longer in reality. For reference, here is a modern BTC mine:

[adamg83]

Thanks for your replies.  are there no miners about <$1500-2000 ish that will make ROI within a few months? 

I think I might go down the route of buying BTC then, and trying to find sites that I can spend it on. 

Ta
Adam

[spazzdla]

Thanks for your replies.  are there no miners about <$1500-2000 ish that will make ROI within a few months? 

I think I might go down the route of buying BTC then, and trying to find sites that I can spend it on. 

Ta
Adam

With the difficultly leveling out... there is a potential.

Perhaps spoodlies, I would just mine for fun TBH.  I will be buying a couple of the S5's when Bitmain releases them but I am not expecting to make a profit from them.

IMO your best bet is to buy an S1 off of kijiji to figure out mining and wait for Bitmain, Rockminer or spoodlies(not actually how you spell it) to release their .2w/Ghash chips.

[vpasic]

Thanks for your replies.  are there no miners about <$1500-2000 ish that will make ROI within a few months? 

I think I might go down the route of buying BTC then, and trying to find sites that I can spend it on. 

Ta
Adam

you are missing one thing in your calculation.
difficulty.
it will go up, maybe not that much but will go up so your ROI in 22 months will become never.
your electricity cost will stay the same while your earnings will drop down with diff go up.
buy some BTC and play with them on Bitstamp, you know selling high and buying low.
I'm earning that way more than I mine in a month with 20TH of hashing power.

[mavericklm]

Buy used s3, buy refurbished server psu and you got positive roi faster!

[sumantso]

Thanks for the welcoming reply

As you can see, I am new here, this is my first post, so how would I know what "this shit" is? 

Sorry that you got a less than warm welcome. Its just that we are tired of repeating again and again that mining is a business which profits only the manufacturing companies.

Now if you want to do it as a hobby then by all means go ahead.

[sumantso]

With the difficultly leveling out... there is a potential.

There isn't. Even if there are no new miners, there will still be newer, better hardware which will push the difficulty up.

[spazzdla]

With the difficultly leveling out... there is a potential.

There isn't. Even if there are no new miners, there will still be newer, better hardware which will push the difficulty up.

As of now there is no way of telling if that new hardware will be released tomorrow, a month, 3 years from now.

First time in 22 months the difficulty went negative.


Althought it would seem it might be soon as people are claming .2Ghs/Watt chips are hitting the market.

[sumantso]

With the difficultly leveling out... there is a potential.

There isn't. Even if there are no new miners, there will still be newer, better hardware which will push the difficulty up.

As of now there is no way of telling if that new hardware will be released tomorrow, a month, 3 years from now.

First time in 22 months the difficulty went negative.


Althought it would seem it might be soon as people are claming .2Ghs/Watt chips are hitting the market.

There is bound to be, such is the nature of chip development. The hardware companies would try to increase their profit and the race continues.

[adamg83]

Thank you for all your feedback - I have taken everything on board and bought 3 s3's.  Can anyone advise me on PSU's?  Will a 1200W Corsair be enough for all 3? or is it a matter of the bigger the better?

The reason I have decided to buy these miners is that I would mine as a hobby and just pay the electric bill, rather than buy the BTC.

Ta
Adam

[Paul Revere]

Take a look at the 12v availability on the PSU.  Technically speaking an S3 needs ~360 watts @ 12 volts which equals 30 amps. On top of that you need a ~20% safety margin, so around 36 amps @ 12 volts minimum per unit with no overclock. Even if that 1200 watt PSU has enough 12 volts, it might not have enough PCIe connectors to rig all 3. I would go for three 500-600 watt PSUs. Again, don't just look at the total wattage, only the 12v rail(s) matter. Example: A Corsair CX500 has ~36 amps@12 volts, so it is just barely adequate. I have two S3's on those with no overclock and the PSU's make quite a bit of heat. I also have a couple running on EVGA 600 watt PSUs that have 49 amps of 12 volt and these run cool as a cucumber even with the s3's having a decent (237.5) overclock.

[spazzdla]

With the difficultly leveling out... there is a potential.

There isn't. Even if there are no new miners, there will still be newer, better hardware which will push the difficulty up.

As of now there is no way of telling if that new hardware will be released tomorrow, a month, 3 years from now.

First time in 22 months the difficulty went negative.


Althought it would seem it might be soon as people are claming .2Ghs/Watt chips are hitting the market.

There is bound to be, such is the nature of chip development. The hardware companies would try to increase their profit and the race continues.

If there is not enought money coming in there will be zero $ for R&D.

[Mabsark]

With the difficultly leveling out... there is a potential.

There isn't. Even if there are no new miners, there will still be newer, better hardware which will push the difficulty up.

As of now there is no way of telling if that new hardware will be released tomorrow, a month, 3 years from now.

First time in 22 months the difficulty went negative.


Althought it would seem it might be soon as people are claming .2Ghs/Watt chips are hitting the market.

New miners based on AM's new chip are due in February:

The schedule of BE300 producing: First batch production will be done next Feb.

We are glad to announce ASICMiner's 4th generation chip. From the physical testing data
of our verification sample, BE300S, the silicon results matches the simulation results faithfully,
and even outperforms our simulation in some cases. BE300S achieved the lowest energy
consumption per gigahash in existing market, getting the joule/gh ratio down below 0.2.

Furthermore, our string-based power solution eliminates almost all power losses and almost
all electric components on the board. Therefore on-wall power consumption would be very close
to (on-chip power/PSU efficiency), and the overall system cost is squeezed to its minimum.

Name: BE300S (Sample)

Technology: TSMC 28nm HPC

Package: FCLGA 5mm x 5mm

On chip efficiency (first board):
    3.0GH/s | 0.1872W/G
    4.8GH/s | 0.2275W/G
    5.2GH/s | 0.2469W/G

On board efficiency (average of 4 boards):
    2.8GH/s | 0.1961W/G
    3.2GH/s | 0.2026W/G
    3.6GH/s | 0.2095W/G
    4.0GH/s | 0.2145W/G
    4.8GH/s | 0.2204W/G
    5.2GH/s | 0.2257W/G
    5.6GH/s | 0.2314W/G
    6.4GH/s | 0.2363W/G
    6.8GH/s | 0.2439W/G
    7.2GH/s | 0.2495W/G

We are still testing more voltage-frequency combinations, as well as more chips.
But the test results are stable and solid so far.