I run a 35 GH/s mining operation, ask me anything!

[TwinTurbo]

Hey all, I am new to posting on these forums, but not new to bitcoin. I've been mining for about a year and have grown my bitcoin mining operation to roughly 35 GH/s. Feel free to ask questions and I'll do my best to provide all the answers I can to help you with your efforts.

Cheers!
- TwinTurbo

[Dargo]

What is your reaction to the concept that it may be possible by this October to have 40 Gh/s for $1300? Do you a) doubt this is true, b) already have orders placed with BFL, c) plan to wait and see, d) plan to sell your farm soon, e) something else?

I'm not trying to be obnoxious here by asking this - just wondering what your thoughts are as someone who has recently built a large farm.

[TwinTurbo]

What is your reaction to the concept that it may be possible by this October to have 40 Gh/s for $1300? Do you a) doubt this is true, b) already have orders placed with BFL, c) plan to wait and see, d) plan to sell your farm soon, e) something else?

I'm not trying to be obnoxious here by asking this - just wondering what your thoughts are as someone who has recently built a large farm.

Great question Dargo. To be honest, I believe BFL is the real deal and knowing a little about ASIC I fully expect they will be able to deliver the performance they are advertising. Although I have no idea on the time-frame or speed of keeping up with demand. I plan to place a pre-order with BFL, but not sure to what extent yet.

Not to discourage anyone, but the days are numbered for GPU miners, just as it was for CPU mining, if what is claimed is true. According to Bit-Pay, they hit a record number of transactions processed in one day. That was primarily attributed to BFL opening up pre-orders. Calculations estimate that pre-orders through Bit-Pay alone could account for about 8 TH/s of ASIC hardware. Unknown bank wires and other payments not included. Presently the network is somewhere around 12-13 TH/s.

So my estimate is this, assuming all that has been announced and promised is true: By beginning of November, the difficulty will have doubled to 25 TH/s. This means your mined coins per day will be cut in half. By the end of December, payout will cut in half again due to the scheduled reduction in rewards in the bitcoin algorithm. At this point, your mining operation will only be yielding roughly 1/4 of what it did before. Price should slowly climb, but it will take quite a while for that to occur. We've got to remember there are over 9 million coins already issued. This will change as it becomes easier for the common people to interact with bitcoin.

So, if your operation is costing you more than 25% of your gross earnings, you may want to think about a graceful exit strategy from GPUs. My guess is difficulty will temporarily take a heavy drop somewhere in the middle as the GPU exodus occurs, but will be picked back up by people reinvesting back into ASIC.

Remember though, not everything is certain aside from the reward drop in half around December. BFL coild fail to deliver on time or performance. One should keep a close eye on price AND difficulty along with ongoing expenses when determining when to exit GPU mining. In the meantime, keep spreading the word about bitcoin!

[SgtSpike]

Does your internet connection have any trouble with processing all the getwork requests for 35 GH/s?  Do you think you could do double or triple what you are doing now without any problem?  What sort of internet connection and router do you use?

[TwinTurbo]

Does your internet connection have any trouble with processing all the getwork requests for 35 GH/s?  Do you think you could do double or triple what you are doing now without any problem?  What sort of internet connection and router do you use?

My operation currently lives in three separate areas, roughly 12 GH/s each. Each connection is basically fed by a low bandwidth cellular connection (8Mbit down, 1Mbit up) of sorts. I have no problems keeping up in any of them. As for router, I just use off-the-shelf basic home routers. Even when doing large downloads or remoting into the boxes, I see no degradation in hash rate. One minor note, I do use a network switch that runs into the router, which runs into the cellular wireless modem.

Edit: There should be no problems doubling or tripling capacity on these connections.

[R0MEO]

With 650W Psu real power, can I run 3x6870 1000/300 with G630/B75 momo/2GB DDR3?

[TwinTurbo]

With 650W Psu real power, can I run 3x6870 1000/300 with G630/B75 momo/2GB DDR3?

Hi Romeo, I would say you would be cutting it really close with only 650 watts. Each 6870 at that speed will consume roughly 170 watts. In addition, your system is going to need about 50 watts for overhead; Processor, ram, HD, etc.

Also, the 6-series cards cannot underclock memory that low. With the 6870, you can only run the memory at 100 MHz below the GPU core speed.

Double check your power supply's 12V rail rating to see how much power it can deliver to the cards before attempting this.

Good luck!

[salty]

What do you think about FPGAs right now? Would it be worth stepping up from GPUs to FPGAs right now or do you think the BFL ASIC renders them useless?

[Garr255]

What do you think about FPGAs right now? Would it be worth stepping up from GPUs to FPGAs right now or do you think the BFL ASIC renders them useless?

I think that FPGAs are still a good investment now, because they will remain profitable for most people indefinitely (assuming btc value stays up). There will be a significant profit margin change if BFL sends out ASICS, but I think its best to acquire some hardware now and go along for the ride. I know a lot of people are waiting for BFL to deliver, which is another option.

[TwinTurbo]

What do you think about FPGAs right now? Would it be worth stepping up from GPUs to FPGAs right now or do you think the BFL ASIC renders them useless?

If you can get, or already have, an FPGA right now then you should have nothing to worry about until ASICs arrive. Even then, you can trade up to the ASIC thanks to BFL's generous trade-in program. The power consumption is pretty negligible compared to even the most efficient of GPU setups. Personally I wouldn't order an FPGA now due to the amount of time it will take to recover the investment, the amount of time it will take BFL to deliver, and I believe ASICs are going to render them insignificant in the end. If you already have a desktop computer you are better off buying a couple used 5-series GPUs at a good price and start mining immediately, so long as you have relatively cheap power and can deal with a little heat. Two used 5870s can produce the same hash rate as a BFL single at half the cost.

So if you have have an FPGA now, I'd get in on the trade-in list with BFL. If you don't, find yourself a couple used 5870s and stick them in an existing computer. At this point, building full computers doesn't make much sense when difficulty is outpacing the BTC price in the near future.

[Grouver (BtcBalance)]

A bit of speculation, but I am curious what you think.
What will happen with the price when in December the bounty gets halfed?
Will you go with the market price or? What do you think what kind off affect this will have on the miners in general?

[zero3112]

With that much mining power would it be better to solo mine or mine in a pool and which one do you do?

[Tacitus]

What is your reaction to the concept that it may be possible by this October to have 40 Gh/s for $1300? Do you a) doubt this is true, b) already have orders placed with BFL, c) plan to wait and see, d) plan to sell your farm soon, e) something else?

I'm not trying to be obnoxious here by asking this - just wondering what your thoughts are as someone who has recently built a large farm.

Still we have several months until that (and with 50BTC reward). So I'm buying 3 video cards right now, because I'll get my money back in 5-6 months. I do not have to pay for computers or electricity though .

[Dargo]

What is your reaction to the concept that it may be possible by this October to have 40 Gh/s for $1300? Do you a) doubt this is true, b) already have orders placed with BFL, c) plan to wait and see, d) plan to sell your farm soon, e) something else?

I'm not trying to be obnoxious here by asking this - just wondering what your thoughts are as someone who has recently built a large farm.

Still we have several months until that (and with 50BTC reward). So I'm buying 3 video cards right now, because I'll get my money back in 5-6 months. I do not have to pay for computers or electricity though .

Yes, I built a second rig recently. Only needed the GPUs, CPU, RAM, and Mobo - had all other parts on hand. Also have free electric. I'll turn a profit on that rig, but I'm certainly not planning on expanding any further with non-ASIC at this point.

[maxme]

What is your mining configuration ?

[TwinTurbo]

What is your mining configuration ?

I run 28 machines fully populated with a wide range of GPUs. Nearly all are 5-series GPUs. Each system runs on Windows. Systems are spread across 3 locations which all connect to the internet via wireless cellular modems. Most systems are running off of 208 volt power for higher power efficiency.

[jamesg]

I run 28 machines fully populated with a wide range of GPUs. Nearly all are 5-series GPUs. Each system runs on Windows. Systems are spread across 3 locations which all connect to the internet via wireless cellular modems. Most systems are running off of 208 volt power for higher power efficiency.

Pictures or it didn't happen. 

[maxme]

I run 28 machines fully populated with a wide range of GPUs. Nearly all are 5-series GPUs. Each system runs on Windows. Systems are spread across 3 locations which all connect to the internet via wireless cellular modems. Most systems are running off of 208 volt power for higher power efficiency.

Whooo, serious business !

[TwinTurbo]

I run 28 machines fully populated with a wide range of GPUs. Nearly all are 5-series GPUs. Each system runs on Windows. Systems are spread across 3 locations which all connect to the internet via wireless cellular modems. Most systems are running off of 208 volt power for higher power efficiency.

Pictures or it didn't happen.  

Alright, you got me, I've only got two 5770s and...  

I am actually out of town right now so i am not able to get you full proof, but here's a good start. The first photo is a smaller lab that runs slightly less than 1/3 of the operation. The second photo is a new lab I recently built out which is roughly about the size of the first, but the photo doesn't show the current state. It's all I had access to at the moment. The third photo is actually my oldest and most powerful lab. It has the 208v bar visible on the floor. As with the power in the first photo, you can see digital readouts of how many amps are coming across the bar. What isn't visible in this room are a few cased machines running a few 6-series cards. Those were running off of 120V, so I had to place them closer to the outlets. Sorry for the low quality. I'll try and share more when I am back home. (I don't actually recommend mining with 6 series cards btw).

http://imgur.com/a/1QCeS/embed

Cheers!

[TwinTurbo]

A bit of speculation, but I am curious what you think.
What will happen with the price when in December the bounty gets halfed?
Will you go with the market price or? What do you think what kind off affect this will have on the miners in general?

Price will slowly make its way upward I think. Just remember that there are already over 9 million coins in existence. Even if coin production completely stopped in December, it still wouldn't budge the price too quickly. This is purely speculation of course. There is a possibility that bitcoin could become A) Easier for the common folk to use, and B) Easier for miners to transact into cash. If this happens, it's anybody's guess.

Personally, I plan to hold all the coins I don't spend on BFL ASIC SC's.

Miners are going to take a pretty heavy hit due to the difficulty increase. Some were talking about making money back in 6 months. I don't think we have 6 months before network power goes through the roof. If price doesn't keep up with difficulty (and it probably won't for quite a while), then it will actually cost you more money to mine with GPUs than it will make, assuming you pay for electricity.

For me, every piece of hardware I buy, I assume I will never resell, it will die, or become obsolete. Furthermore, I don't acquire hardware unless I think I can make my money back in 3-4 months time. I assume everything after December is going to make 0 for my GPU miners.

All that said, you can always mine at a loss if you think value will ultimately go up. Of course it would be more wise to just buy bitcoins if you think that is the case, but that's just not as fun.