mining question

[ledgerman]

i have a question about mining... i see that bitcoins come into existence from mining them, but how much can you actually earn after all the costs?

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[lenny_]

http://bitcoinx.com/profit/

[DobZombie]

long story short, if your electricity is expensive (like Australia) using the most efficient rig (and bang for your buck) it can take 14 months to make your money back.  That's assuming the variables that work in your favour don't get worse, which they most defiantly will. If Bitcoin increases substantially in value, the story changes

If your electricity is free, you could potentially make your money back by December.

This is calculated on buying...

4 x Radeon HD 5970 (used) $280ea
A new motherboard 1155 (with 4 pci-e, 16x or 1x it doesn't matter) $60
new celeron cpu ($50)
ram 2gb $15
1200w 80+ rated power supply $250
other odds and ends $100.

Such a system could produce 2800Mh/s, which would translate to about 1.5BTC a day.


Now keep in mind I've used A LOT of rough estimates.  I suggest you troll through forums for a few weeks, and run a mining program on what ever PC you have now.  It'll give you a taste of what mining is, and you'll then know if you've got the MINING BUG or not

[Dargo]

If you want to try your hand at investing in the world of bitcoin, your best bet right now is probably to just buy some coins. It's not clear at the moment that there is any mining hardware you can purchase now that would actually pay for itself with mined coins. If you buy GPUs or FPGAs, ASICs may come on the scene and raise difficulty so high as to make it almost impossible to make your money back. And if you buy BFL ASICs, it may take so long to actually get the equipment that difficulty will likewise be so high that it may take a really long time to make your money back. If you don't understand what difficulty is or how ASICs might impact this in the future, then you should just educate yourself for now. Whatever you do, don't take the various "profit calculators" too seriously. These calculators assume fixed price and difficulty, but price and difficulty are not fixed, and are quite hard to predict.