Bitcoin Mining Newbie Questions!

[Coolmike]

Hello All!

   Recently a buddy I work with told me about bitcoins and the wonders of the market and how they work and what mining is.

So I decided to do some research myself and he explained different thing to me. After some long hard thought I decided id like to try out building a rig. and shot the idea at my buddy who is also technically my landlord

My questions are....

1. I wanna understand a little bit better about hash rates, really more like if we decided to buy 4x 7970's and use them, how do I calculate the total possible hash rate so I can figure out possible the average amount of bitcoins produced per day?

2. We wanna start with one rig just for bitcoins, we have PLENTY of dry, Cooled basement area if we decide too continue making rigs and producing a nice profit, Would you guys say 4x 7970's would be worth the money to start off with? We have a decent amount of funds to blow if it will return a decent amount more.

3.I've also heard that its worthwhile joining a mining pool and i have tried to understand the actual numbers, on average people seem to be making 3-4x the amount of BTC than if they fly solo. Would this be a good idea if we decide to do the 7970 setup?

     Ideally were obviously looking for the best bang for our buck setup that will show us some magic and convince us to build a farm. I also am going to look into how to figure out how to calculate how much more it'll cost us a month in electricity....Of course since the Landlord is my best friend and owns the house, Electricity wont be a worry provided were making money.



Any help is greatly appreciated, thanks guys!

[JupeB]

If you are going to get started, might as well get ASICs from Butterfly Labs (butterflylabs.com). If the hashrates are right (which they have been in the past), these will blow away GPU mining.

[Coolmike]

So essentially these are more efficient than the GPU way, cheaper and produce almost the same ?

[01BTC10]

1.
https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Mining_hardware_comparison
http://bitcoinx.com/profit/ (To get an estimate of profitability)

2.
I would wait to see if Asic come this fall. This will render GPU mining obsolete. https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=87934.0;topicseen

3.
Mining pool is mandatory for small miner. Payout variance can kill profitability. Your expected BTC stay the same but payout will be more steady with a pool.

[Coolmike]

1.
https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Mining_hardware_comparison
http://bitcoinx.com/profit/ (To get an estimate of profitability)

2.
I would wait to see if Asic come this fall. This will render GPU mining obsolete. https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=87934.0;topicseen

3.
Mining pool is mandatory for small miner. Payout variance can kill profitability. Your expected BTC stay the same but payout will be more steady with a pool.

It looks like you can order those BFL singles now? For 600$. How do these work....you still need a computer to run it through right?

[01BTC10]

The singles are FPGA and will get obsolete once ASIC hit the market. The best bet is to wait for ASIC (BitForce ‘SC’). http://www.butterflylabs.com/bitforce-sc-faq/

[Coolmike]

Do we know a price point for the ASIC yet?

Let's just say in the meantime excluding the ASIC / FPGA stuff. Would a 7970x4 set up work for price point comparison too amount of MH/s put out or is there a better card for a 4x set up? We already have a large server Case with a ODD / HDD etc. So really we'll only be being a buying a board the cards a CPU and PSU.

[Hunner]

Given the costs of creating the ASIC fabbing hardware, be careful about putting all of your money on them being released. BFL may be selling their FPGAs with pre-ordered promises of ASICs in the hopes that interest will create enough funding to actually produce the ASICs.

I'm in the camp of "don't preorder ASICs with money you need", and consider it more like gambling $1299 for an SC.

[s_asahara]

Do we know a price point for the ASIC yet?

Unless I am misreading this and the Butterfly labs site, it looks like they have three different models: 3.5 g/hash for $150, 40 g/hash for $1200, 1000 g/hash for 30K.  http://www.butterflylabs.com/products/

[moparguy528]

The estimated GH rates is what confuses me..... so are they designing it for 3.5GH and just putting more on the single 40GH and rig 1000GH and coming up with odd performance numbers....or are they designing 2 different chips? If the use just one 3.5GH design...it will take approx 286 to make a rig.

[Coolmike]

SC? never heard the term. I'd like to get started mining ASAP. As nice as the ASCI seems i'm sure I can flip w.e I use now. I'll look into this SC

[Unacceptable]

SC=Super Computer from BFL  

Well,you can go ahead & get that 4x7970 rig up & running,but....@ 2.6 gh/s:

Difficulty Factor-1866391.305

Hash Rate (mega-hashes / second)-2600

Exchange Rate ($/฿)-$7 per BTC

per Day=฿1.40-$9.81
per Week=฿9.81-$68.66
per Month=฿42.60-$298.17

http://www.alloscomp.com/bitcoin/calculator.php

4-7970's @ $450 each=$1800

Mobo with 4 PCIE slots=$150

cheap CPU=$75

1 gig RAM=$25

1000 watt Powersupply=$200

Total $2250

Say $300 earned in BTC per month=7.5 months for ROI (Return Of Investment).Thats IF you have free electric  

Otherwise subtract about $150 per month for electric=15 months for ROI.

But,you can sell your hardware when BTC reward halves or sooner & buy ASIC's.Or just start with ASIC's,but you may get started in October or November or December or etc................

Either way you can learn something about mining at least with a GPU rig  

[subject]

I'd recommend you to wait for the BFL ASICS. If they are shipped out on time GPU mining will be obsolete,  since the ASICS would increase the difficulty level so drastically. I've read some people are considering switching their GPU rigs to mine alternative cryptocurrency like Litecoin.

[Vladimir]

Great plan! But it is almost 2  years too late.

[Coolmike]

Ahh you've really cleared it all up now. I think we'll just save / pool our money and wait for the ASIC provided they are profitable and worth the investment for a period of time. Are these listed on the BFL site already because all I see are the FPGA items? I'm assuming there's a pre-order list started already for these items somewhere?

[Coolmike]

Answered all those questions on my own and wow i'm going to pre-order 2 BFL singles and gain 16 of the ASIC units when they come out. How high do we think the difficulty will raise once the ASIC has been out for a few months? double? triple? I was doing the math if I had 16 of the Jalapeno's going its around 5000 / MO but obviously the 50 is going down too 25 and such so yeah lol

[DeathAndTaxes]

IF BFL releases the ASICS and they meets the specs as listed and they can produce in volume you can expected difficulty to increase by a factor of 100x (no not 100%, 10,000%).

There is no free lunch in mining.  If you have a rig that is 100x as powerful so does everyone else and the difficulty increases.

[Coolmike]

Wow that's crazy that means 16 of those ASIC's will only produce like.... 75 dollars a month  Maybe I should look into something else related too bitcoins lol

[01BTC10]

Wow that's crazy that means 16 of those ASIC's will only produce like.... 75 dollars a month   Maybe I should look into something else related too bitcoins lol

https://glbse.com

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?board=78.0

[Coolmike]

Hmmmm LOL. I studied the stock exchange and Forex when I was 16-19. This should be good. =)