Got ROI in 40 days with my Antminer S3+

[adaseb]

I think 95% of the energy is dissipated as heat, the rest is processing power, light, and fan noise.

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[MrTeal]

I think 95% of the energy is dissipated as heat, the rest is processing power, light, and fan noise.

As dogie mentioned, the processing power does get turned into heat. The energy produces something we consider valuable so we measure efficiency, but it's still just turning electricity to heat. If you're playing a crappy video game and your computer is drawing 200W, it's not like you're turning 195W to heat and 5W to fun, but if you bought a better game you could turn only 190W to heat and 10W to fun. Energy would actually have to escape your building in order for you to lose efficiency.
So, you can actually lose a miniscule amount of energy to radiated EM (light or possibly unintended RF emissions) and to sound. It is incredibly minor though.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sound_power
For example, for a hemispherical sound distribution (IE, in free space but with a floor) 62dB at 1m (like an Antminer S5) is a sound power level of 70dB. Look at the table in the Wikipedia article; the actual power in 70db SWL is 0.00001W. That's 10 microwatts.

[klondike_bar]

Same here in Europe. When it's cold and I anyway would need electric heating, I turn on miners. For every 1 EUR spent on electricity I get back around 50 cents.

And if you would use a space heater in stead of a miner you would be using 25 cents (instead of 1 EUR) for that same amount of heat, still losing 25 cents on mining... Heat is a byproduct of mining, remember?

that makes no sense. a bitcoin miner is no different from an electric space heater, and both produce 1w of heat for 1w of power usage.
however, a space heater might better distribute the warmth


edit: realised pages 2 and 3 of this thread are almost exclusively filled with confusion over electricity->heat. theres no magical physics that causes computing power to somehow NOT produce heat. the results of a computation are not a form of energy - the energy is turned to heat in the process of hashing, but does not somehow send 1w into the internet with every share.

Dogie is right - 99.99% of energy used is directly translated to heating the room holding the bitcoin miner. whatever energy leaves as noise/light/vibration will be converted to heat through its interaction with the air/walls/floor.

[dmeter]

[...] Interesting that you "forgot" to take into account the point of ROI in that case too.[...]

No, I didn't... Even if the building costs already have been amortised it still has to be taken into account... And then there's still the operating costs... Hence - again - no such thing as "free electricity"... 

yes i have free eletricity. i have contract if i used or not used 7 kwh power i must pay minimum 7 kwh. hotel in winter is totaly empty. i must pay 730$ month used or not used 5100 kwh.
this is free energy.
Also this year i instal more solar panel and new cat generator 500 kw to lovering peak to 100 kwh. because every kwh peak i must pay 11$ month minimum this 730 $
For one night club have installed 700 kwh and 500  kwh cat gen set. because  peak energy must pay 132000 $ year club work only 90 days year.

[tss]

i guess if you buy an antminer s1 second hand for $20 with free electric you'll roi even faster.

[sbogovac]

[...]
Dogie is right - 99.99% of energy used is directly translated to heating the room holding the bitcoin miner. whatever energy leaves as noise/light/vibration will be converted to heat through its interaction with the air/walls/floor.

And you're forgetting the space heater will have a thermostat which actually tells the heater to stop producing once the desired temp. is achieved. As I said, the space heater is by definition more efficient at heating a space than a miner. <- period

[sbogovac]

[...] Interesting that you "forgot" to take into account the point of ROI in that case too.[...]

No, I didn't... Even if the building costs already have been amortised it still has to be taken into account... And then there's still the operating costs... Hence - again - no such thing as "free electricity"... 

yes i have free eletricity. i have contract if i used or not used 7 kwh power i must pay minimum 7 kwh. hotel in winter is totaly empty. i must pay 730$ month used or not used 5100 kwh.
this is free energy.
Also this year i instal more solar panel and new cat generator 500 kw to lovering peak to 100 kwh. because every kwh peak i must pay 11$ month minimum this 730 $
For one night club have installed 700 kwh and 500  kwh cat gen set. because  peak energy must pay 132000 $ year club work only 90 days year.

No you don't. You are confusing recovering your losses (something you paid and would not use) with getting something for free.

As I said (and simple physics/economics dictate): no. such. thing. as. free. electricity. <-period

[Mikestang]

Since that time I made a little over 0.40BTC with those 2 miners and today I took profit and they paid for themselves.

I am so happy that the risk I took ended up paying off. Even with free electricity it was still kind of scary buying mining equipment with difficulty hitting new highs and BTC hitting new lows.

So for new miners out there, YES you can still make money mining with a little bit of risk and luck.

Getting away from the heat discussion...

What pool did you mine in?  Congrats on the ROI.

[MrTeal]

[...]
Dogie is right - 99.99% of energy used is directly translated to heating the room holding the bitcoin miner. whatever energy leaves as noise/light/vibration will be converted to heat through its interaction with the air/walls/floor.

And you're forgetting the space heater will have a thermostat which actually tells the heater to stop producing once the desired temp. is achieved. As I said, the space heater is by definition more efficient at heating a space than a miner. <- period

That is really a separate thing. Not having an integrated thermostat makes the miner less convenient to use, but it would be relatively trivial to control voltage and clocks based on an outside temperature to increase efficiency and lower power draw, and even simpler to just shut it off. That doesn't mean it is by definition less efficient period. For example, my heating baseload is such that I could run 10kW of gear 24/7 without ever turning it off for 6 months of the year and my house would still need additional heating on top of that. For every X kWh the miners consume, I directly get a reduction of Y cubic meters of gas that I don't have to purchase.

[ajw7989]

Congrats on the ROI. You got them for a really good price and got lucky with the difficulty plateau for that period. Enjoy making all profits now or selling them for a quick profit.

[KaChingCoinDev]

Congratulations! Rarely do us home miners turn a profit. For me, it was the other way . When will you upgrade to a newer miner? Just wondering.

[M28MmickT]

Title is misleading. You got ROI with a second hand S3, not with a new one...

To be fair to him it does not say he got it with a new Antminer s3  but yeh i see the trouble it took to open the thread and read a few lines to find out he did indeed roi on a s3.

Free electric op that is really good here in the uk without miners etc i am paying £35 a week so around $50 would hate to think what mining equipment would cost me 

[Bitminer1224]

Thats amazing man!   Such insane profits has to drag more attention to btc.

[KaChingCoinDev]

i guess if you buy an antminer s1 second hand for $20 with free electric you'll roi even faster.

Not neccessarily. With the adjustment of difficulty every 2 weeks, you would probably roi within 55 days.

[tss]

i guess if you buy an antminer s1 second hand for $20 with free electric you'll roi even faster.

Not neccessarily. With the adjustment of difficulty every 2 weeks, you would probably roi within 55 days.

Ceteris paribus, all else being equal,
75 cad is 60 usd,
s3 around 450gh, @ $60usd
s1 around 180gh, @ $20usd

2.5 to 1 hash ratio but 3 to 1 price ratio :-)

[mavericklm]

yeah but is it really worth all the trouble for 180gh/s?

by exaggeration:  would you like 1.8th/s or 4.5th/s?
s1 has a little bit higher wattage
s1 is a bit louder
resell value of s1 is still ok because of need for heating in the northern hemisphere. but in the summer only dumb noobs will buy an s1
maybe you need to put transport in there. when you want to resell the s1, because of it's low speed, some ppl will say i better get s3 'cause the shipping is the same

so in the end s1 is very ok for free electricity, but i'd say it's not worth the trouble

[adaseb]

I looked into the S1 but even if I got offered the units for free they weren't worth the trouble. I rather just turn on my GPUs.

They are noisy and even if you have free electricity they make 180Gh/s and use over 400Watts. Not worth using up a PSU.

Maybe if I had a bunch of server PSUs where I could power 3 of them with one unit.