Cryptocurrencies

[timeshifter]

I'm curious as to why all the rigs I see pictures of all look the same. Six cards on a set of rails with just a few inches of spacing between them. It seems that the fans of the first five cards will be working harder than the fans on the sixth card. Does anyone arrange the cards in a different manner - stair step them or arrange them differently for better airflow? Seems like a different layout might keep the noise down somewhat.

And speaking of noise: what about water cooling? I understand that it might be more expensive and complicated, but I'm considering building some rigs to run at home and would like to mitigate the noise.

 

[HCHTech]

We're going to dip our toe in this water as well - looks like fun (ok, clearly geek-fun, but whatever). We've got a nice Optiplex i5/8GB castoff machine, a GTX1060 6G card, and a kill-a-watt unit to measure the electricity cost.

Our first rig is up and running - some bumps in the road, of course. The Optiplex I had targeted had the Dell-specific motherboard power connector, and the power supply did not provide an extra connector for a graphics card. We found a similar vintage & configured Vostro in the bone pile which sufficed. So my startup costs were the graphics card & a Thermaltake 450W Power Supply = $290 USD. I'm pulling 165 watts, about 4.11 KWH per day. My rate for power comes out to about $0.51 per day to run the thing. I'm getting around 18.9 MH/s, or about $3.53/day at current rates. So that puts my ROI at just over 3 months.

This is only 1 day's performance, so more accurate numbers should emerge over time. If I had built that machine from scratch, the ROI wouldn't be nearly so soon - harder to justify if you have to wait a year before you're making money. I'll keep an eye on it, and in the meantime, I've set aside 3 more of those Vostros (all retired from the same business customer of mine).

I was surprised at the cost of the card, and how much that cost has risen in the past year. The RX480 8GB (if you can find, they seem to be out of stock everywhere, thanks to their popularity for mining) is more like $400. I'm glad I'm not trying to make & sell gaming machines now!

 

[timeshifter]

So, @HCHTech you're running a PC with one GTX1060 6GB card?

 

[HCHTech]

So, @HCHTech you're running a PC with one GTX1060 6GB card?

Yup. This is just a dalliance, so I don't want a big investment in money or time. I figure I use castoff computers, then if it doesn't work out, I can easily resell the cards on ebay.

 

[timeshifter]

Been doing a ton of research on video cards tonight. After going at it for a couple of hours, a few observations:

1) AMD cards are sold out all over the place. If you can find one you're going to pay scalper pricing.

2) The 1080 TI card seems to be the winner. They seem to be available. Yes, they're pricey, but according to the calculator at NiceHash you get your money back in about 90 days. And once you break even on the initial costs the 1080 TI looks a lot more profitable.

 

[HCHTech]

Yes, they're pricey, but according to the calculator at NiceHash you get your money back in about 90 days

I noticed that as well. The sweet spot in the ROI graph seems to be about a 90-day return, I spent $250 on the 1060-6GB, return is about 90 days, and after that I would get (at today's pricing) $3.50/day. A 1080TI is more like $800, has the same 90-day return, then after that should earn (at today's pricing) about $7.00 per day. So the 1060 costs $71.43 per dollar per day earning power, while the 1080TI costs $114.29 per dollar per day earning power. THAT means that 2 1060s in a single machine would give about the same eventual return for less initial outlay.

Somewhere, I'm sure some enterprising young miner has done all of this math with pretty graphs that shows the moving averages to determine the most profitable setup. I'm glad I'm not trying to make a business out of this, I'd be buried in spreadsheets right now.

Oh, I should also note that the CPU does NOT work hard on my machine. It's a 2012 i5 w/8GB RAM. Task manager shows the CPU between 0 and 1% and there is a steady 3GB of RAM utilized. I'm sure I could have gotten buy with a lesser processor and perhaps only 4GB of RAM for the same performance.

 

[timeshifter]

I noticed that as well. The sweet spot in the ROI graph seems to be about a 90-day return, I spent $250 on the 1060-6GB, return is about 90 days, and after that I would get (at today's pricing) $3.50/day. A 1080TI is more like $800, has the same 90-day return, then after that should earn (at today's pricing) about $7.00 per day. So the 1060 costs $71.43 per dollar per day earning power, while the 1080TI costs $114.29 per dollar per day earning power. THAT means that 2 1060s in a single machine would give about the same eventual return for less initial outlay.

I was following right along until your last sentence. I guess you're thinking about return in terms of getting back the money you put out for the card?

Once either card is paid for wouldn't you rather have the card earning two times the other?

I guess what you're saying is that you're looking at it from a hobby, "this is fun", perspective and don't want to put up that kind of money up front?

 

[Markverhyden]

On a separate but related note. While I've been researching, etc this subject matter I've not signed up anywhere. A little while ago I got an email from bit.ac about having created a new account. Anyone heard of them before? Headers looked ok but very simple.

 

[HCHTech]

On a separate but related note. While I've been researching, etc this subject matter I've not signed up anywhere. A little while ago I got an email from bit.ac about having created a new account. Anyone heard of them before? Headers looked ok but very simple.

Well, one of the sites you visited might be using this as a shady way to get people to sign up. That or it just a random scam.

 

[HCHTech]

I was following right along until your last sentence. I guess you're thinking about return in terms of getting back the money you put out for the card?

Yes - I didn't look farther out than about a year, so in that short window, the 2-cheaper-card setup would be just about as profitable as the 1 more-expensive-card setup.

My point was that two cards whose total purchase price was less than the fancier card produced the same output (about $7/day). So, if the output is the same, then the other factors to consider are initial purchase price, and cost to run. I ignored running costs in my conclusion, So let's look at that.

A 1060-6GB makes $3.70 per day and costs $0.29 per day to run (I put in my electricity rate, which is $0.12/KWH)

So, it stands to follow that 2 1060-6GB Cards will make $7.40 per day and cost $0.58 per day to run, leaving a profit of $6.82 per day.

A 1080TI makes $8.25 per day and costs $0.72 per day to run, leaving a profit of $7.53 per day

If a 1060-6GB costs $250, then 2 cards cost $500 divided by $6.82 = 73 days to pay for them.

a 1080TI costs $800 divided by $7.53 = 106 days to pay for itself.

So for a year, the dual 1060s make (365*6.82)-500 = $1,989

A single 1080TI makes (365*7.53) - 800 = $1,948

So if you stop after a year, the cheaper cards win. Obviously, the working lifetime of these cards is probably more than a year, so the more-expensive card will win at some point on the curve.

2 years would be (730*6.82)-500 = $4,479 compared to (730*7.53)-800 = $4,697. So there you are, if you run the rig a bit less than 2 years, then the 1080TI will be more profitable. Oh, hell - let's just solve the thing.

6.82X-500 = 7.53X-800

6.82X = 7.53X - 300

.71X = 300

X = 422.53

So as long as you run your rig longer than 422 days, it's better to purchase the 1080Ti than 2 of the 1060-6GBs.

Also counting against my initial conclusion is that it's pretty unlikely to gain a dual PCI-slot motherboard from customer castoffs, so that would mean more upfront costs on that side as well.

Then, you should probably factor in a certain percentage of downtime, equipment failures & such.

Yeah, I'm definitely looking at this from a hobbyist's perspective.

 

[Markverhyden]

Well, one of the sites you visited might be using this as a shady way to get people to sign up. That or it just a random scam.

Well, I'm leaning more towards scam. None of my browsers have any information stored, including my email. The email I received it at is not used for random research. I have another email that I use just for that purpose.

 

[Moltuae]

Thanks for that detailed reply!

What have you settled on recently as the best card and motherboard combo lately? I know you talked about 4GB RX 480s in post #72 and you're leaning toward 3-4 card systems for various reasons.

We're actually experimenting with the 1080 TI now. As you mentioned in your later post, the AMDs are pretty much sold out everywhere. In some ways the 1080 TI seems to make more sense: While it costs more, it mines at twice the rate of a 480 so you could make a smaller rig ( = potentially less complex and therefore more reliable).

My customer has just sent me his own quick 1080 TI calculations (I haven't checked these figures yet, though I have no reason to believe they'll be wrong):

The motherboard is £58
PSU £90
Then the usual CPU, memory, SSD, risers and case.

So £720 without GPU’s for x2 motherboards in one case.
6x 1080ti are £4020

Total setup excluding labour £4740

That one case/rig working off my average earnings for the past 24hr earn 20.4 mBTC or £41.40 per day.
That’s £1242 per month or 0.612 BTC

Excluding electricity that’s a ROI of 114.5 days


Assuming the rig runs 24hr 7 days a week. PROFIT excluding electricity after paying itself off
3 months negative £1122
6 months £2712
9 months £6438
12 month £9732
18 month £17616

Electric consumption 170w per card assuming £0.13 kw
24.5 kw per day or £3.18

So profit taking into account electric
9 months £5579
12 months £8587
18 months £15898

Regarding ROI, another thing to consider is depreciation and the resale value of the cards. In most cases the cards will probably be worth at least 50% of their original cost, even after 12 months. When calculating ROI, if instead of using the full purchase price of the card you subtract the gradually decreasing resale value to determine a 'losses' value or an actual (ie non-recoverable) expenditure, ROI is ridiculously quick, probably under 1 month in most cases.

I'm curious as to why all the rigs I see pictures of all look the same. Six cards on a set of rails with just a few inches of spacing between them. It seems that the fans of the first five cards will be working harder than the fans on the sixth card. Does anyone arrange the cards in a different manner - stair step them or arrange them differently for better airflow? Seems like a different layout might keep the noise down somewhat.

And speaking of noise: what about water cooling? I understand that it might be more expensive and complicated, but I'm considering building some rigs to run at home and would like to mitigate the noise.

We haven't found it necessary to use water cooling, etc, but then we're not really concerned about noise. Our aim has been merely to find the best way to knock-out mining rigs quickly and easily, in a repeatable and reliable way. Once we find the best way, we'll probably hire a bunch of his (non-tech) staff to mass produce the rigs, so simplicity is more important for us.

I'd be really interested to see how that goes though. Please let me know your findings if you do experiment with making a quiet/silent rig. I'm planning to heat my entire home and workshop with mining rigs next winter, if I can get enough of them built. They're not particularly noisy (especially compared with my Antminer S9!) but it would be good to have a reliable silent option.

On a separate but related note. While I've been researching, etc this subject matter I've not signed up anywhere. A little while ago I got an email from bit.ac about having created a new account. Anyone heard of them before? Headers looked ok but very simple.

View attachment 7639

Never heard of them and never had such an email. Just a coincidence maybe?

With cryptocurrencies dramatically increasing in popularity now, there are a huge amount of scams around.

 

[timeshifter]

He's talking about two motherboards in one case???

 

[Moltuae]

He's talking about two motherboards in one case???

Yeah. By 'case' he means an 'open frame' rig though.

We've done single-motherboard dual-PSU rigs but, after various discussions and experiments, we decided to do either smaller (3 or 4 card) rigs or dual motherboard/PSU rigs instead. Main reasons being, motherboards with more than 3 or 4 PCIe slots are more expensive and harder to find and there are often more technical issues to overcome with such setups (graphics driver problems, PSU load balancing and ground commoning, etc). Having dual motherboards keeps things simpler, uses more readily available parts and, if one board goes down for any reason, you've only lost half of the rig.

 

[timeshifter]

OK, so basically two computers in one case?

 

[timeshifter]

I do like your philosophy of simple off-the-shelf type systems. Saw an article on NiceHash where they ran 8 GPUs on one PC

It sure is cool to connect all those cards to one machine. But then you need power supplies that will trip a 15 amp breaker. I think I'd rather have to buy more CPUs and motherboards and have a few more PCs to manage than deal with those monstrous rigs.

 

[timeshifter]

Here's a good article where a guy went through several flavors of 1080 TI cards.

https://forum.z.cash/t/nvidia-gtx-1080-ti-gpus/16765

 

[Moltuae]

I do like your philosophy of simple off-the-shelf type systems. Saw an article on NiceHash where they ran 8 GPUs on one PC

It sure is cool to connect all those cards to one machine. But then you need power supplies that will trip a 15 amp breaker. I think I'd rather have to buy more CPUs and motherboards and have a few more PCs to manage than deal with those monstrous rigs.

Exactly.

There's actually a new 13 PCIe mining motherboard out soon too. As cool as that would be to get working, it's unlikely the board's availability will be consistent. Plus maintaining a bunch of those rigs would be a nightmare. Lots of smaller rigs makes it more modular and, if one goes down, it's not such a big deal ... just swap it out for a new one while you repair it.

 

[timeshifter]

Just ordered one 1080 Ti card from Corsair. Wish me luck. Going to put it in my Windows desktop. By the time Fall rolls around let's see if it's been paid for

Got a couple of Kill a Watts arriving today. After ordering the card it occurred to me that the power supply in my PC is not a high efficiency model. May need to upgrade that to make this work out.

 

[Blues]

I wonder about a "budget solution" buy used/refurb PCs like old Dell Optiplex 9010, likely SSF, for ~$50 or less per machine and dropping in a budget friendly solution like an AMD 580, or is it 590, and have a system for less than $200.