View Single Post
  #4  
Old 26th June 2017, 05:25 PM
moltuae's Avatar
moltuae moltuae is offline
RIP 27/02/2021 :-(
 
Join Date: Sep 2014
Location: East Lancs.
Posts: 2,679
Default

I've been involved in cryptocurrencies for a few years now and had various discussions about it on some of the IT/tech industry forums I participate in. So to save me a lot of retyping, I'll start by copy-pasting some of the posts I made there.

(these are predominantly US-centric forums, hence the USD/GBP cost comparisons)


Some of this info may be a little out of date now but, to start with, here's a post I made comparing mining rigs and an Antminer S9 ASIC unit ...





Quote:
Originally Posted by Me
So the Antminer S9 arrived at the end of February, a few weeks earlier than expected. Shipping for this batch wasn't due to start until March. Since I had placed the order less than a month earlier (4th Feb), I assumed I'd be at the back of the queue and expected to have to wait until at least the end of March.


Here's the unboxing photos ....































So this thing is presently heating my workshop while I experiment with different mining pools for the best profitability. I usually use electric heaters in my workshop but the S9 pumps out more than enough heat alone to heat it.

In colder climates (like the UK), used as a space heater it costs about the same to run as a small electric fan heater (around 1300W, I believe). Bottom-line profitability of course depends on electricity costs and the present Bitcoin value (or whatever cryptocurrency you're mining) but even with the relatively high UK electricity prices it seems to be able to manage to generate about twice as much as it costs to run.

It's too early to get a good mining average yet, but it seems to be able to achieve at least 11mBTC per day (presently around £11 or $14), which equates to over £300 ($370) per month or about £4000 ($5000) per year. So if, like my customer, you have a free source of electricity, or you use the thing as a heater, ROI is about 6 months, otherwise it's more like 12 months.

One point I should mention is that these things are quite loud when running! Not unbearably so. They're louder than a typical rack-mount server but a little quieter than the average vacuum cleaner. You can hold a conversation in the same room as an S9 fairly easily.



We began looking into GPU mining rigs too. This is where things get interesting. Somewhat surprisingly, with the right graphics cards, these can be just as profitable (if not more so). I'll post more on this later, but here's a photo of the test rig for now, complete with 2 x PSUs, 6 x GPUs (with risers) and 1 motherboard ...





Quote:
Originally Posted by AnotherForumMemeber
If you're in a place with electric heat or free power (e.g. solar, wind or hydro that's not feasible to sell back into the grid) then these could make all the sense in the world. Would be interesting to see one of these set up tied to a thermostat - need more heat? Crank up another core!

Depending on the setup you might also be able to mount it to allow vertical airflow and get a bit of simple convection cooling, but that may crank out too much heat to do without the fans anyway. You can also do a limited chimney at the output, the rising hot air can actually pull air through faster for better cooling.
Precisely our thinking. As you say, if you generate ample electricity that you can't sell back to the grid (which is often the case) or you can make use of the heat, it becomes a no-brainer. My customer falls into both categories. They also have an ORC generator on-site and numerous solar panels. They're very excited by the results so far and they're already doing the math(s) and considering investing in many more rigs (and possibly more solar panels!). Installing these rigs for bushiness customers could prove to be very lucrative!

Now, what surprised me was how well the multi-GPU rig compared with the S9. In many situations, the GPU rig makes more sense ...

Antminer S9 Pros:
  • Ready-made unit. Purpose-built and comes with a 12 month warranty.
  • Compact size.
  • The most energy efficient ASIC miner available (~1300W).
  • Very easy to configure.
Antminer S9 Cons:
  • Loud fans.
  • Likely to have a low residual value in future.
The GPU rig probably pumps out a similar amount of heat to the S9. We haven't had chance to measure the electricity consumption yet, but we expect it to be comparable too. Noise-wise it's much quieter however (depending on choice of fans) -- not really any louder than a high-end PC. But, perhaps more importantly, since it uses off-the-shelf parts, its residual value is much higher. The used prices of these high-end graphics cards are very high. The S9 does its job very well, but it has no other purpose or value if it becomes no longer viable to mine with.

GPU rig Pros:
  • Readily available parts.
  • Much quieter operation.
  • Easily repairable/serviceable.
  • Good residual value (of parts).
GPU rig Cons:
  • Requires custom build/config.
  • Large & bulky (Takes up about 4 times as much space as an S9).

For a home/office mining rig/heater, the GPU rig probably makes the most sense, whereas the S9 is probably best suited to larger operations or warehouse mining farms.

Some more photos of the GPU rig:















We're running NiceHash on the GPU rig, and this is how much it's earning:

__________________
Mark
------------------------------------------------------
2002 FE S8 Ebony Black Pearl
------------------------------------------------------

------------------------------------------------------
Cars Owned:
The Tesla Era: 2020 Model S Performance Ludicrous+ (present)
(Black, with all black premium interior and carbon fibre décor, 21" sonic carbon twin turbine wheels and FSD capability)

The Audi Era: '97 A8 4.2 (Ming Blue) --> '96 A8 4.2 QS (Dark Green) --> '02 FE S8 (present)
The Citroen Era: '84 BX 1.6 RS --> '89 BX 1.9 DTR Turbo --> '94 XM 2.0L Turbo --> '96 XM 2.0L Turbo Exclusive --> '00 Xantia Activa 2.0L Turbo
The Banger Era: '76 1.2L Lada VAZ-2101 (Ruski Fiat 124) --> '80 1.7L Morris Ital HL, finished in Ermine White and Rust
Reply With Quote