Crypto currency mining - Page 8

moltuae · #71 4th July 2017, 06:53 PM

Information overload MJ?

So, an update of my own mining operations ....

The makers of the Antminer S9, Bitmain, recently announced a new, highly profitable model, the Antminer L3+, designed for mining Litecoin. Last time I checked they were unavailable and no release dates had been given.

So, out-of-the blue today, we (my customer and I) noticed that they had become available to purchase, so we put our Bitcoin together and decided to order 3 of them!

https://shop.bitmain.com/productDeta...8538J49cKq063A

We probably won't take delivery until mid-September. I just hope they're still as profitable as this by then! ...

https://new.nicehash.com/profitabili...in-antminer-l3

ainarssems · #72 4th July 2017, 07:24 PM

Looks like it's sold out again, cannot increase the quantity to add to cart

moltuae · #73 4th July 2017, 07:39 PM

You do have to be pretty quick.

We wasn't sure if we'd manage to get an order in before they sold out. We had a frantic hour or so, scrambling to get enough Bitcoin together between us (most of my Bitcoin is usually offline in an Armory wallet, which takes a while to sync before I can send from it).

There should be another batch announced before too long (they usually take orders a batch at a time). If you're interested in buying one, I'll PM you as soon as I can if I notice a new batch has been made available to order.

moltuae · #74 4th July 2017, 07:43 PM

Actually, it may just be that the link I posted has expired ....

Try clicking on the Buy Now button on this page:
https://shop.bitmain.com/overview.ht...c_scrypt_miner

NOTE - You will need an APW3 PSU for each Antminer too.

ainarssems · #75 5th July 2017, 06:20 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by moltuae

Actually, it may just be that the link I posted has expired ....

Try clicking on the Buy Now button on this page:
https://shop.bitmain.com/overview.ht...c_scrypt_miner

NOTE - You will need an APW3 PSU for each Antminer too.

That's it but price is higher now. Still offers huge return assuming it will last. The drawback is that you cannot switch to mine other currencies like you can with GPU and a lot can happen till September. If it was available to get within week I would go for it but with 2 month time not sure.

moltuae · #76 5th July 2017, 06:35 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ainarssems

That's it but price is higher now. Still offers huge return assuming it will last. The drawback is that you cannot switch to mine other currencies like you can with GPU and a lot can happen till September. If it was available to get within week I would go for it but with 2 month time not sure.

You're absolutely right. They're a much riskier investment than GPU mining hardware. It's also likely that mining difficulty of Litecoin will rise sharply as thousands of these Antminers come online, lowing the rate of return. I just hope we get enough time to make a profit. I think if it hadn't been for such risks, we'd have bought 10 or more of the things.

EDIT: For anyone considering buying an Antminer, it's worth noting that they are loud! Not ridiculously so (perhaps a little quieter than the average vacuum cleaner) but it's probably something you're not going to want to heat your bedroom or your living room directly with.

MikkiJayne · #77 6th July 2017, 04:25 PM

Does it matter if all the graphics cards in the system are by the same vendor or not? I would expect them to all use the same driver so would also expect it wouldn't matter if they were a mix of different cards...

moltuae · #78 6th July 2017, 06:17 PM

No it shouldn't matter. We have some rigs with a few RX 480 cards from different vendors and they run happily with the same driver. We also have some rigs with a mix of different makes (ie AMD/nVidia) and models.

ainarssems · #79 7th July 2017, 01:31 PM

Have been experimenting with couple of RX480 cards including over/underclocking, flashing modded BIOS. On the 2 cards I have there is not much room for memory overclocking but a little GPU under-clocking does bring energy savings without affecting performance much. Modifying BIOS did see increase in MH/s from 24-25MH/s to 28MH/s but was unstable resulting in lot of incorrect shares so actual return was lower. I only modified memory timing, maybe if I added a little bit of extra voltage it might be more stable but I don't want to fry it. Some people are lucky enough with their cards to have BIOS mod and also run memory overclocked resulting in 30 MH/s but did not work out for me. I have another 2 different RX 480 turning up hopefully tomorrow so I will see how they do. Also RX580 shows as generating less on NiceHash profitability calculator but apparently are more acceptable to BIOS mods and can do over 30MH/s with mods. Somebody told me get rid of RX480 while they are still £300+ and get RX 580 and mod them. Seems like a reasonable advice since you can get RX580 for less than 480 it's just that RX580 are pre-order only with expected stock 31/07. Might also look at GTX 1080 Ti.

Another thing I would like to mention is that my first RX480 was huge but the second one reference design is the same size as my old GTX760 and would easily fit in case without cutting out HDD cage.

I am still having itch for Antminer L3+. If I were to buy it what would be the best way since I do not hold any crypto-currency or USD accounts but I do have empty Bitcoin wallet.

Mark, are you running all PC's on Windows or Linux as the licencing costs can mount up for several machines.

Another question is where does it stand with taxman? I suppose you can offset all your purchase and electricity costs against income and it would only count as income only when you convert your earned bitcoins to fiat currency.
My old PC with 2x RX480 is running 49MH/s with tweaked settings is expecting about £115 month at the current rate but this can vary a lot with £31 electricity costs so £600 investment should pay back in about 7 month, a bit longer than I was hoping for but should be still going for another 3 years or so after it has paid off. Obviously lot of unpredictable variables involved

MikkiJayne · #80 7th July 2017, 02:19 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ainarssems

Another question is where does it stand with taxman? I suppose you can offset all your purchase and electricity costs against income and it would only count as income only when you convert your earned bitcoins to fiat currency.

I was looking in to this the other day. In the UK its considered currency trading and subject to capital gains tax. Apparently there is a personal allowance of £11,100 on this, although I'm not sure if that's your income tax allowance or a separate one for cg. The amount of cg is dependent on how much income tax you pay - starts at 18% for basic rate income tax, then 28% for upper rate. There is a 3rd band too iirc.

Assuming its separate to your income tax allowance then 2 people can theoretically mine £22,200 a year without paying tax on it. Which is nice.

I got a payout of a whole £2.12 this afternoon! I only used £2.40 of electricity to get it too

I'm going to buy a GTX 980ti on Monday and see what that does. The 960 is quite vexing as it starts off mining at 84p a day when the Nicehash site says 86p, which is fine. If I leave it overnight its down to 12p a day which renders the whole business completely futile. It averages out to about 70% of what Nicehash says it should be doing. I'm hoping a 980ti will be more consistent, although I have no justification for that whatsoever...

Oh also, my 6-slot base model Proliant G7 uses the same power at idle (75W) and mining (195W) as my 2-slot mini-ATX desktop board. I can get a low-power Xeon for the G7 which might save a few watts, and also 750W power supplies for £20 each so I think thats going to be the hardware of choice, especially if I can optimise it a little more.