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Bitcoin Discussion Thread Part 2

yowen said:
Yeah... With my cost at 13 cents per KWH I'm not sure I want to get into it, for me it would mean building a system. Which I could do fairly cheaply, but cheaply enough? The thing is, I wouldn't have a use for the system afterward (like you do silent-circuit).
Click to expand...

Is your system cost/sandbox the total cost of system? I was factoring in CPUs, Mobos, PSUs, etc. everything I needed to buy to build the mining machines.
 
Spare-Flair said:
Is your system cost/sandbox the total cost of system? I was factoring in CPUs, Mobos, PSUs, etc. everything I needed to buy to build the mining machines.
Click to expand...

My sandbox I was really just plugging in a bunch of numbers.

Hmmm, educated guess:
CPU: $60
Motherboard: $60
GPU'S: $300 (2x6870)
PSU: $50
Memory: $20
===========
Total: ~$500
(I have some spare Hard Drives and a case I would run W/O panels).

Another option is making my current system a part-time system and spending $150 on an additional 6870. I could probably average 20 hrs a day on it. I would consider the cost of the rest of the system not associated with btc as I would have the system regardless.
 
Couple of problems with my Ubuntu rigs.

My 4xSaphire 5830 Ext rigs used to be able to do 1000core/344mem overclocks on all cards and run 24/7 without problems. It seems recently if I run at those close, the GPUs start to show DEAD in cgminer after a few hours. I have tried clocks all the way down to 900/344 and it seems stable for the most part, but the last couple of days, one of the 4x5830 rigs just seems to lock up. I cannot SSH into it, physical monitor plugged in will be black, miner stop reporting shares, unable to ping it. If I reboot, everything is fine. This happened last night around 8PM, I rebooted, and the rig churned out shares all the way up till 9AM this morning where it locked up again.

Anybody have any ideas? Could it be the PSU(Corsair HX750)? It is running pretty well maxed out. I have a Coolermaster 1000w I can swap out this afternoon, maybe that would help.
 
sethmo said:
Couple of problems with my Ubuntu rigs.

My 4xSaphire 5830 Ext rigs used to be able to do 1000core/344mem overclocks on all cards and run 24/7 without problems. It seems recently if I run at those close, the GPUs start to show DEAD in cgminer after a few hours. I have tried clocks all the way down to 900/344 and it seems stable for the most part, but the last couple of days, one of the 4x5830 rigs just seems to lock up. I cannot SSH into it, physical monitor plugged in will be black, miner stop reporting shares, unable to ping it. If I reboot, everything is fine. This happened last night around 8PM, I rebooted, and the rig churned out shares all the way up till 9AM this morning where it locked up again.

Anybody have any ideas? Could it be the PSU(Corsair HX750)? It is running pretty well maxed out. I have a Coolermaster 1000w I can swap out this afternoon, maybe that would help.
Click to expand...
What temperatures have the cards been running? Running them at 100% all the time AND being hot can kill the cards.
 
Pretty cool, right now between 47-50C on all 4 cards in that rig. Fan set at a manual 85%. Only once have I seen a crazy temp on a card, that was when I forgot to set fan speed on one card and my cooling was not working(forgot to open window lulz) and the card got up to 120C for a few minutes. That particular card still works though, all the other cards have not seen any temps above 80C at the extreme in the summer.
 
Stock voltage.

One 4x5830 rig mining pulls 755-760w at the wall, I would expect that to be very taxing on my PSU. I will swap out PSUs and see if it helps.
 
Most curious. Try switching the power supply, if not, the real troubleshooting begins.

EDIT: That corsair unit should be able to pull 850+w from the wall no problems, they are awesome units, but I'd switch it out to make sure.
 
Yeah, that is what I read while doing research on them. I switched to running 2x5870 and 1x5830 in my second Ubuntu rig and haven't had issues, but earlier in the week when I was running 3x5830 in one rig and 4x5830 in the other, both machines would lock up around the same time and require a reboot in order to resume connectivity. All the while, my Win7 rig with 2x6950 would not be interrupted.

I dont know what the deal is.
 
sethmo said:
Couple of problems with my Ubuntu rigs.

My 4xSaphire 5830 Ext rigs used to be able to do 1000core/344mem overclocks on all cards and run 24/7 without problems. It seems recently if I run at those close, the GPUs start to show DEAD in cgminer after a few hours. I have tried clocks all the way down to 900/344 and it seems stable for the most part, but the last couple of days, one of the 4x5830 rigs just seems to lock up. I cannot SSH into it, physical monitor plugged in will be black, miner stop reporting shares, unable to ping it. If I reboot, everything is fine. This happened last night around 8PM, I rebooted, and the rig churned out shares all the way up till 9AM this morning where it locked up again.

Anybody have any ideas? Could it be the PSU(Corsair HX750)? It is running pretty well maxed out. I have a Coolermaster 1000w I can swap out this afternoon, maybe that would help.
Click to expand...

Have you cleaned the cards/PSU/entire system lately? One of my triple 5870 rigs was exhibiting the same symptoms until I use a compressor to really blow it all out. It was odd because the reported temps were the same before and after cleaning but it suddenly became stable again.
 
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I have purchased an Opteron server for my F@H needs and I am going to be taking all of my nvidia cards out of my dedicated folding rigs in order to save power. I have my eyes on a 5970 for $350 AUD (cheap for Australia) for a bit of mining. Power costs don't matter as I will be savings hundreds by stopping 16 or so power hungry nvidia GPUs. As I will have a few empty rigs that can easily takes 4 dual width cards each (only issue could be the power connectors) there is ample room for a few ATi cards.
If I was to run the 5970 how much would it make highly over clocked without worrying about power costs?
If it will pay for itself within a few months and then start making a bit of money then I will get it.
I know it's not the best time to get into mining and it may be dying or whatever but it's only $350 for a little adventure :)
I have tried a few calculator things however lots of them seem to be optimistic.
From what I have read the 5970 should do 655 MH/s stock and I will push it as close to 1GHz as possible.
If it will do 750 MH/s and I am able to sell the BTC for close to $6 it will make $1300 ish in a year.
I am not yet very experienced with BTC mining so I am not sure how accurate this is :/

Thanks

EDIT: If the 5970 does OK this will result in other ATi/AMD purchases ofc.
 
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WOLF_TEAM_LEADER said:
I have purchased an Opteron server for my F@H needs and I am going to be taking all of my nvidia cards out of my dedicated folding rigs in order to save power. I have my eyes on a 5970 for $350 AUD (cheap for Australia) for a bit of mining. Power costs don't matter as I will be savings hundreds by stopping 16 or so power hungry nvidia GPUs. As I will have a few empty rigs that can easily takes 4 dual width cards each (only issue could be the power connectors) there is ample room for a few ATi cards.
If I was to run the 5970 how much would it make highly over clocked without worrying about power costs?
If it will pay for itself within a few months and then start making a bit of money then I will get it.
I know it's not the best time to get into mining and it may be dying or whatever but it's only $350 for a little adventure :)
I have tried a few calculator things however lots of them seem to be optimistic.
From what I have read the 5970 should do 655 MH/s stock and I will push it as close to 1GHz as possible.
If it will do 750 MH/s and I am able to sell the BTC for close to $6 it will make $1300 ish in a year.
I am not yet very experienced with BTC mining so I am not sure how accurate this is :/

Thanks
Click to expand...

In terms of profitability, most people do worry about their power costs. If you are already folding and all this already and how much your electricity costs doesn't matter to you, then those numbers should be accurate. A single 5870 will do 400-450MH/s on overclock. A 5970 has two 5870 cores but is more like two 5850s though in stock configuration because of heat/power consumption. If you are able to overclock it and provide enough cooling, you could probably hit 800MH/s. Remember to downclock your ram to around 425MHz or lower (sometimes crashes under 425MHz).

Extrapolating to a year is difficult because we don't know what BTC prices will be from month to month or how the difficulty will change. If mining picks up again this year, expect to get much less BTC at the end of the year than at the start as the difficulty could double.
 
Thanks for the reply.
Power costs are quite major in my household however I am planing to save thousands of watts by eliminating 4 GPU folders that can do 1000W each so at the moment power will only be less than before even with a few new ATi cards.
In a years time I will be moving to the other side of the country where I will need to ensure that any mining is going to be profitable even if the value of BTC drops quite a bit.
So yes electricity costs matter but from where I am now with loads of GPU folding rigs I will be saving on power considerably even with an ATi card or two, or three.
I did have a pair of 5870's last year that I sold for peanuts unfortunately :(

Thanks
 
WOLF_TEAM_LEADER said:
Thanks for the reply.
Power costs are quite major in my household however I am planing to save thousands of watts by eliminating 4 GPU folders that can do 1000W each so at the moment power will only be less than before even with a few new ATi cards.
In a years time I will be moving to the other side of the country where I will need to ensure that any mining is going to be profitable even if the value of BTC drops quite a bit.
So yes electricity costs matter but from where I am now with loads of GPU folding rigs I will be saving on power considerably even with an ATi card or two, or three.
I did have a pair of 5870's last year that I sold for peanuts unfortunately :(

Thanks
Click to expand...

Whats the point of mining if you don't care about power costs? Isn't that the concept? Make more money than the power is costing you?
 
Sweet I will buy it tomorrow provided someone else hasn't taken it.
It's used but is in great condition and hasn't been OCed (I would rather they OC it and tell me how high it goes :cool: )
@yowen: I am not at all inferring that I would consume more power than the bitcoin earnings are able to cover by starting a mining rig. I just badly pointed out that I will be making savings not just from mining the 5970 but also for switching the 5970 with a few power hungry 295's.
 
I only have a 6950 for a miner -- contemplating getting another for CFX and doubling my mining speed. I'm just waiting for that good deal to come along from someone who wants to upgrade to the 79XX cards.

Traded in 3BTC a few weeks ago and got a $20 Amazon gift card, currently sitting on ~3.5BTC, wishing the price didn't drop so I could trade em in.

Sadly I only mine about 0.3 to 0.4BTC per day if I mine 24/7 - cooling hasn't been an issue at all yet, however i do live in Texas. 110F summers can mess things up.

I only pay $0.07 cents per kWh so I'm pretty lucky there... I just don't have the money to dump into mining hardware at the time. Getting another 6950 is 50/50 for gaming and for mining really. I game at 1920X1080p in BF3... another 6950 isn't 100% necessary really. And 250 dollars is 250 dollars.
 
Just out of curiosity, what methods do you guys favor for sending and receiving funds to your bitcoin exchange?
 
collegeboy69us said:
I only have a 6950 for a miner -- contemplating getting another for CFX and doubling my mining speed. I'm just waiting for that good deal to come along from someone who wants to upgrade to the 79XX cards.
Click to expand...

Well, I got about $250 each for my 6950s. If you could get similar, maybe consider going with a single 7970 instead.
 
Parja said:
I stopped using exchanges a while ago. Now I just use http://spendbitcoins.com/. I just send the BTC direct from my wallet.
Click to expand...



I do the same thing -- I cashed out a few coins and got a $20 gift card to amazon.com I used on a purchase.

Was awesome in that I had the amazon code in about 8 hours, and there were no "fees/comissions/BS" to deal with. Since I'm only a small time miner in that it takes me 2 or 3 weeks to get a few BTC, I'm not really interested in converting straight to cash. Amazon gift codes are good enough for me. I mean you can find ANYTHING on amazon :)
 
tunatime said:
that's just what they do they go up and down a hell of a lot
Click to expand...

Its the ebb and flow of bitcoin, difficulty goes down, value goes up and people start mining again, difficulty goes back up, value goes down people eventually turn off their miners. rinse, repeat.
 
I'm in Canada so I use www.cavirtex.com which is the Canadian Virtual Exchange. It direct deposits into my real bank account. The prices are usually better then MT Gox and they are reactive so I have more time to react.

Spendbitcoins, etc. won't work for me because the giftcards and prices often don't work/apply outside the U.S.
 
So I just got back into mining a week ago or so, and I was using BTC Guild and slush's (I think, site is mining.bitcoin.cz). I see BTC moved to pps and charges a 5% fee. I don't really care for pps, unless it has now become the better option, and would like to find a 2nd pool to use. I see ARS mentioned a couple times, any other recommendations?

EDIT: Maybe pps is what to use, but I am not fond of the 5% fee.
 
So I noticed that deepbits and BTC Guild are not reporting my hash rate accurately. Either that or my card might be going out. Guiminer shows I'm getting 304Mhash/s with only about .8% stale but it is only showing up as 212-264 on both the sites.

I know that there is some variance from site reporting and what guiminer shows but I've never seen it that off from one another. Any idea what's causing it?
 
They came in eventually.
When I logged in and they weren't there and the add funds address had changed I expected the worst :p
BTW: I keep my wallet in a true crypt container thingo and make the bitcoin wallet program use the files in that directory when I mount it.
Is there anything else I should do for security?
I haven't fixed my linux firewall machine yet and I just generally wan't to keep my coins safe :)
Oh and I successfully got the 5970 off ebay and should be here soonish.
Hopefully it isn't borked.
 
WOLF_TEAM_LEADER said:
BTW: I keep my wallet in a true crypt container thingo and make the bitcoin wallet program use the files in that directory when I mount it.
Is there anything else I should do for security?

Oh and I successfully got the 5970 off ebay and should be here soonish.
Hopefully it isn't borked.
Click to expand...

Grats on the 5970!

And second, don't use a wallet unless you keep alot in there at once. I just auto send mine from the pool to my exchange site where they get sold shortly.
 
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