I had written back in February on how I was getting back into crypto mining so I wanted to give an update on that. At that time, I had procured an Nividia 3060TI. Well yada yada, I wound up buying my buddy’s old 13 GPU mining rig as well as a 6 unit one. I then had an old computer laying around that has 5 video cards in it and my main PC has 3 cards, so I have a total of about 26 video cards mining ethereum 24/7. All 26 cards are either Nivida 3070’s, 3080’s, or 3060’s/TI. I’d guess my capital outlay was close to $25K for just the video cards alone. Maybe add another $1000 for my buddy’s rigs.
At first, I had a 6 unit rig in my bedroom. After a week, my wife complained that the lights on the video cards were making our bedroom look like a rave. I then put on some black electrical tape but it didn’t cover them fully. Plus, it was generating a lot of heat and made the bedroom too hot, so I had to relocate it to another bedroom.
The 13 GPU beast in the pic below generates A LOT of heat, so I had to put it downstairs. I would have put it in the garage, but the garage is full of reselling crap. That thing generates enough heat to increase the temperature on the floor above a degree in under an hour. In the summer, it was pretty bad. I had to of course turn on the A/C. I had industrial fans and opened the windows at night to get a cool breeze coming in. Now that we’re getting back into the fall, this will be a great heater.
Income
So how much are these 26 video cards generating? Well I was using Nicehash, but I moved to Flexpool and using Gminer these days. Currently it generates about .04 ETH a day, so about 1.2ETH a month. At the current ETH price, that’s about $3500 a month in revenue. My variable cost is around $400 a month for electricity, so I’m netting about $3K a month in ETH. The great thing is that if I stopped mining today, I could easily recoup my $25K capital cost since GPU’s are still scarce. Of course the opportunity cost would have been me reflipping the video cards back when I bought them, but I think my ETH earnings have so far generated more than the resell value. Plus, where’s the fun factor in that?
The beast
What was your capital outlay on non-gpu components?
Around $1K for the other parts
“netting about $3K a month in ETH”? Does this amount fluctuate with the price of ETH or is it a constant?
Vihn, thanks very much, really interesting. Do you have any links/reading material that you would recommend to learn more on how to get started on mining? Been interested for a while to try it out as I have extra production from my solar panels each month at my house.
It’s not that hard at all. If you have a compatible video card, just start at http://www.nicehash.com and it’ll tell you how much the card can produce daily. It takes about 2-5 minutes to get going. Once you get more advanced, you can start googling about miners and pools.
What would ROI be if you just bought ethereum at beginning?
Think ETH was around $3K back in Feb, so 0-10% if i had bought it outright
With BTC on a tear would it be worth it switching to that, or is ETH still more profitable?
Besides the heat, how noisy is this thing? Lots of fans …
Get bigger fans (120mm) and it’s not a HUGE issue.
Is this harmful to the environment?
Isn’t using any electricity harmful to the environment?
@George, enough with the electricity FUD. It’s a scare tactic to oppress the citizens. Bitcoin (and can be applied to other cryptos) uses 0.1% of the worlds electricity (not to mention the mining is getting more clean/renewable by the day). It’s a fucking rounding error for all you and I should care. Christmas lights, which have ZERO practical utility, use more electricity than Bitcoin. The wasteful list can go on and on: new iphones every year with no new functionality, private transportation, fashion industry waste, etc. And Bitcoin brings actual day-to-day conveniences to the underprivileged and provides everyone the ability to give a giant F U to the Fed printing money (have you seen inflation these days!? And wages flat too..). Bitcoin gives the power back to the people to an extent. The financial elite have been investing in Bitcoin and don’t want you to for power purposes (fidelity and u.s. bank have been hodling and accumulating Bitcoin for YEARS. Banks know crypto is the future and will do the opposite of what they say)
Regardless, in my experience, I still find mining crypto cannot come close to being as profitable as either buying the coin outright, going long on mining stonks (if you want mining exposure thru shares or thru LT options), or purchasing an ASIC miner thru like Compass Mining while not taking on the risk of capex (eth2.0 will kill all worthwhile mining anyway guaranteed, failures, maintenance, etc.) but to each his/her own
I remember the cast of Gold Rush saying that they get a bunch of people saying they are ruining the environment by mining and not realizing that they are sending their message from an Iphone, laptop, etc that was built using copper, gold, silver and other rare earth metals along with plastics and such. Anyway best of luck with your mining efforts.
You didn’t mention electricity costs once?
Are we just going to comment and not READ the post?
“My variable cost is around $400 a month for electricity”