Bitcoin mining made easy

[zwzsg]

More effective? Please explain me where the lost energy goes, if not in heat, then.

[Cheesecan]

Heat flows through temperature difference.
If the surface area of your heat dissipator e.g. GPU die is low and the temperature difference is small then heat will be conducted poorly. Whereas a radiator has a large surface area to conduct heat properly.

You get pockets of air that is unevenly heated, kind of like when you take a shower and close the door to the rest of the house - the rest of the house may stay cold. The stored heat in the bathroom air will be transferred into walls and pipes and other things, then into the ground that is cold and outside where it is not of any use (or joy) to you.

PCs will also emit some small quantities of Extremely Low Frequencies (ELF) and microwaves that isn't absorbed inside your house, so it will turn into heat somewhere else as it is gradually absorbed in distant surroundings.

Additionally, heating with electricity is generally more expensive than oil or gas.

[zwzsg]

Thanks for providing a proper answer. You make good points.
But I'll still contest them

P1: Well, the GPU being worse at dissipating only means that, given the same power, it will reach steady state at a much hotter temperature. But once steady state is reached, both eat the same amount of electricity and output the same heat to their surrounding, I believe....

P2: Similarly, pockets of hot air might be a problem if you're measuring the time to warm an initially cold room, but not as much if you're considering the monthly cost of keeping a house warm 24/7. The argument about how hot air pockets will lose heat to the outside more than evenly distributed warm air throughout the house really depends on where the computers are located inside the house. If they are in the center of the house, close to where varikonniemi spends time, it's instead better to concentrate heat there.

P3: Any data on the amount of energy these microwaves carry outside? Is it really non-negligible?

P4: I assumed, maybe wrongly, that varikonniemi house heating was electric. If a boiler or fireplace is available, of course burning gas, fuel, or wood is a much cheaper alternative.

[varikonniemi]

The only relevant part of your answer, Cheesecan, is that the energy is lost that radiates out at frequencies not absorbed by the house. But this is so infinitely small it can be totally omitted. If i say it will certainly be under a Watt in total, i think i am at least an order of magnitude too high.

We heat the house using electricity and wood, so up to this point the mining has been with essentially no cost besides the GFX cards i would not have gotten if not for mining.

In a month or so the summer is so far along we don't need electricity to heat the house. However we still need warm water, so by placing the miner in the boiler room even that can be countered.

edit: Butterflylabs announced they have received their generation 2 boards, and that even those have problems (that are purportedly fixed in the coming gen3). The gen3 boards are the first ones that might start shipping retail, and have a bit under half of the original promised hashrate and about three times the power consumption and twice the price.

[Cheesecan]

varikonniemi from your blog entries about electronics I'm guessing you're an electrical engineer, so you probably took some physics and thermodynamics courses at university no? That means you know a great deal more than me on the subject.

Tell me why build radiators that big if it's not better for heating?

In Sweden most people's heating bill is separate from their electricity bill. Using electricity to heat houses is more expensive due to (luxury) taxes on electricity. I think it is similar in Finland.

I live in an apartment, and my electricity and heating happens to be free. In other words, I'd love to do some mining. But I think the conclusion here is that GPU mining is obsolete, and that you are suffering as a late adopter. And ASICs seem like a scam/racket, pick your preference.

[varikonniemi]

Compare a 5kW electric sauna and a normal 5kW heating element. Both are as good at converting energy into heat, yet the heating element would probably be 10 times bigger in size.

The difference is that the sauna trades size with a higher temperature delta (glowing hot resistors). A glowing hot heating element would be very inconvenient and dangerous, where in a sauna it is a necessity.

If you are at all interested in mining and don't have to pay electricity, go for it! Start with one card in your main computer, that way you have a perfectly good reason for the purchase even if you would not mine :) Just go for a card with a good cooler like sapphire vapor-x. You will loose your mind if you sit next to an OEM card spinning it's fans at 4500 RPM constantly. A vapor-x on the other hand is almost silent even at full load.

ASICs are not something you would want to start with. After succesfully mining with GFX cards you are ready to consider if you want to be a miner by profession and move to ASICs (an perhaps they have even become available by then)

[Cheesecan]

I already have a current generation Nvidia gaming PC so investing in a bunch of same-generation ATI cards wouldn't make sense for me.

http://www.eetimes.com/electronics-news ... for-Altera

FPGAs seem more attractive overall. And tons more fun to experiment with, then later they will still be useful for other projects.

[varikonniemi]

Sell the nvidia for some small loss and fill your PC with 7950/7970:s :)

But yeah, absolutely if you know how to use FPGAs then they are an excellent choice. I looked into them before i bought GFX cards, and decided it is too big a commitment to start learning SDL at this time.

I have already 10 times more activities going on than i have time available for them :)

[Cheesecan]

I took a course at uni where we worked with the Cyclone Development Boards, so they don't scare me that much. They taught us how to load one of the Altera CPU designs and write a simple OS using assembly and C. That was years ago though.

Taking (hopefully) functional fpga miner code from an open source project and getting it to work is a whole different business. Designing a PCB and soldering on FPGAs (instead of using expensive dev boards) will be a trip. I've done quite a bit of soldering things like LEDs, but no PCB design. But there's a first time for everything.

I've conclusion that people tend to think of bitcoin as CPU -> GPU -> FPGA -> ASIC eras. However, the Avalon miner is built using a 110 nm process from some small foundry that supplies tiny customers like them. Altera and Xilinx buy from the biggest foundries with the latest processes. If 14 nm FPGAs start appearing next year, then FPGAs might catch up in MH/$. Meanwhile people might still be waiting for ASICs they ordered this year, lol.

[KDR_11k]

Even Adam Smith thought it was stupid to waste something valuable just to mint money... Building dedicated Bitcoin hashers just seems like wasting a lot of real value (objects that can be used productively) for virtual value (objects that are only useful for being traded for actual value).

[PicassoCT]

Renting the Rigs to nasa would bring in real currency, but then the reason for bitcoin - independence from state currency would be back onboard.

[luckywaldo7]

Even Adam Smith thought it was stupid to waste something valuable just to mint money... Building dedicated Bitcoin hashers just seems like wasting a lot of real value (objects that can be used productively) for virtual value (objects that are only useful for being traded for actual value).

Pretty much my feelings. Especially when a lot of the terminology (e.g. 'mining') is supposed to trick you into feeling like you are making something of real value.

On the other hand, I do love the idea of a decentralized currency, and I haven't thought of a better way of minting & distributing one. Unless there is a way to keep the advantage in the general computing power of everyone and not dedicated machines.

[Cheesecan]

I had the same feelings back in 2010. That it was a pyramid scheme with no reason for existence. Should have started mining back then...

[varikonniemi]

Even Adam Smith thought it was stupid to waste something valuable just to mint money... Building dedicated Bitcoin hashers just seems like wasting a lot of real value (objects that can be used productively) for virtual value (objects that are only useful for being traded for actual value).

Do you mean that the trillions paypal, creditcard companies and banks cost to run is worth it, whereas a Bitcoin miner's cost is not? Even though the Bitcoin system is so much more capable than any of those.

Give me a break.

There simply is no better system to distribute and run a decentralized currency. Of course it would be grand if the hashing would be replaced by some useful HPC workload, but somebody must first figure out how to build such a proof of work system.

[varikonniemi]

So any new opinons on this revolutionary technology? I know many have been sitting back and waiting for 'the inevitable crash' so they can comment and feel special, but let me say this right here:

No such thing is coming.

Bitcoin is the next generation of money. Just as the internet was the next generation of communication. It is not the main method of communication to this day, but it is very important. Just as Bitcoin is not and will probably never be the main currency of any nation, but it is and will be a very significant global alternate currency.

ps. hashstation one is approaching ROI for the whole build, not just the hashing modules.

If you have an AMD GFX card, join the Bitcoin community and start hashing. A 7970 will mine about 1 Bitcoins per month. If you invest those Bitcoins you might have thousands of dollars in a couple of years just by lending your idle computing power to the network.

Full disclosure: This is entirely an altruistic recommendation from me. Every hash you submit is away from my earnings, so by telling this to you i am essentially donating money

[knorke]

What have you done with the generated BTC?
I mean as in bought something, cashed it out, kept it,..?

[varikonniemi]

I am sitting on most of it, saving for the future. About 10% i have cashed out at amagimetals.com. They sell at spot price, which is rare even if you buy with dollars, so i can recommend them in all cases. Some really nice silver bullion is my investment of choice :) In my country silver is not tax exempt unlike gold, so by buying silver in small quantities as a private person i get a 23% edge compared to commercial brokers.

And then some random crap; a radeon 7870, a bitcoin ingraved USB3 stick, a dozen bitcoin casascius coins, one first edition coin etc.

If the shit hits the fan i have about 30% at any time in mtgox ready to be converted to euros at a mouse click.

My long time savings account is on an Armory paper backup.

[klapmongool]

If you have an AMD GFX card, join the Bitcoin community and start hashing. A 7970 will mine about 1 Bitcoins per month. If you invest those Bitcoins you might have thousands of dollars in a couple of years just by lending your idle computing power to the network.

Once again I'm going to refer to the electricity bill. Unlike your country in mine it isn't freezing every day. Thus these costs have to be taken into account. Might not break even for a long time then..?

[smoth]

So any new opinons on this "revolutionary" technology? I know many have been sitting back and waiting for 'the inevitable crash' so they can comment and feel special, but let me say this right here:

nope, i stopped seeing anything interesting being discussed. enjoy your hipster money.

[Funkencool]

alright sorry to derail further but I'm curious.. What the hell does hipster even mean really. I see it thrown around constantly but where I'm from it has no meaning. What makes a person or bitcoins 'hipster'?