Opteron based crypto-mining servers - A CPU based miner that competes with GPUs

[suchamoneypit]

So I've spent dozens and dozens of hours, and over $3000 of my money buying various hardware, CPUs and GPUs, testing crypto mining, specifically for mining CryptoNight currencies. This post is compressing all that info learned, free of charge to anyone. Maybe a poor financial decision on my part considering most people who spent a ton of money to learn something don't just give it away for free. Yes it's a very long post, but one does not simply compress 50-100 hours of experience into a paragraph or two.

 

My Results:

I have come to this conclusion having testing R9 390s, 390Xs, 5870s, r7 270, gtx 760s, gtx 750tis, gtx 1080, gtx 970s (various models with different memory configs). After learning what was good at Mining cryptonight currencies, such as Monero, I first learned that cards such as GTX750tis were AS efficient price to performance wise to mining as the higher ends cards like a GTX 1080. Example, you could buy 4 GTX 750tis and they would match a 1080's mining performance and wattage while costing half as much. 390Xs were pretty good too but had a mucher higher buy-in cost. My first setup was to experiment with GPU mining systems and I had a 5-8 GPU setup with various cards constantly swapping in and out for testing. After this I moved to testing CPUs, originally with a dual Xeon server. The CPUs efficiency peaked my interest, and I immediately began comparing CPUs to GPUs for mining the currency. After extensive testing, I found one extremely key fact: A efficient and well planned CPU based mining setup would mine as good as a comparable GPU setup dollar for dollar. It would however perform less favorably electricity efficiency wise, but this is offset by one massive factor: GPUs are price inflated, making investing in them very risky. The Opteron CPUs I settled on are not nearly as price inflated as GPUs, meaning if the currency were to suddenly tank you don't get destroyed by poor profitability; you're still left with very powerful servers you can resell. Another huge benefit is these Opteron servers are extremely modular compared to GPUs. My GPU setup had cards laying exposed everywhere and just a mess of cables and adapters that have no resale value at all. It was messy and unsightly. My Opteron server cluster, I literally just stack the thing, in a perfectly contained, perfectly stackable setup. Most intense GPU setups have an expensive metal rack to hold them. you can just stack these servers on the floor with no extra hardware costs and it'll run and look good.

 

So key points to a CPU based mining system : On par with GPU performance with no risk of lost value to severely inflated GPU prices, and it has an extremely expandable and modular system setup. These traits make it a far less risky investment for you and just easier all around to setup. On top of this it doubles as a very powerful home server that any Techie can appreciate. And who doesn't like bragging about their core count?

 

So that's the conclusion on the comparison and why its better in my opinion, now, here is for my test builds, comprising of 2 main Opteron based servers:

 

Server 1 (high end)

CPU: x4 Opteron 6380

System core: Dell Poweredge R815

RAM: 16x2GB DDR3 ECC 1333

Hash Rate: ~2.15 KH/s

Wattage: ~635 Watts

                                                          Cinebench R15 Score: 2723 (raw CPU performance relevant to a home server)

Cost: ~$800

 

Server 2 (budget)

CPU: x4 Opteron 6212

System core: Dell Poweredge R815

RAM: 16x2GB DDR3 ECC 1333

Hash Rate: ~1.11 KH/s

Wattage: ~540 Watts

Cinebench R15 Score: 1486

Cost: ~$535

 

I originally planned on 3 server builds but hardware issues on server #3 set me back too long 

 

ADDITIONAL PARTS REQUIRED: Either run Linux off a USB with no drives, or buy a cheap 2.5" SAS HDD for $5 AND a H200 Perc RAID card(if you don't have one)to hook up a drive and get an operating system installed. I populated all the drive bays on my servers to use them as home servers as well as mining servers (another big perk). Running off USB reduces build cost but you can't use it as a home server. This cost  (HDDs) is assumed in my above build costs.

 

I found the big factor in building these servers was the cost of the main system. The cost for RAM and for the motherboard/system is a fixed cost. I found a quad socket Dell Poweredge R815 was the key factor in bringing down your system costs enough to keep it a good purchase. Keep in mind with any GPU setups you also need many power supplies, motherboards with lots of PCI-E slots, lots of PCI-E risers, power cables, ect. When comparing the fixed costs of both systems the Opteron base server is only marginally more expensive unless you building a massive GPU setup, and as discussed before the benefits of resale value and expandability well outweigh a slightly higher fixed hardware cost. Notes for purchasing, buying in bulk can save a ton of money. Buy a single Opteron 6380, its $150. Make an offer to buy 4 at once? You get them for $400 all in. Build 3 servers at once? Cost gets even lower. If we don't include the fixed costs (which even GPU systems have too, which I completely ignore here!), these CPUs walk all over a GPU cluster in my opinion.

 

Eye candy for those who don't like reading numbers:

More is better (below)

In the above graph we see the clear dominance of these servers in their mining power compared to how much money you spend. The decently efficient 6380 server is even more cost effective than a vega 64, the best mining gpu out there for Cryptonight at current GPU prices.

 

 

Less is Better  (below)

In the above graph we clearly see GPUs walk over the servers in efficiency, but that doesn't ignore the fact even the most inefficient server mines profitably (100-300% return), while doubling as a powerful home server which has many other practical uses. There is a clear tradeoff you take with CPU servers, you do lose efficiency, which is a Con, but there are many Pro's as discussed.

 

 

 

Notes: Although you can get a lot of Opteron 6100 series cores, they do not support AES, which cripples their mining performance to the point where they are 99% less efficient regardless of their CPU cache or cores. Any 6200 and 6300 series CPUs are good. You're looking for high CPU Cache amount, and as high core clock as you can with your budget and availability of CPUs. I tested 3 different setups for comparison purposes. They have different core amounts and Cache. ALSO NOTE: most of these R815 systems come with old BIOS. You must buy a set of Opteron 6134s for example for $20 shipped in order to boot the system and update the BIOS to 3.2.2 if you want to use something like Opteron 6380s! Make sure you let the system fully reboot. I bricked one of my motherboards because I was rushing (-$130, oops), and you can't just clear the BIOS like a normal gaming motherboard!

 

Comments on Investing in Crypto and mining: I do not discuss profits because of constant market changes. This setup currently mines a large amount of Monero, and Monero is worth pretty little right now (meaning it will likely improve significantly, especially with the recent fork on April 6th). If you were to mine with a single 6380 system you would make like $3-4 a day (profit) and $5-8 in revenue a day of  the coin, but if you did this for 3 months, held onto the coins you mined, and then the value spikes and you sell it, you stand to make a LOT more profit than before ($5-15 per day profit) . Part of this is not just the daily profit, but the potential  for long-term profit gain and investing. Its very important to keep this in mind. If I mined for 3 months with 3 servers, If the currency doubled in value back up to its previous $400 per Monero, then It would be as if I had made $20+ profit every single day for 3 months. Thats a lot of cash, especially considering if you then resold the servers you would make a pretty penny, maybe even significant profit on the machines themselves on top of the currency mined! EDIT: Just in the weeks i've been refining the post and typed the previous, monero has gone up in value 47% and steadily rising as I had predicted.

 

Some background on me personally, I'm 18, just graduated High School, and looking to start college for computer networking extremely soon. I invested  more money than I probably should have researching this and comparing servers. I'm not made of money, and In giving this info for free, I personally incurred a lot of cost, nevermind typing all of this up. If you use this info to your advantage, or build some servers, maybe consider donating some Monero to me as a thanks. If you build servers, then maybe even just mine to my address at this pool for a bit or something instead as a thanks. And let me know if you do!

 

Buying the discussed hardware:

 

I didn't want to do this as I wrote the bulk of this post a few weeks ago, but I'm pretty burnt out working with my servers, and I'm actually selling my servers at very little to no profit on ebay to invest my money into other hobbies. If you'd like to help me do that, contact me on forum about my Opteron 6380 server [sold]or my Opteron 6212 server and I'll sell them to any forum member with an account at least two weeks old at no profit to myself. I believe in the investment and the massive profit potential in 1-2 years but at this time in my life I can't have this much money invested. 

 

If you are looking to purchase the hardware discussed above from other sellers, I could point you in the direction of "IT Mart". They have an Ebay page here, and a website here. I have bought from many sellers of used server hardware on ebay, and gotten many bad parts before (which you are entitled to working replacements on ebay, but it costs you time, which is money in mining). Every Item I've purchased from this seller have been great parts with no issues, and they were always super friendly and willing to assist me. 

 

Troubleshooting Issues and Questions

 

Chances are if you have questions about any of this (hardware or mining crypto), I can answer it. Ask me, and if you're new to the forum, be a part of the community and join the discussion while you're here, it's always nice seeing other miners on the forum.  I'm happy to help anyone if I can.

[LtStaffel]

Finally someone who does something productive with high end equipment

[Crunchy Dragon]

1 minute ago, LtStaffel said:

Finally someone who does something productive with high end equipment

Calling out @LinusTech are we?

[suchamoneypit]

2 minutes ago, LtStaffel said:

Finally someone who does something productive with high end equipment

I think the key factor here for me is that I can have a high-end home server, and it can print me money with its spare resources, competitively againsts GPUs, while completing all the other tasks a home enthusiast would like.

 

For me its an excuse to play with expensive toys.

[Crunchy Dragon]

-Moved to Build Logs-

 

This is really intriguing, even though I have next to nothing good to say about cryptocurrency. How long ago did we switch from mining on CPUs because they weren't cost efficient at cryptomining? In my opinion, if miners got their hands on this kind of information, there would just be an Opteron shortage and us gamers would be all happy

[suchamoneypit]

4 minutes ago, Crunchy Dragon said:

-Moved to Build Logs-

 

This is really intriguing, even though I have next to nothing good to say about cryptocurrency. How long ago did we switch from mining on CPUs because they weren't cost efficient at cryptomining? In my opinion, if miners got their hands on this kind of information, there would just be an Opteron shortage and us gamers would be all happy

I thought about posting this to build logs, but I really never talk about putting the build together at all. The entire post is about comparing mining performance of CPUs to GPUs. So I think the original topic area is more fitting by far.

 

I mined for a month or two on GPUs switching up which cards and how many of them almost on a weekly basis, then switched to CPUs and have been mining for roughly 2 months with varying amounts of servers and hardware. I enjoy my CPU setup far more than my GPU setup. And this isn't exclusive to Opteron. There are several xeon based servers I think could possibly even work better (mainly in terms of electricity usage) , however I'm already too deep financially in this to pursue even more large hot hunks of metal in my basement chugging electricity.

[Streetguru]

11 minutes ago, suchamoneypit said:

$3000 of my money buying various hardware, CPUs and GPUs, testing crypto mining, specifically for mining CryptoNight currencies

You poor soul.

Though I'm trying to figure out if it's worth mining on my 1950X

[Crunchy Dragon]

2 minutes ago, suchamoneypit said:

I thought about posting this to build logs, but I really never talk about putting the build together at all. The entire post is about comparing mining performance of CPUs to GPUs. So I think the original topic area is more fitting by far.

 

I mined for a month or two on GPUs switching up which cards and how many of them almost on a weekly basis, then switched to CPUs and have been mining for roughly 2 months with varying amounts of servers and hardware. I enjoy my CPU setup far more than my GPU setup. And this isn't exclusive to Opteron. There are several xeon based servers I think could possibly even work better (mainly in terms of electricity usage) , however I'm already too deep financially in this to pursue even more large hot hunks of metal in my basement chugging electricity.

Righto, I'll move that back for ya

 

It's not like anyone outside of Linus actually uses Xeons, I don't think a Xeon shortage would be a problem...

/s

 

-Moved back to Folding@Home, Boinc, and Coin mining-

lol

[suchamoneypit]

7 minutes ago, Streetguru said:

You poor soul.

Though I'm trying to figure out if it's worth mining on my 1950X

1950x is one of ,if not the most efficient Monero mining CPU out there, but their very high buy-in price makes it very cost prohibitive to set them up large scale for mining though. If you want to make a potential large investment for your future long term, mine with your 1950x in its spare time.

6 minutes ago, Crunchy Dragon said:

Righto, I'll move that back for ya

 

It's not like anyone outside of Linus actually uses Xeons, I don't think a Xeon shortage would be a problem...

/s

Actually there are hundreds upon hundreds of the relevant xeons for sale, and even more opteron CPUs. At a glance you could throw together like 100-400 quad and octa CPU systems for mining on current listings. Combined mining power for $10,000-$50,000 per month depending on setups.

 

And as mentioned, when you buy the hardware in bulk, the costs of the systems drop significantly.

 

anyone wanna build a datacenter with me 

[Crunchy Dragon]

3 minutes ago, suchamoneypit said:

Actually there are hundreds upon hundreds of the relevant xeons for sale, and even more opteron CPUs. At a glance you could throw together like 100-400 quad and octa CPU systems for mining on current listings. Combined mining power for $10,000-$50,000 per month depending on setups.

Oh believe me, if I needed lots of cores I'd throw together a rig with a Xeon or Opteron(or two).

 

To be honest, I barely need more than 4 cores in a personal system. I only got the Ryzen 1600 because it would fit in my budget(Micro Center bundles for the win). I still have no real use for all 6 cores/12 threads...

 

I get the feeling this CPU will last me a good long while.

[Streetguru]

8 minutes ago, suchamoneypit said:

1950x is one of ,if not the most efficient Monero mining CPU out there, but their very high buy-in price makes it very cost prohibitive to set them up large scale for mining though. If you want to make a potential large investment for your future long term, mine with your 1950x in its spare time.

Doesn't seem as simple as just setting it up with nicehash though.

 

and LMAO, Crypto isn't an investment, bad idea to think of it as one.

[suchamoneypit]

On 5/5/2018 at 9:22 PM, Crunchy Dragon said:

Oh believe me, if I needed lots of cores I'd throw together a rig with a Xeon or Opteron(or two).

 

To be honest, I barely need more than 4 cores in a personal system. I only got the Ryzen 1600 because it would fit in my budget(Micro Center bundles for the win). I still have no real use for all 6 cores/12 threads...

 

I get the feeling this CPU will last me a good long while.

But when your friends ask you how many cores you have, you say 4. Not 192. Those are rookie numbers. 

 

But in reality , what matters most in mining is your L3 Cache. Mining operates in threads. Each thread using 2MB (for cryptonight). The high core count is a side effect of needing high cache , however each thread needs it's own physical core to operate (no hyperthreading). 

 

On 5/5/2018 at 9:25 PM, Streetguru said:

Doesn't seem as simple as just setting it up with nicehash though.

 

and LMAO, Crypto isn't an investment, bad idea to think of it as one.

Saying crypto isn't an investment is ignorant af. 

 

Saying crypto can be a risky investment is true. 

 

It's as simple as downloading XMR-Stak, plugging in your wallet address , and plugging in which pool you mine on. 30 min work for a noob and you'd make like $4 profit a day maybe like $4.50 revenue, just on your CPU. 

[Streetguru]

5 minutes ago, suchamoneypit said:

 

It can be regulated out of major existence at any point in time, and it's value is not reliable at all. And with big hacks happening I wouldn't plan my retirement on it.

Hell Im still waiting on a bitrex transaction...No idea what I did wrong there, followed a guide and plugged in my wallet address correctly I'm pretty sure.



Since Coinbase doesn't seem to want you mining to your wallet there I wouldn't know how to go about getting a wallet, then getting it to coinbase to get it to my bank account after I've mined a bunch. Or does Crypto night basically do everything for you?

[suchamoneypit]

11 minutes ago, Streetguru said:

It can be regulated out of major existence at any point in time, and it's value is not reliable at all. And with big hacks happening I wouldn't plan my retirement on it.

Hell Im still waiting on a bitrex transaction...No idea what I did wrong there, followed a guide and plugged in my wallet address correctly I'm pretty sure.



Since Coinbase doesn't seem to want you mining to your wallet there I wouldn't know how to go about getting a wallet, then getting it to coinbase to get it to my bank account after I've mined a bunch. Or does Crypto night basically do everything for you?

Monero is a privacy coin and the coin of question in my thread. With proper Internet security such as VPNs the government cannot track how much I've mined or how much I have. That cannot be regulated. Big banks around the world are already starting to accept this new technology. You cannot make it go away. At least not with something like Monero. Bitcoin is vulnerable due to many things and is only prevalent due to it being the first major coin which established it as an extremely popular "intermediary coin" used to purchase other coins or convert "altcoins" into USD. All of my servers are on AES-256, SHA256, AND RSA-4096 encrypted VPNs. 

 

I cannot speak for bitrex. In my case , I would mine Monero, which is directly deposited to my Monero wallet, which is a insanely easy setup on my phone (Monujero). From my Monero wallet I could transfer off my Monero to an exchange such as cryptopia or Binance, and covert it into Bitcoin which I could then sell on an exchange for USD or transfer to Coinbase and sell for USD. 

 

EDIT: keeping money on exhanges can be hacked. Storing the currency on a wallet such as Monerujo is pretty damn safe, and storing it on a hardware wallet such as the Monero GUI wallet is pretty much foolproof. If you stored a long term investment it would be on a hardware wallet. 

[Streetguru]

7 minutes ago, suchamoneypit said:

 

I'll probably just get that started because why not, just gotta find a guide.

Gives me an excuse to build that R3 2200G system for when the 1950X is mining or rendering 4K video.

[suchamoneypit]

4 minutes ago, Streetguru said:

I'll probably just get that started because why not, just gotta find a guide.

Gives me an excuse to build that R3 2200G system for when the 1950X is mining or rendering 4K video.

If you do go ahead and try to set it up, and get stuck, all you gotta do is ask me and I can help you fix it/set it up. Like I said, find a pool to mine on (I use monero hash vault), create a wallet (I use Monerujo), and download and run XMR-Stak which should auto-config (It will ask you for a pool address and wallet address) and mine at 1000H/s and higher on your threadripper. 

[TheIz]

TLDR- The missing component in the cost/efficiency or CPU vs GPU mining argument is this: CPU mining exclusivity!

 

Made an account just to reply.  Great article.  I agree with most of it.  The part I'm not sure i agree with is the sentiment that CPU mining is more attractive than GPU mining and I suppose that could come down to personal preferences and priorities.  iirc... the sentiment of the OP is that CPU mining is more attractive because of ease of use, modular components, and entry cost.  Better efficiency was credited to GPUs but again, the sentiment leaned in favor of CPUs.  So... I think it's REALLY REALLY REALLY important to remember efficiency if setting out to be at all serious about mining --even if I haven't fine-tuned my own efficiencies! 

 

Now then.. 

 

CPU vs GPU mining arguments have been around for a long time.  Even GPU vs GPU arguments or CPU vs CPU arguments!  So let's remember some things.  Cryptocurrencies ARE an investment!  They are RARE.  They are subject to supply and demand and all the wranglings of market cornering!  Mining coins early means getting more of that coin when network difficulties are low and usually standing to profit more.  But to be fair... many NEW coins are hammered by keen miners and sometimes it's better to come back and mine when the hype has died down.  But getting back to NEW coins... a lot of times NEW coins are CPU ONLY until someone forks a GPU miner for these coins.  This means that NEW CPU COINS TEND TO BE MORE EXCLUSIVE THAN OTHER COINS THAT CAN BE MINED WITH CPU/GPU/ASIC/FPGA.

 

So... yes... CPU, GPU, ASIC, FPGA.. they all have their selling points and will likely have markets supporting purchase for mining for a LONG time.  But two things I consider seriously are mining exclusivity and hash density.  The latter meaning I'd rather have 1 1080 ti instead of 7 or 8 750 ti (numbers might be off but you get the idea).  Why port density?  Labor for one thing.  materials for another... space usage... I could probably droll on but let's finish this!

 

Finally, to suchamoneypit: SERIOUSLY AMAZING, YOUNG MAN!  I can't believe you are only 18 years of age.  Your posting here is useful, well composed, organized... really superb!

 

TLDR- The missing component in the cost/efficiency or CPU vs GPU mining argument is this: CPU mining exclusivity!

[suchamoneypit]

19 hours ago, TheIz said:

TLDR- The missing component in the cost/efficiency or CPU vs GPU mining argument is this: CPU mining exclusivity!

 

Made an account just to reply.  Great article.  I agree with most of it.  The part I'm not sure i agree with is the sentiment that CPU mining is more attractive than GPU mining and I suppose that could come down to personal preferences and priorities.  iirc... the sentiment of the OP is that CPU mining is more attractive because of ease of use, modular components, and entry cost.  Better efficiency was credited to GPUs but again, the sentiment leaned in favor of CPUs.  So... I think it's REALLY REALLY REALLY important to remember efficiency if setting out to be at all serious about mining --even if I haven't fine-tuned my own efficiencies! 

 

Now then.. 

 

CPU vs GPU mining arguments have been around for a long time.  Even GPU vs GPU arguments or CPU vs CPU arguments!  So let's remember some things.  Cryptocurrencies ARE an investment!  They are RARE.  They are subject to supply and demand and all the wranglings of market cornering!  Mining coins early means getting more of that coin when network difficulties are low and usually standing to profit more.  But to be fair... many NEW coins are hammered by keen miners and sometimes it's better to come back and mine when the hype has died down.  But getting back to NEW coins... a lot of times NEW coins are CPU ONLY until someone forks a GPU miner for these coins.  This means that NEW CPU COINS TEND TO BE MORE EXCLUSIVE THAN OTHER COINS THAT CAN BE MINED WITH CPU/GPU/ASIC/FPGA.

 

So... yes... CPU, GPU, ASIC, FPGA.. they all have their selling points and will likely have markets supporting purchase for mining for a LONG time.  But two things I consider seriously are mining exclusivity and hash density.  The latter meaning I'd rather have 1 1080 ti instead of 7 or 8 750 ti (numbers might be off but you get the idea).  Why port density?  Labor for one thing.  materials for another... space usage... I could probably droll on but let's finish this!

 

Finally, to suchamoneypit: SERIOUSLY AMAZING, YOUNG MAN!  I can't believe you are only 18 years of age.  Your posting here is useful, well composed, organized... really superb!

 

TLDR- The missing component in the cost/efficiency or CPU vs GPU mining argument is this: CPU mining exclusivity!

Thanks for making an account and posting a really worthwhile reply. I agree with a lot of your points. After paying electricity, I still make a profit, but now I see efficiency as being more attractive, even at the cost of direct profit. When I set out to make these servers my main goal was as much performance for as little money, efficiency be damned as long as it was profitable. Now having several of these power hungry machines, I think I appreciate a power sipping moderately powerful system instead. I recently sold a server and I putting some of the money plus some favors from friends with old parts to piece together a new system with dual 1070s for the main purpose of getting back into gaming and to play around with mining with GPUs again (high end ones this time around).

 

Your point about new coins being CPU mined until GPU support is a very interesting point and I never considered it before. Imagine someone with 20 of these servers rushing every new coin. Chances are they gonna make really good short-term profit. Unfortunately I don't have the knowledge to mine brand new coins (users gotta compile code and stuff usually) or the real time to closely stay relevant to new coins so Im not the person to exploit it this way. When I was thinking of CPU mining exclusivity I was drawn to Monero/XMR because of its still decent CPU exclusivity and the coin's popularity with that trait. My point being the more CPU exclusive the coin, the more profitable this system would be. Im sure there are more specific cases/coins that use CPU mining I don't know about where this would be useful; far more than with simply mining Monero.

[Dirk]

To compare, a single Vega 56 gets ~1,696 H/s at ~284 watts.  While two of them would be around $220 more upfront, you get 1,242 H/s more for the same wattage. Thelz's comment about new coins being CPU mined is an interesting way to look at things.  The short term profits that you can get on some of the more promising new coins can be quite lucrative.  I managed to get into Ravencoin in the first few days with just my 5820k and I was able to mine ~700k coins.  Having a dedicated server for doing just that is very attractive.

[theitmart]

hi friends, apologies in advance if this post is considered "advertising".. i stumbled upon this thread (we check for bad backlinks every now and then - my least favorite thing about selling online...)

 

Thank you for the shoutout in your post @suchamoneypit! reach out to our support team if you need more hardware and we'll hook you up.

-snip-

Don't want any of our equipment to be a "money pit" for you guys!

- The IT Mart 

___

 

** I am an industry affiliate representing The IT Mart.

Edited June 9, 2018 by colonel_mortis
Removed some content & links

[GOTSpectrum]

11 hours ago, theitmart said:

hi friends, apologies in advance if this post is considered "advertising".. i stumbled upon this thread (we check for bad backlinks every now and then - my least favorite thing about selling online...)

 

Thank you for the shoutout in your post @suchamoneypit! reach out to our support team if you need more hardware and we'll hook you up. just as a small thanks to the forum, i created a promo code "linustechtips". I won't advertise anything specific, don't want to violate any standards, but feel free to contact us and let us know you're from the forums if you want to find a deal somewhere.

Don't want any of our equipment to be a "money pit" for you guys!

- The IT Mart 

You may have to be seen as an industry affiliate on here, @leadeater not sure on the exact rules, can you chime in?

[suchamoneypit]

On 6/1/2018 at 7:22 PM, theitmart said:

Don't want any of our equipment to be a "money pit" for you guys!

Hahaha good one.

 

Nice to see the shoutout mentioned though. Like I said in the post I dealt with a lot of different (many large such as yourself) eBay sellers and every purchase with you was perfect every time and I a firm believer that good service should be recognized, especially when I found myself with an above average of poor sellers selling bad hardware. Staff may want you tagged as an industry affiliate but there shouldn't be any issues. 

 

[Opencircuit74]

On 5/5/2018 at 10:16 PM, suchamoneypit said:

anyone wanna build a datacenter with me 

Sure, I've got 10 extra PowerEdge 1950s and a PowerEdge R300 that I don't know what to do with. JK, but I actually don't know what to do with them.

[bcredeur97]

nvm -- was looking at wrong thing --

But I will say the Opteron 6212 is NOT worth it.

[suchamoneypit]

Although these servers are still fun to mess around with and learn about, and they still boast a lot of multi-threaded performance,  with the current state of cryptocurrency and the looming threat of FPGA miners (like ASIC miners that are programmable) which likely already exist and are currently mining on networks, I would advise against using these for the sole purpose of mining crypto. The threat of FPGA miners makes even investing in GPU mining very risky. If you are using it as a home server and mining on the side, its still a powerful tool, however for the sole purpose of mining you risk a major development rendering the hardware useless for mining most coins in a few days unless major coins think of a way to combat FPGAs.