Nvidia Sold $175 Million Worth of GeForce RTX 30 GPUs To Crypto Miners

[done12many2]

16 minutes ago, Bombastinator said:

83 GPUs.  That’s a big power bill. 

It is a pretty big power bill indeed. 



 

 

30 minutes ago, Bombastinator said:

The cops get interested in big power bills.  Too often they’re for indoor grow lights.

Thankfully, in the United States, the fourth amendment keeps these great internet type tales from actually happening.  The probable cause required to obtain a warrant to make sure my mining rigs aren't grow lights, requires a bit more articulation from the requesting agencies other than "he's got a big power bill though". 

 

25 minutes ago, Bombastinator said:

They get even more interested if power is being stolen.  

Not sure if you're implying something or just letting us know that stolen power is a bad thing?   Personally, I choose to pay for my power usage, but thanks for the heads up.
 

[Bombastinator]

10 minutes ago, done12many2 said:

It is a pretty big power bill indeed. 



 

 

Thankfully, in the United States, the fourth amendment keeps these great internet type tales from actually happening.  The probable cause required to obtain a warrant to make sure my mining rigs aren't grow lights, requires a bit more articulation from the requesting agencies other than "he's got a big power bill though". 

 

Not sure if you're implying something or just letting us know that stolen power is a bad thing?   Personally, I choose to pay for my power usage, but thanks for the heads up.
 

Wasn’t intended as any more than that. Unless there is a battery a power company actually has to produce the exact amount of power used by a grid as it is used.  There’s some slop that can be handled within the power generation devices and by turning generators on and off, but the result is a power company has to know how much power is being used by a grid where. Illegal grow operations like to steal power which generally is enough for probable cause, making the police’s job easy.  So they’re going to be low hanging fruit.  Low hanging fruit gets picked first.  Zoning can be a thing though.  

Edited December 3, 2020 by Bombastinator

[leadeater]

1 hour ago, done12many2 said:

I'll be picking up a 3060 Ti on the 9th from Best Buy

Do you know how it performs compared to the 3070 yet? (for mining)

[leadeater]

1 hour ago, done12many2 said:

What kind of battery backup would you recommend?    

For mining? None lol.  Anything that could last more than 10 mins would be huge and extremely costly. All you would benefit from would be automated rig shutdown on power loss.

[Blade of Grass]

2 minutes ago, leadeater said:

For mining? None lol.  Anything that could last more than 10 mins would be huge and extremely costly. All you would benefit from would be automated rig shutdown on power loss.

Needs one of those battery rooms  

[done12many2]

8 minutes ago, leadeater said:

Do you know how it performs compared to the 3070 yet? (for mining)

With regards to the Ethash algo, it's exactly the same and probably the very reason the 3060 Ti is going to be a homerun and favorite for miners.

On core intensive algos, hash will favor the 3070 due to that Cuda power, but truthfully, algos outside of Ethash haven't been that important lately.  They seem to pop up every now and then, make us a little money and then fade into the distance.

 

5 minutes ago, leadeater said:

For mining? None lol.  Anything that could last more than 10 mins would be huge and extremely costly. All you would benefit from would be automated rig shutdown on power loss.

lol, no doubt man.  Would be awesome though!

[Bombastinator]

5 minutes ago, Blade of Grass said:

Needs one of those battery rooms  

Beyond a certain level gas generators start to be more space and money efficient as the size and cost grows.  I saw a battery once that was a lake carved out of the top of a mountain. The working fluid was water.  They’d pump it up using electric pumps and run them backwards to harvest electricity.  Terribly inefficient, but the difference between high use time and low use time was enough to make it worth it. Was in Massachusetts I think.  Long ago.  I read about another somewhere in the world that was a cog train on a hill.  For coal or something.  They loaded the cars with something heavy, concrete rubble maybe, I don’t know.  Anyway it worked more or less the same way.  

[leadeater]

1 hour ago, Bombastinator said:

Beyond a certain level gas generators start to be more space and money efficient as the size and cost grows.  I saw a battery once that was a lake carved out of the top of a mountain. The working fluid was water.  They’d pump it up using electric pumps and run them backwards to harvest electricity.  Terribly inefficient, but the difference between high use time and low use time was enough to make it worth it. Was in Massachusetts I think.  Long ago.  I read about another somewhere in the world that was a cog train on a hill.  For coal or something.  They loaded the cars with something heavy, concrete rubble maybe, I don’t know.  Anyway it worked more or less the same way.  

Well it depends, I charge my batteries by solar where a generator would have an ongoing operational cost, higher than mine anyway. Plus I got the batteries for two boxes of beer so I'm 100% on the winning side, not that everyone can get free batteries lol.

[Dracarris]

11 hours ago, Moonzy said:

based on above calc, hardware cost aside

about $450 a year, which is equivalent to a new GPU roughly every year (if you can get one for that price anyways, rip myself too)

So first of all, I appreciate your calculations and insight. Around 60$ of income per month is indeed more than I expected, and I'll have to trust your calculations that a 1.4k$ rig can generate that amount of money per month. Now, regarding the profit, hate to say but IMHO that is not really a lot of money and for me personally certainly not enough to justify having a ~350W space heater at all times in a room where I usually stay/live/sleep. Since you live in a tropical country, I hope you don't counter that ~350W of heat with an AC. Also, $450 per year is not enough to pay for a decent high-end GPU. I don't know about ETH, but how drastically will the payout from a mid-tier GPU degrade over the course of a year? Same for the CPU, is spending 1.4k every three years for a new rig enough to stay at this level of profitability?

12 hours ago, Moonzy said:

  Hide contents

$66.64 per 246kWh a month

solar panel generates 564 kWh a month avgly

 

(66.64/246) * 564 = $152 a month

at 5k installation fee, 33 months, less than 3 years

 

now i can see why miners are installing solar panels, jesus

 

3 years is nice. I have no idea if the installtion costs that you quote are resonable for NA or Europe. As long as you use all the energy from the panels yourself you calculation is valid since you safe on buying energy. Whenever you overproduce and have to feed back to the grid, you will be however charged the grid fee per kWh. Also the fact that you live in a tropical country really helps a lot here which for sure doesn't apply for most people.

[Blade of Grass]

7 hours ago, Bombastinator said:

Beyond a certain level gas generators start to be more space and money efficient as the size and cost grows.  I saw a battery once that was a lake carved out of the top of a mountain. The working fluid was water.  They’d pump it up using electric pumps and run them backwards to harvest electricity.  Terribly inefficient, but the difference between high use time and low use time was enough to make it worth it. Was in Massachusetts I think.  Long ago.  I read about another somewhere in the world that was a cog train on a hill.  For coal or something.  They loaded the cars with something heavy, concrete rubble maybe, I don’t know.  Anyway it worked more or less the same way.  

Yes, but if you need continuous power then purely using gas generators isn't possible, and instead you needs banks of lead acid or lithium ion batteries to maintain your load while the generators start up. Most datacenter are setup this way.

[Moonzy]

18 minutes ago, Dracarris said:

not enough to justify having a ~350W space heater at all times in a room where I usually stay/live/sleep

agreed, that's why it's out of my room

it would be silly to run your AC and a "heater" at the same time

 

the plus side is my room is eeriely silent, and i still get uber compute performance

the tools needed for transition (cables and usb hubs) was paid by, you guessed, it, the project itself

 

18 minutes ago, Dracarris said:

Also, $450 per year is not enough to pay for a decent high-end GPU

not these days, im afraid -sigh-

but as i said, profit drops, it was higher before

but hey, better than nothing amirite?

 

18 minutes ago, Dracarris said:

but how drastically will the payout from a mid-tier GPU degrade over the course of a year?

it has ups and downs really, but as long as it's green, i keep mine on

depends on pricing, disparity between coins and mining difficulty and such

 

but as done12many2 said, sell when price is right and you'll be very profitable

 

ie, i mine $2 worth of btc a day when it's $10k, now if i sell it at $20k, i essentially was making $4 a day, for example.

 

i sold $1k worth yesterday, accumulated for roughly a year and half, eye-ing on more gpus, 2x3060ti perhaps

 

18 minutes ago, Dracarris said:

Whenever you overproduce and have to feed back to the grid, you will be however charged the grid fee per kWh.

here, any extra you produced is sent to elsewhere, and is credited, you can use it later in the day and it'll be taken off you bills if you have any left over energy

 

ie, i produced 550kWh, and my family uses 600kWh, i'll be charged 50kWh by the energy provider

if i use 500kWh, i get 50kWh credit and i can use it next month, say if i use 600kWh and generate 500kWh, i pay $0

 

so basically, a free battery, which is neat.

[Dracarris]

13 minutes ago, Moonzy said:

ie, i produced 550kWh, and my family uses 600kWh, i'll be charged 50kWh by the energy provider

if i use 500kWh, i get 50kWh credit and i can use it next month, say if i use 600kWh and generate 500kWh, i pay $0

 

so basically, a free battery, which is neat.

Well that is neat, here you pay the grid fee everytime electricity travels through it, no matter in which direction. And the grid fee is between 50% and 60% of the total kWh cost (between 13ct and 18ct, depending on the time of the day and weekday).

[MageTank]

58 minutes ago, Dracarris said:

So first of all, I appreciate your calculations and insight. Around 60$ of income per month is indeed more than I expected, and I'll have to trust your calculations that a 1.4k$ rig can generate that amount of money per month. Now, regarding the profit, hate to say but IMHO that is not really a lot of money and for me personally certainly not enough to justify having a ~350W space heater at all times in a room where I usually stay/live/sleep.

My friend, I think you finally hit the nail directly on the head here. It may not seem worth it to you, but others may feel differently. I do not believe @done12many2was being "salty" in his responses towards you, though he was definitely being sarcastic. Considering you were sarcastic towards him first with your "congrats" remark, he likely felt it appropriate to respond in kind. I won't speak for him, but I do respect him taking the time to share his insight on the subject. You may not agree with the philosophy behind mining and the impact it has on GPU availability or what environmental impact it may have, but it's never a bad thing to hear the other perspective on a subject. If ever you have the opportunity to learn more about something you disagree with, I advise you take the time to do so. Worst case scenario, you find yourself justified in your beliefs. Best case scenario, you walk away with a change in perspective yourself.

 

I eluded to it earlier in this thread, but I'll double down now. Neither side (gamers & miners) are in the wrong here. Both are consumers in the eyes of businesses. Both sides work to earn their money and both sides are free to spend it how they see fit. You cannot fault other consumers for their resourcefulness in buying hardware with a legitimate intent to consume. If the blame goes anywhere, blame the manufacturers/suppliers for failing to anticipate and meet the demands, and blame the retailers for not putting the proper restrictions in-place to prevent abuse. Scalpers are a different story entirely. On one hand, you can view it as people buying products they do not intend to consume with the intent to resell at a higher price. On the other, that is one of the foundations of capitalism and it's difficult to fault people for gaming the system. The "don't hate the player, hate the game" proverb. The only real remedy to prevent scalping is to make their endeavors fruitless. That requires not buying from them and eliminating their profit margins entirely. Sadly, not everyone is going to be on board with that, as some value their time enough to pay a premium for a product to avoid waiting in front of stores or refreshing web pages on a daily basis.

 

To end this post, I'll share one last piece of advice. I know the biggest annoyance gamers have with miners is the notion that "if they didn't have 80 of these graphics cards, I'D HAVE ONE". This is not a healthy mindset to have about many things in life. I won't get biblical with the "thou shalt not covet" side of things, but it's going to drive you guys mad if you rationalize things with that manner of thinking. There might be some truth to it, or it could be as simple as manufacturers would simply produce less GPU's due to the reduction in sales/demand and things just even out. That last part is a reach, I know, but it's to illustrate that things are not black and white. Everyone is eventually going to get a GPU, of that I am certain. It might not be today, it might not be tomorrow, but it will happen eventually. That is... unless you are waiting for the Heatkiller V from Watercool like I am. Then that day may never come with these daily delays.

[SADS]

The poor environment.

People burning through all this electricity so that someone can make a couple of dollars in a year through mining.

"Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn’t stop to think if they should." - Ian Malcolm.

[Colonel_Gerdauf]

Okay... putting aside the fact that one of the citations here is a very well known liar and charlatan (seriously, if you take MLID seriously in any regard, shame on you!), and putting aside the fact that the questionable reputation of the claim made would make this entire news and discussion moot...

 

Can someone explain to me what is the benefit is nowadays of bitcoin mining? If you are doing it for profits, then congrats, you are no better than the damn scalpers many of us are having to deal with. If you are doing it for the science of it, there are much better and much more straightforward way of satisfying your curiosity.  If you are doing it for the principle of bitcoins one day "killing fiat currencies", I would ask of you to take your first step outside your basements, look at the real world around us, and then come back and tell me that this principle actually makes any sense at all.

 

My hot take: there is absolutely no legitimate purpose to pursue crypto mining, especially now in 2020 when it has completely failed to take a foothold in anything at all.

[Dracarris]

1 hour ago, MageTank said:

My friend, I think you finally hit the nail directly on the head here. It may not seem worth it to you, but others may feel differently.

Whether mining is profitable, barely profitable and thus not worth any effort, are not IMHO things or up to personal taste.

 

You can also look at it from this angle: Given the choice of investing x amount of time and effort a) into mining, getting ~450$ of yearly income, depending on many factors I cannot influence or b) into improving my skills for my job (that I enjoy), easily adding 2k-5k of sustainable additional yearly income with zero energy waste - what should you do? Spoiler Alert: Only one choice is smart.

 

Also not an IMHO thing is the environmental impact of mining: I just checked our last energy bill. Over the last 3 months we used 483kWh, so 161 per month. For a 2-person household, 90m2 flat, including cooking, dishwasher, washing machine, dryer, lights, a gaming desktop rig, several laptops and external monitors under heavy daily use due to home office. Even adding the 1 CPU ,1 GPU, quite energy-efficient mining rig from @Moonzy with 246kWh per month would add the 1.5-fold energy consumption! This is absolutely insane, comparing what could be done instead with the amount of energy.

 

And for the record: The saltiness of @done12many2 was quite intense. For example by ridiculing the fact that his HVAC has to combat >2kW of additional heat source with even more energy.

 

The comparison I did above, relating mining to a typical household energy consumption, came out even clearer than what my guts feeling was of how wasteful mining is.

[Moonzy]

5 minutes ago, Dracarris said:

This is absolutely insane, comparing what could be done instead with the amount of energy.

so... what COULD be done with it?

 

also, my mining rig isnt efficient at all compared to a proper rig lol

[Bombastinator]

3 minutes ago, Colonel_Gerdauf said:

Okay... putting aside the fact that one of the citations here is a very well known liar and charlatan (seriously, if you take MLID seriously in any regard, shame on you!), and putting aside the fact that the questionable reputation of the claim made would make this entire news and discussion moot...

 

Can someone explain to me what is the benefit is nowadays of bitcoin mining? If you are doing it for profits, then congrats, you are no better than the damn scalpers many of us are having to deal with. If you are doing it for the science of it, there are much better and much more straightforward way of satisfying your curiosity.  If you are doing it for the principle of bitcoins one day "killing fiat currencies", I would ask of you to take your first step outside your basements, look at the real world around us, and then come back and tell me that this principle actually makes any sense at all.

 

My hot take: there is absolutely no legitimate purpose to pursue crypto mining, especially now in 2020 when it has completely failed to take a foothold in anything at all.

I have wondered about this.  One is subsidized electricity.  Another is money laundering.  Even if cryptomining is done at a loss the ability to effectively turn a non convertible currency into a convertible one by buying electricity with one sort of money and turning it into another might have value.  There are others who claim significant profitability.  A shortage of ethical reasons perhaps.  I am myself prevented by ethical considerations and my belief that long term viability will be eventually limited to groups that can get heavily subsidized electricity.  There won’t be a place for small operators. The whole thing is behaving al lot like the mom&pop dialup ISP market of the early 2000s.  It still exists in a few isolated places for specific reasons but has largely disappeared.

[MageTank]

2 minutes ago, Dracarris said:

And for the record: The saltiness of @done12many2 was quite intense. For example by ridiculing the fact that his HVAC has to combat >2kW of additional heat source with even more energy.

You and I must have differing opinions as to what the colloquial definition of "salty" means. He was most definitely being sarcastic, that is beyond undeniable, but you instigated that. You've been the aggressor throughout this thread and have altered the context of several posts to fit the narrative you're pushing. You've attempted this with my posts too and believe me when I tell you I do not like my context twisted. I am as neutral of a party that you'll ever find on this topic because I am not invested in either side of this discussion. I am not a miner, and I hardly have the free time to call myself a gamer anymore.

 

I do not know much about you as I do not frequent this forum all that often anymore, but I've had quite a few conversations with @done12many2in the past. He does not strike me as unintelligent, and I cannot imagine he would pursue a fruitless endeavor, especially if it's the money pit you perceive it to be. It's possible there may be some tricks he isn't disclosing that is aiding in his ability to maintain a profit. All the more reason not to aggressively chase these people away with this anti-mining rhetoric that plagues this forum due to a simple lack of understanding. I'll reiterate once more, just because it doesn't seem worth it to you, doesn't mean it isn't worth it for others. I need not remind everyone just how subjective "worth" is. 

 

If you wish to intentionally squander this opportunity to learn more from these people and continue to debate from a place of ignorance, I won't stop you. In fact, I'll take any advantage I can get if you're willing to go that route. I myself still need to brush up on this subject, so a head start won't hurt.

[Dracarris]

9 minutes ago, Moonzy said:

so... what COULD be done with it?

 

also, my mining rig isnt efficient at all compared to a proper rig lol

Covering the complete energy demand of 3 people?? Or just not use it at all? Seriously, if people would start mining on a broad scale it could easily double the energy used in private households.

 

350W for a performance PC under full load is quite energy-efficient in my view.

[done12many2]

13 minutes ago, Moonzy said:

also, my mining rig isnt efficient at all compared to a proper rig lol

 

Hey bud, do you mind me asking what type of cards your are mining with?

[Dracarris]

12 minutes ago, MageTank said:

You've been the aggressor throughout this thread and have altered the context of several posts to fit the narrative you're pushing. You've attempted this with my posts too and believe me when I tell you I do not like my context twisted.

No, just no. The direction of this thread was turned by other people towards the general discussion about mining.

12 minutes ago, MageTank said:

I do not know much about you as I do not frequent this forum all that often anymore, but I've had quite a few conversations with @done12many2in the past. He does not strike me as unintelligent, and I cannot imagine he would pursue a fruitless endeavor, especially if it's the money pit you perceive it to be. It's possible there may be some tricks he isn't disclosing that is aiding in his ability to maintain a profit. All the more reason not to aggressively chase these people away with this anti-mining rhetoric that plagues this forum due to a simple lack of understanding. I'll reiterate once more, just because it doesn't seem worth it to you, doesn't mean it isn't worth it for others. I need not remind everyone just how subjective "worth" is.

Mining on such a large scale as he does can indeed be profitable if done right, at the expense of an utter shitload of wasted energy. I invite you again to carefully read through the comparison of energy for mining vs for a whole household to get a grasp of the scale on which miners are just dumping energy. And no, I will say it again, whether wasting these amounts of energy is a sensible thing to do or not, is not up to personal opinions. There is nothing to not understand about how wasteful mining is and I am glad people on this forum are intelligent enough to put common sense and responsibility for the environment over selfish financial interests of individuals. There is nothing subjetive about the worthiness of using such drastic amounts of energy to make some moneyZ.

[Dracarris]

4 minutes ago, done12many2 said:

 

Hey bud, do you mind me asking what type of cards your are mining with?

It says right in his post, 2070S.

[Moonzy]

Just now, Dracarris said:

Covering the complete energy demand of 3 people??

and what would they do that's meaningful?

gaming? TV? generating heat in the winter, while not profiting? (mining in the winter to profit while having heating was a meme, but it's pretty smart)

 

2 minutes ago, Dracarris said:

350W for a performance PC under full load is quite energy-efficient in my view.

that's how miners are, we strive efficiency

 

people tend to think miners abuse their cards, killing them left and right

while in truth, we want our cards to last, but more than that we strive efficiency

cards out of the factory is super inefficient, undervolting and underpowering it tends to keep the performance the same, but power draw way down

side effect of that is lower temps, and less voltage through the chips

mining cards experience less thermal stress too, since they're under the same load constantly

 

 

if i learnt anything from mining, is to run GPUs at 80% power limit is no different than 100% most of the time (for nvidia gpu anyways, idk amd since i dont play with them)

same core and mem clock

i game with the same setting i use for mining now

my CPU is also undervolted for the same reason

 

3 minutes ago, done12many2 said:

Hey bud, do you mind me asking what type of cards your are mining with?

not a big scale miner like you, my max config was 2x 1070 + 2070S, though i sold off my 1070s in preparation for 30 series

might've been a bad decision, but -shrug- live and learn

 

2 minutes ago, Dracarris said:

I will say it again, whether wasting these amounts of energy is a sensible thing to do or not, is not up to personal opinions.

that's your opinion, tbh

it's using energy, like everything else

 

there's no "better" or "worse" way to use energy, it's up to individual opinion

some of us may agree with your view, some may not

[done12many2]

3 minutes ago, Dracarris said:

It says right in his post, 2070S.

Thank you!

 

 

3 minutes ago, Dracarris said:

Mining on such a large scale as he does can indeed be profitable if done right, at the expense of an utter shitload of wasted energy. I invite you again to carefully read through the comparison of energy for mining vs for a whole household to get a grasp of the scale on which miners are just dumping energy. And no, I will say it again, whether wasting these amounts of energy is a sensible thing to do or not, is not up to personal opinions. There is nothing to not understand about how wasteful mining is and I am glad people on this forum are intelligent enough to put common sense and responsibility for the environment over selfish financial interests of individuals.

It's not just profitable, it pretty dang lucrative.  That said, I completely understand your point of view, but I'm going to continue.  I think that if I could just show you the positive impact it's had on my household, you'd be less upset about it.  That said, I completely understand.