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If you're not running 7+ cards on a mining rig you're probably doing it wrong. The higher the number of cards you run in a rig the more you can distribute the c

If you're not running 7+ cards on a mining rig you're probably doing it wrong. The higher the number of cards you run in a rig the more you can distribute the cost of the non mining hardware (HD, mobo, cpu, memory) across cards. A mobo that supports 8 cards might be double the cost of a board that supports 4 cards, but it prevents you from having to buy a second cpu, a second hard drive, second psu, and more memory to put in your second cheapo mobo. Now if you can buy random cheap ATX boxes for less than $27 dollars per PCI-E slot you are better off initially, but then management across all your various junk boxes becomes a PITA quick.

walrus01 7y ago
The last time I spent 15 minutes doing a possible ROI calculation on a GPU based Ethereum mining system, about a year ago, I came to the conclusion that the upfront cost of buying the GPUs alone, plus the electricity (entirely ignoring the cost of a dedicated mining purpose motherboard and cpu/ram, power supply, etc) would not have a reasonable payback period. Even if the electricity was 1.5 cents a kWh, and cooling was free. I've seen the various motherboards from Taiwanese board manufacturers which are designed for mining, with many small pci-express 3.0 slots intended for use with riser ribbon/interface cards, such as for use as you describe with 8 GPUs attached to one motherboard. https://www.techradar.com/news/best-mining-motherboards https://www.techradar.com/news/best-mining-motherboards
- OldHand2018 7y ago
  I did some Ethereum mining for a little while and simply couldn't believe that people were buying/building new systems. PCI 3 is backwards compatible with PCI 2, which has far more bandwidth than a mining GPU will ever need. I bought surplus Core2Duo systems for $10 and slapped in a cheap SSD and a 1060 6GB. The CPU would sit there at 99% idle and the power supply never broke a sweat.
  - walrus01 7y ago
    That is a very good point. The calculations I did were well after the value drop (early 2018) in Ethereum, and assumed that case, motherboard, cpu, ram and power supply were 0 dollars. Just based on the cost of electricity and buying several thousand dollars of GPUs. Even then it didn't work out.
- lozaning 7y ago
  I should have paid more attention to my phrasing. If you were running less than 7 cards per rig you likely did it wrong. Now if you do it at all you're doing it wrong. ROI is more or less impossible now. By the time you'd get close the reward will halve again. Also back then the diff kept rising increasingly quickly as well. I was doing this back in like 2016 with free power and cooling and made a grip of money.
  - walrus01 7y ago
    I think for the ROI to be worth it now somebody would have to literally give you $3000 to $4000 of GPUs for zero dollars, and your electricity bill would have to be some magical $0.00 per kWh.

walrus01 7y ago

The last time I spent 15 minutes doing a possible ROI calculation on a GPU based Ethereum mining system, about a year ago, I came to the conclusion that the upfront cost of buying the GPUs alone, plus the electricity (entirely ignoring the cost of a dedicated mining purpose motherboard and cpu/ram, power supply, etc) would not have a reasonable payback period. Even if the electricity was 1.5 cents a kWh, and cooling was free. I've seen the various motherboards from Taiwanese board manufacturers which are designed for mining, with many small pci-express 3.0 slots intended for use with riser ribbon/interface cards, such as for use as you describe with 8 GPUs attached to one motherboard. https://www.techradar.com/news/best-mining-motherboards https://www.techradar.com/news/best-mining-motherboards

OldHand2018 7y ago
I did some Ethereum mining for a little while and simply couldn't believe that people were buying/building new systems. PCI 3 is backwards compatible with PCI 2, which has far more bandwidth than a mining GPU will ever need. I bought surplus Core2Duo systems for $10 and slapped in a cheap SSD and a 1060 6GB. The CPU would sit there at 99% idle and the power supply never broke a sweat.
- walrus01 7y ago
  That is a very good point. The calculations I did were well after the value drop (early 2018) in Ethereum, and assumed that case, motherboard, cpu, ram and power supply were 0 dollars. Just based on the cost of electricity and buying several thousand dollars of GPUs. Even then it didn't work out.
lozaning 7y ago
I should have paid more attention to my phrasing. If you were running less than 7 cards per rig you likely did it wrong. Now if you do it at all you're doing it wrong. ROI is more or less impossible now. By the time you'd get close the reward will halve again. Also back then the diff kept rising increasingly quickly as well. I was doing this back in like 2016 with free power and cooling and made a grip of money.
- walrus01 7y ago
  I think for the ROI to be worth it now somebody would have to literally give you $3000 to $4000 of GPUs for zero dollars, and your electricity bill would have to be some magical $0.00 per kWh.