Folding / Bitcoin , two separate rigs.

F

FriedLemming

n00b
Joined
Aug 3, 2013
Messages
8
Did SETI back in college, havnt messed with folding but got the bug recently. The bitcoin craze hasn't really bitten me... mostly I just want to set up something that will break even over time, so that I can then switch it over to folding :p Bootstrap! Not even sure if it is possible to break even anymore?

Anyway, budget is loose, its whatever I feel like spending.... I would like to make the main folding rig one that I can use whenever Ihave time to game (which is not often), at high res. But 99% of the time it will be folding.

Folding Rig: Potential Budget 3k-4k
What I have: 3930k New in Box, picked it up unopened for $400.
What Im thinking of getting: GTX 780 x2, and water cooling the whole rig.

Bitcoin Rig: Potential Budget: Whatever I can come close to breaking even on, eventually
No clue... is it still jam as many 7950s into a rig aspossible?


Am I wasting electricity I could be saving for a second main rig?
Rigs Ive Just started folding on.
X6 Phenom
2x5870 eyefinity

X3 Athlon II
Nvidia 460

X6 Phenom
1x ATI 6670

I3-2100 (Mineral oil submerged 2.5 gallon computer, kinda nifty!) thinking of swapping inan i5


Thanks for putting upwith the noob post, Ive searched a bit but thought Iwould introduce my plans and see what everyone thinks....
 
breaking even with bitcoin is near impossible now unless you are strip mining (multiple rigs or a farm) or join one of the larger coin communities where unfortunately.money only goes to the top contributors. So in reality, unless your planning on running more than one rig especially for mining, than bitcoining will not be worth your time or more importantly, worth the potential WU you could be completing if you save the rig for foldinng.

As for your other questions, if your serious about the money and don't mind a slight increase in power bill, I would go ahead and let the 4P bug bite you.
 
For $3-4k you can def get a decent i4p up and running that would be making over 1m PPD and be extremely efficient on power use.

That is a hell of a budget to get started with and with that much money the options are really unlimitied. Hop into IRC if you can and we can really help you get started.
 
Depending on the scale you want to build at -- it's still possible to break even mining LiteCoin with your GPU's (since there is no ASIC miners out there driving difficulty to the moon)

I have three 7970's and one 7950, and I can still make ~200 each month in profit after you factor out the cost of electricity.

It's been a while since I've done any folding -- if i recall correctly, wasn't nvidia hardware much more suited to folding stuff?

With any sort of Crypto Currency - AMD is your only choice really.

I'm just pissed at myself I didn't mine more LTC before the price and difficulty shot up, used to be able to mine 2k LTC a month with just two video cards.
 
collegeboy69us said:
Depending on the scale you want to build at -- it's still possible to break even mining LiteCoin with your GPU's (since there is no ASIC miners out there driving difficulty to the moon)

I have three 7970's and one 7950, and I can still make ~200 each month in profit after you factor out the cost of electricity.

It's been a while since I've done any folding -- if i recall correctly, wasn't nvidia hardware much more suited to folding stuff?

With any sort of Crypto Currency - AMD is your only choice really.

I'm just pissed at myself I didn't mine more LTC before the price and difficulty shot up, used to be able to mine 2k LTC a month with just two video cards.
Click to expand...


AMD has pretty much taken the lead when it comes to GPU folding as far as price/ppd ratio.

As far as folding goes, if you want to make some serious points and continue to be serious youre going to want to look into multiprocessor rigs vice going all GPU's.

Thats not to say GPU farms wont get it done but as far as electricity cost and over cost of gpu's, youd just perform better with a multiproc system.
 
Well, lets assume that 4p is down the road a little bit, and I will try to snag a deal on a used one when someone has to get out of folding(saw a few in DCFS forum that I would have bought instantly if I wasnt 3 weeks too late :). I have the 3930k and am semi-justifying this rig for high-res gaming (even though, as stated, never have time to:p). What would be approx PPD of 3930k OC + 780 GTX x2, and what would approx PPD/Watt be.

As far as the 4 systems I have running now, am I just wasting electricity on some of them in terms of efficiency? So far it looks like 40-50k ppd between all 4of them.

So litecoin is the only profitable currency at the moment for gpu farming? Like I said I dont mind farming coins for a while on a pile of AMD's if they pay for themselves, but if not I will just put this budget toward a 4p setup.


Thanks forall the replies!
 
FriedLemming said:
Well, lets assume that 4p is down the road a little bit, and I will try to snag a deal on a used one when someone has to get out of folding(saw a few in DCFS forum that I would have bought instantly if I wasnt 3 weeks too late :). I have the 3930k and am semi-justifying this rig for high-res gaming (even though, as stated, never have time to:p). What would be approx PPD of 3930k OC + 780 GTX x2, and what would approx PPD/Watt be.

As far as the 4 systems I have running now, am I just wasting electricity on some of them in terms of efficiency? So far it looks like 40-50k ppd between all 4of them.

So litecoin is the only profitable currency at the moment for gpu farming? Like I said I dont mind farming coins for a while on a pile of AMD's if they pay for themselves, but if not I will just put this budget toward a 4p setup.


Thanks forall the replies!
Click to expand...

Good to hear about the 4P (as long as youre folding for 33 :D) As far as the 2x 780, from what Ive read (because I only own 7970) you'd be looking at 125k-140k PPD with power consumption being around 200w-225w per card.

As far as your other systems, it's never a waste because it's all going to a good cause. However you are most likely eating up more money with those 4 systems being powered on and folding than 40-50k is worth.



I know nothing of BTC/LTC mining so someone else would need to help there.
 
Welcome to the fold

The 3930K allows you to use a 4x GPU setup. Which motherboard would you like to get? If you intend to WC the whole rig, heat might not be an issue. For the budget you "envisioned", GTX 780 might be a good direction to go. Versus AMD 7970, the purchase price per folding point is slightly higher, but with current folding cores (core17), the power efficiency is much better. Especially if run for a few years.

Expect 600.000 points from the GPUs per day.

My system was air cooled.
original.jpg
 
AndyE said:
Welcome to the fold

The 3930K allows you to use a 4x GPU setup. Which motherboard would you like to get? If you intend to WC the whole rig, heat might not be an issue. For the budget you "envisioned", GTX 780 might be a good direction to go. Versus AMD 7970, the purchase price per folding point is slightly higher, but with current folding cores (core17), the power efficiency is much better. Especially if run for a few years.

Expect 600.000 points from the GPUs per day.

My system was air cooled.
Click to expand...

Just to clarify...you're saying 600k on a 4x 780 setup, correct? Because he said he owns 2x at the moment and from what I read on the forums that isn't pushing 600k PPD...

BTW quitter, stop quitting and get back to burning up the 33 ladder..
 
m33pm33p said:
Just to clarify...you're saying 600k on a 4x 780 setup, correct? Because he said he owns 2x at the moment and from what I read on the forums that isn't pushing 600k PPD...
Click to expand...

Yep,
you are right. 600k for a 4x GTX780 setup.
I took your 3-4k$ "investment" range as base for the recommendation mentioned above.
 
AndyE said:
Yep,
you are right. 600k for a 4x GTX780 setup.
I took your 3-4k$ "investment" range as base for the recommendation mentioned above.
Click to expand...

Gotcha.

The gpu route is viable but you be making far greater ppd with a multiprocessor system. In comparison my ES machine cost me 1k used and makes near 700k ppd. I definitely wouldn't be recommend spending that budget on the 4x gpus if you're just folding on that rig.

Just my $. 02
 
AndyE said:
Yep,
you are right. 600k for a 4x GTX780 setup.
I took your 3-4k$ "investment" range as base for the recommendation mentioned above.
Click to expand...

He could build an i4p for less that 4k that could do approx 1million ppd and use a hell of a lot less power.
 
sc0tty8 said:
He could build an i4p for less that 4k that could do approx 1million ppd and use a hell of a lot less power.
Click to expand...

Yea, this is definitely the way you want to go if this will be a dedicated folding machine.

Of course there wont be any GPU mining happening (obviously) but if youve got the budget, can afford 2 different rigs and want the best bang for buck, this is the way to go.

Plus youll be one of the few owners of a full fledge i4p :D
 
m33pm33p said:
Gotcha.
The gpu route is viable but you be making far greater ppd with a multiprocessor system. In comparison my ES machine cost me 1k used and makes near 700k ppd. I definitely wouldn't be recommend spending that budget on the 4x gpus if you're just folding on that rig.
Click to expand...
Partially agree with the MP system approach.
The OP want to game as well and currently has only the CPU: So the MB, PSU, RAM, SSD, GPU(s) are still missing and costs money. Going from this game system to a 4 GPU system costs "only" the 2 GPUs (1200$). Alternatively he can go the route for a 700k AMD 4P system for 1000$. What would be the power consumption of this rig at 700k PPD production? The 4 GPU system would be using approx 800-900 watt under FAH load.

sc0tty8 said:
He could build an i4p for less that 4k that could do approx 1million ppd and use a hell of a lot less power.
Click to expand...
Not sure he can get his game rig finished and the i4P for less than 3-4k$. But agree on the coolness factor of i4p :D

If there would only be 8104 WUs then the i4P systems would indeed be in the 1mio ppd range. Unfortunately, the mixture of 8101, 8103, 8104 and 8105 rather limit the average performance over a longer period of time to the 850-900k ppd range. At least my system does. Darn 8101 units ....
Power consumption is excellent though with 610-620 watt on the plug.

Core17 is only at the beginning, vs. 4P cores are very mature - in terms of potential speed progress in the next 2 years.

Would be very "bad" for the OP if he goes the 4P route and NVidia releases a CUDA JIT compiler in the next few months ..... (Would turn probably many of the metrics around)
 
AndyE said:
Partially agree with the MP system approach.
The OP want to game as well and currently has only the CPU: So the MB, PSU, RAM, SSD, GPU(s) are still missing and costs money. Going from this game system to a 4 GPU system costs "only" the 2 GPUs (1200$). Alternatively he can go the route for a 700k AMD 4P system for 1000$. What would be the power consumption of this rig at 700k PPD production? The 4 GPU system would be using approx 800-900 watt under FAH load.


Not sure he can get his game rig finished and the i4P for less than 3-4k$. But agree on the coolness factor of i4p :D

If there would only be 8104 WUs then the i4P systems would indeed be in the 1mio ppd range. Unfortunately, the mixture of 8101, 8103, 8104 and 8105 rather limit the average performance over a longer period of time to the 850-900k ppd range. At least my system does. Darn 8101 units ....
Power consumption is excellent though with 610-620 watt on the plug.

Core17 is only at the beginning, vs. 4P cores are very mature - in terms of potential speed progress in the next 2 years.

Would be very "bad" for the OP if he goes the 4P route and NVidia releases a CUDA JIT compiler in the next few months ..... (Would turn probably many of the metrics around)
Click to expand...

Yes, but he stated in OP that his "folding rig" budget is 4k alone. And his Mining budget was whatever he felt like spending.

a 700k PPD AMD rig is going to use about the same power. PPD/Cost a GPU system is not going to beat out a beefed up 4p.

a 4x 780 rig that will be folding 99% of the time is a huge waste of money imo. When he could spend 1k on a dedicated 4p rig and go crazy with the other 3k (if he so chose to) on a gaming rig.

However there is certainly nothing wrong with wanting to have a rig that can game and fold, youve just got to understand you're not really going to be efficiently using your money.

My advice would be to take the 3930k and whatever other parts you have and build a gaming rig with a single beastly GPU. Then spend the rest on dedicated machines for the other stuff. That way if you REALLY wanted to you could still fold with the gaming rig (which I dont recommend due to power consumption).
 
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collegeboy69us said:
Depending on the scale you want to build at -- it's still possible to break even mining LiteCoin with your GPU's (since there is no ASIC miners out there driving difficulty to the moon)

I have three 7970's and one 7950, and I can still make ~200 each month in profit after you factor out the cost of electricity.

It's been a while since I've done any folding -- if i recall correctly, wasn't nvidia hardware much more suited to folding stuff?

With any sort of Crypto Currency - AMD is your only choice really.

I'm just pissed at myself I didn't mine more LTC before the price and difficulty shot up, used to be able to mine 2k LTC a month with just two video cards.
Click to expand...

Bitcoin GPU mining is pointless right now at current pricing. You won't even break even on electricity or you just will barely for the next 3 months at most. Otherwise you'll be losing money.

Mine litecoins with your GPU's as it uses scrypt and their currently no FPGA setups or Asics out yet to the public. A FPGA setup has been in the works, but performance wise it will more than likely only be more energy efficient and performance to dollar ratio probably worse.

At my peak I was making over 2500 LTC a day, and it was a complete blessing to say the least. I have a pretty nice setup, and your best bang for the buck is 7950's.
 
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