So, mining folks... Tell me of your profits and your future sustainability?

[BillyBob]

I've been meaning to sit down and type this out for a while now... This post is bound to trample some toes and get some undergarments properly knotted, but I'm genuinely curious as to opinions and views from the mining community.

1. GPU mining, BTC & its followers

There are a couple of decently sized GPU farms on the forum - but at the current pricing vs difficulty, you would struggle just to get an ROI on the depreciation portion on the cards if you're planning to sell them second-hand after a few months - and that's provided you're not paying for electricity. BTC pricing is crappy at the moment - so are the guys that persist in GPU mining simply speculating and waiting for the day that BTC will supposedly soar back to the $1000 mark and beyond?

BTC may very well be played out... By technical analysis, it's on a long-term downward trend.... fundamentally, it had its boom thanks to China, the single largest potential economy to support it, and took its dive when the Chinese government and banking governance all but outlawed it. The US is on the fence about BTC, but the FBI still stockpiles the Silk Road seizure, and has the potential to trigger a panic sell and resultant market crash if they feel like it... heft in hand over an emerging economy.

So what justifies speculating BTC? It's a long shot right now - and a plenty expensive gamble if you're buying BTC at $450 a pop or producing them at an even higher cost.

LTC has been stagnant for a while now - hovering between $10-11, down from its highs... Doge is mostly flat as well... the rest of them, meh... I dunno if they'll be sustainable in the long run, or fade into obscurity... but as things stand, LTC, Doge, and the other small handful of well-established virtual currencies are trending in the footsteps of BTC..

So why mine them??

2. ASIC / Scrypt miners --- Yeah son... we're gun be rich! Or are we?

So now dedicated Scrypt miners are finally going mainstream, causing the entire mining community to have collective wet dreams about the potential and all the bucks to be made... but no one seems to give a second's consideration to the notion that these devices are consciously being held back on a progressive rollout curve to capitalize on the money to be made at each stage of adoption?

Yes, you read right... Gridseed, the great revolutionary hope for Scrypt mining, is selling products to make YOU money? Uhm, no... the world doesn't work that way - but more on that in a bit.

Gridseed knew that the mid-April pricing on a 5.2 MH/s Blade miner had a 6-7 month ROI if you're mining LTC's or Dogecoins - and that's before you even factor in difficulty increases along the way.. But it's a marginal concern, and there were obviously adopters who would have a go... Already, if you buy a Blade now, you're looking at a minimum of 9 months for ROI. But wait, there's more - they're now unveiling the amazing new Black Widow (13), Falcon (27) and War Machine (54 MH!) miners... to only be shipped by the end of May (at a premium) or the 2nd week of June if you'll wait it out (at a 10% discount nogal) - but hey, the price per MH/s is soooo much better than the Blade.

Too bad it won't be so cutting edge in a month or two from now - when bigger and better things will be on the horizon, because the difficulty level moves up at a furious pace thanks to a paradigm shift in mining speed seeing all the new blocks being mined so quickly.

What happens then to all the guys that shelled out nearly $3k for a Blade? No return on investment for you, sorry bro... but buy our 110 MH/s mammoth and try again.

What was stopping Gridseed from developing the War Machine months ago when the first ASIC Miners came out? Nothing... the technology hasn't changed - it's just more of the same chips - chips that cost a dollar or two to produce... but stimulate demand, plan your rollout schedule carefully, control the market, and you can charge whatever you like.

You see what I meant when I said that the world doesn't work this way? If these Scrypt miners were going to be so profitable - WHY WOULD YOU SELL THEM? - If it really were profitable, Gridseed as a company would be running their own farm spanning many acres of land - and would be raking in all the virtual coins themselves.

Unless they already are? Hmmmm... Conspiracy theory in the making? Or common sense?? They develop miners, running them for months while they're ahead of the curve, mining them lots of lovely coins, and once the difficulty curve just staaaaarts to turn, they decommission them, package them and sell them off online. And you thought your ASIC miner just looked a little bit used thanks to the extensive "in-house testing" before shipping? And the failure rates are simply thanks to it being an exciting new & emerging technology? Riiiight.




Don't get me wrong - early adopters on BTC and LTC made money - some lucked out bigtime thanks to the boom... some lost a sizeable whack of cash when it tumbled again... but right now, things are looking somewhat grim for the virtual currency world.


So what say you Carbonite? Am I smoking my socks? Or is this the 21st century's world-wide digital version of the ponzi scheme?

Bawb

 

[Wasabee!]

I agree with you 100% bob.

I don't think many people see it this way though. I suppose it is their risk to take however unethical the possible practise of these suppliers.

 

[SoloMid]

My biggest regret: expanding my mining using coins I had mined.
My calculations where way off. I sold my 1million dogecoin the day before they shot to .00000186, just to buy more graphics cards. I started mining with 2x 280x's, and a 7950. In that 2 months of mining, I made more than I made since selling and trippling my mining rig. If I kept the coins a day longer I could have made a fat profit.

Luckily I have gotten away without paying electricity. Pretty much all the cards I have was funded by mining - R12000 initial investment. If I sold my mining hardware now, id probably scrape in about 22k (Carbonite prices). Meaning only 10k up from before. Lets say I had to pay power of R40 bucks a day. Thats about R3000 bucks atleast. So 7k up. All the time, stress, and frustration was not worth it.

If I sold my doge a day later, they wpuld have brought in about 15k. That, with selling the 3 cards I did own ( when they where in epic demand) would have brought me to 27k.

I hope you can still follow what im trying to say. My 2 months of mining and calling it quits would have been 5k more profitable than sticking with it for 7 months. Sighness.

Sent from my GT-I9500 using Tapatalk 2

 

[CalMul]

Is this the reason so many mining hardware is suddenly on sale?
Because guys realised it's not really profitable atm....?

Sent from my SM-N9005 using Tapatalk

 

[Pansyfaust]

The people who made the most cash in the Californian gold rush were the people selling shovels. At least you didnt need to pre-order a shovel

I for one am not butthurt about the decreasing profitability of my mining venture due to the introduction of faster and more efficient hardware. I will not get a scrypt ASIC purely because you have to fork over large wads of cash before you ever get the product once the difficulty has been mined out

What I do agree on is that ASICS and the business model behind it is a scourge on the system, pay now, wait a few months, receive the ASIC (as well as everyone else). It places a lot of the trust in a Company before they have ever shipped out a product. Even KNC messed up with recent 1TH Asics they sent out with badly constructed miners.

As you say, nothing prevents them from "burning in" the ASICS for a few weeks prior to selling them. When ASIC companies can make legally binding contracts that they will not use the equipment at all before you pay for it, then I would trust them to not screw us over by mining the networks. The recent massive jumps in network hashrate cannot only be Gridseed miners coming online...

In terms of profitability for the new miners, once the network re-calibrates due to the increase in hashrate the amount of coin will equalize and your rate of coin per day will diminish. I think people will expect this and hope the price shoots upwards so that they can ROI faster. The thing is, even if people will make ROI will they make enough(and quick enough) to invest into batch 2 ASICS when they come around? I mean, if you are expecting an ROI in 6 months, and 3 months after Batch one the next double speed miner comes along, your ROI time-frame will increase and maybe not even be achieved...


Less than a month ago the 5.2MHs Blades were $1500, now they are $950. No way in hell you made $650 of LTC in 3 weeks with a 5.2MH. I think with $650 you could buy more LTC than what the 5.2MH blade could mine.

 

[stevenwiner]

My .00002BTC worth.
I started mining Litecoin on a single HD6950 in December (just happened to be what I had in my gaming PC right then). Then I got hooked and bought another one and started mining Doge. Then I bought a couple cheap motherboards and some more cheap AMD cards. In those early days I never spent more than R1400 on a card, but ended up with a bunch of 6950/6970/5870 etc. combinations.
At one point my total investment had built to a whopping R9000. Then Doge climbed a little and I sold some. Then LTC climbed a little and I sold some. I used the profit to upgrade the 3 PC's we have at home to some pretty decent machines all with single AMD graphic cards able to play all the modern games on high/ultra.
Then last month, difficulty started climbing rapidly and at a point I decided to stop mining except for my 1 PC at night and that is now mining Vertcoin/Moncoin.
I sold off all the bits of hardware I had bought along the way and broke even on my initial expense. That includes the cost of my electricity along the way.
My logic (which proved to be correct) was to only buy older kit like HD6950's and Core2Duo boards rather than splash out on newer cards. So for example, I spent R2200 on 2 older cards giving me 1MHash rather than 1 card for R4000-R4500 giving me 800KHash. I recovered my R2200 on my cards when I sold them (even making a small profit on 1 or 2), where the guys dumping the R4000 cards now are only getting around R3000 for them. I actually made a small profit on the Core2Duo boards by splitting and selling CPUs, RAM etc seperately which covered much of my expense on electricity over the few months of mining.

Nett result:

1. I learned a helluva lot about the markets with hands-on experience.
2. I upgraded 3 PCs at home effectively for free.
3. At current market prices I have around R4000 worth of various coins which are sitting and waiting for the market to climb. I have set sell points on each of them at which point I make a few grand. If the market dies and the coins are worthless, well meh... They are already paid for so effectively cost me nothing.

So I played relatively small knowing I wouldn't get rich off this, but hoping I could make a few Rand.
I exceeded my expectations by not being greedy.

By the way...If anyone wants to speculate on some LTC, DOGE, VTC or MON at double current market value, you can buy them off me

 

[adielk]

Thanks thus my quesion on another thread Answered my questions and makes sense.

Sent from my GT-I9100 using Tapatalk

 

[PancakesZA]

Its been grinding me for a while but I am glad someone else brought it up.

Let me start from the beginning, I know some guys that made a fat profit from mining, right about when btc went through the roof, I know of 1 particular guy (a member on this forum) That made around R200 000 in profit, I have no idea if this is good or not or how much other guys made but he sold all his mining gear, all his "coins" and got out right when bitcoins hit the ceiling and then started to drop. Then you got guys that bought into mining at that time(Peak selling time), spent an absolute fortune on setting up mining rigs, dropping in excess of R50 000 on graphics cards alone. Then the profitability started dropping, but hey they were still making coins, and they were sure they would make their cash back that they initially laid out.

So now that the difficulty is incredibly high we see these "Blade miners" popping up. So these guys think...Mmmm if I sell my gpu farm and get a loan/take money out of the bond ect, I can get some of these blade miners and make a ton of money...They then find guys/shops/online shops that offer these blade miners at a fucking crazy price and then proceed to order one, only ever thinking of the fat profit they'll make. Not looking at the absolutely retarded 2 month warranty O Seriously $3000 and you get a 2 month warranty...lol) They don't realize that in 2 months the difficulty will have gone up again, and the current blade miner is now useless ($3000 lay out) There is no selling the blade miner, no one will buy it, I don't even think you would have recouped your initial $3000 "Investment" in those 2 months. So the only answer is to get more than one blade miner...I mean seriously who in their right fucking mind will drop $9000 on something that has a "chance" of turning a profit and then becomes utterly useless after just 2 months.

There are guys that made money from mining, there are guys that made a ton of money from mining...but those days are over...long gone.

To quote Bawb:

2. ASIC / Scrypt miners --- Yeah son... we're gun be rich! Or are we?

So now dedicated Scrypt miners are finally going mainstream, causing the entire mining community to have collective wet dreams about the potential and all the bucks to be made... but no one seems to give a second's consideration to the notion that these devices are consciously being held back on a progressive rollout curve to capitalize on the money to be made at each stage of adoption?

Yes, you read right... Gridseed, the great revolutionary hope for Scrypt mining, is selling products to make YOU money? Uhm, no... the world doesn't work that way - but more on that in a bit.

Gridseed knew that the mid-April pricing on a 5.2 MH/s Blade miner had a 6-7 month ROI if you're mining LTC's or Dogecoins - and that's before you even factor in difficulty increases along the way.. But it's a marginal concern, and there were obviously adopters who would have a go... Already, if you buy a Blade now, you're looking at a minimum of 9 months for ROI. But wait, there's more - they're now unveiling the amazing new Black Widow (13), Falcon (27) and War Machine (54 MH!) miners... to only be shipped by the end of May (at a premium) or the 2nd week of June if you'll wait it out (at a 10% discount nogal) - but hey, the price per MH/s is soooo much better than the Blade.

Too bad it won't be so cutting edge in a month or two from now - when bigger and better things will be on the horizon, because the difficulty level moves up at a furious pace thanks to a paradigm shift in mining speed seeing all the new blocks being mined so quickly.

What happens then to all the guys that shelled out nearly $3k for a Blade? No return on investment for you, sorry bro... but buy our 110 MH/s mammoth and try again.

What was stopping Gridseed from developing the War Machine months ago when the first ASIC Miners came out? Nothing... the technology hasn't changed - it's just more of the same chips - chips that cost a dollar or two to produce... but stimulate demand, plan your rollout schedule carefully, control the market, and you can charge whatever you like.

You see what I meant when I said that the world doesn't work this way? If these Scrypt miners were going to be so profitable - WHY WOULD YOU SELL THEM? - If it really were profitable, Gridseed as a company would be running their own farm spanning many acres of land - and would be raking in all the virtual coins themselves.

Unless they already are? Hmmmm... Conspiracy theory in the making? Or common sense?? They develop miners, running them for months while they're ahead of the curve, mining them lots of lovely coins, and once the difficulty curve just staaaaarts to turn, they decommission them, package them and sell them off online. And you thought your ASIC miner just looked a little bit used thanks to the extensive "in-house testing" before shipping? And the failure rates are simply thanks to it being an exciting new & emerging technology? Riiiight.

Read this: They develop miners, running them for months while they're ahead of the curve, mining them lots of lovely coins, and once the difficulty curve just staaaaarts to turn, they decommission them, package them and sell them off online.

On to my next issue.

Not exactly on topic...

A little company by the name of Phoenix tech (Phoenix-Tech PS4 pre-orders delayed...)

a lot of the guys that were mining ended up buying graphics cards from these sharks, because they were R200-R300 less expensive than local suppliers and shops, now that the mining has died for the gpu miners the cards are flogged on this very forum and on gumtree ect but no one even bothers to mention that the cards were supplied by a now defunct company that no longer exists, how will these guys get warranty sorted if none of the local suppliers will cover warranty.
I'll tell you how, they'll be forced to send these cards back to the manufacturers at their cost (Anything between R400-R800).

Some guys are okay with this, they don't care but what about the guys that can't afford to do that?
All I know is I can see a lot of "Bad Deal" threads popping up because of the above mentioned problem.

I reckon if a Phoenix Tech item gets sold on the forum, the seller should be required to say it came from Phoenix tech and whether or not it has local warranty.

 

[Sickman]

Its been grinding me for a while but I am glad someone else brought it up.

Let me start from the beginning, I know some guys that made a fat profit from mining, right about when btc went through the roof, I know of 1 particular guy (a member on this forum) That made around R200 000 in profit, I have no idea if this is good or not or how much other guys made but he sold all his mining gear, all his "coins" and got out right when bitcoins hit the ceiling and then started to drop. Then you got guys that bought into mining at that time(Peak selling time), spent an absolute fortune on setting up mining rigs, dropping in excess of R50 000 on graphics cards alone. Then the profitability started dropping, but hey they were still making coins, and they were sure they would make their cash back that they initially laid out.

So now that the difficulty is incredibly high we see these "Blade miners" popping up. So these guys think...Mmmm if I sell my gpu farm and get a loan/take money out of the bond ect, I can get some of these blade miners and make a ton of money...They then find guys/shops/online shops that offer these blade miners at a fucking crazy price and then proceed to order one, only ever thinking of the fat profit they'll make. Not looking at the absolutely retarded 2 month warranty O Seriously $3000 and you get a 2 month warranty...lol) They don't realize that in 2 months the difficulty will have gone up again, and the current blade miner is now useless ($3000 lay out) There is no selling the blade miner, no one will buy it, I don't even think you would have recouped your initial $3000 "Investment" in those 2 months. So the only answer is to get more than one blade miner...I mean seriously who in their right fucking mind will drop $9000 on something that has a "chance" of turning a profit and then becomes utterly useless after just 2 months.

There are guys that made money from mining, there are guys that made a ton of money from mining...but those days are over...long gone.

To quote Bawb:



Read this: They develop miners, running them for months while they're ahead of the curve, mining them lots of lovely coins, and once the difficulty curve just staaaaarts to turn, they decommission them, package them and sell them off online.

On to my next issue.

Not exactly on topic...

A little company by the name of Phoenix tech (Phoenix-Tech PS4 pre-orders delayed...)

a lot of the guys that were mining ended up buying graphics cards from these sharks, because they were R200-R300 less expensive than local suppliers and shops, now that the mining has died for the gpu miners the cards are flogged on this very forum and on gumtree ect but no one even bothers to mention that the cards were supplied by a now defunct company that no longer exists, how will these guys get warranty sorted if none of the local suppliers will cover warranty.
I'll tell you how, they'll be forced to send these cards back to the manufacturers at their cost (Anything between R400-R800).

Some guys are okay with this, they don't care but what about the guys that can't afford to do that?
All I know is I can see a lot of "Bad Deal" threads popping up because of the above mentioned problem.

I reckon if a Phoenix Tech item gets sold on the forum, the seller should be required to say it came from Phoenix tech and whether or not it has local warranty.

I agree 1000000000% with this.

 

[Pansyfaust]

I wonder if my 7990 actually has warranty anymore :/. Anybody know who was the supplier Phoenix used?

Also, the only reason I am still mining is I don't pay electricity and I got the 7990 for free

 

[Battletoad]

I wonder if my 7990 actually has warranty anymore :/. Anybody know who was the supplier Phoenix used?

Also, the only reason I am still mining is I don't pay electricity and I got the 7990 for free

no it hasn't - so sell cheap to me

 

[Air]

I reckon if a Phoenix Tech item gets sold on the forum, the seller should be required to say it came from Phoenix tech and whether or not it has local warranty.

i sold two 'phoenixtech' items and on both instances mentioned the ongoing to buyers. one the swiftech i got from senshi, the whole debacle was still fresh back then and the gtx680 classified. buyers were cool with it seeing that international warranty is there and items rare.

i agree. it should be a banable offence to sell an item not disclosing the warranty or pretending it has. bad deal for sure if not disclosed.

 

[Pansyfaust]

no it hasn't - so sell cheap to me

Oi! we dont take kindly to yer type around here!

Sent from my C6603 using Tapatalk

 

[Oj0]

Butterfly Labs, or BFL, a scam so noteworthy it even has an entry in Urban Dictionary:

1. BFL
Verb

1. To have something you ordered - delivered so far behind schedule, that it is no longer useful to you. Especially in cases where delays are 100+ days and the manufacturer or reseller is refusing to offer a refund for the goods.
2. Scammed
3. Completely fucked over

The term originates from the famous case in the Bitcoin community of longer than 1 year backlog of orders at Butterfly Labs, who have refused to refund their customers.
Usage:
Damn, I think we're getting BFL'd

Be careful, you might get BFL'd

4. BFL
One of the many scams of btc that the average btc retard couldn't figure out was an obvious scam.
The fact that BFL hasn't been busted proves how stupid and gullible btc users are.
Typical BTC user: "Oh man, bfl preorders! Let me pre-pay the entire $10,000 on these non-refundable items that don't currently exist!"

BFL: "Sorry morons...erm... loyal customers, we took all your money and used it to gamble while we take our sweet ass time to make as much money on your "pre-orders" before giving you worthless junk! Wait 6 months. But keep preordering, I need another ferrari for my wife."

Typical BTC user: "Man that's uncool, but this is the best thing in btc mining history so it's well worth the wait to be mega rich!"

People with brains: "I dunno guys, this seems pretty fucking scammy... You have no proof they are even going to ship!"

Typical BTC user: "Obvious fed/shill. Don't listen to that guy, he just wants us to cancel pre-orders so he can get his first!"

BFL: "Oh ya, and hey, if you want, you can buy our better non-existing product for some more money and your place in line!"

Typical BTC user: "Seems legit because its in btc, oh man how awesome! I better pre-order this new product because the last $10,000 product I bought hasn't shipped yet is now worthless! Let me get my check!"

BFL: "I love BTC users... they are so fucking stupid! Pass me that Ferrari brochure. Hey MTGox, you want some of this free retard-money?"

Mtgox: "Fuck ya, lol, I love free money!"

Typical BTC user: "Oh man btc is obviously so much better than USD! DERRRRRRRRRR"

 

[adielk]

Lol

Sent from my GT-I9100 using Tapatalk

 

[The_Assimilator]

Bawb, you've pretty much summed up what I've been thinking ever since BTC hit $ 1,000. As you said, some early adopters lucked out and cashed in at the right time... many more are now sitting with hardware that they will have to sell at a loss, if at all. I'd be very interested to hear from those who are in the mining business as to what their figures for replacing their GPUs with dedicated ASICs look like; I'm willing to bet that any profit they made for the lifetime of that business, has either been wiped out completely or has taken a massive knock.

Please note, I'm specifically looking for feedback from people who went into cryptomining as a business proposition. As in, they started out with some capital and not much else, and had to buy all their hardware/rent premises and electricity for their operation. If you got any part of your cryptomining "business" for free (i.e. free GPUs or don't pay for electricity) then someone else is essentially subsidising you, which is great for you but not so much for them, and definitely not indicative of how a proper business runs.

Or is this the 21st century's world-wide digital version of the ponzi scheme?

It's not a ponzi scheme because the ASIC manufacturers aren't guaranteeing any returns IIRC. They are selling a product, not a service, and their product will do exactly what they promised... it's just that their product isn't going to be very useful for very long. But that ain't their problem; it's their customers' responsibility to make informed purchasing decisions. Is this dishonest? Probably, but it's not illegal; thankfully, parting fools from their money never has been, despite how much noise said fools may make after the fact.

Is this the reason so many mining hardware is suddenly on sale?
Because guys realised it's not really profitable atm....?

It's not profitable to mine with GPUs anymore and it is never going to be again. So yes, that is why there is such a glut of Radeon GPUs that are up For Sale nowadays.

 

[CalMul]

Team red supporters gonna pick up some lekker cheap gpus for crossfire gaming rigs.....!

Sent from my SM-N9005 using Tapatalk

 

[Jack_Bauer_ZA]

What Calmul said BUT i for 1, won't buy any card used for mining. This is like buying a golf gti belonging to a 18 year old.

 

[WiZard]

What Calmul said BUT i for 1, won't buy any card used for mining. This is like buying a golf gti belonging to a 18 year old.

Even worse, since the 18 year old does go to bed at times, while miners red-line their cards 24/7...

 

[ThatGuy_ZA]

What Calmul said BUT i for 1, won't buy any card used for mining. This is like buying a golf gti belonging to a 18 year old.

I agree with this. Who would buy a card that has been maxed out 24/7? Especially since most gaming cards are not designed to do this..

 

[Wasabee!]

Ja worse is the cheaper cards like Powercolor who might not have the Military Class/Ultra Durable etc electrical components as the marketing departments like to call them. They are cheaper for a reason, often skimping on component quality or less phases.

This coupled with only a two year warranty and 24/7 load makes me believe that these are bad purchases second hand.

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[PancakesZA]

I am so glad that guys are finally seeing the light.
Just do yourself a favor and contact any of the big suppliers and ask them how rma's on 280X cards have spiked. I deal with this stuff on a daily basis and then there are still people that argue that mining does no damage or shorten the life of graphics cards...yeah I'm sure about that buddy.

 

[RyanW12]

Just my 2 cents...
Ive mined a few coins and Im holding onto it in hopes of the value that will go up maybe... But I started it with the idea of a mining rig (sold a lot of my older pc's and notebooks to build a rig) and then I found myself gaming more on it than mining On a last note mining is actually quite exciting a new learning curve, but at this moment it is somewhat a little bit profitable but not enough for ROI, at least not over a long period of time (I worked out the gridseed at the market value of ltc right now) you will break even anything from 6-9 months this is without the electricity bill, so my guess and I could be wrong but with the electricity included in the calculation it could take roughly a year maybe less to break even with if you have to go out and buy a gridseed right now and provided the exchange for the ltc doesnt drop more.

 

[SoloMid]

I am so glad that guys are finally seeing the light.
Just do yourself a favor and contact any of the big suppliers and ask them how rma's on 280X cards have spiked. I deal with this stuff on a daily basis and then there are still people that argue that mining does no damage or shorten the life of graphics cards...yeah I'm sure about that buddy.

Not mining properly

Too many people I see throw massive overclocks on their card, dont undervolt, set overheat to 95 Degrees, and leave it mining like that. If you fiddle enough to find the right settings with the right clock speeds, all I can see you damaging is the fan. (wear and tear obviously). I was running my cards with an underclock on the memory, and 50mhz overclock on the core. Built it into a PVC open frame, and a nice old desk fan blowing over them. Temps dont touch 70 Degrees with fan speeds set not to go higher than 80%.
Im sure RMA's would have increased, but Id say the majority of people where pushing their cards far beyond their specs. I have no problem buying a card from a miner, so long as it has a fair amount of warranty left.

 

[PancakesZA]

Not mining properly

Too many people I see throw massive overclocks on their card, dont undervolt, set overheat to 95 Degrees, and leave it mining like that. If you fiddle enough to find the right settings with the right clock speeds, all I can see you damaging is the fan. (wear and tear obviously). I was running my cards with an underclock on the memory, and 50mhz overclock on the core. Built it into a PVC open frame, and a nice old desk fan blowing over them. Temps dont touch 70 Degrees with fan speeds set not to go higher than 80%.
Im sure RMA's would have increased, but Id say the majority of people where pushing their cards far beyond their specs. I have no problem buying a card from a miner, so long as it has a fair amount of warranty left.

True this but most of the miners usually run there cards in cases and have normal airflow over them and as you said you spent time to under volt and underclock your card and I am sure there are other guys that did that but most of them didn't.
I recently got into an argument with a guy on mybb where he claimed that mining had no effect on graphics cards, same guy recently rma'd 2 7950's both of which were used for mining and then failed.
Running a gpu at max power @ 80c 24/7 will damage the card over time, whether its the fan or the thermal paste getting hard or the vrm's failing, the list goes on and on.

 

[mzg]

True this but most of the miners usually run there cards in cases and have normal airflow over them and as you said you spent time to under volt and underclock your card and I am sure there are other guys that did that but most of them didn't.
I recently got into an argument with a guy on mybb where he claimed that mining had no effect on graphics cards, same guy recently rma'd 2 7950's both of which were used for mining and then failed.
Running a gpu at max power @ 80c 24/7 will damage the card over time, whether its the fan or the thermal paste getting hard or the vrm's failing, the list goes on and on.

You're assuming that the manufacturers/retailers actually care - they are making a bucket selling millions of cards only because of mining and I don't hink they really care (ATI anyway)

Besides, the cost of actually producing a card (parts) is probably 10-20% of the retail value of the card so they willl probably RMA till the warranty expires quite happily. They can't have their bread buttered on both sides?

My opinion.

 

[Pansyfaust]

True this but most of the miners usually run there cards in cases and have normal airflow over them and as you said you spent time to under volt and underclock your card and I am sure there are other guys that did that but most of them didn't.
I recently got into an argument with a guy on mybb where he claimed that mining had no effect on graphics cards, same guy recently rma'd 2 7950's both of which were used for mining and then failed.
Running a gpu at max power @ 80c 24/7 will damage the card over time, whether its the fan or the thermal paste getting hard or the vrm's failing, the list goes on and on.

Well I for one run my 7990 at 1.09v (down from 1.2), and run the clocks at 980/1500. Pretty sure that will decrease the wear and tear

The worst for wear were the MSI 280x fans, on my one those fans just basically seized up, RMA'd it and got my cash back after a month basically. Was considering getting another 280x, but with recent announcements and releases of ASICS I think I will just stick my my one 7990 and 2x280x's and get most of what I paid for back with the 280x card.

Also, as per the OP I dont think GPU mining is "dead", shifting to scrypt-N can still be slightly profitable. Its what I am doing at the moment, mining LTC when the difficulty drops, then switching to Vertcoin when the difficulty jumps.

 

[PancakesZA]

You're assuming that the manufacturers/retailers actually care - they are making a bucket selling millions of cards only because of mining and I don't hink they really care (ATI anyway)

Besides, the cost of actually producing a card (parts) is probably 10-20% of the retail value of the card so they willl probably RMA till the warranty expires quite happily. They can't have their bread buttered on both sides?

My opinion.

I don't care about the manufacturers, the retails and supplier on the other hand do care, like I said be my guest, give them a call and ask them.

Think about it like this, Person A buys 5 GPU's from you over the course of 2 months. He lives in Cpt so the cards need to be shipped to him...
3 months from now 2 of the cards fail...these cards now have to be returned to the retailer, courier collects (R90 minimum) and delivers to the retailer, they then test the cards/or send it back to the supplier. Cards are replaced and then sent back to the retailer, the cards are then couriered back to Person A (R90 minimum). All is well, 3 months down the line 1 of the replacement cards starts acting up, so the whole process starts all over again...Couriers again, Retailer, suppliers, Retailer, courier, Person A...That's just for one person...out of thousands. All of this, costs the retailer money, the supplier money, suppliers start getting complaints from manufacturers because they want to know why so many cards are being returned or swapped out. I shouldn't say this but what the hell, I know for a fact that Gigabyte isn't happy and neither is Sapphire.

It costs money to refund, repair, swap out hardware...

I've seen the incredible rise in rma's on AMD cards 1st hand...


Think what you want and say what you want but suppliers and retailers are not happy about it.

 

[mzg]

Think and say what you want but it's kind of dumb that their sales probably went up by a factor of 100 (on high end cards) and they now want to moan about RMAs?

There is no fair use clause on gfx cards. It's not uncapped DSL so I can buy it and run it at 100% 24 hours a day (legally). They warrantied it and must live with the pain or revise their business model but then take into account that their sales have skyrocketed.

Would they rather go back to the trickle sales on the high-end cards?

I don't care about the manufacturers, the retails and supplier on the other hand do care, like I said be my guest, give them a call and ask them.

Think about it like this, Person A buys 5 GPU's from you over the course of 2 months. He lives in Cpt so the cards need to be shipped to him...
3 months from now 2 of the cards fail...these cards now have to be returned to the retailer, courier collects (R90 minimum) and delivers to the retailer, they then test the cards/or send it back to the supplier. Cards are replaced and then sent back to the retailer, the cards are then couriered back to Person A (R90 minimum). All is well, 3 months down the line 1 of the replacement cards starts acting up, so the whole process starts all over again...Couriers again, Retailer, suppliers, Retailer, courier, Person A...That's just for one person...out of thousands. All of this, costs the retailer money, the supplier money, suppliers start getting complaints from manufacturers because they want to know why so many cards are being returned or swapped out. I shouldn't say this but what the hell, I know for a fact that Gigabyte isn't happy and neither is Sapphire.

I've seen the incredible rise in rma's on AMD cards 1st hand...


Think what you want and say what you want but suppliers and retailers are not happy about it.

 

[PancakesZA]

Think and say what you want but it's kind of dumb that their sales probably went up by a factor of 100 (on high end cards) and they now want to moan about RMAs?

There is no fair use clause on gfx cards. It's not uncapped DSL so I can buy it and run it at 100% 24 hours a day (legally). They warrantied it and must live with the pain or revise their business model but then take into account that their sales have skyrocketed.

Would they rather go back to the trickle sales on the high-end cards?

When your profit margin is only R200 on a 280X...you would also not be happy.

Anyway this is derailing the thread completely.