The cryptocurrency rate is growing again, and this in turn provokes an increase in demand for its production. Everyone who was unable to become a breadwinner last year will definitely want to try themselves. After all, everyone wants to catch luck. Those who are interested in this topic are probably wondering: what will be more profitable for mining cryptocoins: a mining farm or an ASIC? Let's try to understand this topic so that there are no questions about what and how to mine crypto-assets.

Mining rig or ASIC

What are the payback periods?

First of all, you can calculate the possible volumes of earnings on video cards or on ASIC. There are special calculators for this. On a special website you can enter all the necessary data and receive a table with daily profit data. This can also be done in ASIC. You just need to enter the characteristics of your device.

The data you receive will need to be divided by the price of the farm. This way, you can roughly calculate how long it will take to pay off. Of course, these are very approximate dates, since the rate (cost) of crypto coins changes every hour. Therefore, you will not be able to get accurate calculations. The price may rise or fall every day, but this data will help you navigate your benefits when buying a mining rig.

Be aware of the complexity of the networks of crypto assets you intend to mine. The daily rewards that all miners receive are a constant value when measured in crypto coins. Every day a huge number of new farms are launched around the world. Everyone wants to mine coins and that is why it is becoming more and more challenging every day. The same can be said about profit onASICdevices. That is, your yesterday's profit today may be shared with new miners.

Mining rig or ASIC

Last year, many coins rose greatly in price. As a result, even losses in dollars became unnoticeable for miners. Although every day the earnings became smaller. Let's take a closer look at what advantages and disadvantages a mining farm has? In addition to the issue of payback, there are many other factors that must be taken into account. This way you can make the right choice.

Pros of the farm:

There are no problems with purchasing video cards. Come to the store, purchase the cards you need and collect them.

You are given a long-term warranty for the cards for a period of 1-3 years. That is, if you have a breakdown, the component is replaced under warranty.

You can set up a farm at home. You will not get any noise or overheating.

If you no longer need it, you can sell the equipment as components. Every detail is useful in a regular computer, and video cards are needed by gamers.

You can mine different crypto funds, since the cards have a wide variety of algorithms.

Advantages ASIC- devices:

No assembly required, you can start working right away.

Easy to configure equipment. Just a couple of simple steps - turn it on, enter your wallet and everything is ready to go.

Today, the payback period is ahead of the farm.

What are the disadvantages of a mining farm? The following disadvantages are highlighted here::

The first thing concerns assembly. To complete it, you need to have certain skills and knowledge.

Computer knowledge is also necessary. You will have to configure, install the operating system, overclock the cards. As an alternative, you can use a ready-made build option from Linux, but as a rule, this also requires some skills.

Need more space.

The payback is inferior to ASIC.

Cons you get with ASIC:

The price is high. If you want to order equipment, you will have to wait up to three months.

The guarantee is located in China, which means that sending it there, waiting and getting it back will again take a lot of time. There are no spare parts available, and repairs are not cheap.

Makes a lot of noise. The work will be heard even several floors above. To perform placement, you will need to rent production space.

Creates a lot of heat. Thus, a person will need to take care of ventilation and heat removal.

Mining occurs through one algorithm; if it is not popular, then the only thing left to do is get rid of ASIC.

There are, of course, other reasons why ASIC miners choose a video card farm. But everyone comes to the conclusion that the mining farm is less productive. At the same time, it is lighter and provides a lower level of risk. Today, the development of new miners does not stand still and is actively developing. It is no longer profitable to mine bitcoins as before, but altcoins show promise. That is why the production of devices with a budget cost occurs. This suggests that ASIC miners may soon appear for other altcoins that are more common.

It is impossible to draw exact conclusions about what will happen to this industry, since in this area everything can change very unexpectedly. It may be that manufacturers will take care that one device can perform many different algorithms. We can only conclude that these devices will experience the same fate as personal computers once did. After all, the first of them took up half the room, but now they are convenient and compact devices. Fortunately, in our time, the development of information technology is happening so quickly that tomorrow devices for mining cryptocurrencies can be mobile and fit in the hand.

So what should you choose? Farm or ASIC?

Only you can decide for yourself how to mine. Assess your capabilities, skills and abilities. Then you can make the right decision in favor of choosing one or another equipment option. We tried to reveal all possible pros and cons in this article. The choice will be yours, and first you should carefully assess your risks and potential profits. This way you can choose the ideal solution for yourself and select a convenient device with which you will mine crypto coins and earn money. We wish you to make the right choice!

Hello, dear readers of my blog! In this article we will try to figure out what is the best thing to do (read: more profitable): mine yourself on your own equipment; invest in cloud mining projects; or just buy bitcoins cheaper, wait until the price rises, and sell them at a much higher price, making money on the price difference? I think this question has been tormenting many minds for a long time. Someone is still thinking about it, someone has already decided everything for themselves and is acting, but in both cases, this article may be interesting and useful to you. For each of the above methods there are many arguments, both FOR and AGAINST. Moreover, in most cases, these arguments are subjective, and for different people the same argument (fact) can have different weights and different meanings, including neutral ones. In general, let's look at all the methods in order, and at the end we will draw a conclusion.

We won’t talk about mining on processors, because... At present, this is just self-indulgence, and this activity does not bring real income. Nowadays, mining farms are mainly used for mining ether (ethereum), zcash mining (zicash, zec), or mining monero (monero). ASICs are mainly used for mining bitcoins (using the sha-256 algorithm) and litecoins (using the scrypt algorithm), and there are also, albeit expensive, ASICs for mining the Dash cryptocurrency (using the x11 algorithm). Of course, both mining farms and ASICs can mine any altcoins and forks based on algorithms that suit them. I have a separate playlist about mining on my channel, you can watch it here link. There I show and tell you how to assemble and launch the mining process on your mining farm.

Arguments in favor of mining on your own hardware:

a) The equipment is always with you. If anything happens, you can always sell it and partially recover the losses.

b) You have complete control over the entire process of making a profit. No hidden costs, what you mine is what you get.

c) You can always choose what to mine, thereby increasing profits by choosing the most profitable coins in a certain period of time.

d) You can sell cryptocurrency at any time, thereby holding the coins until the pump, and selling them at the peak of the price.

e) Even taking into account the fall in the price of cryptocurrency and/or the increase in complexity, you will sooner or later recoup your investment.

f) In the case of a mining farm, you can save on some parts if you already have them, or buy a used one.

g) Passive income is possible (if you don’t bother too much).

Arguments against mining on your own hardware:

a) You are responsible for the entire process yourself, from purchasing equipment, assembly and installation, to selling coins and withdrawing money. This is a disadvantage only if you are poorly qualified for any stage of the process, which can lead to various negative aspects, ranging from wasted time studying the issue to loss of money in case of unsuccessful actions.

b) The equipment may break down partially or completely. This will have a particularly negative impact on you if you do not have a warranty or the breakdown does not fall under the terms of the warranty.

c) The equipment must be constantly monitored, otherwise the risk of point “b” occurring increases sharply.

d) You need a specially allocated room and certain operating conditions (temperature, humidity).

e) If you install it in a house/apartment, there will be constant noise, especially from ASICs, and the required temperature in the room will not be maintained.

f) Electricity costs. It all depends on the area where you live, perhaps you will pay less than with cloud mining, and someone may even have access to a “free outlet”, but such people are much less numerous.

g) With any equipment downtime, you lose money, and the payback period increases.

h) You need to have special skills and knowledge in this area to make a successful living.

Recently, a lot of hype projects have begun to appear under the guise of cloud mining, and a person who is not savvy in this matter can easily confuse them. This “BOOM” of pseudo cloud mining is associated with the increased popularity of cloud mining, and the HYIP admins could not ignore it. On my channel cloud And pseudo cloud Separate playlists are dedicated to mining. Also, on my blog, I write in the “news” section about the latest news from highly trusted cloud mining projects, for example, Hashflare. Next, we will analyze only cloud mining projects; we will not take into account HYIPs, because they obey their own laws.

Arguments in favor of cloud mining:

a) You don’t have to spend large sums of money. The minimum amount to invest in cloud mining usually ranges from $1 to $10, so anyone can try it.

b) The equipment is not located at your place. This leads to the following advantages: no noise; no need to monitor and care for the mining farm; think about where to place it; collect it, etc.

c) In the event of a breakdown, repairs are “at the expense of the establishment.” You will not be charged a separate fee.

d) Profit comes in around the clock without interruption, even with equipment downtime.

e) Completely passive income. Nothing is required from you, just rent the capacity and periodically withdraw your income.

e) You do not need to have any special technical knowledge or skills.

g) Periodically there are promotions, discounts and sales, through which you can save money.

Arguments against cloud mining:

a) The equipment is not located at your place. This is both a plus and a minus. The downside is that if something happens (for example, no one needs all the cryptocurrencies), you will not be able to receive income from its sale.

b) Any project (company) on the Internet is at risk of burning out and closing (as, in fact, offline). Only offline you can still try to sue yourself for something, but on the Internet the likelihood of this is almost zero.

c) You do not control the income received from mining. Almost always, the income accrued to you is not transparent. They simply send you a certain amount, but no one will show you why exactly that much was obtained. All that remains is to roughly estimate whether they have squeezed out a certain percentage of your income, or whether everything is fair. In addition, there is always a chance that you yourself could sell the coins at a higher price (or not 😉).

d) There are fees for electricity and maintenance. This is not always a big disadvantage, it all depends on how much electricity costs you.

e) You do not control the mining process. This is a minus only if you know how and can do it, including choosing what is most profitable to mine in a certain period of time.

e) The price per unit of power is usually higher than when purchasing your own equipment. This can be compared with the wholesale price and retail. True, this is not always the case, for example, some ASICs now cost so much that the price per unit of power is the same as in cloud mining, and sometimes even higher.

g) Some contracts are for a specific period (usually 1-2 years). There is a risk that you will not be able to recoup your money during this time, much less earn money. And with conditional lifetime contracts, there is a risk that they will become unprofitable for the project administrators (for example, the price of cryptocurrency will drop sharply and/or the difficulty of mining will jump), and they will be closed before you get your money back.

h) There is a risk of your account being hacked.

You can buy and sell bitcoins (and other cryptocurrencies) both on exchanges (for example, Exmo) and in various exchangers (see monitoring Bestchange exchangers). I talk about how to work on exchanges and about proven exchangers in my videos on the YouTube channel (you can watch). The process itself is called trading. And it doesn’t matter whether you constantly buy and sell cryptocurrency, making money on price differences, or you bought several bitcoins once and sold them six months later, when the price rose, in any case, this is the same trading. And, as you know, trading has its own laws, it is an entire profession, and if you do not know how to do it correctly, then there is a high probability that you will waste all your money. Even with the same bitcoin, buying it with the aim of further selling it at a higher price is just “roulette” for non-professionals.

Arguments in favor of trading:

a) You can quickly make a lot of money.

b) You can handle small amounts of money (especially useful during training).

c) If your goal is simply to get cryptocurrency, then this is the best way.

d) Compared to mining, there are all the advantages of the lack of equipment.

Arguments against trading:

a) You can quickly lose a lot of money.

b) For regular trading, it takes a lot of time, for one-time trading, it makes financial sense to use only a large circulating amount of money.

c) There is a risk of your account being hacked.

d) You need special skills and knowledge to make a successful living.

e) You receive income only when you trade.

Conclusion.

What do we end up with? As I wrote above, any conclusion will be subjective, and everyone decides for himself what will be more profitable for him, where the scales will tip under the influence of the above arguments, what he can afford and what he cannot. Personally, I made a conclusion for myself, and I stick to my decision, namely, I applied the universal principle of not only investing, but also making money on the Internet in general - the principle of diversification (the full list can be seen). If anyone doesn’t know, diversification is distribution. The distribution of funds and risks in all three directions makes my earnings as stable and sustainable as possible due to each of them insuring each other, i.e. the occurrence of any negative consequences of one of the methods is compensated by income from the other two. Of course, this also equalizes income. Of course, my option will not suit everyone. This can happen for various reasons: lack of money, lack of time, lack of knowledge, or other opportunities. In any case, I think there are different ways to start, but this model is worth striving for. I wish you all good luck and big earnings!

Updated: January 26, 2017 — 5:43 pm

November 28, 2013 at 01:05 pm

Visit to the ASICMINER-a farm

• Cryptography

• Translation

During my visit to Hong Kong today, I saw a green container ship in the square near the Wan Chai area (near the subway), two guys dressed in cartoon tigers came out of the open doors and approached me, offering to visit their Bitcoin farm! To the sounds of attractive light music, I went inside and saw some meter-high transparent glass tanks, one-third filled with liquid, with numerous green boards immersed in this liquid, between which bubbles were quietly gurgling. Copper pipes rise from each glass tank and are connected to a small cooling unit. Condensed liquid vapor drips down from time to time. The LEDs are constantly flashing, creating the impression of the presence of life.

_

Okay, I have to admit, the above was a piece of science fiction. I didn't see a container ship near Wan Chai, it doesn't exist. But what I wrote next is reality. In fact, with permission from friedcat, I, as an official reporter for Bitell and the YangYang show, visited ASICMINER's secret farm located in Hong Kong on November 22nd. And, fortunately, I am the first person on the planet to receive this opportunity.

_

Throughout my visit, the host Alex was attentive and helpful. Construction of the farm began in August 2013 with the purchase of the best cooling unit and pumps in China. They were installed on the roof using a crane. By the beginning of October, this farm began to function. Having achieved this, the entire technical support team did an incredible job of trying to beat the clock.

_

The farm is located on an industrial site and consists of many standard racks that can be found in any data center. Each rack contains 3 sealed glass tanks, inside of which “blades” operate silently, from which wires exit to the switches.

If you turn off the air ventilation, this place will become quieter than a library. By comparison, I once had several Avalons, so their roar could be heard even behind two closed heavy doors. This system looks harmonious, and the shiny pipes and red valves hanging nearby fit perfectly into the overall picture.

Alex told me:
Immersion cooling technology has been developed over many years, very carefully. He showed me a prototype of a liquid container designed for the ASICMINER tests. The first version of the Block Erupter Blade mining boards contained many external interfaces equipped with large heat sinks for air cooling. Now, the new Blades board has been significantly improved to optimize liquid cooling results. The boards are reduced in height, which allows using less liquid. In fact, this cooling technology is the most advanced on the planet. The same technique is used in supercomputer systems. Thanks to the use of immersion cooling technology, it is possible to significantly refine the calculations associated with heat dissipation in comparison with an air cooling system. Currently, each liquid container can hold 92 “blades,” with more possible in the future. Every 200 liters of liquid can absorb heat from the boards, with a total power of up to 4 kW. Each cooling pipe can absorb up to 25 kW of heat, and 4 sets of cooling pipes can be installed in each container.

In the world of Bitcoin, timing is everything. In order to speed up implementation in the system, all kinds of common equipment were used: from racks to valves that can be bought at any market. Once the extraction and cooling equipment is installed, each tank weighs approximately 200 kg. Instead of using expensive guide rails in the racks, the surface on which the container slides is coated with low friction Teflon. This greatly simplified all operations related to the installation of the container.

This system inherits practicality, simplicity, low cost and high performance - characteristics that friedcat lays the basis for rapid and easily scalable implementation.
The container is not like the walls of a reactor designed for high temperatures or pressure. When I touched the outside of the wall of the container, its temperature turned out to be no higher than body temperature. Alex showed me an app on his iPhone that showed the temperature of the room, the temperature of the cooling liquid, and the temperature of the liquid that absorbed the heat generated by the operation of the equipment - all within 37 degrees. The liquid produced by 3M, very expensive, is not only non-flammable, but also used for fire extinguishing purposes. You can find its use in wealthy financial processing centers. Fire extinguishing systems also use it.

Low temperature, no pressure, fireproof materials - all this provides an incomparable level of safety.

Stability is a requirement of a mining farm. All cooling units and pumps are backed up by reserve insurance. The farm is connected to the Internet by three uplinks. Each electronic device operating in the tank is carefully tested and connected in the most optimal way. Many people have access to knowledge about research and development, and among them, chip development is the most important part of a large-scale implementation project in the Bitcoin market. But not many people have access to information about the cost of man/hours spent and the time required to hone the technology. The friedcat-a team has real experience and all the necessary knowledge.

This farm is not operating at full capacity, some racks are empty, waiting. I suppose, in anticipation of boards with new generation chips from ASICMINER.

Based on a state-of-the-art immersion cooling system, ASICMINER guarantees a future-proof farm that is easily scalable and expandable. The system is fully equipped and its price is also determined.
It is designed for large-scale deployment around the world, requiring only power, a network connection, and a serious commercial deployment project can be considered complete anywhere.
Yes, by the way, in areas with a cool climate, this system can release heat generated in production to heat rooms.

And, yes, perhaps in a few months the container I described at the very beginning will become a reality.

I will gratefully accept amendments and corrections, especially if there is something inaccurate in the description of technical issues.

With the growth of cryptocurrency prices and their increasing popularity, many people want to start mining. Someone has already assembled a farm using video cards; there were those who preferred ASIC miners to farms. But there are probably those who have not yet decided what to build theirs on and want to weigh all the pros and cons of each of the two options - for them a short review from.

First you need to calculate how quickly the first and second options will pay off. To do this, you can go to - here you just need to select your video card on the GPU tab (or select the ASIC model), and then click “calculate”, after which the site will display something like this on which you can see how much you can earn per day with the available capacity .

By comparing daily earnings with the price of the farm or ASIC, you can roughly calculate how many days it will take to pay for the purchase of the farm. Why approximately? So, the price of cryptocurrencies is constantly fluctuating, there are more and more miners every day, and production is also constantly growing. Therefore, even despite the constant increase in the price of cryptocurrencies in dollars, which was observed throughout this year, miners lost a little in profits, being forced to share income with newly arrived enthusiasts.

Another point: in Moscow, ASIC Antminer s9 costs about 250 thousand rubles, the price tag on the manufacturer’s website fluctuates around 120 thousand, but here you have to wait two or three months, and then also transport the device to the Russian Federation, which is also not so easy. Therefore, the cost of transportation should be added to the price of the device, and in case of malfunction, for example, you will have to take into account the costs of transporting the miner back to China, which is also quite difficult to implement, and also costly. In addition, do not forget that an S9 purchased from resellers for three times over the course of these couple of months can bring in an income of about one and a half thousand dollars, which is already quite comparable to the price of the device from speculators.

Payback is a good thing, but each of the two options also has its own advantages and disadvantages.

The advantages of the farm are obvious:

• Video cards are always on sale. Well, or almost always. Walked in, bought it, installed it - go ahead!
• They will be in demand in the next two to three years, so they can be sold to gamers.
• For the same year or three, a guarantee is given, which allows you to easily replace a burnt card with a new one or have it repaired at a service center.
• The farm can be installed at home - it doesn’t make much noise, it heats up normally.
• You can mine different cryptocurrencies - video cards support many different algorithms.

The disadvantages of farms are not so obvious, but they are also present:

• Assembly requires some experience and direct hands. Burning a motherboard, processor or a couple of cards is a piece of cake.
• You also need to be able to install the OS and software. Yes, this may seem funny, but these days, not everyone knows how to install software on a computer.
• The trusses turn out to be quite cumbersome.
• They usually take longer to pay for themselves than ASICs.

Pros of ASIC:

• It works out of the box: take it out, turn it on, plug in your wallet, and start mining.
• Pays for itself faster than farms.

Disadvantages of ASIC:

• You have to wait a long time for the next batch of devices to be ready at the factory, or pay double the price for the device to resellers.
• Defects happen, and replacing an ASIC with a new one is a rather difficult and not so cheap task. The eternal shortage of spare parts and long shipping times will also not add enthusiasm to the owner of a faulty miner.
• Even one ASIC is very noisy, so installing it in an apartment is not the best option. It's good if you have non-residential premises. Otherwise you will have to pay for its rent.
• The device generates a large amount of heat, so a one-time installation of good ventilation must be added to the rent.
• Typically, ASICs mine cryptocurrency using one or two algorithms. If the usual ASIC algorithm becomes unpopular, the device will be worthless.

You can discuss this news and ask questions at

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Mining farm: how does it work?

Let's conduct a short educational program on the bitcoin algorithm. Many people guess that this virtual currency functions independently and does not have any central authority. Transactions and information are processed using a special program. In the payment register, data about wallets is duplicated on all network blocks.

Bitcoin farm, why is it interesting?

Transactions are stored in the ledger in the form of sequential entries collected in blocks. The chain is formed by computers, and if the goddess of luck smiles on someone to be the first to solve the problem, then he is awarded a bonus, a certain number of banknotes. Low-power farms that are not productive enough to produce currency will be inferior to faster and more powerful units.

How does the farm function?

The distribution of earned currency is proportional to the expended power that you use to develop the virtual currency. Immediately with the emergence of virtual currency in the public domain, business people began to manufacture various mechanisms for the extraction of virtual gold. For many people, the farm became a source of high prosperity, while others got what was left and realized very late to start implementing this idea.

How to introduce a farm? In technical terms, it represents an assembly consisting of packages of powerful modern video cards connected to high-performance computers. The main processor also takes part in the mining process, but its computing power in mathematical calculations of a SHA-256 hash is extremely low.

What else is needed for a farm to be truly productive? As the number of video cards in a package increases, it is necessary to increase the power of the power supplies. To effectively cool equipment, you need to install powerful air conditioners and fans. As a rule, it is necessary to install general supply and exhaust ventilation. As this business develops, large hangars equipped with racks with cascades of video cards are allocated for the farm. Electricity costs are rising accordingly. But even after the depreciation back in 2011, the number of miners did not decrease. Undoubtedly, the signs of mass psychosis in society have not yet passed.

Many users have become millionaires through Bitcoin mining. The mining industry was in awe when manufacturers showed an ASIC device designed to work with SHA-256. This hash function was created for one task - to obtain a “beautiful hash” by searching numbers, which will enable the pool to lengthen the chain of blocks and receive a bonus for this. The farm operates at a speed of three terahash. Advanced assemblies are assembled on multiple processors. They are manufactured on a chip basis with power supplies and fans.

In essence, this is a ready-made farm for the production of virtual currency. Buy and start minting coins right away. The new generation of these chips has become even more productive.

ASICs provide greater payback than the leading Radeon R9 380 cards and are four levels ahead of them in performance. Since microcircuits and power supplies consume less energy, the cost of purchasing and installing the farm is several times lower. The introduction of ASIC integrated circuits upset the plans of prospectors for serious influxes of bitcoins using the Radeon R9 380 video card. The payback on server racks has fallen quite deeply and continues to fall to zero.

How is a virtual currency farm completed?

A detailed guide especially for those who have not yet lost hope of mining gold Bitcoin. We buy video cards. We provide them with intensive cooling. We buy a powerful power supply for assembly. The board consumes about 300 watts.
Everything is mounted on a server rack. Fans are selected for air supply and exhaust. Or air conditioners are used. The cassettes connect to the computer, and it connects to the pool. Starts working. Powerful farms are located in Iceland. It's cool there all year round. This saves resources on cooling the farm.

Let's decide how much such a device costs, and what kind of profit can be expected from the farm?

Approximate initial characteristics.

Video card– costs about ten thousand Russian rubles.
Electricity– four rubles per kilowatt-hour.
Computer power– 375 W (in fact, this figure is much higher).
Let’s imagine that the Bitcoin rate is one thousand eight hundred green tickets with a portrait of the American President for one Bitcoin.
The total computing power at a speed of 0.5 Ghash/s (gigahashes per second) and not taking into account the electricity used, we get -1.6 rubles per hour. Unprofitable event. A farm on a balcony or in a kitchen cannot produce Bitcoin currency. It will be unprofitable.

Let's say you increased the number of video cards to six. Energy consumption will cost 2.5 kilowatts and the data processing speed will be three Ghash/s. As a result, we end up with a loss of ten rubles per hour. The farm does not provide income.

Let's move aside the bitcoin farm and take a look at another type of bitcoin mining. We assemble a farm using AntMiner S9 ASIC controllers, its characteristics are as follows:
About 100,000 Russian rubles must be paid for AntMiner S9.
We pay four Russian rubles per kilowatt-hour for electricity.
The farm consumes about 360 kW of energy (not taking into account the computer for now).
Let's leave the course the same.
The performance of such an assembly is 28 thousand times higher than that of a farm with video cards. As a result, such a virtual currency farm gives the same -1.4 Russian rubles per hour. Even with such powerful equipment, gold bitcoin mining is unprofitable.

The most powerful assembly will not reduce electricity consumption. The road to getting rich with such an assembly is closed.

Bottom line.

No home farm makes any real profit. Large companies create huge cassettes of powerful ASIC controllers. Perhaps the creation of such installations from ASIC cascades has a right to exist for new young cryptocurrencies, but for Bitcoin the time has already passed.