Depends on how much power costs you and how difficulty progresses. I'm also not sure if we have a full 6 months mining left.
A full new 6x 480 setup with mobo, psu... etc... should break even in 6 months or less.
As others have alluded to, this is hard to predict but if you look at it from a risk reward perspective things become a little more clear.
There are multiple approaches;
1. You can mine and sell your ether for whatever current market value is, this will immediately start paying off your gear which is awesome if that's your goal.
2. You can mine for a while and after accumulating a small amount of coins try to time the market to sell them off. This will likely lead to a faster ROI if done correctly but there's more risk involved. I don't recommend day trading virtual currencies unless you're well versed in regular day trading already or you *will lose money* eventually. Just set a sell target and walk away.
3. Hodl! - silly investor meme that's stuck around. This just means hold your coins with the hopes that Ethereum will eventually hit new ATH (all time high). For anyone going this route I recommend keeping your hand on the pulse of the ecosystem as things change very fast.
Ethereum is amazing but as a platform it's very risky to invest in. There's some fundamental (non technical) issues that need to be sorted out. Governance is a big issue that will have to be incorporated and worked out so when future events like the DAO hack happen there will be structure in place to better handle these scenarios.
That being said, the founders of Ethereum and folks over at Consensys are doing amazing work all while doing their best to tackle huge issues like the DAO/ETC and now possibly even litigation issues. If the non technical issues can be worked out the technology and drive is there to make this the definitive Blockchain for mass adoption. I'm less worried about the technology than the human elements. As many of us can relate to working in IT - the technology is easy, the people are hard!
All of that said I'm a Holder - at least until PoS is worked out and then I'll likely stake my pool of coins (with others) and call it a day.
I don't see any other crypto or blockchain tech moving at this pace of innovation or with this amount of enthusiasm. There are TONS of people working on ethereum and etherum related projects. The governance can be worked out over time but it'll be hardest thing to get right. This code is law crap has to go. All code is fallible. This idealism just doesn't work in the real world. Ethereum as technology has enough value on its own where it'll likely see mass adoption over the next five years.
This rant aside, building mining rigs to collect ether is simply a less risky way to get involved in this space. If Ethereum dies tomorrow you can always sell off the hardware and make back 60 - 70% of your investment.
You can look at it another way. Instead of asking how long it'll take to ROI, ask yourself how long until I break even? That's the point where you haven't directly lost money. That's the risk I take into account when building these rigs.
I agree with pretty much on all your post. I calculated on a worst case scenario where you just mine, breakeven should be between 5 to 6 months on a complete mining rig right now. Deduct about 30% of the hardware value if you plan on reselling it later to cut a few months off on breakeven.
For myself I've traded Forex for many years and I agree you should not be trading under any circumstances if you do not already have a good knowledge and system in place. The Coin trading can be super profitable (a lot more than mining), but it is also an extremely choppy environment to do so profitably.
As I trade more than I mine I tend to move to whatever coins move more (up or down). ETH looks like ok tech. If I were to choose a Long Term coin based on tech right now I would seriously consider SJCX, so far these guys have been doing some good work.
RX480 1050,2220,912mv in Wattman, 27.2MH/s
RX470 1050,2220,900mv in Wattman, 26.6MH/s
RX470, 1150,2250,900mv in Wattman, 27.3MH/s - 75.8W RX470 GPU vs 69.1W RX480 GPU, close ASIC %
RX470, 1200,2250,1000mv in Wattman, 900mv froze. 27.5MH/s Didn't bother to test vcore in between.
Settled at 1125/2250,900mv at 27.3MH/s. Let's see if it's really stable.
Ref RX480 vdrop in Wattman by 12.5mv, Sapphire RX470 8GB vboost in Wattman by 12.5mv. So 912.5mv RX480 = 887.5mv RX470 in GPU-Z.
I tried ethereum mining for the first time yesterday. I followed an online guide I found at cryptocompare.com and followed the incredibly easy instructions.
However, when I got to the step where I download the ethminer software and I get an error message when I type 'ethminer -G'
The program builds a DAG file and gets to 100% and then crashes with an error.
Any ideas on what might be causing this?
Not sure. Need more info about your system. Top of my head sounds like you're trying to mine on a card with 2GB of RAM?
FYI no one really uses ethminer any longer for mining It's either Claymore or Genoil.
Which driver did u use?RX480 1050,2220,912mv in Wattman, 27.2MH/s
RX470 1050,2220,900mv in Wattman, 26.6MH/s
RX470, 1150,2250,900mv in Wattman, 27.3MH/s - 75.8W RX470 GPU vs 69.1W RX480 GPU, close ASIC %
RX470, 1200,2250,1000mv in Wattman, 900mv froze. 27.5MH/s Didn't bother to test vcore in between.
Settled at 1125/2250,900mv at 27.3MH/s. Let's see if it's really stable.
Ref RX480 vdrop in Wattman by 12.5mv, Sapphire RX470 8GB vboost in Wattman by 12.5mv. So 912.5mv RX480 = 887.5mv RX470 in GPU-Z.
It seems that Asus GPUTweak2 and Msi afterburner did it. Extending overclocking limits in both, somehow broke the wattman so that I could set some silly 16GHz memory frequency in wattman.
Sadly no voltage control. 2300 Crashed with a colorful artifacts, 2350 instagibbed. 2280 seems unstable depending on the load/core clock? Not sure.
Anyway the core is too slow to keep up with increased memory clocks. You would need to boost GPU clocks to 1200-1300 to have better memory controller utilization. That kills perf/watt. So I guess for gaming it would be nice. For mining not so much
Which driver did u use?
My nitro rx 470 seems cant be set more than 2100 in wattman..
Where to get Genoil and get started? want to try that for Nvidia system, but don't want some virus laden link from anywhere.....
Not sure. Need more info about your system. Top of my head sounds like you're trying to mine on a card with 2GB of RAM?
FYI no one really uses ethminer any longer for mining It's either Claymore or Genoil.
Because of POS or difficulty?
Thanks for the update for nvidia support. I will try it on my 1070So Claymore released v6.0 today with Nvidia support. Anyone play around with it? I have it working on my 980ti's but only get 3mh out of each of them. Latest 368.81. There is some talk that 369.05 is needed but that only supports Pascal from what I can tell.
EDIT: Confirmed that 369.05 will not install on maxwell.
Well, I tried claymore's version 6.1, confirmed it works with my 1070. With my OC I get about 27-28MH/s in eth. Anyone know how to get it higher? What kind of OC guides are there for the 1070?