Planning Your Bitcoin Mining Operation
Operating a Bitcoin mining facility can be profitable, but you need to treat it like a business. I operate a small Bitcoin mining facility, and there is a lot more that goes into it than just plugging in the equipment and letting it run.
It’s easy to set up a single Bitcoin mining device and run it. Scaling to something that can make a significant amount of money is a different story, however. To make a profit, one needs reliable revenue and low costs. This means low costs for all aspects of the operation:
Equipment
Bitcoin mining hardware is the first and most important part of the operation. If you can’t get good equipment at a good price, you might as well stop right there. At this point in time, the best equipment to buy is the Bitmain Antminer S9. You should be able to generate about 0.5 Bitcoin per month (as of July 2016, post-halvening).
The Bitmain Antminer S7 is a good choice to learn about mining. Depending on your electricity prices, it might be profitable for you to operate it.
The power supplies need to be purchased separately. If you have 110 Volt AC, get this setup from Centrix International. If you have 220 VAC, you can use either the Centrix setup, or get the power supply from Bitmain.
Electricity
The Bitcoin mining hardware basically convert electricity to Bitcoin. The lower your electricity costs, the better off you will be. For US Dollars, your electricity costs should be $0.10 per KiloWatt Hour or less to maintain profitability.
Calculating actual electricity cost can be a bit tricky, and if you have a choice of electricity suppliers, it is worth getting their rate sheet to determine the price at the usage. As a starting point, there will be different rates.
- Residential – usually low price.
- Commercial light – less than 200 amps or 30,000 KWHr per month
- Commercial medium – less than 500,000 KWHr per month
- Commercial heavy – everything else
Within these rates, there will usually be a few categories of costs. It is best to put together a spreadsheet, add all the costs together, then calculate an effective per KWHr rate in order to compare the two. The costs you will have to take into account are:
- Monthly service fee
- Usage fee – how many KWHr used
- Demand fee – maximum Watts used at any one time
- Demand peak – additional fee based on maximum Watts vs. average Watts
I was looking at setting up shop in the Canadian province of Quebec, because the price was $0.0493 per KWHr, but as I looked at the Quebec Hydropower rate sheets more carefully, there was a Demand Fee that brought the effective rate up to $0.07 per KWHr. That’s a big difference!
Quebec Hydropower Commercial RatesIf you are in a location where electricity is included in the price of your location, you may be able to operate a single Bitcoin miner. I’ve found that you can turn the fan speed down to 40% or so if you operate in an air-conditioned environment, then it won’t be that loud, and you might be able to run it without anyone noticing…but if you operate more than one of the units the electrical usage will be probably be noticed by the building owner at some point. These devices use a lot of electricity!
One of the first questions I get is the possibility of using solar power. Yes, it’s possible, and let’s think about it for a minute. A solar panel can supply about 100 Watts when the sun is shining on it. Ten of the Antminer S9’s use 12,000 Watts, 24 hours per day. So you would need three times as many solar panels and a storage system. That’s 360 solar panels, and at $100 each, that’s $36,000 in panels! You would also need a place to set them up, wiring between them, and someone to keep them all running. That would be difficult and probably not the best use of your time.
Whenever you have the option, use 220 Volt AC instead of 110 VAC. The power supplies for the miners run more efficiently at the higher voltage.
Cooling
Bitcoin miners put out a lot of heat. The fans on each of the Antminer units push through about 200 Cubic Feet per Minute (CFM) of air. The nice thing is, there are no hard drives in these systems, so they can run hotter than a typical server.
These systems are basically three cards, each running lots of ASIC’s, with heat sinks on the top and bottom of the chips. Here is one that’s open for cleaning.
Antminer open for cleaningSo the good news is that these boxes don’t need to be in an air conditioned environment, they just need a lot of airflow to get rid of the heat. In my first location, I put in place a large exhaust fan that was rated at 10,000 CFM. That size fan would be able to remove the heat generated by 50 Antminers because 50 x 200 CFM = 10,000 CFM. I had to match the intake vents to 10,000 CFM of airflow also, of course. That took up twice the space of the fan. Here’s a nice fan from Grainger, and some Drainable Louvers:
You will need a way to direct the flow of air so it does not bypass or recirculate around your Bitcoin miners. I built some air flow guides out of wooden 2×4’s with plastic sheeting stapled to it.
Infrastructure
This is all the stuff that you need to get the Bitcoin miners connected and working. It helps to have a little bit of data networking knowledge here. Easiest way to get that is to pick up a Cisco CCNA certification guide from the bookstore and use that as a reference.
Firewall and router
You’re going to need an internet connection. It does not need to be fast, but it should be reliable. The Bitcoin miners can only earn money if they can download the hashing puzzles from the Internet and upload the solutions.
It would be useful to have a firewall that has remote access VPN capability, so you would be able to access the equipment remotely. I really like the Cisco Meraki MX64W firewall. It’s everything you need, has top level security, and provides remote access VPN along with Wifi.
Network Switches
Each of the Bitcoin miners has a network connection. It needs to plug into something. You’ll need to buy a network switch to make it work. The switches don’t have to be fast. I prefer to buy used Cisco 48 port switches. You can get one of those for less than $100 on eBay.
Power Distribution Unit
The Bitcoin miners use a lot of power – did I say that already? You are going to need an electrician to run electricity to your miners. Tell him that you want a bunch of 220 VAC, 30 Amp connections, and you are going to be using NEMA L6-30P connectors (in North America).
Plan on each Antminer using 6 Amps of 220VAC power, which means if you get a 30 amp Power Distribution Unit (PDU), you can power 4 Antminer’s from it. You can try to power 5 from them, but you’ll pop circuit breakers. This Tripp-Lite PDUH30HV would a good one to get.
Power Cords
You’ll need to get the power cables that go from the PDU to the power supplies also. These can be tricky to figure out. You’ll need the IEC C14 to C13 connectors. There’s lots of different vendors for these.
This is a handy guide from APC to all the different types of power connectors that can be used in North America
Video Surveillance System
These are really inexpensive these days. Connect a cheap 4 camera video surveillance system up to your network. It’s nice to be able to quickly see that everything is working well while you are away. And if someone messes with your stuff, that’s nice to see also.
Shelves
I bought cheap shelves from Lowes and Home Depot. I like the ones from Home Depot better. You don’t need anything fancier.
Things You Don’t Need
There is stuff you could buy if you wanted to be extravagant. But I don’t think it’s worth it.
Smart PDU’s – I first started using these, because I thought it would be nice to be able to reboot the Bitcoin miners remotely. It turns out they are more trouble than they are worth.
Computer Server Racks – These are a waste of money. The Antminers don’t fit on them.
Air Conditioning – Too expensive to run
Uninterruptable Power Supplies (UPS’s) – Not needed, and way too expensive. If power goes down, you want your miners to shut down. When power comes back on, everything will boot and start running again.
Business Management
This is a business that makes money. There are things that need to be done for business management, both in the initial setup, and in the ongoing operations. It should be registered as a company so that business expenses are deducted from income, and any taxes will be paid only on the profits.
This means you should engage with at least an accountant, so that you can capture the depreciation of the Bitcoin miners.
Business Setup
- Form business as an LLC, register with the State
- Get an Employer Identification Number from the IRS
- Set up a bank account and fund it.
- Lease a space for operations
- Obtain a Certificate of Occupancy (pro tip – make changes to space after getting CO)
- Get account with power company and internet service provider
Bitcoin Mining Operations
- Get electrical pulled into space
- Set up natural circulation cooling
- Configure data network
- Configure power distribution to Bitcoin miners
- Operate miners and scale up
- Keep track of all purchases and expenses for tax purposes.
Business Operations
- Set up Bitcoin Miners to send Bitcoin to an account on an Exchange.
- Sell Bitcoin on the Exchange to fund operations, send money to bank account.
- Pay bills from bank account.
- Keep equipment running.
- Save enough Bitcoin or money to fund an equipment refresh every two years
- Pay taxes as you need to. Understand depreciation. Get an accountant.
Operations and Maintenance
The first few months of operations will be great. As you add more Bitcoin miners, you’ll see your daily, weekly, and monthly income go up.
And then things will start to go wrong. Power, cooling, and other issues will crop up.
So you’ll have to start a regular schedule of maintenance and upgrades to the equipment. There’s many different things that will have to be done, but the biggest one is cleaning.
Get yourself a dust mask and an air compressor, and clean your Bitcoin miners out every few months.
Summary
Remember, keep your costs low. The two biggest costs are the Bitcoin miners and electricity. If you can control those, everything else will work out. If you are planning on setting this up as a legitimate business, plan for minimizing taxes right from the start. If you do it right, you can be cash flow positive yet have a tax loss to offset your other income…good luck!
Originally posted at Block Operations
Video - Data Networking for Medium Size Bitcoin Mining Operation - Block Operations
February 18, 2017 @ 6:08 pm
[…] For an introduction to on planning your Bitcoin mining operation, see Planning Your Bitcoin Mining Operation […]
September 26, 2017 @ 8:45 pm
Good guide Rolf. I’m planning a medium-sized ASIC and GPU mining operation with my friends as business partners. One thing I’m going to do differently is use retail box fans instead of that big commercial 10k CFM fan you used. These box fans cost $25 each and can do 2500 CFM. 4 of them would provide the same ventilation as the Grainger one and cost 1/5 the price. As for the filters, I’ll make sure it isn’t a pain to clean them. Maybe some cheap home HVAC disposable filters will do.
Also, I’m setting up my own server connected to a switch to act as a firewall, VPN gateway, and router to cut costs and provide more flexibility.
Instead of using a smart PDU I’m going to use 240v smart outlets from Xiaomi. If those aren’t up to code I’ll use 120v wireless outlets from Etekcity for only the GPU rigs. They cost $8-10 each and can be controlled from a Raspberry Pi that I built. For GPU mining reboot control is very useful since GPU rigs tend to fail a lot more often than ASICs and require more labor. The upside, however, is that the deprecate more slowly, have gaming uses, and are the swiss army knife of mining.
September 26, 2017 @ 8:47 pm
P.S.: You can find box fan filters for $5 each on Amazon. I have a Xiaomi phone so that would be a perfect match for their smart outlets.
September 26, 2017 @ 8:49 pm
Electricity is $0.025-0.04 here in Long Island and $0.01-0.02 in nearby Pennsylvania.
October 3, 2017 @ 4:23 pm
Sounds like you have a good plan. Best of luck mining!
November 3, 2017 @ 10:41 pm
@Rohith Hegde How are you getting these electricity rates? Indiana rates which are top 10 lowest in the country are at 9 cents per kw. Please explain how you get these rates in Long island and PA
Thank you!
Soko Mining
Instagram & Facebook @sokomining
April 29, 2019 @ 7:46 pm
REALLY LATE UPDATE:
I deployed the mining farm in Spring 2018. I ended up running 200 GPUs at 25 kW total. That’s 800 less GPUs than I planned. We launched it in January and the market kept falling, along with other business mistakes we made. We just used 25 kW. It went bankrupt and I ended up losing $25k personally. But I think that loss was well worth the experience I gained, since I’ll start future businesses and my career is IT.
Here’s what I learned:
1: Yeah I was totally wrong about the electric rates. I had no idea how commercial rates worked. I ended up getting 9¢/kWh after some serious planning. This rate does work in the long term for GPU mining. GPU rigs are less power-intensive per dollar invested than ASICs. Do not invest in ASICs unless your rate is Call your utility company, ask what the rate is, and do your own calculations first. The average small commercial rate in the U.S. is 6-10¢.
2: I was wrong on the box fans as well. They’re not designed for commercial use. The rated CFM of 2500 is for zero static pressure. In an actual server room, the static pressure is higher since the air has to travel longer distances across the room. They might only do 400-600 CFM (I tested this myself). You’ll have to cut much bigger holes in the walls if you don’t have enough windows, so it’s not worth it. Also, putting box fans in a row does not increase the airflow.
–> The metal industrial fans are pricey, but they’re your only choice. Rolf is correct.
3: Air conditioning isn’t as bad as it sounds. Ductless split systems will cost around 10-15% of your equipment price and add 10-15% more power consumption (with an EER of 12). It might actually be a better idea than fans. No humidity, dust, burglar, and structural modification issues to worry about. Less of a headache to maintain.
–> Even if AC costs more, it’s easier to maintain and your fire risk is lower.
4: If you’re just investing your own money into the mining farm, don’t plan to deploy more machines, and don’t plan to get outside investors, NOT renting a warehouse space is probably the best idea. Host them at home in the garage or in a shed. Even if your residential power rate is 16¢ and commercial is 8¢, not paying $1000/mo. of rent is a big advantage. You can also consider datacenter colocation but it’s pricey.
–> Compare multiple ways to host your equipment (colocation, home, warehouse) and choose the least risky one. Both in terms of fire risk and financial risk.
5: It’s difficult to get insurance if it’s your own farm and equipment. It’s even harder to get insurance if you’re hosting investor equipment. Hire a lawyer and accountant as well no matter what the price is. You need to do these things if you’ll invest over $100k. Also, don’t push your electrical circuits, especially if they’re old. Get a clamp multimeter for $40 and check the amp loads.
One day, one of the wires in my warehouse’s 40-year-old fusebox melted and was glowing orange. I wished I paid $1000 for a brand new subpanel instead of using that old one.
–> Better safe than sorry. There were times when my farm was on the edge of disaster. Prevent those risks at any cost.
6: Don’t trust pre-order devices such as brand new algorithm ASICs, magical Acorn accelerators, FPGAs and any device that hasn’t been released yet. Especially if it’s from a brand new company. There’s a 20% chance it meets expectations, a 30% chance it’s delivered late and you missed out on the profit, and a 50% chance it’s an outright scam.
–> Bitmain/Obelisk/Avalon are the only companies you should pre-order from.
7: Know when you missed the gold rush boat. It’s impossible to time the market. If you built your farm in June 2017, that’s great and you win. But if it’s March 2018 and the price already peaked, you’re probably late to the party and should stay out of Bitcoin. That’s just how these bubbles work. Don’t hesitate to exit the market as well. Selling your video cards at $200 is better than doing it at $90. Don’t feel bad about not making money that you could’ve made. Do feel bad about losses that you could’ve prevented.
8 (the most important one): Mining will never make you rich quickly unless you already have capital to invest. It’s a chicken and egg situation. Even if you plan to HODL your coins you won’t make a life-changing profit. Instead, build your computer and business knowledge and figure out how to apply it so you can get a technology job or get promoted or become a consultant and charge $100/hour. That will make you hundreds of thousands in the future, guaranteed. Much better than betting on hardware and coins. Especially if you’re young like me and are just starting your career.
https://www.reddit.com/r/gpumining/comments/8hgm10/mining_will_only_change_your_life_if_you_work/v%20ggg
The crypto industry is in a recession right now, but I think we’ll have a gold rush again in 1-2 years. Bitcoin is now $5000 after all. Before the last boom it was just $400, which is a 10x increase. New ASIC-resistant coins are being released and GPUs are here to stay.
If/when the next gold rush starts, I’m going to use my labor and experience to make profit helping other people build their warehouses. I’m not going to build another mining farm.
April 18, 2021 @ 8:20 pm
Reading your response now and it’s clear you really didn’t know what you were doing.
BTC was always a “mine and hold” opportunity. You just didn’t have the right timing horizon…
October 31, 2017 @ 7:13 am
High Graphics GPU – Best Deal.Deliver Only in india.6 GPU slots are available.Best Suit for Mining coins. Please find the below link. No Delivery Charges.
http://www.payumoney.com/webfront/index/GPU
January 18, 2018 @ 7:28 pm
Hi there, Do you have a number of minimun antminer to have in ontario, in order to be profitable? I am trying to get better information about energy cost but I am stuck, I got a number of 5.17 CAD per day per antminer s9. What do you think about this number? Thanks in advance
January 18, 2018 @ 7:30 pm
Rafa, keep doing your research lol. They consume about 1000 KwH per month.
February 18, 2017 @ 11:04 pm
You mention to avoid air conditioning. What if it’s in a hot area like Phoenix? I’m in the beginning stages of planning a 20-40 Antminer S9 setup depending on logistics. I’m looking at a warehouse (similar to your 20 Antminer setup) or possibly building a work shop. AC would have to be ran at least 4 months of the year I imagine. I’m not positive on how to calculate costs for AC but I am estimating it to be an addition 10% in electricity. At those margins I should still be profitable durning summer months. Thoughts?
February 19, 2017 @ 5:03 pm
There are a couple things you want to think about for cooling the Bitcoin mining facility in Phoenix. You can definitely calculate how much air conditioning would be required and that would be a good starting point. The second thing that you need to calculate is how much throughput on the airflow you’re going to need.
Since you don’t want any back circulation of air into the antminer you can take 20 miners and calculated at 220 cubic feet per minute per Miner and get a number of about 4500 cubic feet per minute. That’s the minimum airflow you need to prevent the air from recirculating. You’ll also need to put up barriers to prevent the recirculation from happening.
The second thing you’re going to need is to calculate how many tons of air conditioning you’ll need. This website provides a good basic explanation of that.
https://www.dataclean.com/secret-to-watts-btus-and-tons.html
So you can see if you have 20 miners they’ll use about 30 kilowatts of electricity. Leave yourself a little wiggle room and use a number of 40 kilowatts and you’ll see that you need about 12 tons of air conditioning to remove the heat produced from the miners.
A really rough calculation is that 12 tons of air conditioning would use 12 kilowatt hour of electricity.
If my calculations are correct that means you would use about 35% more electricity when you put it in an air-conditioned room. And I don’t know what the acquisition cost of a 12 ton 5000 cubic feet per minute system is.
You may want to consider doing something different and mining something with a much lower power usage and putting it in an air-conditioned environment.
I’m still writing the article but the most power-efficient mining equipment out there is the Baikal giant a900 mining X11 for dash. One Miner uses 250 Watts, not the 1500 watts that an antminer S9 does.
July 9, 2017 @ 1:54 pm
The S9 is designed to up up around 100 degrees if you give it enough airflow. Even in Phoenix, this is possible most of the year with evap cooling that you can get much much cheaper than AC. Don’t let anyone tell you that it’ll be too humid and ruin the miners. In phoenix you won’t be exceeding 50% RH in most cases which is well within the operating limits of pretty much any computer equipment I’ve ever seen.
I’m considering the same thing here in Phoenix and plan on compensating with a huge amount of airflow to make sure the miners stay ‘cool enough’. August is really my only worry when the humidity level will leave the evap units less effective. Even if you had to shut down miners for 10 hours a day in August, it would still be more economical than installing and running AC.
July 10, 2017 @ 12:56 pm
First off wanna say thanks for the post.
Im in Phoenix area as well. Been small time mining for quite some time(2014). In the process now of getting space for Antminers. I have had the same idea as @Ken here. The AC comment is going kill costs in even one month or a few hours.
July 13, 2017 @ 8:22 am
I’m running my Antminers and GPU miners in the Georgia heat right right now. It is hitting over 90 degrees during the day. A few of the miners are not happy, but most of them are running fine. I think I have about 300 CFM per miner of natural circulation air right now.
You could probably even just shut everything down in August to not stress it. I know that over 80% of my costs are electricity. No profit, and much less expenses.
I think it is better to have the miners close by than to have to fly to a datacenter to access them. Travel eats up costs in a hurry.
You could also move…but that’s not an option for me with 4 kids in the house.
November 13, 2017 @ 1:06 am
Hi Rolf,
Where do you live in Georgia (Country) Tbilisi or outside. If is it country Georgia can you tell me the Electricity price of Tbilisi.
Regards,
Rashid
November 26, 2017 @ 11:05 pm
What about running a small computer that is measuring the Temp inside and outside and just using smart shutdown on each miner. When the temp peaks … just start shutting down miners and then toward the evening start cranking them back up and let them run all night long when it’s much cooler!! This avoids the costs of buying, installing, and paying for the electricity for air conditioning!
May 24, 2017 @ 10:17 am
Hi Rolf, thanks for you blogs and videos. They are very informative. I thought I had missed the boat and was too late in starting mining bitcoins or some other cryptocurrency . Watching your video “Tips for Small Bitcoin Miners to Maximize Their Advantages” gave me faith again. But then this article brought back to reality and confirm what I had read on the subject. You need very low electricity price to be able to have a profitable small mining operation. You mention in your article $0.10 per KiloWatt Hour or less to maintain profitability. Here in the UK the cost is £0.12 ($0.16 ) per KiloWatt Hour, well above your recommended price. Do you still think is worth it? Are the alternative cryptocurrencies to bitcoin the answer to be profitable? you mentioned $11000 / year in one of your other post. That would be a nice target. Cheers.
June 24, 2017 @ 6:45 pm
I think at the current cryptocurrency prices it is worth it even at higher electric prices.
July 16, 2017 @ 3:44 pm
thanks so so much for this I’m planning to buy 80 s9’s and saw on some other guides people have a hot and cold side to direct air flow is that necessary the mine will be located around central Indiana
July 17, 2017 @ 12:27 pm
I like to bring in cold air in the middle then send it out. Here is a video I did of my cooling setup in Georgia. You are welcome to come visit to see if you are going to be in the area.
https://youtu.be/3mbnQPcU34I
August 11, 2017 @ 10:43 pm
Hello I’m new in mining, yesterday I buy 4 Antminer D3 and want to ask if this parts that I’m going to buy are correct to plan all my mining. Thank you so much for your help. The miners are going to be inside home here in California.
Firewall and router:
Cisco Small Business RV110W 5 Port Fast Ethernet Wireless-N VPN Firewall Router Model RV110W-A-NA-K9
Network Switches
Refurbished: TP-LINK TL-SG1016D 10/100/1000Mbps 16-Port Gigabit 13-inch Rackmountable Switch, 32Gbps Capacity – 16 Ports – 16 x RJ-45
Power Distribution Unit
Tripp Lite Basic PDU, 16A, 14 Outlets (12 C13 & 2 C19), 100 – 240 V, C20 Input, 1U Rack-Mount Power (PDU12IEC)
Power Cords
Tripp Lite Model P005-003-AGN 3 ft. Heavy-Duty Power Extension Cord, 15A, 14 AWG (IEC-320-C14 to IEC-320-C13) Male to Female
August 11, 2017 @ 11:22 pm
Those all look good. You will also need power supplies for the Antminer D3’s. Something like this would work the best: https://shop.bitmain.com/productDetail.htm?pid=00020170810145351509wM7QTNd9067F
August 12, 2017 @ 8:09 pm
Oh yes I buy the Antminer D3 and the bitmain PSU too.
Thank you so much
August 28, 2017 @ 1:01 pm
Please let me know how it goes!
September 27, 2017 @ 3:13 am
HI Chris,
I am Sudhakar from San Jose.Where r u located in CA. .
I ordered 2 D3s for Late Nov. I wan to know abt the setup.Can i visit your D3 mining room/farm
Tahnks,
Sudhakar.
October 3, 2017 @ 4:24 pm
I’m in Georgia, north of Atlanta. Good luck!
December 10, 2019 @ 4:27 pm
Please I am also new into mining
August 18, 2017 @ 5:13 am
Hello. I’m absolutely blown away at the great info I’ve read here. I’m not the most experienced but I been mining BTC since s2 to s9 .
I’m looking to help some miners in return for good referrals. I’m in GA in the se us as well. We have eliminated 38% of Kw/hr costs though own own PFC and smart voltage regulators.
I’m not sure how to make the game better for the decentralization other than just launch . Anyone got experience with the Energy or Amp reduction and POwer Factor capable PSU add on ?
I’m available Andrew@nullKillaWattCoin.com
August 28, 2017 @ 12:59 pm
yeah, you probably need to just launch. But if you want to me to give your power factor correction and voltage regulator system a try, let me know.
August 18, 2017 @ 10:39 am
What’s wrong with smart pdus? For example, apc ones. I’m planning to build my farm with a bunch of these.
August 18, 2017 @ 11:04 am
There’s nothing at all wrong with smart PDU’s. At my small Mining facility I have six of them. I like that they show the exact number of amps and that they can be remotely accessed and reset the ports.
The problem is they cost almost $700 each and dumb pdus cost about $170 each. At my big Mining facility I have 48 30 amp receptacles right now and I’m expanding to 96.
I discovered that I don’t ever remote access the pdus and I don’t remotely reset them and that once I figured out how many miners I can hang off 1 PDU it was easier to go with the dumb ones.
I save $5,000 by going with the dumb ones instead of the Smart Ones. I like to keep my costs as low as possible. They also only take 1 rack space instead of 2.
August 28, 2017 @ 12:57 pm
Nothing is wrong with Smart PDU’s. I have 6 of them. You probably don’t need or use any of their features, and you can buy 1 or 2 GPU’s with the money you save buying a less expensive PDU.
August 18, 2017 @ 5:00 pm
Hey Rolf,
Great work and very informative. We have spoken via Slack a couple times about ZENCASH and I appreciate your time and advice.
I am currently working on a small mining farm in Gadsden Alabama. We are starting out with 15 Antminer D3’s, 2 Innosilicon A5’s and 4 Antminer L3’s. We are currently waiting for delivery and trying to have everything setup before they arrive. I am about 3 hours from you and have some family I visit often in the Canton area. I saw above your invitation to visit if in the area. Is the invitation still open? If so, can we plan a visit sometime that would convenient for you.
I look forward to your reply and again, great job on the post and your whole website in general.
JD
August 28, 2017 @ 12:54 pm
Sure, come on by! I am happy to show people around both my mining facilities for a quick tour.
August 23, 2017 @ 8:55 pm
I read your Post and immediately bought an used Meraki mx64W without a license because I have a remote farm. But I realized that I have no idea of how to use it, it will be great if you make a post about it.
Do I need a MX64w Enterprise License and Support 1 Year License? Or can I buy just a MR enterprise License?
Besides the MX64W in the farm. Do I need an other meraki product for my house to make a VPN?
Is it possible to go into the antminers IP addresses to see their current status?
Any help I will appreciate it a lot.
August 28, 2017 @ 12:53 pm
Operating an enterprise grade firewall like the Meraki is complex…start with something cheap and simple you can learn how to use, and go from there.
August 31, 2017 @ 4:32 pm
Hey Rolf- Thanks for all of the info. I’ve been mining for a year now (S9 then L3 also with D3 on order). I have been colocating some of them in Iowa however they are now at capacity and I am in need of a home for more asic hardware. Have you given any thought to providing colocation?
Also I’m in Southeast Louisiana where we have decent electricity rates (sub $.09) and talked to my power company to provide another 200 amp line/meter and although that is feasible my biggest concern is providing enough air to keep them cool. I know you are in the Atlanta area however just wondering if it’s really worth it with the heat?
September 5, 2017 @ 4:46 pm
I am in the process of starting up an industrial scale data center for shared crypto mining. It would be organized as a co-operative based in Wyoming, which has some of the lowest electricity costs in the country and the most stable power grid in the US as well as 90+% free cooling. Currently commercial power runs about $0.06/kWh but it varies from year to year with the base rate under $0.01/kWh and with a huge wind project currently on hold I expect it to drop in the future either through direct development or some partnership with a utility co-op (another potential project on the table).
Under the co-operative format users could host their equipment by buying tokens similar to the Gigawatt ICO except this would be entirely a member-owned and governed entity. I believe the tokens can be issued at $0.50/w, significantly less than the Gigawatt token which ran between $1.00-$1.50/w for $0.03/kWh electricity (which is not really guaranteed since the power situation in eastern Washington is extremely fragile due to the subsidized cost structure). The entity would also function like REI as a consumer co-op so that we make money through hardware sales to the general public with members receiving dividends based on their purchases. The mining entity would not generate profit and would exist based on token purchases that function as member capital investment.
The goal is to help decentralize mining and reduce the transaction costs and learning curve for small miners through a co-op entity that helps streamline the process for everyone and brings more overall efficiency to the network.
So instead of 1000 people going on the internet and researching PDUs and engineering a novel cooling solution for a 5 S9 farm or whatever, we’d all put our resources into a large facility with industrial grade equipment designed and maintained by professionals so that we can share in the efficiencies of such an operation.
So it’s better than colo because it’s designed specifically for mining and located in a place that could easily be the next best thing to Iceland (which would be the next next phase of this project).
What do you think?
September 8, 2017 @ 4:37 pm
When I lived in Colorado I would drive all over Wyoming for business. I remember the drive from Cheyenne to Casper, and seeing the huge power plant just southeast of Casper, and thinking it would be a great place for mining. I still have friends there, and would love to visit.
I think what you are doing sounds great. Go for it!
I am a fan of starting small and growing over time, though, and am too busy for anything else, so this is not something I am interested in.
November 22, 2017 @ 8:52 am
Kelvin,
Were you in the Air Force by any chance? Stationed in Portland?
Mark
November 27, 2017 @ 10:25 am
Kelvin, are you still working on setting up that coop in Wyoming? I have an interest.
January 15, 2018 @ 4:43 pm
Lance/ Mike. We run facilities in WY specifically built for miners. What space are you looking for?
September 3, 2017 @ 2:42 pm
Hello,
My question is about the PDU. To Operate 40 miners which are the L3+ I am using a 2400watt PSU that can power 3 L3+ at a time. 13.6 Amp Max each on these PSUs.
The plugs have the C13 type to go into the PDU but what Amp rating PDU do I need to plug in all these miners? Do i get a bunch of 6-8 socket PDUs?? or a couple super long 36 socket PDUs?
Will all the miners plug into just 2, 36 socket PDUs? Room for growth also.
Trying to minimize any mistakes.
Hope you can give a little direction.
Thank you
September 3, 2017 @ 7:36 pm
Your pdu will normally have a current limit per outlet. You won’t be able to plug in more than probably 3 psu per pdu depending on the ratings, so I would recommend getting smaller pdus if you have the option and make sure they handle the amps you need to pull per outlet, not just overall.
Remember that pdus are derated for 24×7 operation, so a 30a outlet can only drive 24a of load.
September 8, 2017 @ 11:54 am
Great Article Rolf!
I am looking to start up a 60 x Avalon 741 Farm.
I am curious on what you would recommend for a power supply?
I am trying to run large power supplies so I dont need to run as many.
What PSU’s have the most 6 pin PCIe outputs?
Thanks
Nick
September 8, 2017 @ 4:27 pm
Parallel Miner has some good ones. http://www.parallelminer.com/product-category/power-supply-kit/
September 9, 2017 @ 10:36 am
Very handy Website!
Do you think its a bad time to invest in a setup? When are we to expect new bitcoin mining hardware? From what I read on Canaans website 2018 will have new hardware. Does anyone know a more accurate release time?
September 10, 2017 @ 8:01 am
It’s unclear to me why you would choose to mine with 60 Avalon units when they are about 75% of the cost of an S9 and double the power usage per unit hashspeed. If Bitcoin prices were to decline significantly you would have effectively a total loss and if a new unit arrives with a higher hash rate then you would effectively have a sunk cost in depreciation that is unrecoverable and possibly will never be recovered from the diminishing positive return from your mining. It doesn’t sound to me like you know what you’re doing, and I would avoid Avalons unless you really want to throw all that money away or you have some clear business model that you want to share.
In general, you want to mine with the fastest available hardware that gives you the fastest ROI (break even) on your hardware costs. The size of your initial investment should not be your main concern rather the speed in which you can ROI (break even) should be. From the sound of it you are purchasing new Avalons and again, comparatively speaking, that is a terrible investment unless you have a source of free or extremely cheap electricity. And even then I think it would be a colossal waste to be consuming electricity (even if it is renewable) like that to generate a return that is comparatively lower than most of your other options.
Currently, that would be mining with an Antminer D3+, but given that the network rate is expected to quadruple in a matter of months it remains to be seen how long this will hold up. Second to the D3+ is the L3+ and then the S9. Currently GPU mining for Ethereum or Monero are nowhere near the ROI rate that you can get with ASICs but my feeling is that Monero has the highest potential price increase in the near term and is probably a good coin to mine in general due to their very stable developer community and positioning as a high utility crypto (i.e. less marketing and more function). And you can build a reasonably priced XMR miner with a variety of different hardware.
September 10, 2017 @ 8:04 am
I should also mention that two other (faster, lower energy) ASIC Dash miners are on the market, but they have priced themselves in such a way that it is uneconomical to use them compared to the D3+. Pinidea offers no warranty and the Inno will not produce better returns than an equivalent investment in D3+s over the near term (~6 mo).
September 10, 2017 @ 8:33 am
Great feedback Kelvin including your feedback on my posts as well. Points my nose in a direction to dig deeper and learn much more. Much appreciated!
December 12, 2017 @ 3:47 pm
Kelvin you seem to be suggesting that the Antminer D3+ and L3+ gives you the fastest ROI over the S9 , can you explain how you came to that conclusion? I’m not contradicting just trying to understand.
September 9, 2017 @ 11:54 am
Great article and website Rolf. You’re a saint for putting in all this extra work just to help others.
My question is about acquiring S9s. Approximately what price should I expect to pay? I’m actually living over in Malaysia at the moment. Maybe it’s cheapest to get on a flight to Bejing and purchase direct? It seems they are also though to come by. What sort of lead time did you face before receiving your rigs?
A
September 9, 2017 @ 12:34 pm
Great question I am also looking to source antminers.
September 10, 2017 @ 7:44 am
Bitmain sells them directly to consumer/wholesaler on their website. You will not find them cheaper by flying to Beijing because they are sold on a release schedule that is published on twitter/facebook. No S9s have been announced since late July or early August and those had a ship date of mid to late October. They probably have made production of D3+ and L3+ a higher priority since those are likely higher margin units.
They have increased the price on their site a bit to $1288, which after customs and shipping will be around $1400 depending on how many units you buy.
September 10, 2017 @ 1:21 am
Hi again Rolf. You mentioned that with an Ant-miner S9 one should be able to generate about 0.5 Bitcoin per month. I’ve just ran a calculation through an online calculator with the result telling me it would take about 262 days to generate 1 BTC.
Please correct my understanding. What am I missing? Possibly you’ve take pool mining into consideration for your number?
Thanks,
Todd
September 10, 2017 @ 7:48 am
You need to understand that there is no guaranteed return from “mining” cryptocurrencies. It is all dependent on the network difficulty rate which is basically to say the more miners there are online the more the price has to increase to keep the return up. So over time if the price doesn’t change and more miners come online the return will decrease as the difficulty increases. Then you need to take into account the reward halving that occurs every 4 years. Look these things up as they are readily discoverable on the internet since they are intrinsic to what is Bitcoin. Wikipedia may give you all of these insights.
If the price crashes, you may find miners going off line, which actually causes a kind of negative feedback loop as transaction times increase as panic selling (i.e. more transactions) may cause the price to decline. Those were the early days and now it’s less likely to happen but there is a relationship between declining prices and slow transaction times due to high transaction volume as a low liquidity environment may lead people to panic sell.
September 11, 2017 @ 3:05 pm
Kelvin
Thank you for you knowledge and insight. I am just now in the planning atages of my company and i ran the numbers and it is very clear to me how unefficiant the avalon 741’s would be.
However this is my situation.
I am planning to mine in my basement in canada with effective electricity costs about $0.06/kwh after distribution fees.
My basement is relativly cold all year about 10 degrees celcius. I am looking into getting 300 amps of 208volt service installed.
I would like to diversify in my crytos that I mine and am considering
15 antminer S9s @ 1375 watts
15 Antminer D3s @ 1200 watts
15 Antminer L3s @ 800 watts
15×1375 = 20625 watts
15×1200 = 18000 watts
15×800 = 12000 watts
50625 watts total for miners/ 208 volt
= about 244 amps of draw which should be sustainable with my power installation.
What do you think of this model?
Is this bitcoin/dash/litecoin model diverse enough to be a solid starting point?
Nick
September 11, 2017 @ 3:12 pm
Just a comment on your power calculations. If you have 50600 watts of power at 208 3 phase, you need to divide by 1.73 to get the actual Amps of service needed. Youre actually pulling 140A of draw not 244.
Dont forget to plan for HVAc. youre basement wont just soak up all of that heat. it will eventually get overheated with that much equipment in there. You need cooling fans / ventilation in your power calcs.
Also, probably want to plan for at least 20% overhead on the service since it’ll be 100% duty cycle.
September 11, 2017 @ 3:18 pm
I think it is diverse enough. I also think you are going to overheat your basement in a hurry.
You will be putting 50KW of heat into a small space. I would not do this without less than 15,000 Cubic Feet per minute of ventilation
September 11, 2017 @ 11:59 pm
Thanks guys and yes ventilation was in the plan I just hadn’t mentioned it as I was at the bank typing on my phone and they had called me in. But it looks like the power install will be 40000$ and that is not in the budget right now. However I did find a nice warehouse with plenty of space and 400 amp 3 phase 200v.
My next question is I am not having any luck with bit main its been almost a week since I sent them a ticket about a purchase order.
Does anyone know what kinda timeline bitmain is taking for responces?
I could Imagine it is insanely busy around there with all the craze of mining cryptos.
Any other suggestions on sourcing alt coin or bitcoin miners?
September 12, 2017 @ 1:02 am
If you asked them about a new PO for purchasing miners, forget it they will ignore you. The orders for new miners happen every few weeks and the website gets slammed with traffic. You need to have a lot of dry powder ready to jump on their site once the miners are listed or your’e not going to get to buy anything.
Oh, and once you do, you’ll be waiting a couple months for the miners to arrive.
October 3, 2017 @ 4:28 pm
Kelvin,
Thanks for jumping in an answering questions that people have. I agree with every one of your answers and comments!
Rolf
November 21, 2017 @ 6:14 pm
This is the only place I’ve found that says you can use 3 phase power with the Antminers. Is it safe to say that the APW3++ from Bitmain can run on 208V, 3 phase power? I will be powering the Antminer L3+. Thanks.
November 21, 2017 @ 7:51 pm
By the time ‘3 phase’ is turned into 208v power it is no longer 3 phase, its single phase. The 3 phase is 3 120 volt lines that are 120 degrees out of phase from each other + a neutral. If you use 2 of the 120v lines you will get 208v. At that point it is no longer ‘3 phase’ it is single phase. If you needed all 3 hots + the neutral to supply the device then it would be a 3phase device.
November 22, 2017 @ 8:50 am
Thank you so much for the quick reply. I get that part of it, I’m just trying to find out if the APW3++ and Antminer L3+ can actually accept 3 phase power without damaging the units. I’m trying to determine how many L3+’s I can plug into a 30A PDU. If I’m stuck with 208V, single phase power, I can put 4, maybe 5, L3+s on one 30A strip. I’m figuring 1000 watts per machine. That’s at 800w (+200w for variances and possible overclocking). If those machines can handle 208V, 3 phase power, that would be 8 machines per strip. That would save me a bunch of money on PDUs, make my setup a little easier and possibly prolong the life of my equipment (assuming I don’t overclock). Thanks again for the help.
November 22, 2017 @ 2:22 pm
The apw power supply’s will run fine on standard 208v power. Remember in your calcs that a 30a circuit will only deliver 24a through the pdu. I think I calc’d about 5 L3s would be the safe max for each 30a 208 circuit.
The 24a limit is imposed because your running them 24/7 so they debate the capacity by 20%
November 22, 2017 @ 2:36 pm
Thanks again for the quick response, but I not sure what you mean by “standard” 208V power. Do you mean 3 phase or single phase. I just want to know if I can plug an APW3++ with an Antminer L3+ attached to it, into a 3 phase, 208V socket without damaging the equipment.
November 22, 2017 @ 4:55 pm
Yes. When it is 208 is isn’t 3 phase anymore. Three phase would have four wires, your pdu plugged into a 30a 208 circuit will only have 3, 2 hots and a neutral.
When you have a 3 phase supply most loads will draw off of only two of the phases which is how you get 208v out of two 120v lines.
Short answer – a three phase supply broken out into 208v circuits will drive an antminer psu just fine.
November 22, 2017 @ 5:41 pm
So maybe I’m confused. Everything I’ve read says that the 208V can be 3 phase power at the outlet if a 3 pole circuit breaker is used. It will be single phase if a 2 pole circuit breaker is used (as you’ve said). It’s my understanding that since the power is 3 phase coming into the panel, I’m still getting the efficiency advantages of 3 phase service whether or not it is single phase or 3 phase at the outlet. However, if I can get 3 phase power at the outlet, I’ll need fewer PDUs for my miners, saving money and rack space.
Rolf, do you have any experience with 3 phase power at the outlets and miners?
November 23, 2017 @ 8:20 am
Im sure Rolf may chime in with additional insight but for now, I think I understand the gap here… You will -not- be delivering true 3 phase to an antminer power supply. You will be delivering 208 single phase.
No ATX power supplies that Ive ever seen can accommodate an actual 3 phase supply (208Y) they accommodate single phase supplies and prefer them to be above 200v (either 208 or 240).
The efficiency people refer to when discussing 3p is related to the cost of getting service and how many devices (miners) can be run off of a given service size. For example a 200a 240v service wont power nearly as many miners as a 200a 208Y service.
Hope this still helps, and Ill drop off of the responses if this still doesnt get there and let someone else give it a shot.
January 31, 2018 @ 2:06 am
208V Can be 3 Phase & Single Phase.
-Master Electrician. Noobie Miner
February 1, 2018 @ 6:33 pm
Bart,
ASIC Miners and their power supplies are single phase. What Rolf was describing is that he has 3 phase coming into his facility. It is then broke down through a switchgear box into multiple single phase 400amp, 208v panels.
I have visited his facility but it was just before his recent expansion.
Hope this helps.
JD
February 1, 2018 @ 6:36 pm
Apologies Bart, I think my comment was intended for Mark….
September 10, 2017 @ 5:19 pm
Holy wow. I love everything you have published!
Some questions:
1. what site can you loan people dash to sell short and make the .1% profit per day and how do you set it up?
2. What pool did you say you were using?I heard like apc.pool.com or something but couldn’t make it out. How did you choose that one? DO you ever change or that’s your go to bitcoin pool. How often does it get a coin on that network?
3. What site are you buying your asic miners from? Any good places? Everyone so overpriced. And a lot want pay bitcoin; how do you protect yourself if they never ship? Where are you buying/building your GPU miners components?
September 12, 2017 @ 11:24 pm
I just stumbled upon this, maybe bit main will have some competition?
GMO Internet group set to start a bitcoin mining facility and to release 7nm ASIC miners in 2018
http://ir.gmo.jp/en/pdf/irlibrary/disclose_info20170907_e.pdf
October 3, 2017 @ 4:30 pm
This site shows you how to lend on exchanges. https://cryptolend.net/rates.html
I’ve stopped doing it though. I think the risk of the exchange being forced to halt all withdrawals outweighs the rewards of incremental gain.
September 13, 2017 @ 10:11 pm
Rolf, can you explain what the PDU’s accomplish? why not run the miner power supplies directly into the 220v outlet? Thanks for all the information, it’s excellent.
September 13, 2017 @ 11:55 pm
It’s like a power strip. The outlet provides 30 amps, but one miner needs about 7.5 amps. If you plug the miner directly into the outlet you are not maximizing the use of your electrical infrastructure.
September 24, 2017 @ 10:39 pm
Rolf,
You can have more that one outlet on the same 220v circuit.
Tony
October 3, 2017 @ 4:31 pm
To each his own. I like the flexibility. One one PDU I can plug in 4 antminer S9, or 8 antminer L3+, or 5-6 GPU miners, or any combination of the above. And a network switch wherever I want.
Individual outlets don’t give you that flexibility.
November 21, 2017 @ 5:31 pm
Great article Rolf, can you provide some fotos too? as one pic is worth 1K of words.. For PDUs We have 110V here in Quebec with more resistance on the outlets.. where did you see BTW the demand fee at 3 cents? it is at 14.7$ per KWH/Month and the rate goes down the more you climb into the tiers they have.
How much sqft per 15 miners /shelved rack you allocate? At Bitmain mining facilities I see they create 1to1 with airflow controls where 2 racks front each other and inbound air blows from above between them (inflow lane), the space between is roughly 1 shelved rack width, and on the backs you have the outflow lane where racks face each other back to back for outflow.. and air is sucked from above.
I am planning the business case for a medium to large farm to be operational in Montreal with possibility of colocation to miners and Hash/Miners sale/rental
Montreal’s power rates, annual 240 days free cooling and infrastructure makes it the perfect place.
Currently we have 10 S9 and L3+ miners shipping and few GPU rigs up and running, we are actively searching for local and serious partner investors if interested reach me on my email.
Michel, Montreal
November 21, 2017 @ 6:28 pm
Hey Michel,
I’ve also been considering setting up in Montreal, and doing a blend of my own mining, and offering colocation. Hydro Quebec is offering as low as 2.5c CAD per kWh all in, with minimum 1mw service.
If you’d like to discuss a potential partnership, reach out to me: tylermckaig at gmail. I’m from SW Ontario.
Cheers,
Tyler
November 21, 2017 @ 6:34 pm
Hi Tyler
At 1MW you will need to run like 1000 S9 Rigs assuming cooling will be required at 10% only of total power consumption, 150KW would cost around 8500 USD/M on the M rate
Will reach out to discuss potential coop 🙂
April 5, 2018 @ 6:45 pm
Hey Tyler Just wondering if you moved forward with this?
September 16, 2017 @ 8:24 am
Hi Rolf,
Really thanks for the wonderful write-up.
I have a question regarding the wiring work.
Currently I’m living in a small home with a single phase 240V, 100 amps. (I’m not certain with the maximum amperage of my house is able to provide) Please look at the photos attached below.
https://ibb.co/b8Gx8k
https://ibb.co/d3E615
How many rigs will i be able to run smoothly in the house assuming that no other electric appliances are running at the same time? I’m a GPU miner for your information.
Thank you.
September 17, 2017 @ 11:08 am
If your GPU miner uses 1000 Watts, then 240VAC and 100A provides you a limit of 24,000 Watts.
Theoretically you could have 24. Practically, your breaker will probably pop at a sustained amperage of 80Amps, your electric wiring will be inefficient, and you probably have other demands on the electricity at your place.
So I’m guessing you will be able to run at most 12-16 GPU miners at your house.
September 17, 2017 @ 12:29 am
Hi Rolf,
Great write-up.
Really appreciate if you can clear a few confusion of mine regarding the wiring part.
I’m living in a small house now, where is has only 100 amps, my electrician is advising me to use a 32 amps circuit to come out with 4 receptacles.
Since it only has maximum 100 amps output, considering 1 GPU rig of mine will take up approximate 5-6 amps maximum, i can have 15-16 GPU rigs to be at the safe time, considering leaving about 20% room for the main breaker.
What do you think?
Do you think i should look for a warehouse with greater power supply instead ?
Or this is viable for a small size miner like me ?
Thank you.
September 17, 2017 @ 11:04 am
I think you should get started as quickly as you can, however you can.
If you prefer to use 4 outlets instead of 1 outlet and a PDU, go for it. When you fill up your house with rigs and your main breaker pops a few times a day then it is probably time to find some other space.
December 21, 2017 @ 8:49 pm
Second this…:) I have a little shop in my home, with a heater on 240V and one separate line of 120V…
I’ve put 3 miners on the 240 line (20 Amp breaker) and it held… Put another miner on the 120V circuit (breaker at 15Amp) and… that’s about it! Next month, when I receive 4 more, I am moving into a warehouse…:)
September 21, 2017 @ 8:06 pm
Hello Rolf, I’ve seen your Data Networking video and well looked for the Meraki MX64 but its suggest maximum 50 clients connected. For mining facilities over 50 miners that doesnt work or thats for PC kind of devices? Also, I dont see you recommending any Routers, do you connect the switch directly to the firewall? You use a layer 3 switch? Or meraki provides routing capabilities? With a partner we are building a mining facility and could use your help on it.
October 3, 2017 @ 4:35 pm
Find a local data networking reseller and get their help would be my recommendation. I am confortable running a flat network up to 400 hosts. So I plug switches into each other, do dual uplinks so and let spanning tree logically shut one of them down, and don’t use a layer 3 switch or router.
Meraki MX64 will handle 400 miners easily. Find a local Cisco reseller and get some consulting help if you need it.
October 1, 2017 @ 3:34 am
Hi thete,
Am curious about starting a mobile unit with 20+ antminer s9’s. I live in a RV, and am looking for information about setting up a mining operation I can take with me wherever I decided to go. I’m curious about how to get set up to where mining is my main occupation please contact me for correspondence.
October 1, 2017 @ 4:21 am
Hi Cameron. You should check out the immersive cooling system from GR Cooling. They can fit 144 S9s into a 20 foot shipping container, complete with cooling tanks, power, and a fibre glass evaporative cooler.
A 20 foot shipping container is probably more than you’re thinking of but Im sure you could figure out how to scale the concept down to suit your needs.
November 27, 2017 @ 7:14 pm
Hi Todd
Thank you for this excellent tip,this cooling system can be the answer to the 3 most debilitating bitcom mining problems witch are:electricity,temperature and dust issues.I am a ym & es day-trader.i am planing to auto finance a cryto currency mining op. from stratch,i am trying to learn as much as i can from multiple source before i would spend a red cent.Your tip was most helpful,cheers!
October 1, 2017 @ 12:34 pm
The problem I see wth that is where are you going to get power from? most RV campsites have 30/50 amp 120 volt…
October 3, 2017 @ 4:36 pm
Best of luck!
Sorry, I don’t have time for correspondence, but hopefully some of my posts and videos help you out.
October 12, 2017 @ 10:55 pm
Great article Rolf, but… regarding cost of electricity in Quebec, this is also from their site:
http://www.hydroquebec.com/data-center/
********************************************************
“In Québec, we offer you a rate as low as US 2.48¢/kWh for your data center,
transmission and distribution included.
Yes, you read that right.
Follow the buzz…
These major players already call Québec home: Amazon Web Services, Google, Microsoft, Ericsson Canada, IBM, OVH, Salesforce.
Québec: the smart place to deploy your data center”
**************************************************************************
I asked around and even if it may not be 2.5 c, it definitely competes with Island at 5c…. And the other costs are definitely lower in Quebec. So if anyone is interested in opening a farm in Quebec, email me. I am running an S7 (residential) and waiting for two S9’s (to begin…) There are opportunities for mining in Quebec.
October 15, 2017 @ 8:21 pm
I’m interested in teaming up with you. Let me know how to contact you.
October 16, 2017 @ 3:59 pm
I have found I am not very good at reading electricity rate sheets. And that the more I use, the lower the price goes. Where I am at now, above 88,000 kWhr per month I pay $0.022 per kwhr, but there is a wholesale charge of $0.02 per kwhr. They have so many charges, it is crazy!
If I look at my overall bill, 150,000 kWh costs me about $10,200, and I average $0.067 per kWhr
I agree Quebec is good for mining, for many reasons. That’s why I traveled to Montreal last year. I’m still thinking of going there in the future.
Or maybe I will set up a mini-hydropower plan in the mountains somewhere, do line of sight wifi, and build a mining facility off the grid.
December 21, 2017 @ 9:09 pm
Rolf, sorry for missing on your comments… Been busy with receiving my miners, setting them up and buying 3 more for a friend who provides me temporary hosting. If you ever plan to come to Montreal, please write to me, I’ll message you privately. Quebec is like Iceland but closer to home…:) Electricity may be slightly more expensive, but the real estate is dirt cheap, by your standards. 1000 sq. feet goes for 1,200 CAD/month.
October 19, 2017 @ 12:24 pm
Question about 3 phase 208 v power, if I use a Power Distribution Unit with the Bitmain APW3++ power supply, do I just need to be sure the PDU is rated for 3 phase 208 V ? I ask because I recall reading about 3 phase that the machine/appliance needs to be capable of handling 3 phase. So no sort of transformer is needed to convert it to single phase, right ?
October 19, 2017 @ 12:25 pm
This is with using the Antminer S9, D3, L3+ by the way….
October 19, 2017 @ 2:00 pm
If you have a 3 phase system it has 3 hot wires. If you use two of them together you get 208v which is then capable of running a single phase load (like a power supply). The three phase machines you are referring to are designed to take all three hot lines at once and are typically large mechanical devices like motors.
October 19, 2017 @ 2:09 pm
Does this change the calculation at all regarding the amp draw ? (A = W / (V x 1.73) for 3 phase ) In other words since I’ll be using a single phase load from a 3 phase supply, do you still use the above formula or is it calculated just like single phase ?
The bottom line behind this is I’m trying to find a lease space and one already has 3 phase power and the other doesn’t. I thought with 3 phase I could put a lot more miners on a 200 amp panel since they don’t draw as many amps compared to single phase.
October 19, 2017 @ 3:28 pm
Yes, you have the Right idea. You will get considerably more miners into a 3 phase panel vs single for the same amperage.
October 20, 2017 @ 9:51 am
So for several Antminers getting power from a 3 phase supply, does the PDU need to be 3 phase since that is what it is plugged into or single phase since that is what the Antminers are ? Tripp Lite has both 3 phase and single phase PDUs.
October 20, 2017 @ 4:57 pm
When you break out a 3 phase panel into 208v circuits, the individual circuits are seen as a single phase. You would get single phase PDUs that are rated for 208 (or normally 208 / 240).
Google 3 phase basics. I’m not an electrician, so do your own research, but The general idea is to share a common neutral with 3 hots that are all 120 degrees our of phase from each other. Since they’re never at their peak at the same time, they’re able to share theh same neutral wire, and you can get more overall power using a smaller set of wires.
From a practical standpoint for mining, all it means is that you are going to hire an electrician to wire up a bunch of 208v 30a circuits that you will plug in your PDUs (single phase). The fact thaat your facility has 3 phase means you can wire up more of those circuits (and use more miners) than a comparably sized single phase panel.
The only time you would need a true 3 phase circuit would be to drive a machine specifically requiring it, such as a heavy motor / fan or something like that.
October 21, 2017 @ 2:50 pm
I had a few questions regarding miner temperature regulation and monitoring. The Antminers have two different temperatures, the Printed Circuit Board (PCB) and Chip temperatures. For the chip temp, the “stop working” temp is 125C and the “chip range” is 65 – 115 C according to a table I found online.
Do you monitor just the chip temp ?
Do you make adjustments in response to a high temperature when all 3 boards are high, or does only 1 need to be high before making adjustments ?
What temp triggers you to make any adjustments (assuming it’s for a prolonged period of time) ?
Do you monitor/measure the static pressure on the cold and hot sides ? How relevant do you think measuring and changing static pressure is on managing chip temperatures ? I ask because I’ve seen a lot of videos about cooling and only 1 person consistently mentions static pressure so I assume that no one else really pays attention to it.
Do you have a “troubleshooting checklist” when chip temps get high ?
October 27, 2017 @ 8:13 am
There are not a lot of adjustments to make. If the S9 overheat first they produce errors, then they shut down. If that happens you need more airflow or more cooling.
I prefer to have both intake and exhaust fans, which provides static pressure. If you use intake fans only you have positive pressure, exhaust only negative pressure. Just move a lot of air and you won’t build up heat.
October 26, 2017 @ 1:02 pm
This is a great article Rolf, thank you for writing it up. I’m planning to start a small bitcoin mine, and I have been reading many stories about banks closing people’s accounts for having anything to do with bitcoin. Have you found a bank that doesn’t have a problem with large amounts of USD coming in from something like Coinbase or GDAX on a regular basis? Do you mind sharing what bank that is?
Also, what NAICS code do you use for business classification for income taxes? I found 518210 “Data Processing, Hosting, and Related Services”, which seems close, but perhaps it should be something related to commodity or financial trading instead?
Thanks!
October 27, 2017 @ 8:14 am
tell the banks the truth, that you run a private datacenter. I have not had a problem with banks connecting to coinbase or kraken
February 3, 2018 @ 9:28 am
business account or personal?
March 7, 2018 @ 12:37 pm
my business account was shut down at chase
October 30, 2017 @ 11:58 am
I am looking into adding a separate 220v box with 400 amp service and whole house surge protection. How many amps will I need to run 25 Antminer L3++ and 5 Antminer D3 ACIS’s.
How many ASIC’s can a setup like this support? Do D3’s require more amps than L3’s? Eventually I would like to get some S9’s as well.
Is it best to use PDU’s or have a single 30 receptacle with 4 outlets, or individual outlets for each miner?
October 30, 2017 @ 10:11 pm
power is amps x volts, so if you plan 1600 Watts for an Antminer S9, and use 220VAC, that’s about 7-8 amps per antminer s0. I think the L3+ uses 800 watts and the D3 uses 1000 Watts.
I like to use 30 amp receptacles with PDU’s, but others like to use multiple outlets per 30 amp breaker. Do what you like.
October 30, 2017 @ 9:13 pm
Hey Rolf, I have a warehouse that has three-phase 208V transformer distributed to 120V panel, and I want to run a S9. I don’t want to run it on 120V as it isn’t efficient. Is it possible to rewire them to 208V with minimal construction? Do 208V even work on Bitmain’s PSU? Thanks!
October 30, 2017 @ 10:08 pm
208 VAC work on Bitmain’s PSU. 120 VAC will not work on Bitmain’s PSU.
I’d recommend you ask an electrician the best way to do the wiring. I know you can pull single phase 208VAC off the three phase transformer.
November 8, 2017 @ 11:08 pm
Hey Rolf, after running one S9 in my house, I decided to run 10 of them in my warehouse. The problem is that I didn’t realize how difficult it is to make an order from Bitmain. I spent nearly $18,000 for the S9 January batch, but I am not receiving any sort of confirmation. And now the order is expired when in fact I see the balance in the order address. After doing some research I saw that so many people are having trouble with their orders. Some say they didn’t even get their shipments. Customer support seems to be non-existent. How did you manage to get hundreds of miners from Bitmain!? It seems to me the supplier risk is way too high to even consider mining at mid-scale (100+ miners).
November 13, 2017 @ 12:14 am
I have had good luck with Bitmain. They are a little behind on their service, but if you buy from them I find they ship to you.
If you need to you can open up a support ticket with them. You may need to go back and forth a little but they have always been good for me.
November 6, 2017 @ 10:31 am
Hi, sorry for my ignorance. The louver you listed has much lower intake CFMs that the fan. You haven’t found that to be an issue? I noticed quite a bit amount of louvers having lower CFM throughput than the fans of same size.
Thanks for your time.
November 6, 2017 @ 11:28 am
I use two of the louvers for 1fan.
November 7, 2017 @ 12:04 pm
That makes sense Rolf. Thank you.
November 6, 2017 @ 3:00 pm
I live in a country that still has no regulation on bitcoin mining, so setting up that kind of business will be tricky. No regulation means no way to calculate taxes, but at least it’s not banned.
November 12, 2017 @ 5:09 pm
Hello. At the end of the article you said “plan for minimizing taxes right from the start”. Can you explain how to minimize the taxes?
Great article and thank you for putting all this content together.
November 12, 2017 @ 7:37 pm
Hi,
I believe Rolf was referring to finding a good accountant to show you how to depreciate your equipment (miners, etc…) over time as a tax right off.
Parry
November 13, 2017 @ 12:15 am
Exactly – and it depends on how taxes are calculated in your country. For the US, if you show only losses and no income every year it gets kind of suspicious.
December 9, 2017 @ 12:00 pm
Keep in mind that when they’re fully depreciated and you sell them, your cost basis is $0 (more than likely) so you’ll be taxed on the capital gain (difference between sell price and depreciated amount). Depending on your gear, taking the full depreciation in the first year makes sense sometimes instead of a depreciation schedule. (Depends on your profit too)
November 15, 2017 @ 2:16 pm
Have you considered mineral oil submersion cooling? We have 10 miners right now and when we expand to 50-100 we are definitely considering putting these beasts in a small swimming pool with mineral oil and just extracting the oil into a pair of big radiators with big fans on top of them. Would love to hear your thoughts on this or if you experimented with this.
December 27, 2017 @ 6:22 pm
seems like more work, additional parts that can break, and it would be hard to work on them if they needed repair.
November 17, 2017 @ 1:40 am
Hi Rolf, thank you for this great article. It let me clear understanding of workable steps.
Now I’m trying to find a warehouse for lease. What minimal size of room would you recommend for 20 s9 farm (length/width/height)? Roughly of course.
(It’s not Arizona, I live in Canada 🙂
Thanks again
December 27, 2017 @ 6:22 pm
300 square feet or so
November 22, 2017 @ 9:08 pm
I’ve looking at an supply fan to a 300 sq ft space but none have a filter and the supplier (Grainger) said they would not recommend putting a filter in the airflow because of the increased resistance. I saw your YouTube video of your medium sized mining farm when you were replacing the filters. It looked like you custom made a way to hold filters in front of the fan. How has that affected your fans, if at all ? I’m looking at a 24″ belt drive 1/2 hp cabinet supply fan but not sure how to fashion a filter in front of it and if I do whether it will shorten the motor lifespan.
November 26, 2017 @ 1:32 pm
I am curious to see is there any other practicL application to save your outdated ASIC’s. I am starting a 15xD3 farm in my basement here in Canada I have the power plumbed and the networking and cooling done. What I am wo dering is when these x11 script miners our no longer profitable for x11 coin mining is it worth keeping them for other applications? What do you current miners do with old hardware? Sell it on ebay as a paperweight?
November 26, 2017 @ 6:33 pm
After they aren’t profitable You have 15. 1200watt space heaters that earn back a couple bucks of their operating expenses that’s about it.
November 27, 2017 @ 2:21 pm
Does anyone have any suggestions on getting a facility? As o speak with brokers, any of the small startup sized locations with 100 or 200a service don’t seem too flexible about allowing additional ventilation to be added. I was envisioning a vent panel at the bottom of a secured roll up door with a couple 30” fans but I’m sure that’s coming across a bit ghetto to the brokers. None of the facilities have wall vents or roof vents and of course don’t want to cut big holes in their block walls.
December 8, 2017 @ 10:53 pm
Keep looking. Also if you offer to put a deposit down to cover the cost to repair the hole when you’re done, that should appease some who are concerned about resale.
November 29, 2017 @ 4:53 pm
Hi Rolf, I am currently setting up a mining operation. On your website you said, “Plan on each antminer using 6 amps.” Is that for the new s9 miners? If that is correct…I can run 4 antminers off a 30 amp breaker?
Trying to figure out what breakers to get and how many miners I can run per breaker. The building is wired with 208V three phase. I am having the electrical upgraded to 800amps. Was planning on doing what You suggested… “Tell the electrician that you want a bunch of 220 VAC, 30 Amp connections”
Thanks,
Carl
December 27, 2017 @ 6:24 pm
yes, 3 or 4 antminer S9 per 30 amp circuit
December 30, 2017 @ 5:50 pm
Hi Carl, as usual, Rolf is right… 🙂 My first setup was with 3 x S9 miners on a 20 Amp circuit.
I ran them for a month and the breaker never jumped. Not recommended as a setup, but just to emphasize that 6.66 Amps/miner covers it…
November 29, 2017 @ 7:21 pm
Rolf, with Bitmain releasing new batches, they seem to be selling further out from the date of shipping. I know you said not to buy pre-orders but how are you suppose to get the machines if the only reasonable price is a pre-order from Bitmain?
For example, Bitmain just announced 2 batch releases for purchase today, shipping in March!
December 8, 2017 @ 10:50 pm
I’m assuming the “no pre-order” comment was directed at new companies that don’t have an existing miner but want to “pre-sale” the device to raise money in the hopes of getting it produced. This is in contrast to an established company that runs a production schedule that takes orders for future batches a few months in advance. Bitmain seems to have a few months from first availability to shipping but they actually come through and ship the products they sold you. They may have questionable customer service but once you understand how they operate, it’s workable.
December 27, 2017 @ 6:24 pm
agreed – pre-order is the only way to get them now. But buy from someone who has a track record of shipment and support, like Bitmain
December 2, 2017 @ 1:23 am
Hi Rolf,
You recommend Cisco Meraki MX64W as a router for a small farm. I found on eBay another Cisco product – RV110W Wireless-N VPN Firewall which is much cheaper and provides almost the same functionality. Is this device suitable for a farm of 20 s9 ASICs? I am going to use it along with 24-port LAN switch.
Thank you
December 27, 2017 @ 6:25 pm
I don’t know. I have not used that box.
December 4, 2017 @ 1:20 pm
Hi Rolf,
First of all, thanks for the great post, and sharing all this knowledge and experience, well done.
I’m planning to build a small mining farm, about 20 Antminer S9. I live in Kuwait, and it’s extremely hot and humid here most of the year, but the electricity is extremely cheap, around $0.016 kWh.
In your blog, you mentioned that the Antminer S9 doesn’t need cooling, how come? I’m assuming you are saying that because the weather where you are at is cold, am i correct? In my case, I have no other options than using an air conditioner, i guess.
I have a room (4m x 4m). It’s totally empty and it’s in an extension of my house.
So, with cheap electricity, and the room available to me, what are my chances of running 20 Antminers S9?
Let’s assume I have the kW and the amp to run 20 miners…is this project feasible in your opinion? What are the things I need to consider or watch for?
Can I do hot isle isolation, and let a fan push the air out? In this case, how much of cooling and CFM do I need?
Appreciate your help
kWminer
December 27, 2017 @ 6:26 pm
you need to bring in enough cool air to the antminers so no hot air recirculates. 300 CFM per antminer. That is a LOT of air. For 20, that is 6000 CFM in and out of the room.
December 7, 2017 @ 1:27 pm
Are you using a WAN/LAN Server or connecting miners into Network switch and then the internet? What is the best way to set up a Cisco Meraki Wireless Firewall unit? I am currently setting up a number of L3+ and D3 units.
December 27, 2017 @ 6:26 pm
switch, firewall, then modem/router to internet
Tips for Small Bitcoin Miners to Maximize Their Advantages - Bitintruder
December 7, 2017 @ 10:57 pm
[…] data: Planning Your Bitcoin Mining Operation – https://blockoperations.com/planning-your-bitcoin-mining-operation/ Zabbix arrange as tracking for Antminers – […]
December 14, 2017 @ 3:11 pm
Rolf,
I attempted to talk with an insurance company today about purchasing Business Insurance. I told them that my business was a private data processing center. They asked me if I hosted. I said yes. When we were going through the questions they asked about coverage for lawsuits against lost information. I told them I didn’t need that coverage, which they began to ask why and I ultimately divulged that I would be handling cryptcurrency transactions. They immediately stopped the quote and said they can’t do it.
I know what I did wrong, but how did you secure your business insurance?
December 14, 2017 @ 4:27 pm
State Farm and be totally honest for the start.
December 16, 2017 @ 12:27 pm
Hi. I am having a problem with a couple of my S9’s 14Th/s that maybe you can shed some light on. On one of my machines, only two hashing boards are powering up and on another machine only 1 hashing board is powering up. I have tried swapping PSU’s but the problem still remains. These two machines are connected to 220VAC power on a 30 amp circuit through a 30 amp PDU with a total of 4 machines connected to the same PDU. I am using the Bitmain power distribution units APW3++
Thanks.
December 27, 2017 @ 6:29 pm
go through the Bitmain support recommendations
December 16, 2017 @ 8:12 pm
so if u need to run 12 antminer s9. do u need to bring in 3 220v bring in or just 3 outlet with 1 wiring would be ok?
December 16, 2017 @ 8:13 pm
wiring*
December 27, 2017 @ 6:28 pm
Whatever type of wiring that can handle the load. There are many ways to do it.
December 27, 2017 @ 6:39 pm
In order to run 12 s9, wire need to be at least 72 amp with 220v 1 wire or 30 amp with 220v 3 wires from panel. Correct?
December 16, 2017 @ 8:13 pm
wiring*
December 17, 2017 @ 12:09 am
Hi Rolf,
Question for you about leasing business space. Specifically, what do you look for when trying to lease a space to house 50 – 300 miners? Also, do you recommend looking into a datacenter?
I’m located in Texas and have a very small farm right now but given the success of bitcoin/crypto this year I’m definitely thinking of how best to expand in 2018.
Thoughts?
December 27, 2017 @ 6:28 pm
some people have trouble renting for that many miners. You may need to buy a small building. I got lucky that my landlord did not mind the electrical and ventilation modifications.
December 30, 2017 @ 4:54 pm
bitmain is always sold out
how did you order the miners?
December 30, 2017 @ 5:02 pm
They announce batch releases on their tweeter and facebook.
December 30, 2017 @ 5:03 pm
Bitmain may be the most efficient game in town but the sell out rate, quality issues (at times), and lack of top notch customer service means that you might consider looking elsewhere for miners. Canaan is a great option with New miners slated for 2018. As is whatsminer (even though they’re based on the 28nm chip architecture).
Also, I haven’t purchased these miners yet but was trying to price out the space and plan for growth in 2018.
January 14, 2018 @ 7:18 pm
I’ve been able to snag some Antminers when I was randomly looking at their site and it suddenly went on sale. Later that day they announced “Did you miss the morning batch ? It’s going on sale again tonight”.
I found a way to avoid the “random web search” since that’s not reliable. There are several websites that will monitor a web page of your choice for any changes and alert you. I picked one called Change Tower and there was an option to alert you to just a visual change to a site. I input the S9 web page and specified just the “Coming Soon” box as the area of the website that , if changed, I wanted to be notified. In other words, once that box changes to “Buy Now”, I get notified since it checks the site every 20 minutes. It worked well for the last batch. The free version only checks once a day if I remember correctly. I paid a small fee to have it search the site every 20 minutes.
Free Bitcoin 10000 Roll Script | Maen Yuk
December 19, 2017 @ 10:21 am
[…] Planning Your Bitcoin Mining Operation […]
height bitcoin s9 – site1.mystagingwebsite.com at Pressable
December 20, 2017 @ 8:45 am
[…] Planning Your Bitcoin Mining Operation – Block Operations […]
Free Bitcoin 1000 Roll Script | Maen Yuk
December 23, 2017 @ 7:18 pm
[…] Planning Your Bitcoin Mining Operation […]
Data Networking for Medium Size Bitcoin Mining Operations - Bitintruder
December 24, 2017 @ 10:51 am
[…] For additional information on making plans your Bitcoin mining operation, see this submit at my site: https://blockoperations.com/planning-your-bitcoin-mining-operation/ […]
Tips for Small Bitcoin Miners to Maximize Their Advantages - BitcoinPennies.com
December 28, 2017 @ 12:51 am
[…] information: Planning Your Bitcoin Mining Operation – https://blockoperations.com/planning-your-bitcoin-mining-operation/ Zabbix set up as monitoring for Antminers – […]
January 2, 2018 @ 6:42 am
Are PDUs considered surge protection?
Data Networking for Medium Size Bitcoin Mining Operations - BitcoinPennies.com
January 4, 2018 @ 1:09 am
[…] For more information on planning your Bitcoin mining operation, see this post at my website: https://blockoperations.com/planning-your-bitcoin-mining-operation/ […]
January 4, 2018 @ 7:35 am
I will buy some mining equipment as soon as possible!
January 4, 2018 @ 7:37 am
Today I will made also an order! I founded an interesting website on google!
Tips for Small Bitcoin Miners to Maximize Their Advantages - CryptoInvesting.tips
January 4, 2018 @ 10:02 am
[…] information: Planning Your Bitcoin Mining Operation – https://blockoperations.com/planning-your-bitcoin-mining-operation/ Zabbix set up as monitoring for Antminers – […]
January 11, 2018 @ 12:59 pm
Hey Rolf,
Thanks for your help in the past. What is the best way to remotely manage the systems and bios/uefi settings? I can remotely administer the machines with RDP but what about before the OS boots up, I find myself ushering the system to a new location or moving a monitor and keyboard/mouse combo around to check/edit bios settings. I’m using GPU miners with Celeron CPUs… Is there a more efficient way? Would be great to remotely view/edit the bios/uefi settings without having to be physically at each mining rig.
January 11, 2018 @ 1:21 pm
Regarding Taxes, lets say the business earned 2 bitcoin with a value of $15K per coin.
The year expense was $15K, leaving $15K profit (in bitcoin).
You cash out .33 percent of a coin or $5K into cash to the business bank account.
Do you pay income taxes on $5K and property taxes on the $10K remaining as bitcoin?
Or do you only have to pay on the profit that was converted to cash ($5K)?
January 12, 2018 @ 1:10 am
Hi,
Thanks for writing informative posts. Regarding the PDU, how are you able to know how many Amps you are using? I’ve seen some metered versions but they’re very expensive. Do you know of a more cost friendly way for me to measure amps?
January 12, 2018 @ 6:30 pm
cheap and safe dont mix. Do yourself a favor and learn electricity 101, im sure theres some youtube videos. That said you assuming you know your wattage you can convert that to amps here https://www.rapidtables.com/calc/electric/Watt_to_Amp_Calculator.html
January 12, 2018 @ 6:53 pm
I’m not sure the OP was asking about how to calculate amp draws as opposed to actually measuring the amps. As far as I know there is no published figure for the power factor for Antminers so we could guess it is between 0.95 and 1.0. If I’m trying to optimize the mixture of miners (S9,L3,D3) so that the amps drawn on the PDU are as close to 80% of the maximum load as possible, I know I’d find it helpful to know the real life amp draw as opposed to the calculated figure. But then again we’re not launching rocket ships and the calculations work fine for me.
January 12, 2018 @ 4:51 pm
Rolf,
You are the man! Quick question. Can you run SHA-256 (S9) and Scrypt (L3) miners using the same computer and mining software? If you had two (2) S9’s and two (2) L3’s, would you need a separate computer, or at least separate software to operate them? My initial thought would be no, but I’m not sure if I am missing anything. Let me know my good sir.
January 12, 2018 @ 6:56 pm
I can tell you that I’m using the software Awesome Miner (http://www.awesomeminer.com) and you can monitor and make bulk changes with S9, L3, D3 all on one platform.
January 14, 2018 @ 7:09 pm
Rolf,
I have 25 miners and I’m already finding myself constantly checking the monitoring dashboard (using Awesome Miner) and periodically finding a hashboard that is not recognized or a few “xxx” on the ASIC chips or a complete row of “xxx”. Right now I can’t imagine having 250 so I was wondering what operating parameters do you get notifications about that likely need immediate attention ? My first stab at it was setting up a command to reboot the S9 if the hash rate is below 9 TH/s since that represents the hash rate of just 2 boards on a 13.5 TH/s machine. Would love to know what other automated commands you have setup .
January 24, 2018 @ 10:54 pm
Great write-up Rolf.
The crypto mining landscape is becoming an arms race these days hah.
If anyone is in need of ASIC hosting, we’ve got an 80 MW facility with $0.04 USD/kW.
Let us know your project plans >> http://www.coinflowtechnologies.com
January 30, 2018 @ 8:35 pm
Thank you so much for all of your hard-earned experience and success. I am starting a farm of 30 asic miners, with plans to expand as much and as quickly as possible from there. Have you found a certain “saturation point” for lack of a better term, where more machines create more problems? Is there, in your experience, a certain point that you just don’t want to get any bigger? Thanks!
February 4, 2018 @ 11:49 am
We are building a 100 antminer s9 farm. My question is is there any PDU’s that can handle more amp I would say 50-100 amp. I am not a expert in electricity wiring but we are going to hire a electrician. I was thinking to have one 125 amp 220v breaker and power 10 antminer with it. Is there any PDU that can handle that much amps. Your help will be greatly appreciated. If there is no good solution for that I will just stick with 30 amp tripp lite PDU to power 4 antminers.
February 4, 2018 @ 3:46 pm
Do you recommend a whole circuit surge protector? Like the EATON CHSPT2ULTRA Ultimate Surge Protection.
https://www.amazon.com/CHSPT2ULTRA-Ultimate-Protection-Length-Height/dp/B01AQAKRSS
Or is it unnecessary. Thank you.
February 5, 2018 @ 2:51 pm
Really, in doing the actions, they’ll not even understand that they’re learning the essential
mathematical skills at the identical time https://math-problem-solver.com/ .
I commented on the portrayal of mathematics in that new
series in a latest commentary within the Huffington Put up.
bitcoin mining block » Cloud mining
February 7, 2018 @ 12:32 am
[…] Planning Your Bitcoin Mining Operation – Block Operations […]
February 7, 2018 @ 4:25 pm
New original Antminer S9 14TH/s + PSU 1600W APW3++ Bitcoin ASIC Miner cost 1200usd
New 2018 Hot sale Baikal Giant B with PSU Dash Coin Miner cost 6000USD
Antminer D3 cost $1,500 each unit including PSU and delivery to your home address.
Baikal giant 10 4000usd each unit including PSU and delivery to your home address.
Antminer A3 840 3500USDeach unit including PSU and delivery to your home address.
Antminer L3+ cost $1,300 each unit including PSU and delivery to your home address.
Delivery takes just 2-3 daysto your home doorstep through FedEx,Ups or Dhl shipping courier services.
We accept payment through Western Union or Money Gram Transfer and also Bank transfer and BTC .
IF YOU ARE READY TO PLACE ORDER AND FOR QUICK REPONSE CONTACT US HERE:
Whatsapp CHAT or Call : +19842085304
Email: james.steven102@nullengineer.com
Skype: faisa.hassan102
Best Regards
CEO
February 9, 2018 @ 2:15 pm
Hi Rosh, Thanks for the great write-up! I am just getting started. Is there a reason you did not use immersion cooling?
Thank you, Jay.
February 16, 2018 @ 6:46 am
Bitman Antminer S9 Bitcoin Miner 14TH/S available for sale at the price of US$1,200 per unit. We can discuss the price if you order more than 10 units.
It is possible to buy the miners in leasing (credit), with regular payments for a period up to 3 months. First installment is 50% only.
– 2 years Bitman warranty
– Free shipping worldwide + VAT
—————————
e-mail for pricing and information:
Names: Elokda Ihab
Email: trustincmart@nullgmail.com
—————————
February 19, 2018 @ 5:47 am
I needed a place to buy and sell bitcoins without the stress of ID verification and http://www.liviacoins.com provided that option for me.
March 3, 2018 @ 11:01 am
Hi, Rolf
First of all, thank you for sharing your experience .
I am just start a business in mining and ordered 100 L3+.
But, problem is i have no practical experoence for doing this business.
I have a few question about mining farm.
1. Cooling.
I understand intake and exhaust air. However, there is a scientific? Reason you intake air from outside?
Can we just exhaust hot air to the outside and intake air in side of facility?
I am just guessing the tmperture of the air is lower than outside of the room.
2. Do you have a plan to corporate a s-corporation later?
From llc to s corp, you can self emoyment tax.
Since you are operating more than 400 units, i could save a lot of taxes.
I am just curious why choose llc rather than s corp.
Thank you
X11 rig mining rental
March 10, 2018 @ 5:07 pm
[…] Planning Your Bitcoin Mining Operation – Block … – Operating a Bitcoin mining facility can be profitable, but you need to treat it like a business. I operate a small Bitcoin mining facility, and there is a lot more … […]
Cheapest Dash Exchange Reddit – Crypto Exchange Reviews
March 30, 2018 @ 2:24 am
[…] Planning Your Bitcoin Mining Operation – Block Operations – Operating a Bitcoin mining facility can be profitable, but you need to treat it like a business. I operate a small Bitcoin mining facility, and there is a lot more that goes into it than just plugging in the equipment and letting it run. […]
April 5, 2018 @ 6:52 pm
Guys contact me if you are interested in working together to secure cheap power and space. No BULL please, just serious people wanting to discuss working together to grow and expand in this space.
tpower12@nullhotmail.com
Roberto Dabrowski
April 8, 2018 @ 3:22 pm
Planning Your Bitcoin Mining Operation
[…]See a full checklist of DMV telephone numbers and office hours.[…]
April 24, 2018 @ 1:15 pm
We need to add business general liability insurance so we can close on a business loan. Someone mentioned State Farm as an option, but their agents are telling me that data mining is excluded from their coverage. Does anyone know of other insurance companies that will carry liability for a data mining center?
Thanks!
April 24, 2018 @ 6:15 pm
I wound up using a local brokerage that placed my business with an Excess and Surplus carrier. You will likely pay a slightly higher rate, but wont get cancelled after the carrier realizes what you’re actually doing. For comparison, my colo $1M GL / work comp / hardware coverage was about $1200 annually for up to ~$50k in mining hardware
June 11, 2018 @ 10:17 pm
I am getting issues with filters :(, i am using exaust fans of 10,000 cmf 40 x40 size but when i use filter lose all air :(, some suggestion, i got filter of 85% and the same thing, and required filter
Some suggestion?
June 27, 2018 @ 12:03 am
Hi Joege ,
Air filtration:
I am plagued with heavy fine airborne dust (in Saudi Arabia).
Solution: I use polyester media filters ½” thickness.
Wet Filter: I spray the 1st layer with light mineral oil (cheapest baby oil) using a plant spray mister or window cleaner sprayer.
Dry Filter: 2nd layer – I do not coat with oil and place it on top of the wet filter.
The logic is that the dry filter will catch the large dust particles, and then the wet the finer ones.
I replace the dry filter 2x weekly & the wet 1x weekly (they are disposable) . Turn off fans before replacing filters.
My filters are 4’ x 3’ ea.
The media filter is available in rolls from ½” to 3” thicknesses. My cost is 0.09 $/sqft .
You can experiment with different thickness, and wet or dry filters.
https://www.google.com.sa/search?q=media+filter+air+rolls&safe=strict&tbm=isch&source=iu&ictx=1&fir=scEuSFONpt5r2M%253A%252CL4hCbVp7epxMAM%252C_&usg=__uC0w3vzv_Uj32SVRwR8sidQeEvI%3D&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjyxezv3fLbAhWBLhQKHRliALgQ9QEIMTAE#imgrc=scEuSFONpt5r2M:
June 27, 2018 @ 12:01 am
Hi Joege ,
Air filtration:
I am plagued with heavy fine airborne dust (in Saudi Arabia).
Solution: I use polyester media filters ½” thickness.
Wet Filter: I spray the 1st layer with light mineral oil (cheapest baby oil) using a plant spray mister or window cleaner sprayer.
Dry Filter: 2nd layer – I do not coat with oil and place it on top of the wet filter.
The logic is that the dry filter will catch the large dust particles, and then the wet the finer ones.
I replace the dry filter 2x weekly & the wet 1x weekly (they are disposable) . Turn off fans before replacing filters.
My filters are 4’ x 3’ ea.
The media filter is available in rolls from ½” to 3” thicknesses. My cost is 0.09 $/sqft .
You can experiment with different thickness, and wet or dry filters.
https://www.google.com.sa/search?q=media+filter+air+rolls&safe=strict&tbm=isch&source=iu&ictx=1&fir=scEuSFONpt5r2M%253A%252CL4hCbVp7epxMAM%252C_&usg=__uC0w3vzv_Uj32SVRwR8sidQeEvI%3D&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjyxezv3fLbAhWBLhQKHRliALgQ9QEIMTAE#imgrc=scEuSFONpt5r2M:
July 30, 2018 @ 6:42 pm
Hello everyone,
I am currently running into a lot of issues setting up a 40 S9i Antminer Farm. Here are all my details below:
– Current electricity is about $0.10 kw/h averaged.
– Building has 3-phase power – 150a feed into the building
– I recently upgraded the electrical panel to 10x 30a breakers leading out to a C19 outlet to plug in PDU’s
– It is a Trip Lite PDU with 30a support. 4 plugs per PDU (Link: https://www.amazon.com/Tripp-Lite-Outlets-Rack-Mount-PDU1230/dp/B00ZPOIPO4/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1532990154&sr=8-4&keywords=tripp%2Blite%2Bpdu&th=1)
– I have 4 S9i Antminers plugged into each PDU
– Each Antminer is using an AP3++ PSU from Bitmain
Issues:
– I currently tested 12 units over night. I have 4 units per shelf and ran only the 12 to get a gauge on my heat issues. Heat in the warehouse was averaging about 117F with outside temperature at 95F to 99F. The bottom 8 S9i power was tripped.
– Then I tested running one with 4x S9i on one 30a circuit. Another 3x S9i on a 30a breaker. The one with the 4x S9i tripped. The 3x S9i is still running.
Resolutions?
I would like to see what I can do prevent the breakers to trip?
Do you think the heat is causing the circuits to trip? I am trying my best to resolve the heat issues at the moment by creating better airflow. I just moved in 3 days ago so I am working with the lessor to see what I can do to install air vents on the top of the roof to draw them out.
Is my power draw not enough? I highly doubt it since it has a 150a feed into it and the electrician said that should be more than enough to power the S9i’s. Any comments is appreciated as I am stuck and I need a lot of help! I can be reached at rchao83@nullgmail.com. Thank you in advance!
Where To Buy Bitcoin Mining Hardware In India | Cross Roadsc center
March 4, 2019 @ 1:56 am
[…] Planning Your Bitcoin Mining Operation […]
Where To Buy Bitcoin In Indiana | Cross Roadsc center
March 4, 2019 @ 1:57 am
[…] Planning Your Bitcoin Mining Operation […]
Knowledge Networking for Medium Measurement Bitcoin Mining Operations | Upcrypto-Your Cryptocurrency News
April 8, 2019 @ 10:40 am
[…] Planning Your Bitcoin Mining Operation […]
March 17, 2021 @ 5:17 am
you ever tried to modify a Switch from Cisco , HPE or any other manufacturer to mine some Bitcoins or any other ?
do you think is it possible ?
March 18, 2021 @ 10:21 pm
Would you say that an S9 or S7 are still profitable in 2021? Or are they a good way to get into the learning curve necessary to start a small mining operation. I found your website because I was looking for someone in the area who lived close to me whom I could learn from or consult with the setup my own small operation. I will provide my email address below and was hoping you could lend some help.
October 15, 2021 @ 5:34 pm
Hey everyone, I have some s19jpro’s running on single phase power to which I have a good understanding of the electrical breakdown. But, I have the option to upgrade to 3-phase power in the building. The electrician tells me that if the building is upgraded that I will have 300 amps on 3 phase dedicated for mining. He basically told me that the 300 amps on 3 phase is like having 900 amps on single phase. Is this correct? I’m not sure how this would work in regards to using 3 phase pdu’s. Does that mean if I run a 30 amp outlet on 3 phase that with the PDU I would have 90 amps to work with before worrying about 80% rule? Just wondering if anyone is using 3 phase to mine and how it works in regards to your PDU’s and how many machines you can run per outlet. Any help would be much appreciated as I am just getting into the mining world!
Budget Bitcoin Mining: Effective Tips That Work
September 30, 2024 @ 2:00 pm
[…] needs 6 Amps of 220VAC power. Think about getting a 30 amp Power Distribution Unit for several units8. Also, try to keep your electricity cost at $0.10 per KiloWatt Hour to make a […]