September 11, 2018 at 13:29

A bit about industrial mining



    Among those who read this article, everyone has heard of such a concept as mining. This topic is now very popular and many have tried to mine at home. Industrial mining is noticeably different from home mining, if only because you have expenses that you didn’t even think about at home. In everyday life, you can rarely find private traders with capacities above 15 kW. That is why we will consider the features of mining for farms with a consumption of over 15 kW.

    Before you start mining, you should decide for yourself what to do it on. There are two main options:

    • GPU mining on video cards.


    The most universal, you can mine any "currency", but because of the cost of video cards it is very expensive. Also, depending on the selected risers and video cards, periodic freezing is possible.

    • ASIC mining on special assemblies.



    This option is tied to mining a specific group of "currencies", with the same algorithm. This approach does not allow you to choose a more profitable currency, but the price of the farm is significantly lower, moreover, it takes up less space.

    Some miners are afraid to choose ASIC, since the issue of its repair remains open. Replacing a burned-out video card seems to an average person an easier option.

    Basically, this problem applies to those who mine at home and have a small number of ASICs. Since inside, the ASIC consists of several assemblies, the burnt ASIC becomes an excellent donor for the repair of its brothers. In addition, major suppliers can supply repair parts separately. Therefore, when working with a large number of mining devices, there is no fundamental gain from the GPU before the ASIC, from the point of view of repair. If we compare the performance, then one ASIC is approximately the farm of 6 video cards of the level of NVIDIA GTX 1070 or ATI RADEON RX 570. So, in what follows we will use the term Mining Unit (ME). 1 ME = 1 ASIC ~ 6 GPU

    First of all, you have to decide exactly where your farm will be located. You have three options for placement: place the equipment in a third-party data center, a mobile data center (MCOD - a farm made in a 10/20/40 ft container) or rent a room. Each of the options has its pros and cons. Let us briefly dwell on each of the options.

    Placement of equipment in the data center




    Speaking about the data center, we will mean a professional data center with guaranteed power and Internet access, with a properly calculated and designed cooling system, as well as security and fire fighting. Otherwise, you can save a little on accommodation, but you will get risks to ensure uninterrupted operation of the equipment and its safety.

    The plus of the solution is that all issues regarding protection, ventilation, electricity, etc. immediately resolved. You just have to monitor and periodic maintenance / repair.

    The disadvantage of this option is that the cost of the service is quite high. With current profit with one ME, the profitability will not exceed 15%.

    When choosing this solution, the availability level is maximum; you can install equipment and start working.

    Accommodation in the International Center





    Plus - the autonomy of the solution. You can move the farm to another region where cheaper electricity or to a new site, if there are disagreements with the owner of the previous one. High degree of readiness - in the case of the purchase of the data center, you immediately resolved the issue of fire extinguishing, ventilation and places for equipment. In 3-5 years, the data center will pay off, and due to savings on rent, your profit will increase slightly.

    Minus - high initial costs for the purchase of the data center, less than the premises, theft protection.

    When choosing the MCOD option, you will need to solve such issues as:

    • Placement of the container. The place must have the ability to connect the required electricity.
    • The ability to provide a reliable Internet connection.
    • The ability to provide security with a quick response time. The weak point of the container is that you can drive on a truck and load the container in 2-3 minutes, leave. In this case, the security, which will arrive in 5-10 minutes, will only find an empty area.

    Premises for rent




    Pros will depend on how well you manage to negotiate with the landlord. The main plus is the ease of scaling, since it is difficult to find a technical room of less than 100 m2. And on an area of ​​100 or more squares, you can easily place up to 1000 ASICs.

    Less - you are tied to a specific place, and the owner of the premises, realizing this, likes to raise the cost of rent. Low degree of readiness, all issues associated with ensuring the operation of the equipment will need to be addressed. Namely:

    • The choice of premises for rent. In this case, it is worth considering a number of requirements:
    • The room should be able to provide you with the necessary electrical power with a level of reliability of the first, in the worst case, the second category. Depending on the size of the farm, it can be from 20 to 1500 kW. In this case, you need to have two independent inputs. Considering the volume of electricity consumption, it is very expensive to provide all this with a UPS for several hours. The UPS can be for 5-10 minutes to smooth the jumps. So a reliable electrical input is very important.
    • The room should be away from residential buildings or have good sound insulation, as the noise from equipment and ventilation will be significant. As an option, you can consider renting a technical floor if you make good soundproofing.
    • Organization of a ventilation system.
    • Organization of a security system.
    • Organization of fire extinguishing system. Special attention should be paid to fire extinguishing, since we cannot use electric appliances and extinguish them with water. If a former warehouse or workshop is used, and their area is significant, the gas fire extinguishing system will be ineffective.

    Once you have decided on the method of placement, you need to decide who will look after everything: you yourself or a hired engineer. It is worthwhile to understand that when ME becomes dozens, something regularly breaks or hangs and you can’t watch the equipment from time to time. The configured system of automatic equipment reboot (Watchdog) will solve the problem of freezing, but the issue of repair and preventive maintenance will remain. The more ME, the more often you will have to visit equipment for maintenance. After you collect information on prices for each of the options, you can calculate the planned profit and profitability based on current profitability. Then you can choose the option most suitable for you, based on the amount of initial investments. Also, not only the starting quantity of MEs, but also the planned amount,

    Initial data that should be taken into account:









    As we can see from the calculations, the option of renting a room is the most profitable, however, a lot will depend on the cost of preparing the room and the cost of renting. This option should be considered with an amount of ME from 100 pcs.

    I want to note right away that these calculations are correct with the current complexity and cost of cryptocurrency. Based on data from the beginning of 2018, the yield on 1 IU falls on average by 2-3% per month. Therefore, it is worth considering this when forming the final business plan.

    Based on our calculations, it is clear that each of the options has its own advantages, based on the amount of ME. So, at the stage between home mining and 50 IU, the option with placement in a foreign data center is most suitable. Between 50 and 100, the IDC is profitable. After 100 - it makes sense to consider the most profitable option with a rental, but it is also the most labor-intensive.
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