Thread by @eigenrobot

so I'm mining monero to heat my apartment this winter

So, working around this. Earlier plan for 16x -> 1x risers for my case won't work since *all* the slots in my board are x8/x16 form factor.

Instead, repurposing my pseudo-NAS box to hold one 1080, and going to kludge a different solution with a ribbon riser in my workstation.

Rearranged things a bit more, jammed one of my 1080s into the mATX rig I was using as NAS. Probably consumes ~300W full tilt, which is more than my refrigerator.

Wiferobot is going to want to store perishables, so I'm renting space for it in my DM's house at $25/mo + electricity

Capital delivery

Semi-final setup. Consumer rig, workstation, converted NAS. Calibrating now.

Worried about toasting my 20A circuit and also about heat dissipation and finally about long-term fan noise irritating my cat, so workstation cards likely to be throttled

Bonus: cat

25cm 16x to 16x riser arrived today. Workstation final form 😎

realized I could jam another card in my consumer rig, prices have increased about 40% since I bought a couple weeks ago

maybe the real play is day trading 1080s, fellas

Now digging around my apartment with my landlord trying to track down (i) the source of the electrical short in my unit and (ii) the source of a strange smell something like Trail's End popcorn

Hoping they are not the same thing

Welp

There goes my foyer ceiling for the third time in eight months

My ceiling is now on fire

Landlord: do you actually want to try that?

Electrician: fuck yeah, we're just having fun, right?

Ok SO

Apparently, issue was a shorted jank-ass wire off the main circuit, probably installed 50y ago. Supplied power to outlets on a post near my breakfast bar.

The outlets had 3 prongs but were not actually grounded

This was the spot I had all my boxes plugged in, ofc

Going to be a little more deliberate about electricity use going forward. Having one of these things delivered tomorrow for GPU power calibration, til then going to leave the workstation off

Also so my landlord doesn't see a box with a GPU running on topamazon.com/gp/product/B00…

a poem, for no particular reason genius.com/Shel-silverste…

bit of quick computation

20A maximum instantaneous load is 2400W; maximum continuous load, 1920W

turns out a continuous load runs >= *3 hours*

this is actually great news for me, refrigerator turns on only intermittently and probably draws substantially less than 480W

hm sure hope that insulation wasn't asbestos

Quick check reveals probably not vermiculite

Also it was burning which seems like a contraindication

Apartment rewired today, still stuck on 20A.

Landlord bought me a bottle of cheap whiskey for my troubles, though he also helped himself to a few shots of my tequila

Got my Watt meter, going to do some testing. Also installed a 1080 on a Rosewill 1x riser.

Mobo recognizes the card, but not showing up in Windows . . . going to try driver reinstallation.

Rig pulls about 120W mostly idle, incidentally

That did it! Ordering some Thai while it benches for nicehash. Then, onto power testing.

Goal will probably be to maximize power use by cards, conditional on total power use <= M

M tbd, will mostly be a function of observed refrigerator and monitor draw.

Early findings:

(i) i7-5820k @ 3.8GHz draws only an extra 30W when full-tilt running CryptoNight (350H/s), that's awesome

(ii) running a 1080TI FTW3 @ 100% pulls an extra 269W, about spec. Every 10% reduction in power target reduces draw by about 30W. Will test performace drop.

Fascinating.

1080TIs seem to see 1:1 gains in hash rates as power increases until about 80% TDP, when the return drops off dramatically

1080s drop off dramatically at . . . 65% TDP? Less?

Interesting implications for power use optimization anyway

Ok. Final tally, for 4x1080TI @ 80%, 3 x 1080 @ 70%, 35 CPU cores >= 3GHz is . . .

1779 Watts

Comfortably under my 1920W continuous limit although a bit dull numerologically

main remaining concern is the fridge. rated 6.5A full-load, which would be (eep) 780W, insta-game over

GOTCHA

160W, pathetic. Can't believe I was worried about that damn food hole

Modem (<7W) + router (<8W) basically negligible, as is Penny's Litter Robot (<4W rotating).

Monitor + speakers + usb dock are 70W together tho, gotta watch that

Okay, off to catch up @ work but I think I'm set. Last task: replace one more 1080 on top of my workstation after a guy comes in to finish fixing the ceiling tomorrow

Overall have say, the fire what burned through my ceiling was a small, basically-insignificant bump in the road

reading about the tax implications of mining

motherfucker

I wish the government would just fucking rob me directly instead of forcing me to keep meticulous records of the size and associated fees and contemporaneous USD value of BTC for

every

fucking

daily

payout

Hmm. Evaluating "include the fair market value of the virtual currency, measured in U.S. dollars, as of the date that the virtual currency was received." Wonder if I can defend use of the daily low price.

Do I need to pay self-employment taxes if I already max out SS/Medicare tax at my day job? Does wiferobot's rental duplex fuck things up further? What about quarterly estimated taxes?

Join me as I investigate these and other exciting issues and slip deeper into anarchocapitalism

My apartment is toasty, and I'm still miles above my shutdown threshold.

Even so, o u c h. Waking up every morning and computing my past day's net take has been unpleasant.

Love to everyone out there taking a more direct beating.

hahahaha frig

just got my first post-launch electrical bill

APPARENTLY seattle city light has a tiered billing scheme, after a certain point they start charging nearly double the base rate for power (~$0.13/kWh vs $0.07)

still way in the black, but . . . gurk

in better news, transferred my first 0.1BTC to an exchange

although somehow a single Satoshi was lost en route so my balance is 0.09999999BTC which is going to irritate me for the next month

got 0.5XMR in a private wallet too

feel like a rich man, still thousands to recoup tho

what's the easiest way to sell used GPUs?

AMZN, EBAY?

Still have all the original packaging and plastic bits and such as

I'm still turning a profit but it's 70 Fahrenheit in Seattle and @tradwiferobot wants to be able to use the oven without logging in and killing my workers

Well, end of a fun era. I listed four of my GPUs on eBay and set another two up with some tweeps.

If I hit the going eBay rate, even after they take their 10% cut I should be in the black on capital, so that's nice.

Have bids on 3 cards already, from a Russian. I panicked for a second at the thought of paying to ship across the Pacific, but fortunately eBay restricts to domestic addresses by default.

Hmm. If I'd been more thoughtful + had higher n, could've run some experiments . . .

in other news, for the first time in months my apartment is REALLY CHILLY.

Looks like a few weeks of sweaters indoors.

All right. Six cards sold, roughly for what I paid for them (or at a slight profit adjusting for the fact that I sold my old 1080 and kept one of the 1080Ti FTW).

Still mining Monero with my E5 2687W-v4 chips, but I might cut back on that once it really warms up. Full circle!

Overall, I think I made about $1500 net of electricity.

Purely as a function of the hours I burned on this project, this was an economic loss given my marginal value of time.

But factor in the value of learning, experimentation, heating, and entertainment, and I made a killing.

Thanks for following along, everyone. I'll be sure to document the next slightly-unhinged project I start out on. (This wasn't my first--ask my pal @Lexirad about living with me sophomore year--and it sure won't be the last.)

xoxo

EPILOGUE

The robot reclined on a sofa overlooking a lake and reflected on the past eighteen months

Much had changed in his life since the fire; much had been lost and gained. And he had finally found a way to use his filthy lucre

The first tab dissolved

@ALilHipster @nmgrm I get genuinely uncomfortable when people talk me up in re: things that seem likely to highlight socially-awkward status differences and that drives a lot of it

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