Should I buy/build a computer to mine Monero?

This blog post assumes that you're looking to make a profit by mining monero. If you have other motivations such as supporting monero, doing it for fun, or obtaining monero anonymously, then the conclusions of this post might not be relevant to you.

Should you build a computer to mine Monero?

Short answer: Probably not. Returns from mining monero are very low. Unless you have free or almost free electricity, you won't earn back what you spent on the computer. Monero is not a get rich quick scheme - far from it. Mining monero will get you pennies a day on most computers.

Let's take an example. One of the best CPUs you can get right now, in terms of high hashrate for the price and energy usage, is the AMD Ryzen 9 3900X. Let's estimate some prices:

Motherboard: $100
RAM: 2x8 GB 3600 MHz RAM - $100
CPU: AMD Ryzen 9 3900X: $500
Power supply: $70
GPU: Just any cheap one for display output - $50
Case: Generic cheap case - $40
SSD: Generic cheap SSD - $30

Total: $890

I will use the profitability calculator here in case you want to play about with numbers.

Tuned for power efficiency

Hashrate when tuned for best power efficiency: 12 kH/s

Power usage:

Motherboard: 10W
RAM: 5W
CPU: 80W
GPU: 10W
SSD: 5W
Power supply inefficiencies: +10%

Total: 121 W

Monero mined per day: 0.005459 = $ 0.7528 (Price as of 2020-02-01)

Days to pay off computer with free electricity and no increase in difficulty: 890/0.7525 = 1183 = 3 and a quarter years.

Accounting for electricity cost, this setup will use 121/1000 * 24 kWh per day. That's 2.904 kWh.

Multiply that by the price you pay per kWh. That gives the price you pay for electricity for each day of running this setup.

So then to calculate the time to pay off the initial investment: (Price of XMR earned per day - cost of electricity per day) / initial investment

This equation would give you the number of days to pay off the initial investment IF difficulty stayed the same. But unless computer technology stops advancing, it won't. See below.

Tuned for best hashrate

Hashrate when overclocked for highest hashrate: 15 kH/s

Motherboard: 10W
RAM: 5W
CPU: 160W
GPU: 10W
SSD: 5W
Power supply inefficiencies: +10%

Total: 209 W

Monero mined per day: 0.006824 = $ 0.9410 (Price as of 2020-02-01)

Days to pay off computer with free electricity and no increase in difficulty: 890/0.9410 = 946 = 2 and a half years.

Accounting for electricity cost, this setup will use 209/1000 * 24 kWh per day. That's 5.016 kWh.

Multiply that by the price you pay per kWh. That gives the price you pay for electricity for each day of running this setup.

So then to calculate the time to pay off the initial investment: (Price of XMR earned per day - cost of electricity per day) / initial investment

This equation would give you the number of days to pay off the initial investment IF difficulty stayed the same. But unless computer technology stops advancing, it won't. See below.

Difficulty

Difficulty is how hard it is for the CPU to correctly calculate the hash. This is adjusted automatically to keep the interval between blocks approximately the same over time. If the difficulty did not change, blocks would be mined more and more often as computers get more powerful.

Difficulty will increase automatically as newer CPUs that are faster and more efficient get released. It will also increase as more people start mining. The higher the total hashrate of everyone mining, the higher the difficulty gets.

Since monero changed to using the current RandomX algorithm, this is the difficulty change over time: 



(Data from coinwarz.com)

You should notice the increasing trend. There is no reason to believe this trend will not continue. 

In the last 12 months, the difficulty has increased from 148 to 230. That's a 55% increase in difficulty in just 12 months. 

In 12 months from now, any CPU you buy today will likely be earning about half of what it does today. If you were operating on a profit margin of anything less than 50%, you'll probably be losing money within 12 months - before you've paid off even a third of your investment in the computer. That is the primary reason why it's not worth buying new computer equipment to mine monero.

And every year, the difficulty will increase more, and you'll be making less.

"But I think monero's gonna moon"

If you think the price will go up, then you would make more profit by putting the money you were going to spend on a computer into monero*.


* Unless you have your own solar farm/hydroelectric generator or similar. But even then you still might make more by just buying monero.

Comments

  1. Anonymous20/02/2021, 17:23

    hey thanks for this blog , the info is clearly explained compared to other info out there for beginners.
    is it possible to create a post with a step by step guide on how to physically build a simple rig ? there really isnt any noob friendly info on this subject

    ReplyDelete
  2. Unknown28/02/2021, 20:18

    Hey, it would very obviously be dumb to spend $75 per kH. If you're resourceful, there are old servers out there that can be had and modified for around $14.5 per kH. Which at the current difficulty, would pay for itself in around 13 months.

    I plan to make an initial investment to get to around 250 kH/s and then solo mine -> use the profits to reinvest to scale with the difficulty of Monero.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Unknown29/12/2021, 14:25

    Does MyMonero have multiple languages? Chinese

    ReplyDelete
  4. CesarIII19/03/2022, 20:40

    Then, Why to mine monero?

    ReplyDelete

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