Current AEON profitability

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funkywizard

mmm.... bandwidth.
Jan 15, 2017
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He runs a hosting facility in Arizona.
I have a pretty large amount of colo in someone else's facility. Hoping to leverage mining to justify stepping up to starting my own in 2018. Mining is a pretty "forgiving client" when it comes to working out any kinks along the way.

Evap cooling works great in Arizona. A single-tenant facility might be able to get by with evap-only if they're careful about how they run the facility and they use appropriate servers (i.e. no 1u heatsinks).

2u heatsinks easily run 10C cooler under load than 1u heatsinks, while using far less power-hungry 80mm fans vs the 40mm's needed in 1U cases. For those doing the math, 10C comes out to 18F. Consider the difference between running a facility at 72F vs 90F, while the hardware runs at equal temperatures. That's a huge power savings and still gives you around 10C headroom on the CPU thermal limits at 100% cpu load at well below 100% fan speed.

Even more importantly than saving power is saving capital costs. If your thermal target is "keep the cold aisle under 90f at all times", you can do without chillers altogether, saving on floor space, installation costs, and maintenance. Ambient air + evaporative cooling will get you below 90f in Arizona pretty much all the time.

Worst-case-scenario, cpus are designed to throttle, and these CPUs run idle at least 20c lower than they do mining full-out. Certainly you'd want a better contingency plan than that, but realistically there's quite a bit of leeway.

You can really only get away with this if you control things end to end. I don't know of any colo facilities that would consider having a "No 1u servers" policy. And you'd also need to put some extra thought into keeping your network gear cool enough. Either selecting hardware that can run with hotter inlet temperatures than usual, or keeping the switches cooler than you keep the servers.

The payoff is that you can probably achieve a PUE in the ballpark of 1.2 or less if you go through the effort. And, the servers themselves should use 10% less power due to using more efficient 2U / 2-node models. Server fan power doesn't count in PUE calculations but it is an important factor. Overall it shouldn't be hard to get your total costs to under half of what it costs to colo, provided you have sufficient scale to justify the fixed overhead and setup costs.

Facebook does this in New Mexico. The form factor of opencompute is not a coincidence -- it provides sufficient height and width for efficient heatsink design, with 2x 2-CPU servers in one chassis.
 
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funkywizard

mmm.... bandwidth.
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so my rx 480 will need that, got one you recommend?
480 probably wont need it.

Vega is very flakey. Performance drops by 1/4th at the drop of a hat. One "hat drop" that occurs, is if the connected monitor is turned off or unplugged. So technically you dont "need" the dummy plug for the Vega.

Also, the linux drivers and/or linux miners for AMD, don't seem to work for Vega. Might have better luck with the RX480.

Either way, probably don't need the dummy plug in your case.

I searched amazon for "hdmi ghost plug" or something like that, and bought some cheap ones with good reviews. A friend of mine got his working (need to install vnc server, login via vnc with no monitor attached -- just the dummy plug -- and start mining that way. Then when you disconnect vnc it doesn't trigger the slowdown bug). I haven't gotten it working on mine yet, have been too busy to troubleshoot a vnc problem I had on my first attempt. For the moment am just burning in some cheap monitors lol.
 
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Iaroslav

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Aug 23, 2017
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...Facebook does this in New Mexico. The form factor of opencompute is not a coincidence -- it provides sufficient height and width for efficient heatsink design, with 2x 2-CPU servers in one chassis.
Agreed! I'm running some servers in a garage rack. But jets like 2U quad Supermicro or that 8-node ProLiant S6500 are extremely noisy and hot, so I sent these to a colo. Open compute 2 node 1.5U windmill is just awesome for home - cool, quiet and cheap. Not an option for a regular datacenter anyway due to it's width.
 
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funkywizard

mmm.... bandwidth.
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Agreed! I'm running some servers in a garage rack. But jets like 2U quad Supermicro or that 8-node ProLiant S6500 are extremely noisy and hot, so I sent these to a colo. Open compute 2 node 1.5U windmill is just awesome for home - cool, quiet and cheap. Not an option for a regular datacenter anyway due to it's width.
Agree the S6500 or 2u quad nodes are going to run much hotter, all else equal.

If you can get the racks, open compute it may be an option in a datacenter. I heard they're hard to find or expensive. Does anyone have info on that?

The datacenter I'm in has cages for three racks or more, at which point you can put in whatever fits.
 

marcoi

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Apr 6, 2013
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For the Open compute 2 node 1.5U windmill, any of them come with 120V-240V psu? I current do not have access to 200v to hook them up.
 

Iaroslav

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For the Open compute 2 node 1.5U windmill, any of them come with 120V-240V psu? I current do not have access to 200v to hook them up.
That's a bright side of european voltage, not a problem to get even 50A/380V
 

funkywizard

mmm.... bandwidth.
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examples much appreciated :)
If you have access to the breaker panel, a qualified electrician can change a 120v circuit to 208/240v.

Standard home wiring is rated for 600v. So if you have a circuit with a small number of outlets (say, a kitchen circuit designed for a single appliance that has a single outlet) you can swap out the single pole 120v breaker for a double pole 240v breaker. Then swap out the 120v outlets for 240v outlets of the same rated amps as the circuit. I recommend replacing a 20a rated 120v circuit breaker with a 20a 240v rated breaker -- then the wiring will be rated for at least 20a as well.

Difference between single pole and double pole -- single pole uses "hot phase 1" (+120v) + nuetral to give 120v. Double pole uses "hot phase 1" (+120v) + "hot phase 2" (-120v) to provide either 208v or 240v depending how the building / transformer is wired up.

Anyway, have a qualified electrician look into this -- I am not one, so take this as laymans advice. I may be unaware of some important consideration. One thing that comes to mind is that an old home may not be up to current standards. The general idea should be valid aside from that possibility -- changing how the breaker is wired will increase voltage in a normally-wired home, the wiring should have no trouble with the added voltage, so then swap out the outlets and you should be good. Relatively quick work so an electrician should be able to get this done for you with their minimum service call time. Parts are under $100.
 
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marcoi

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If you have access to the breaker panel, a qualified electrician can change a 120v circuit to 208/240v.

Standard home wiring is rated for 600v. So if you have a circuit with a small number of outlets (say, a kitchen circuit designed for a single appliance that has a single outlet) you can swap out the single pole 120v breaker for a double pole 240v breaker. Then swap out the 120v outlets for 240v outlets of the same rated amps as the circuit. I recommend replacing a 20a rated 120v circuit breaker with a 20a 240v rated breaker -- then the wiring will be rated for at least 20a as well.

Difference between single pole and double pole -- single pole uses "hot phase 1" (+120v) + nuetral to give 120v. Double pole uses "hot phase 1" (+120v) + "hot phase 2" (-120v) to provide either 208v or 240v depending how the building / transformer is wired up.

Anyway, have a qualified electrician look into this -- I am not one, so take this as laymans advice. I may be unaware of some important consideration. One thing that comes to mind is that an old home may not be up to current standards. The general idea should be valid aside from that possibility -- changing how the breaker is wired will increase voltage in a normally-wired home, the wiring should have no trouble with the added voltage, so then swap out the outlets and you should be good. Relatively quick work so an electrician should be able to get this done for you with their minimum service call time. Parts are under $100.
thanks for that, i was hoping for changes at the psu level since im renting at the moment and changes like that would not be possible.

next home purchase (hopefully in 6 months) will include solar and 200 or more amp service to the house/shed where i can ramp up servers and such.
 
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marcoi

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Apr 6, 2013
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AEON: 7.77 USD and going up and teh two exchanges dealing in it aren't helping. one isn't taking new accounts, the other seems to have issues with their systems.

ARG - going to need to bury my treasure like a pirate and dig it out when more exchanges come along.
 

jims2321

Active Member
Jul 7, 2013
184
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AEON: 7.77 USD and going up and teh two exchanges dealing in it aren't helping. one isn't taking new accounts, the other seems to have issues with their systems.

ARG - going to need to bury my treasure like a pirate and dig it out when more exchanges come along.
Tell me about it, I have 20 coins in limbo with HitBTC since 30th. I am not getting a warm fuzzy that it will be resolved anytime soon.
 

iamtelephone

Member
Jan 30, 2017
49
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AEON: 7.77 USD and going up
Again the AEON->USD spikes as the difficulty decreases...

The network is also down ~2-3MH/s. I wonder if the bots are retreating, or if it's the regulars moving to a different coin in the short term.
 

Marsh

Moderator
May 12, 2013
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I think weekend and holiday is over, people going back to work.
If business computers were using for mining, definitely , would raise red flags.
 

funkywizard

mmm.... bandwidth.
Jan 15, 2017
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thanks for that, i was hoping for changes at the psu level since im renting at the moment and changes like that would not be possible.

next home purchase (hopefully in 6 months) will include solar and 200 or more amp service to the house/shed where i can ramp up servers and such.
In that case, maybe a small transformer would work. But I agree I would be looking at changing the power supply in that situation.

However, changing out the psu negates a decent chunk of the cost savings of opencompute vs supermicro.
 

funkywizard

mmm.... bandwidth.
Jan 15, 2017
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402
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AEON: 7.77 USD and going up and teh two exchanges dealing in it aren't helping. one isn't taking new accounts, the other seems to have issues with their systems.

ARG - going to need to bury my treasure like a pirate and dig it out when more exchanges come along.
On the bright side, if a major exchange picks up Aeon, I would expect the price to increase further.
 
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Joel

Active Member
Jan 30, 2015
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I think weekend and holiday is over, people going back to work.
If business computers were using for mining, definitely , would raise red flags.
Very good point. It'd be interesting to plot network hash rates over time to see what kind of trends emerge.