Amount of energy consumed on the farm. How much electricity does a mining farm consume per day and per month? Electricity consumption of a farm for mining on ASICs

Based on this, it is necessary to reduce these costs as much as possible to increase profits and clearly understand how much electricity a mining farm consumes.

The consumption of one mining farm consists of the following components:

• motherboard, processor, RAM and hard drive – up to 100 watts;
• consumption of video cards depending on power and mining algorithm - from 360 to 1500 watts for a rig of 6 cards;
• ventilation system - from 20 watts when using a simple fan to several kilowatts when using air conditioning systems.

Based on the high consumption of air conditioners, their use on mining farms is not rational. It is better to use powerful ventilation systems with good filters.

Approximate electricity consumption on mining farms with the most common cards when mining ether (per hour/month) with the most energy-efficient settings:

• rig of 6 cards RX460 4 gigabytes - from 500/1550 watts;
• rig of 6 cards RX470/570– from 600/1860 watts;
• rig of 6 cards RX480/580– from 700/2170 watts;
• rig of 6 cards R9 290– from 1100/3410 watts;
• rig of 6 cards GTX1060 3 gigabytes – from 520/1612 watts;
• rig of 6 cards GTX1060 6 gigabytes – from 600/1860 watts;
• rig of 6 cards GTX1070– from 700/2170 watts;
• rig of 6 cards GTX1070Ti– from 760/2356 watts;
• rig of 6 cards GTX1080– from 800/2480 watts;
• rig of 6 cards GTX1080Ti– from 900/2790 watts.

When mining Monero, these values ​​will be less, when mining coins using the Equihash algorithm and dual mining, they will be more.

Video card consumption table

Due to the large variation in energy consumption of different video cards using different mining algorithms, let’s consider the average values ​​of consumption and speed of the most common video cards when mining the currently most profitable cryptocurrencies (at maximum downvolting):

Serial number	Serial number	Hash algorithm, speed, coin	Consumption, watt
1.	NVIDIA TITAN V	Ethash, 79 MH/s, Ether	from 180	0,43
2.	AMD RX Vega 56	CryptoNightV7, 1.6 kH/s, Monero	from 220	7 hashes per 1 watt
3.	AMD RX Vega 64	CryptoNightV7, 1.6 kH/s, Monero	from 220	7 hashes per 1 watt
4.	NVIDIA TITAN XP	Lyra2REv2, 77 MH/s, Monacoin(MONA)	from 220	0,35
5.	NVIDIA GTX 1080 Ti	X16R, 15 MH/s, Ravencoin(RVN)	from 120	0,125
		Ethash, 50 MH/s, Ether (with ETHlargementPill)		0,41
6.	RX460	Ethash, 13 MH/s, Ether	from 40	0,32
7.	RX470/570	Ethash, 28 MH/s, Ether	from 70	0,39
8.	RX480/580	Ethash, 28-30 MH/s, Ether	from 80	0,4
9.	GTX1060 3 gigabytes	Ethash, 19-20 MH/s, Ether	from 60	0,33
10.	GTX1060 6 GB	Ethash, 22-24 MH/s, Ether	from 65	0,37
11.	GTX1070	Ethash, 30-31 MH/s, Ether	from 90	0,34
12.	GTX1070Ti	Ethash, 31-32 MH/s, Ether	from 95	0,34
13.	GTX1080	Ethash, 35 MH/s, Ether (with ETHlargementPill)	from 110	0,32

If high-quality downvolting is not performed on video cards, then the efficiency indicators may be lower than those indicated by approximately 30-40%.

1. Consumption table for special mining equipment

The most common ASIC miners have the following energy consumption values ​​when mining the currently most profitable coins:

Serial number	ASIC miner model	Hash rate, algorithm, coin	Consumption, watt per hour	Efficiency, hash rate/watt
1.	Innosilicon A9 ZMaster	Equihash, 50,000 decisions per second, ZCash	620	80,6
2.	BITFURY B8	SHA256, 50 terahash per second, Bitcoin	6400	0,0078
3.	Antminer X3	CryptoNight, 220 kilohashes per second, ETN	500	0,44
4.	Antiminer S7	SHA256, 4.7 terahashes per second, Bitcoin	1200	0,0039
5.	Antiminer S9	SHA256, 13.5 terahashes per second, Bitcoin	1400	0,0096
6.	Innosilicon A5 DashMaster	X11, up to 30-38000 megahashes per second, DASH	750	50
7.	Baikal Giant X10	X11/Quark/Qubit/Myriad-Groestl/Skein, up to 10000 megahashes per second, DGB-Qubit (DGB)	630	15,8

How much do video cards consume when mining Ethereum?

The consumption of properly configured video cards when mining ether should be something like this:

Ethereum has long been the most popular coin to mine. When mining this coin, the most important thing is to ensure video memory overclocking. Ether mining speed depends very little on the core frequency - approximately 0.5 megahashes for every 100 megahertz. Therefore, the most optimal operating mode for video cards when mining ether will be to set the core voltage to about 830-850 millivolts for AMD cards and 650-850 millivolts for Nvidia cards.

1. AMD cards(when measuring consumption only on the core using the GPU-Z program, the GPU only power draw parameter):

• RX460/560– 35-40 watts;
• RX470/570– 70 watts;
• RX480/580– 80-90 watts;
• R9 290– 140-160 watts (VDDC Power in value).

1. Nvidia cards(when measuring consumption only on the core using the nvidiaInspector program, Power parameter) with a core voltage of 700-800 millivolts:

• GTX1060 3 gigabytes - 60-65 watts;
• GTX1060 6 gigabytes – 65-80 watts;
• GTX1070— 90 watts;
• GTX1070Ti— 95 watts;
• GTX1080— 110 watts;
• GTX1080Ti- 120 watts.

The actual consumption values ​​of video cards are 20-30% greater than the consumption of a single core and consist of memory consumption, losses in power circuits and cooler operation.

How to save on electricity for mining?

You can reduce the cost of paying for electricity consumed by a mining farm in the following ways:

• switch to a more economical electricity supply tariff, for example, install farms in premises in which reduced tariffs apply to consumers with electric stoves, electric heating, and reduced prices at night;
• enter into a direct agreement with a power plant that produces electricity and has excess capacity;
• create your own solar/wind power plant and use its electricity for mining;
• reduce electricity consumption by mining equipment through the use of maximum downvolting and optimized software;
• switch to more energy-efficient hardware manufactured using a more advanced technological process that consumes less electricity;
• switch to mining less energy-consuming cryptocurrencies (for example, instead of Ether or ZCash, mine Monero), abandon dual mining.

How to configure a video card rig so that it consumes less electricity

Setting up a mining rig consisting of video cards to achieve maximum energy efficiency involves minimizing the consumption of its components, including:

• video cards, as equipment that directly performs the work of carrying out calculations for the extraction of cryptocurrencies. Reducing the voltage on the video card core, in addition to reducing power consumption, reduces heating, which has a beneficial effect on the operating mode of the equipment and allows you to achieve greater stability in overclocking video memory;
• power supplies as devices that ensure the operation of the entire mining farm. The use of power supplies with a Gold certificate, in addition to ensuring high-quality voltage and equipment safety, allows you to save a large amount of electricity (about 15%) compared to power supplies without certificates and, accordingly, reduce costs;
• when replacing hard drives with SSDs, you can not only increase the loading speed of the operating system and the work of the paging file, but also reduce the power consumption of each rig by 5-15 watts;
• the use of more modern RAM (DDR4, DDR3L instead of DDR3), more modern processors allows you to reduce consumption by 10-20 watts.

The biggest effect is from reducing the voltage on the video card core. The voltage reduction method for AMD and Nvidia video cards is different.

For AMD video cards when mining ether, it is best to set the core frequency in the BIOS to about 1150 megahertz and core voltage 840-850 millivolts, and the frequency and timings of memory in accordance with each specific sample. In Claymore's Dual GPU Miner and Phoenix Miner, this is done by adding the following parameters to the batch file to run:

Cclock 1140 -cvddc 840 -mclock 1980 -mvddc 840, where:

Cclock – core frequency;

Cvddc – core voltage;

Mclock – video memory frequency;

Mvddc – voltage on the memory controller.

When using several video cards, the values ​​for each of them are specified in the parameters, separated by commas.

Each video card has its own characteristics that determine its overclocking capabilities when the voltage drops, the so-called ASIC-quality parameter. Specific values ​​of frequencies and voltages are selected experimentally to achieve the optimal ratio of frequency, voltage reduction and good operating stability.

Approximate frequency and voltage data for AMD cards can be taken from the OverdriveNTool program (can be downloaded at https://forums.guru3d.com/threads/overdriventool-tool-for-amd-gpus.416116/), which represents the frequencies and voltages recorded in the video card BIOS in the form of a table. You need to find the voltage value of about 850 millivolts (usually around the P2 value) recorded in the BIOS and see what frequency of the graphics adapter is recorded in the next line (which is set to a higher voltage at the factory, in this case the P3 state).

As a rule, a video card can operate at this frequency and at a voltage lowered by 1-2 steps.

For the memory controller, undervolting does not provide much of a power efficiency gain, but sometimes core downvolting fails without setting the –mvddc parameter to a voltage similar to what is needed on the GPU.

For Nvidia video cards, downvolting can be done using the MSI Afterburner program by setting a constant voltage of 800 millivolts and lowering the core frequency, but it is better to do this using the program nvidiaInspector and running a batch file with the following content:

SET GPU0=-setMemoryClockOffset:0,0,210 -setBaseClockOffset:0,0,80 -setFanSpeed:0,%FAN% -lockVoltagePoint:0,%VOLT% -setTempTarget:0,0,%TEMP%

"nvidiaInspector.exe" %GPU0%, where:

• SET FAN – fan rotation speed in percent;
• SET VOLT=650000 – voltage on the video card core (in this case 650 millivolts);
• SET TEMP=60 – video core temperature;
• parameter -setMemoryClockOffset:0,0,210 – memory overclocking (in this case 210 megahertz);
• parameter -setBaseClockOffset:0,0,80 – video core overclocking (in this case, 80 megahertz).

When using several video cards, the values ​​for each of them in the parameters are written in a separate line, while in the SET GPU0 parameter the number zero means the serial number of the video card, starting from zero.

For example, for two Nvidia video cards this file will look like this:

SET GPU0=-setMemoryClockOffset:0,0,270 -setBaseClockOffset:0,0,80 -setFanSpeed:0,%FAN% -lockVoltagePoint:0,%VOLT% -setTempTarget:0,0,%TEMP%

SET GPU1=-setMemoryClockOffset:1,0,250 -setBaseClockOffset:1,0,80 -setFanSpeed:1,%FAN% -lockVoltagePoint:1,%VOLT% -setTempTarget:1,0,%TEMP%

"nvidiaInspector.exe" %GPU0% %GPU1%

Cheap electricity for mining - regions

If it is possible to install mining equipment in regions with cheap electricity, you can achieve a significant increase in profitability. In this case, it is necessary to take into account transportation costs, the availability of a good communication channel (with a low ping) with the pools, the ability to provide security, maintenance and other options related to the remoteness of the equipment.

In Russia, the cheapest electricity tariff is in the Irkutsk region (about 1 ruble per kilowatt for the population), in Khakassia the cost of electricity for the population is 1.99 rubles per kilowatt. In Crimea, the cost of electricity is about 2 rubles per kilowatt.

Novosibirsk, Krasnoyarsk, Khanty-Mansiysk and the Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug are quite profitable from the point of view of cheap electricity - prices in them also do not rise above 3 rubles.

Installing rigs in these regions will make it possible to quickly recoup their purchase and receive greater benefits from mining.

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When experienced crypto miners, who moved from home (garage, balcony) mining to the “major league” with the creation of entire mining factories, talk about the beginning of a glorious path, they very often remember what frightening bills they received for electricity and how a hair dryer suddenly turned on by their wife turned them off traffic jams throughout the apartment. Let's figure out with a calculator in hand how much electricity a mining farm consumes depending on its composition and size.

Consumption of "home" farms

The key factors in assessing energy consumption and bill payments are the following indicators:

• type (type) of equipment used;
• equipment settings (enabling energy-saving modes, slowing down fans, etc.);
• the cost of electricity in a specific region (country, city).

Let's look at the main parameters in more detail.

Equipment type

When assessing power consumption, the division, first of all, should be made not between different types of video cards, but between video cards and ASICs.

The difference between the power of video cards can differ by 3 or more times, but cards that are actually used in mining usually do not have such a significant difference in maximum power. For example, for randomly taken R9 380X models, the specifications indicate 190 Watts, for the R9390 - 275 Watts, for the GTX 1060 - 120 Watts, for the GTX 1070 - 150 Watts, for the GTX 1070 Ti - 180 Watts, and for the GTX 1080 Ti - 250 Watts. Of course, there are differences, but they are less noticeable than when comparing these video cards with almost any ASIC miner.

Thus, the specifications of the Antminer T9 ASIC indicate 1350-1570 W of power, which is approximately 6 times more than that of the GTX 1080 Ti. A farm of three devices operating 24 hours will already consume about 100 kW: 1 ASIC consumes an average of 1400 W per hour * 24 (hours per day) * 3 (devices) = 100800 W = 100.8 kW.

This means that with an average cost in the country of 4 rubles per kW/hour, you will need to pay 400 rubles per day, and about 12 thousand per month. At the same time, three devices with the same performance as the Antminer T9, while maintaining the price or increasing the cryptocurrency rate, easily recoup these costs and gradually pay for themselves.

The Antminer L3+ device, which is usually used to mine Litecoin and some other cryptocurrencies, consumes 880 W taking into account the operation of the power supply, but this is still noticeably more than that of video cards. However, the calculation of the power consumption of cards in the farm must also be made taking into account the consumption of the power supply, which is indicated in the technical specifications. For example, for the GTX 1060 a power supply with a power of 300 W or more is recommended.

A standard farm usually has from 4 to 6 cards. At the same time, the video cards that are assembled into farms are often of the same type, so the electricity consumption when mining cryptocurrency for a farm is indicated as a total number. If we assume that with the adjusted operating mode of the coolers (changed in the software settings), the mining farm consumes about 800 Wh, then with the same average cost of electricity of 4 rubles per month, the crypto miner will spend: 800 Wh * 24 (hours in day) * 30 (days of the month) = 576 thousand W = 576 kW * 4 rubles = 2304 rubles per month.

In different regions of Russia, and even in different houses, the cost of kWh can vary significantly. For example, mining in Moscow will cost 3-5 times more in electricity bills than mining in Irkutsk or Krasnoyarsk.

It is not surprising that crypto miners from different cities of Russia post different data on their actual electricity bills on the network, indicating the composition of the mining farm. For example, a large home multi-farm, including 10 Nvidia 1060 video cards and 5 1050 ti video cards, on which the author mined Ethereum and Zcash in Power Limit mode, in Novosibirsk (with a cost of 2.49 rubles/kWh), according to According to him, it costs 3,100 rubles a month, taking into account the operation of a refrigerator, electric stove, electric kettle and laptop (the mode of use of the devices is not specified).

The average payment for electricity is usually estimated at 10-15% of earnings (assuming a well-chosen coin that is relatively easy to mine and does not fall in price).

Consumption of industrial-scale crypto mining

Factory farms, where sometimes 3-5 thousand ASIC miners work simultaneously, are located in different countries of the world - from China to the USA and from Iceland to Switzerland. But such data centers are always located either in areas with excess electricity, near hydroelectric power stations, or in regions with the lowest price for electricity due to government support and incentives. Climatic conditions also play an important role, since the cooling system is more economical in areas with relatively low average annual temperatures.

For comparison, below is information on large farms from different parts of the world:

1. The work of the data center in Georgia, opened in 2015, is directly provided by the Tbilisi hydroelectric power station, despite the fact that this factory uses an economical liquid cooling system for chips.
2. The climate and electricity prices have made Iceland an attractive country for setting up mining farms. The Genesis Mining company has its facilities there. And it is she who is considered the largest consumer of electricity in the country. In Iceland, the cost of a kWh is 10 euro cents, which at the beginning of summer 2018 corresponds to approximately 7.3 rubles. For comparison: in Germany you will need to pay 29 euro cents (about 21.18 rubles) per kW/h.
3. Crypto entrepreneur Guido Rudolphi was looking for a place for his mining mega-farm for several years until he looked at the village of Linthal in Switzerland with an affordable energy price - less than the Swiss average (about 11 rubles in equivalent).
4. Due to the lowest prices for electricity, American businessman Dave Carlson settled on the location of his enterprise in Washington state. He spends about $1 million a month on operating expenses, the bulk of which comes from paying for electricity.
5. The largest Chinese mining factories are located in industrial cities specifically designated for this area of ​​activity. For example, in the city of Dalian, located in Northeast China, there is one of many farms with 3,000 ASIC devices, which consumes $80,000 worth of electricity per month, which is not much compared to providing such a volume of power in other countries.

In addition to China, the group of countries that support the minimum price for electricity includes Canada, the USA, Venezuela, Sweden, and the UAE. The average cost of kWh in these states is in the range of 3-9 cents.

Russia also has its own mining giants. Thus, at the beginning of 2017, a video circulated that told about a factory with more than 3 thousand Antminer S9, whose owners paid about 6.5 million rubles per month for electricity while consuming almost 3.24 million kilowatts over the same period . If the same volume of electricity is calculated at 3 rubles per kilowatt, then it will be 9.72 million rubles per month. There is no information about the current actual fee and location of the farm, also because the owners of such enterprises very rarely strive for popularity.

Among the public undertakings in the field of construction of mega-farms for mining, one can note the intention voiced in 2017 by Internet Ombudsman Dmitry Marinichev. According to him, there is a plan to attract $100 million in investment for a 20-megawatt farm in a region with surplus electricity.

Thus, the location of mining mega-farms is most often dictated by a combination of several factors, among which the key ones are the presence of a sufficiently developed energy infrastructure in the region, the proximity of a constant cheap energy source and favorable temperature conditions. However, when scaling their business, crypto-entrepreneurs often seek to find ways to solve the problem “privately” by illegally cutting into someone else’s power grid and consuming electricity “for free.”

Global consumption volumes of the cryptocurrency industry

Cryptocurrency mining systems based on proof of work are considered very resource intensive. In 2017, the combined mining of coins in the Bitcoin and Ethereum crypto networks together consumed more energy than Cyprus, Cambodia or Syria consumed.

Dutch economist Alex de Vries calculated that by May 2018, the mining of all cryptocurrencies would consume about 0.5% of global electricity. Berlin mathematician Moritz Strube confirmed with his calculations that mining energy consumption is comparable to the energy budget of a small European country. For clarity, he provided comparative data on global mining (1.17 terawatts per month) and monthly consumption in Slovenia (1.08 terawatts).

At the same time, the Berlin mathematician “estimated” how much electricity would cost at current prices in Germany if all the world’s crypto mining moved to this country. It turned out that with mining for a year, an impressive amount of more than 4 billion euros would have been paid.

HF17TOPBTC3

With the rise in the value of cryptocurrencies in 2017, there was also great interest in their mining. Many people believed that mining is a gold mine in which you can get fabulous profits by investing just once. Actually, this is not true. In addition to equipment costs, it is necessary to consider energy costs.

Producing digital money is a very energy-intensive business. Therefore, you should not be surprised by high electricity bills if you have a whole farm of video cards or an ASIC device installed. The question of energy costs is extremely relevant among beginners. This is exactly what we will talk about today. So, what expenses await you if you start mining cryptocurrency and what are the global energy issues associated with the production of digital assets?

What is mining difficulty?

The vast majority of countries have not yet decided on their position regarding cryptocurrencies. Someone has already declared their readiness to work with them, and someone is preparing to eliminate them from their territory, but in most cases there is no legislative regulation. Accordingly, there are no official statistics regarding electricity consumption.

Moreover, even in countries where there are already legal regulation mechanisms, energy companies cannot know exactly where the resource they provide is being used.

The only way to estimate costs is to consider the difficulty of mining cryptocurrencies. The flagship in this area was and remains Bitcoin - the oldest and most expensive coin at the moment. First, let's look at the complexity indicator itself. It is a number calculated by the protocol and attached to all blocks of the chain.

So, starting in 2018, the difficulty has already exceeded 1,600,000,000,000. One hash is a number chosen at random, in the range of 1 and 2 to the power of 256 minus 1. The peculiarity of this concept is that it cannot be exceeded by the hashrate.

Relatively speaking, for complexity we can give a comparison such as darts, where it is the center. The smaller the red circle on the board, the more game shells are spent to achieve the goal.

To calculate the average hashrate required to search for a block within 10 minutes, a special formula is used - D x 232 / 600, where D is the difficulty of mining cryptocurrency. In particular, with today's indicator for Bitcoin, the value will be 1.14x10^19 hash/s.

How much electricity is required?

We repeat, all calculated values ​​will be very approximate. Simply because the farm and ASIC equipment from different manufacturers will consume different amounts of energy.

Let's take a look at Bitmain products as an example. This is the world leader in the production of mining equipment for Bitcoin production. The company's headquarters is located in China. Today its share of the Bitcoin production equipment market is more than 70%.

So, one of the company's products is Antminer S9. It contains chips made using 19 nm technology. The average performance of the chip is 4 terahash/s. At the same time, the miner consumes 1372 W of electricity. The entire line of devices released before S9 is characterized by high power consumption.

If we divide 1.14 × 10 19 by 14 × 10 12, we can find out that today about 800,000 ASICs of this model are in operation, totaling 1,100 megawatts.

When analyzing electricity consumption for mining, it is impossible not to mention that the International Energy Agency does not use units of measurement such as MW or GW. They have another designation - MTNE, which stands for million tons of oil equivalent. One HNE is equal to 11.63 megawatt-hours. The International Energy Agency estimated the total electricity consumption on the planet in 2017 at 13,647 MTNE.

If we take MTNE as a unit of measurement, we find out that the Bitcoin network requires 9636 gigawatt-hours or 1100 megawatts, which is equivalent to 0.829 MTNE annually. This figure can only be taken as a minimum, but these are the approximate figures.

It is worth considering that not everyone can afford to buy the latest miners, which means that actual consumption is much higher. For example, the predecessor of the S9 model, Antminer S7, requires 1.5 times more electricity than its modern counterpart.

At the end of 2017, when there was a rapid increase in the value of Bitcoin, ASIC Antminer S7 remained profitable for operation, because the price of the cryptocurrency covered all the costs of its production. Now it brings in little profit, and in the future it will be abandoned, which is why energy consumption values ​​will change.

What do these numbers mean? Is this a lot?

As you know, everything in our world is relative, so you can only find out whether mining consumes a lot of energy or a little by comparing it. Let's look at a few examples to help make the numbers more clear.

So, the energy consumption of Bitcoin is identical to the expenses of half a million residents of Canada, which is a developed country and has one of the world's largest economies. If we take the lagging countries, Bitcoin consumption is identical to what is required by the entire Republic of the Congo. The network “devours” more electricity than 166 other countries on our planet.

However, a comparison can be made in which the energy costs of Bitcoin will be insignificant. For example, the energy used by the world's main cryptocurrency would only be enough to power a country like the United States for 19 hours.

All the Bitcoin capacity with a huge reserve could be covered by one thermal power plant in Taiwan - the consumption would be only 20%. The same applies to the Chinese Three Gorges hydroelectric power station - only 30% of its capacity is sufficient for energy supply. In 2015, Google required more energy than the entire Bitcoin network did last year.

Always accompanied by large initial equipment costs. In addition, you will need to spend money on maintaining your miner and on electricity. Your farm's food costs will determine how much you'll earn.

After all, it is calculated using a simple formula: the price of the consumed electricity is subtracted from the price of the mined cryptocurrency.

I’ll say right away that a mining farm will consume a lot of electricity. If you are going to assemble your own mining rig or have already assembled it, but for some reason did not take into account how much electricity it consumes, then this article is for you. It will also be useful for beginners. Many of them often have inaccuracies in calculating the electricity consumed by their farms. Because of this, it happens that at the end of the month a miner may be very “delighted” with the payment for electricity and will have to pay an amount five times more than what he initially expected. You should avoid such moments and approach this matter with an understanding of all the basic principles.

How to calculate the electricity consumption of a mining farm?

To calculate how much electricity a mining farm consumes, you first need to find out how much electricity its individual elements consume: processor, video card, cooling equipment. If you mine Bitcoin on a special single miner, then you can find information about the electricity consumption of the entire system, and not its individual parts. You can find them on the Internet. We will analyze how much a mining farm consumes using the example of a farm with four video cards, one processor and two coolers.

For our calculations, we will take a video card from Nvidia - GeForce GTX 1070. By searching on the Internet, we find out its power consumption. It is 150 W. We have four of these video cards, and their total consumption will be 600 W.

The next most energy consuming element after the video card is the processor. For example, the Intel Pentium G4620 consumes 50 W. This is what we will take for our calculations.

The electricity consumption of other elements, such as coolers, RAM, hard drive and motherboard, is very small. And regardless of cost and characteristics, their total power consumption will not exceed 100 W. This is the value we will take for our calculations.

And so, in total, our system consumes 750 W per month. But we did not take into account one more point that novice miners often do not take into account. The fact is that no power supply operates at 100% efficiency. It loses 10 percent in the form of heat. So, the final consumption of our system will be slightly higher. Adjusted for the power supply, it will be approximately 825 W per month. Or 28 kW per day. So we found out how much electricity a mining farm consumes.

If you want to find out how much money you will have to pay for this, you need to multiply the resulting electricity consumption by the price in your region. In different countries, and even in different regions of the same country, electricity prices differ. Depending on the price per kW in your area, the amount will vary. For example, we will take the average cost of 1 kW in Russia - 3 rubles. If our farm consumes 825 W, we will have to pay 2,520 rubles per month (84 rubles per day) for its operation.

This is quite a large amount, considering that this is the price for work only. But with an effectively organized mining process, this price will be insignificant compared to the profit from the mined cryptocurrency. You must calculate everything so that your income from mining is several times higher than your electricity costs.

Opinion from the network

I started mining two years ago. I was mining at home for 2 months, I had to pay more than 5k a month. Then he decided to move his farm to his dacha, outside the city. Now I pay less than 2k. This is very profitable, especially for those who have powerful miners.

As we know, the second expense item after purchasing a farm is energy costs. And when the farm is not of an industrial scale and is located in an apartment, there is a desire to separate farm expenses from expenses for household needs.

How to calculate the power of a farm at the time of cryptocurrency mining?

The simplest and not entirely accurate way is to use the MSI Afterburner program or any other program for working with settings and overclocking video cards. See how much one video card consumes at the time of production, multiply by the number of cards and add the cost of wiring. My program shows 85 watts, multiply by 6 to get 510 watts, add a couple of hundred to ensure the operation of the motherboard, processor, memory, risers and hard drive with Wi-Fi modem, and we get the desired figure, but the problem is, how much needs to be added. There are rumors that around 200 watts, we end up with 710 watt/hour, 17 kW/day, 511 kW/month or 1,656 rubles.

Use a multimeter to determine the power of the mining rig.

We also have such an option, but it is quite difficult to implement. It is necessary to connect a multimeter into the gap and find out the current consumed by the farm, i.e. pass through your measuring device the current necessary for the farm to operate in mining mode. For a simple farm this is not a problem, for a powerful one too, but the device may not withstand such a load. Next, having learned the current, we find out the voltage in the socket, and multiply the obtained data among each other. I’ll say right away that I didn’t find out the power of my farm this way.

Uninterruptible power supply (UPS) as a device power meter.

Also a good option. I have just this one, although I only received the information that you can find out the power through it by studying this issue on the Internet. And already rubbing my hands that the problem was solved and the data I needed was received, I was a little disappointed, my UPS model does not transmit this data to the control program, so again not my option. Although other models show both power and voltage and even calculate energy costs. It looks something like this:

The socket is a digital AC power meter.

I started exploring the vastness of online stores, but eventually came to Aliexpress. I started exploring possible options and came across a device from the Hidance brand. I decided not to think for a long time, but to place an order, the cost of the device at the time of order was 680 rubles, after 12 days I received my parcel. We open the packaging, open the box and here is this miracle device.

Rather, we connect our farm through it, launch it and look at the results without mining.

On the left side of the picture we see that our system, when operating without a running miner, consumes 87 watts, and after starting mining, the system begins to consume 773 watt/hour, multiply by a month and get 554 kW or 1,796 rubles. The difference is not so big compared to our approximate figures, but still almost 10%. And in general, it’s good that the difference is not so big and we are within the limits of theoretical calculations; it would be worse if it showed 1 kW per hour.

According to the passport, the device holds up to 16 amperes, although it’s probably better not to turn it on that much.

It has 7 modes and shows the network voltage, current consumption, power consumption, minimum and maximum power per hour. It shows how many kW was consumed during its operation, and if you indicate the cost of 1 kW, it will also calculate the costs in rubles.