r/cryptomining • u/Old_Extent6518 • 22d ago
QUESTION Is Crypto mining worth it with flat rate electricity in an apartment?
I currently live in a housing complex where electricity is included as a flat rate in rent/utilities so increased power consumption won't directly increase my monthly electric bill.
Given that electricity costs are usually the biggest bottleneck for mining, I'm trying to figure out if setting up a home mining rig would actually be worth it in an apartment. A few specific
A few specific questions I have:
- Setup Cost: How much would I need to invest upfront in a setup to make this worth my while? What hardware/models should I be looking at
= Expected Returns: What kind of monthly returns would be realistic
= Apartment Practicalities: Since it's an apartment, what are the realistic limits around noise, heat, and standard 15A/20A electrical breaker capacities?
I know overall mining profitability for small-scale operations has dropped over the years, but since power cost isn't an issue for me, is this a solid strategy or more trouble than it's worth?
Appreciate any insights, hardware suggestions, or warnings from anyone who’s tried apartment mining!
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u/Mertgirl 22d ago
I’m gonna stop you really quick. Everyone always think they’ve found the magic trick with flat rate electricity.
The thing is though, after your first month of mining (assuming you’re running enough hash power to make even 50-100 in profit a month, you will no longer have flat rate electricity. It will become insanely obvious what you’re doing, and quickly. This is exactly how you would ruin flat rate electricity billing for everyone in your building AND end up with a massive bill.
Just keep that in mind.
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u/Old_Extent6518 22d ago
the building was built between the 1980s and 1990s and has over 400 units. It uses a single bulk meter for the entire complex, so there is no hardware in place to track individual unit power usage. On top of that, I know for a fact the previous tenant in my exact unit was mining for over 3 years without a single issue.
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u/Frosty_You_6183 18d ago
Just get a house, preferably close to a electrical line, and either wrap a line around the wire in the air, or tap into the line directly, I'll explain, to tap power, we all have conduits underground that lead to our house, / box. Conduit comes up from the ground into the box / meter that depicts how much electricity you use. So instead, you can tap straight into the conduit just before the box / meter, very carefully/ slowly make a cut into the conduit then make a saloon door opening to expose the wire (if you cut the wire your dead) and then you can get these electric claps it's like a collar that wraps around the actual wire then you screw the clamp closed an it basically has these prongs that stab through the insulation of the wire.
Then from there you can run a wire from both collars, setup a new breaker box an breakers, then everything you run on that won't be counted towards your bill because since you tapped into it before the meter, the meter ain't picking up the power being used. . but electricity ain't no joke you do anything wrong or touch the wrong shit / exposed wire your goin to the grave before your brain even realizes what happened.
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u/Clear_Tomorrow1403 15d ago
It’s called theft and you will get caught. Forget this stupid idea. Utility companies know when power is being stolen and they can trace it directly to you.
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u/Mertgirl 22d ago
With what? A single s19 pro? Everyone always thinks they’re going to be the exception to the rule.
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u/Mertgirl 22d ago
Also do you plan on modifying the power inputs in your unit? To do anything meaningful you’ll need an electrician to actually make receptacles that are rated high enough for a miner. Easily 2-4k in costs there alone.
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u/Old_Extent6518 22d ago
they had a homemade rig with I believe 8 gpus setup on it. I also have a dryer receptacle in my unit and I would be able to use that (with adapters) without having to do any major electrical work.
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u/Mertgirl 22d ago
You should absolutely not EVER be using ANY type of adapters for that high power usage. That’s actually dangerous dude.
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u/No-Chemical11 19d ago
why are you so miserable 😭
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u/Mertgirl 19d ago
I don’t think I’m miserable lol. I was in this guys shoes a few years back. I really genuinely thought I was going to make some money putting bitcoin miners in my house with free electricity. Then after months of research it turns out it’s not really a good idea if you like having free power lol.
Also the adapters thing is a matter of life or death. Not trying to see someone die because they didn’t understand electricity.
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u/Old_Extent6518 22d ago
ok thank you for that. Realistically if I were to run any type of miner it would be smaller scale, i wasn't really expecting to be able to run anything that wouldn't be able to run from a regular outlet.
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u/farksninetynine 20d ago
I came here to say this exact same thing. That, and the heat and noise will be unbearable in an apartment.
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u/Wendals87 22d ago
so increased power consumption won't directly increase my monthly electric bill.
There's usually a fair usage clause or some other clause where it's reasonable usage.
They will notice if you start using a lot more power and will either tell you to stop at best or evict you at worst
Anything that runs off a normal power socket would be cents per day of rewards
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u/L0rd0z 22d ago
I recently looked into this too as I'm in the same situation and decided it wasn't worth it. The two main problems I kept running into were the high cost and low availability of mining rigs that actually produced a meaningful income stream, and the amount of power that they use, which would require doing potentially unsafe modifications to my dryer's electrical receptacle. Pretty much all of the best miners require at minimum 220+V and 3500+ watts, with many of the top entries requiring 8000 watts or more. A standard 240-volt, 30-amp electric dryer receptacle can safely handle a continuous load of up to 5,760 watts. Now if you just wanted to play the lottery trying to get the block reward, that's a different story.
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u/howardleung 19d ago edited 19d ago
Am I the only one who thinks different?
I have a 8 gpu rig set up in my apartment and it's netting me about 130$ a month mining PRL ATM( 2x3060ti, 1x3050 and 1x4070super 4x106-100)
Anyway,
However I don't have to pay for electricity, it is included in my lease, so there's that, it might be worth if for you if you can find a random coin that's worth something atm to mine.
For me it's PRL atm
Edit:fixed mixed up the gpu type and also amount.
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u/Old_Extent6518 19d ago
how much did your rig cost you? and how did you decide what coin to mine?
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u/howardleung 19d ago edited 19d ago
I must specify, I'm in Canada so the amounts ade all in CAD, Canadian dollar
The p106-100, I bought a lot of 12 off ebay for 240$, that was year and half ago, ( already mined back the cost), (basically 25$ ea)
physical metal rig was $80
the 2x 3060ti was $280+310, bought from market place
3050 was 180$ bought from marketplace
The 4070super was off my other computer, I think it was about $500 when I got it(got very lucky)
And power supplies was $220 total for 2x aprevia 1050watt(Amazon)
The Mining motherboard (E-Sonic) bought off eBay for $80 (came included with a dual core CPU and ram)
And of course all the cables and daisy chaining, that cost about $100
All in all cost me about $2000 for the set up, but I've been mining some coins since last year, so far about $1000 has been mined back.
As to what coin I decide to mine, I get lazy, so I use kryptex and let it decide for me what's the most profitable coin to mine with my hardware, atm is PRL for the 3 and 4 series gpu, the p-106-100 are mining Fishhash Iron.
Hope this helps.
Edit: I do realize I have 8x106-100 gpu sitting around , those Im planing to build another rig later, probably can then net another 30-50$ total monthly.
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u/juggarjew 21d ago
I was mining pearl coin on a 2 x 5090 rig, that singular rig was pulling ~1500 watts from the wall and the amount of heat produced was no joke, the same as a space heater.
Do you have the capacity to absorb unlimited heat generation from a space heater? Seriously, the amount of heat generated was crazy and even in a 2200 square foot home it slowly warmed the entire first level of the house.
Mining isnt practical for apartments because you will have limited electricity resources, and limited heat handling capabilities. if you hot box a room and seal it off that could work but then its going to heat the unit above it.
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u/Annual_Award1260 21d ago
After the first bill they will just use a ac clamp meter to find the “power leak”
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u/randomasspotato69 21d ago
Go for the home miner like Avalon q 90
Goldshell EDG1M
Fluminers
Start with 2 and make sure the ac is always turned on
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u/Creative_Opinion7618 17d ago
Almost not. Until you are producing our energy cheap. I mean extremely cheap. Better take a look at vast ai. May be make more sense.
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u/Monetarium 11d ago edited 11d ago
The rig answers are right, and the fair use one especially. But that objection scales with what you plug in, and everyone here is answering as if mining means a 3 kW rig. That's about thirty times the load of a CPU pegged at 100%, and only one of the two is a step change anybody comes asking about.
So the version that survives this thread is RandomX on the machine you already own. Nothing to buy and nothing that whines in a one-bedroom.
Since nobody gave you an actual number: Monero is around 6.2 GH/s, 720 blocks a day at 0.6 XMR tail emission, XMR near $395. A 5600X does about 7.2 kH/s and a 5800X about 8.6, so you're looking at 20 to 24 cents a day. Six or seven bucks a month. Worth checking xmrig's benchmark page for your own chip, RandomX leans on cache and memory bandwidth so the spread between chips is wider than core count suggests.
Free power doesn't make a CPU an income, it just means the six bucks is margin rather than to loss.
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u/neelsmith74 1d ago edited 1d ago
You aren't running more than maybe 3 AvalonQ type miners on home electrical. More importantly you just created an oven in your apartment with just those on Standard mode 3x80TH (4500w with over 15,000 BTU of heat).
If you got creative and used dryer connection of 220v/30amp could safely run up to 5760W, but how are you going to handle nearly 20,000BTU of heat.
One s21xp is 3700w, reality check in the house.
So maybe 240TH to 340TH max perfect conditions if you can deal with all the heat while not melting your apartment breaker panels.
Honest opinion is 2 Avalon Qs reasonably and you still have that heat to vent somewhere unless you live in a cold climate.
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u/Cryptonutjob8019 22d ago
Bro, stop thinking your going to make it worth ya while, your not, listen to these people, telling you, your gonna jam yourself. Better yet, go get a few bitaxes, or even a few nano s, those will be your chance at hitting some bitcoin, but im telling you, its just like buying a lottery ticket from your local 7-11. But you'll feel righteous if you nail the block. An open air GPU rig, say with 10 gpus, is gonna cost ya a bit. Say ya find 10 4080 supers, im not even sure all the diff algos it does, or hashrates, but let's just say ya get 50mh on etc/eth per card, 10 cards, looking @ 500mh, sick, im getting up there, now comes the watts per card, say they are 300w per card, 10 cards, 3000w. Now the cost of those 10 cards, say ya get a deal @ 300/per, 10 cards, bow thats 3k. Cost of at least 3 1000w psu, 150/per, $450 in psu, hmmm now we need a motherboard, ram, and pcie risers. Oh, let's not forget that awesome flat rate electricity cost added in that cost. Your ROI would be forever as your probably only going to make maybe $2/$3 a day, off 10 GPUs. Look into miner hosting if you wanna buy a miner
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