L3+ power usage to productivity is untenable

The last few weeks leading up to 5 April.18 I am taking note with all other known factors being the same as far as I know, that it taking more watts to run than what the ASIC machines are returning in mined LTC. The math done roughly is in the range of $200.00 USD a month to run 2 of those units 24-7 as far as electricity goes, which is of course not " cheap." This is forcing a change to some kind of alternative or even worse.
Is this due to the current difficulty of mining LTC, and the drop in USD value, or something else?

It totally depends on your electricity cost. Assuming $0.10 per kw/hour your L3+ will cost $2.16 per day in electricity. Straight LTC mining will produce $4.11 per day and a profit of $1.95. If you have higher than $0.10 electricity you should consider hosting your miner somewhere else.

You can easily overclock your L3+ to around 600Mhash instead of the standard 501Mhash, this increases power consumption to around 900W. I do this on all my L3+s. This helps a lot also in terms of profitability.

There are 2 big issues now with mining and profitability.

1: Price of coin dropping especially LTC and it will get worse before better

2: Network difficulty, A sudden connection rise on LTC network went to 220TH which was probably a lot of L3+ from March batch connecting all at once so the difficulty went to 7.2m and looks set to go to 7.5m in 44hrs, it was 5.3m a month ago when the prices were +$220


I have 4 L3+ running but don't have power costs at the moment and if I did I wouldn't be making any money or even a loss due to UK power prices.

I have seen a lot of L3+ on UK Ebay for next to nothing so might add more to my collection.

A reason why its very important to run watt meters on your rigs so you KNOW how much you are using.
Then you can take your electric bill and figure cost of power and multiply it so you know the running costs.

If your L3+ is only making 1 LTC per month, and LTC drops to $50 a coin, no sense paying $90 a month in electric.
You could shut down and save $90, or spend $50 for your monthly coin and still save $40 for the month.


You need to know the cutoff so you can turn the machines off when needed to save money.

CS, I work as an Electrician, so my numbers are close. The readings were taken when I brought them on line and they stay consistent.
I run 240V on the L3s, they pull 760W each. The way utilities bill KWH can be somewhat screwed up as they will change rates for different periods of the month.
Darzl. thanks good overview of things I am less learned on.
Rjenkin, I'd like to hear details on you OC methods.

Thanks all

Darzl wrote:There are 2 big issues now with mining and profitability.

1: Price of coin dropping especially LTC and it will get worse before better

2: Network difficulty, A sudden connection rise on LTC network went to 220TH which was probably a lot of L3+ from March batch connecting all at once so the difficulty went to 7.2m and looks set to go to 7.5m in 44hrs, it was 5.3m a month ago when the prices were +$220


I have 4 L3+ running but don't have power costs at the moment and if I did I wouldn't be making any money or even a loss due to UK power prices.

I have seen a lot of L3+ on UK Ebay for next to nothing so might add more to my collection.

Bitmain are offering L3+ at $462 - Yes you read that correctly. I just applied a $250 coupon to one. I'm debating about applying a $100 to another.

They changed their shipping rates, the $100 coupon doesn't cover the shipping now.

The OC Frequencies being used would be helpful to know.