GPU vs Disk space?

[driftux]

Is 2 GPU units (for example Nvidia 1070 or Radeon580 ) will be more profitable to get coins than sharing 8TB total disks space looking in period of 2 years? How can I estimate it and choose more profitable way to make PC with GPU or HDD? Or maybe I could combine GPU and HHD's sharing in one PC and get double bonus?

[reinisp]

@driftux
The mining with GPU will practically end next summer when ASICs are expected to take over the mining.
But at present you can earn way more by mining than by hosting.

If you intend to get and accumulate SC, you should mine something more profitable and exchange the mined coins into SC.
For example, I am mining with my old 2GB Radeon cards Monero at miningpoolhub and let them exchange the mined XMRs into SC...
I found that is the most profitable use for my otherwise useless GPUs.
And, if you do like that, the only difference would be to find the most profitable coin to mine for your particular card so you can choose your GPU according to other needs/wishes (gaming).

[driftux]

Can I do hosting and mining on a single PC at the same time?

[reinisp]

Yes, you can.
Hosting runs on nearly all OS (assuming enough ram and hdd space available), mining sofware not on everything.
But with Windows and Linux you can do both.

[driftux]

I think for file hosting RAM is not very needed. By the way how much SIA coin value should I expect for 8TB disks sharing? How can I calculate the profitability?

[reinisp]

@driftux
I am sharing 7TB, of which ~5% are being rented.
After 4 months of operation I am earning ~5SC a day. There is not one host earning more than 10SC a day at present...
And more. You can't expect you will be rented out fully anyway, as when the free storage left decreases you are getting a reducing coefficient for the hosting score.

So, you can quickly recognize that mining SC will be way more easy than earning with hosting.
And, You need to buy SC for hosting to put as collateral.

Anyway, if you intend to operate a host plan it for a long period. And start it. Even with low collateral and little shared space you start to eliminate the penalties every new host gets at the start. Hosts "accumulate" rating points for just being online 97% of time, even if no space gets used. Ok, they don't accumulate, they just improve (lower) the penalties and so increase the likelihood of getting contracts in future.
Just do not expect to make real profits for the first 2 years of operation...

[reinisp]

Ah, and just FYI my hosts siad process alone currently uses ~8GB of RAM and ~8% of a 2GHz celerons processing power. Someone is uploading data to my host.

Most of the RAM is needed for the Sia node to work with the blockchain and transactionpool, and not for the file hosting itself.

[bryan]

@driftux Mining will always be more profitable I think.