Ethereum GPU mining?

[wege12]

I'm about to build a five 290x mining rig. How much power do you think I'll need?

 

[Madpacket]

Well that's one interesting way to implement PoS. Honestly if Metropolis has sharding and zksnarks properly implemented, a transition to PoS is going to be a hard sell. I agree with the approach given the huge explosion with the price and interest by Ethereum Alliance. I would like to see proper governance before we go full PoS so premie purchasers don't end up with an oligopoly due to the largest stake pools. Ideally all premine coins should be destroyed in the fork before full PoS but that would piss a lot of early adopters off. There may be a way that works best for both PoW miners and large stake pools, and I suspect sharding will be involved. However given Vitalik's lack of greed thus far (seems genuinely motivated by the capabilities of the technology rather than getting rich), and his track record I'm not too concerned. Ethereum is still the platform with the biggest potential so just need to be patient. Good times ahead!

 

[Madpacket]

I'm about to build a five 290x mining rig. How much power do you think I'll need?

Undervolted and overclocked a 1KW gold or platinum would likely suffice. However I would probably pick up a 1200W P2 or 1300G2 for some buffer.

 

[wege12]

Undervolted and overclocked a 1KW gold or platinum would likely suffice. However I would probably pick up a 1200W P2 or 1300G2 for some buffer.

That is what I was thinking as well. However, I think it'd be much cheaper to use two 750w power supplies instead of a one 1200w.

 

[DrMrLordX]

Well that's one interesting way to implement PoS. Honestly if Metropolis has sharding and zksnarks properly implemented, a transition to PoS is going to be a hard sell. I agree with the approach given the huge explosion with the price and interest by Ethereum Alliance. I would like to see proper governance before we go full PoS so premie purchasers don't end up with an oligopoly due to the largest stake pools. Ideally all premine coins should be destroyed in the fork before full PoS but that would piss a lot of early adopters off. There may be a way that works best for both PoW miners and large stake pools, and I suspect sharding will be involved. However given Vitalik's lack of greed thus far (seems genuinely motivated by the capabilities of the technology rather than getting rich), and his track record I'm not too concerned. Ethereum is still the platform with the biggest potential so just need to be patient. Good times ahead!

Either destroy the premine coins, or prevent them from being used in PoS. It was my understanding that most of the premine coins are still under dev control anyway, unless they dumped them to raise capital at some point.

 

[wege12]

What kind of power surge protectors are you guys using with >1,000w mining rigs?

 

[fleshconsumed]

Undervolted and overclocked a 1KW gold or platinum would likely suffice. However I would probably pick up a 1200W P2 or 1300G2 for some buffer.

You would really need to underclock and undervolt the hell out of those cards to run 5 290's off of 1200-1300W PSU. From what I remember two 290's would draw about 600W from the wall, say 50W was for CPU/RAM, that means single 290 drew 275W, times 5 that's 1375W on cards alone. Even undervolting and underclocking that's going to be really pushing even a 1300W PSU.

 

[n0x1ous]

I pull 1000w from the wall with 6 underclocked and undervolted 480s so I would think 5 290s would be really pushing it for 1200/1300 watt psu

 

[thilanliyan]

If you heavily undervolt and underclock, you may be able to get a 290 down to 200w per card, but a 1200w psu would still be cutting it close I think.

 

[IEC]

I used to run 4x 290 rigs with 1000W eVGA G2 PSUs. But these were run open-air and undervolted/underclocked for maximum efficiency.

 

[Madpacket]

I should have said undervolted and underclocked. Yeah, 5 290 cards is cutting it close but you can get them down to roughly 160 - 170W each with careful tuning, at least you can with the reference models. A 1200W Platinum or 1300W Gold would be plenty for efficient mining (where you want to be anyway). I had a 6 card 290 reference milk crate setup pulling around 1050W of power last year. Each 290 was mining around 26 - 27mh. I ran this machine without issue on a 1KW Platinum EVGA power supply for around 3 weeks but I wouldn't recommend you do that. 5 cards you could get away with but for extended mining probably go with something a little bigger. My 6 card 480 rigs pull around 820 - 830W and produce 29Mh per card. These power measurements are from the wall. Remember these power supplies run at a max of around 93% efficiency (usually under 90 when near full load) so take that into account when pushing the limits. FWIW most of my rigs are running around 80 - 90% load (and have been for almost a year straight). I can't say enough good things about the top tier EVGA power (SuperFlower design) supplies.

 

[VeryCharBroiled]

What kind of power surge protectors are you guys using with >1,000w mining rigs?

square d whole house surge suppressor at the breaker box.

 

[DrMrLordX]

Undervolted 290s don't chew up that much power. My most power-hungry machine - an old undervolted Phenom with 4 undervolted, overclocked 290s - pulls maybe 980W from the wall on an EVGA G2 1300W? It could easily handle another card, especially if I underclocked. I can get 290s down to around 150-160W at the PSU running them around 900 MHz with 1175 MHz RAM.

 

[dajeepster]

Undervolted 290s don't chew up that much power. My most power-hungry machine - an old undervolted Phenom with 4 undervolted, overclocked 290s - pulls maybe 980W from the wall on an EVGA G2 1300W? It could easily handle another card, especially if I underclocked. I can get 290s down to around 150-160W at the PSU running them around 900 MHz with 1175 MHz RAM.

the last of my 290/280 have died this past weekend (gasket went out on waterblock... made it 3/4 years?). if i've been slowly replacing them as they die in my machines with 4xx/5xx and 1070/1060. Most likely it's just power regulators and power filters on the cards have just warn out through 24/7 since day 1 of the life of these cards. When i get the time and energy, i'll work on them, but right now it's not economically feasable to spend the time currently on them.. to busy with job and keeping the other miners up and running and tweaking them. i about twenty of these babies in my parts box.

 

[fleshconsumed]

My 6 card 480 rigs pull around 820 - 830W and produce 29Mh per card. These power measurements are from the wall.

How did you get 29Mh at 135W per card (including CPU)? Did you flash custom BIOS?

 

[beginner99]

I'm about to build a five 290x mining rig. How much power do you think I'll need?

Mining with one 290x a year back doubled my power bill. Be warned...(Not US so it's costly)

 

[Madpacket]

How did you get 29Mh at 135W per card (including CPU)? Did you flash custom BIOS?

Yes. I use that Boysie 29mh low power BIOS for all my 480's, even my aftermarket Sapphire and MSI cards. In addition to the flash you use wattool and set your voltages even lower, it's easier and more reliable than AMD's Wattman, at least for reference cards.

Here's an image of my relevant settings.

WatTool RX 480 Settings. https://imgur.com/gallery/HMpfv

You can find the BIOS here:

https://forum.ethereum.org/discussion/9400/boysies-rx480-ref-bios-29mh-low-pwr-eth-or-dual-mining

 

[wege12]

Mining with one 290x a year back doubled my power bill. Be warned...(Not US so it's costly)

I don't pay my electric bill so I'm all good.

 

[thilanliyan]

the last of my 290/280 have died this past weekend (gasket went out on waterblock... made it 3/4 years?).

Was it a full cover block? Is that a common occurrence on full cover blocks?

I've been using universal blocks exclusively with custom heatsinks for vram and vrms, and I have never had a block fail on me. I think I used my old DD Maze4 Acetal block for nearly 10 yrs. The Swiftech MCW82 blocks on my 290s have been used for about 3.5 years. And I just got an EK VGA-Supremacy for the 1080 I have.
A gasket failing never really even occurred to me lol, but I guess I should keep an eye out.

 

[DrMrLordX]

the last of my 290/280 have died this past weekend (gasket went out on waterblock... made it 3/4 years?). if i've been slowly replacing them as they die in my machines with 4xx/5xx and 1070/1060. Most likely it's just power regulators and power filters on the cards have just warn out through 24/7 since day 1 of the life of these cards. When i get the time and energy, i'll work on them, but right now it's not economically feasable to spend the time currently on them.. to busy with job and keeping the other miners up and running and tweaking them. i about twenty of these babies in my parts box.

Aww poor things. Well they don't last forever, do they?

 

[dajeepster]

Was it a full cover block? Is that a common occurrence on full cover blocks?

I've been using universal blocks exclusively with custom heatsinks for vram and vrms, and I have never had a block fail on me. I think I used my old DD Maze4 Acetal block for nearly 10 yrs. The Swiftech MCW82 blocks on my 290s have been used for about 3.5 years. And I just got an EK VGA-Supremacy for the 1080 I have.
A gasket failing never really even occurred to me lol, but I guess I should keep an eye out.

this is the first time i've ever had a waterblock gasket fail. it was a full cover block from EK. it seem like the liquid was coming out of all the gasket opens at once.. i didn't even notice it until one of the cards stopped being recognized after a reboot. At first i thought it was just it's time and that the power regulators on the board was going, until i noticed the wetness and it wasn't from excitement. The only time i've ever replaced a gasket on something has been if i removed a connection that had a gasket, i would always replace the flattened gasket, but this gasket failure happened without any help from me.
I've got a few of those MCW82 blocks also on older cards such as my 79XX and my 57XX. I never did get any MCW82 on my 290/280 though. If i ever revive them and have the power to spare i might, but right now i'm trying to reduce power and increase hash rate. I consumed about 7000 kwatts last month.

 

[dajeepster]

Aww poor things. Well they don't last forever, do they?

they're not dead forever yet, just not economically wise in time and money to revive them currently.

 

[wege12]

I've been mining to two different ethereum addresses and was wondering how I actually access my ethereum from these addresses to eventually one day sell them? Do I need to use a wallet? If so, how do I go about this?

Thanks

 

[Crono]

I've been mining to two different ethereum addresses and was wondering how I actually access my ethereum from these addresses to eventually one day sell them? Do I need to use a wallet? If so, how do I go about this?

Thanks

How did you get these addresses? You can use the official wallet client (Mist) which runs locally, or use an online wallet generator like MyEtherWallet to send and receive transactions.

In either case, I highly suggest printing a copy or copies of the private key (this is what's called a paper wallet) and export a backup of the wallet (and keep the password safe somewhere, as it's an encrypted file) to flash drive(s), making sure to keep them in secure locations (ideally one off site in case of a fire, flood, etc).

As long as you have the private key, you can always import it into any type of wallet on any platform later on, and just use the public key to view your balance while mining.

 

[wege12]

How did you get these addresses? You can use the official wallet client (Mist) which runs locally, or use an online wallet generator like MyEtherWallet.

In either case, I highly suggest printing a copy or copies of the private key and export a backup of the wallet (and keep the password safe somewhere, as it's an encrypted file) to flash drive(s), and keep them in a secure locations (ideally one off site in case of a fire, flood, etc).

Almost positive I used Mist wallet over a year ago to generate these addresses.