Ethereum GPU mining?

[bob4432]

Bitcoin mining in any form is dominated by ASICs. I do not recommend it at all. You can try mining ETH or ZEC or XMR or uh DCR or LBRY or . . . whatever. Not sure if I recommend it since ETH difficulty is spiking so much, pushing hash power into other coins. You would have to do a lot of research on hashrates to see what is possible and what are the probable profits.

It is still possible to make a profit mining ETH since the price is going up. We're over $350 now. A single 8GB R9 390 running 1010 MHz core/1500 MHz VRAM can push ~28.5 MH/s earning ~$55/month before taking power into account. That's running 24/7 on nanopool. Mine will do that undervolted -125 mv from stock. Run enough cards like that and you could do okay, for awhile. Difficulty is only going to get worse.

I think you can get better MH/s per W with Polaris, but Polaris is still terribly overpriced to the point that RoI might take more than 6 months. Not 100% sure on 1070s.

Would somebody mind informing me of a site/s that you have been to that you consider good sites w/ good data (like the Anandtech of Mining for a newb). From what wallet, to what to mine. I have a lot of older systems that need to be sold off anyway and their sale could be used to offset a 'mining' rig (after I did my own calculations of course taking Power into account).

Please advise on a trusted newbs to mining site that doesn't expect you to get an ASIC setup for $1700 right out of the gate.

Thanks again,
Bob

 

[DrMrLordX]

Well I can tell you, the wallet you want to start with on Ethereum is Mist Wallet/Ethereum Wallet:

https://github.com/ethereum/mist/releases

It WILL download a huge set of chain data, but unless you are with insane space restrictions on the drive where you install it, you should be okay. Running it makes you a full node which is good for network health. I 've taken to running Ethereum Wallet as often as possible to be a full node myself.

Do not touch ASICs.

I will tell you that any "serious" mining rig with 4 GPUs or more is going to run you will over $1k, probably over $1.5k with the price of GPUs being as high as they are right now. An r9 390 is $300 and the cheapest rx 480 8GB I can find is $353 so it's a bit ridiculous. Budget $150-$200 for a decent PSU and go from there.

A lot of people now would just say, get 1070s and call it a day. They might be right. I think you can find them for around $430 and they will save you money over a 390 pretty quickly in terms of power usage.

Anyway you gotta pay to play.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Anyway you gotta pay to play.

Isn't that true... I've got a rig with R5 1600, RX 470 4GB, RX 570 4GB, a rig with R5 1600, and 2x R9 260X 2GB, a rig with R5 1600, and 2x GTX950 2GB, and a rig with Thuban 1045T (95W), and 2x R9 270X 2GB.
At current mining tempo, I'm "making" over $8 USD / day. My electricity cost, if I were paying for electricity, would be around $2-3/day. So, maybe $4-5/day profit? I'll find out in a month.

I bought the RX 570 4GB card on a whim, a week ago, so that will take a while to pay off, if I even can. I had planned to mine with "what I have" (which is a good-sized mish-mash of GPUs), but I was just tempted of making $1-1.50/day more with that card. So, maybe 6-8 months ROI.

 

[DrMrLordX]

Still rockin with pitcairn eh? Mine is idle. Only thing it's good for is ZEC I guess, and I haven't mined that in awhile thanks to Nvidia users taking over that scene. Plus ZEC value isn't keeping up anymore.

 

[Yakk]

The non-profit dedicated to supporting development of the ethereum protocol has signed a partnership with Russian state-owned development bank Vnesheconombank (VEB).

Announced in a joint statement yesterday, the Ethereum Foundation will work together with the VEB to support its new blockchain research center, providing specialist training for distributed ledger technology and the ethereum platform.

The partnership hopes to help foster a community of ethereum experts within Russia and to assist the formation projects based on ethereum and other blockchain.

Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin said in statements:

"Cooperation between Ethereum and VEB gives a unique opportunity to engage in research and development on the use of blockchain technology for public administration and accelerate the adaptation of this technology to government organizations in the Russian Federation,"

The official partnership signing took place at a blockchain event in Tatarstan this weekend called "Blockchain: The New Oil of Russia." Senior officials from VEB are in attendance, as well as Buterin, who spoke at the event.

The partnership is part of a series of steps that Russia are taking towards blockchain implementation nationwide.

I'm not sure what to think of it after a high level Russian official declared cryptocurrencies shouldn't be accessible for the average citizen.

https://www.coindesk.com/ethereum-foundation-strikes-deal-russian-development-bank/

 

[bob4432]

Since the calculations are done w/ the GPUs, how much CPU do I need for say 3 GPUs as my rig in sig has 3x PCI-E 16x sized slots (2x8, 1x4 electrically) & 1x PCI-E x1 slot. Can the PCI-E x1 slot be used? Is this where a riser card is used? Or is there a need for for more bandwidth than a x1 slot supply? Last, with the amount that the cards create, I am assuming an open air case would be needed. Is there any in particular or since I have access to an aerospace machine shop, should I design my own and if so, what aspects do I need to be careful of? I could give the cards more space in between them since I am thinking that they are not going to be directly plugged into the motherboard but again, I am just in the very beginning of doing my cost analysis of this endeavor. While I do my cost anaylsis, is my rig in sig even worth starting up and trying this out? Or is my GPU to old and not even worth trying it out on and if that is the case, what is the 'weakest' GPU I should look at to even get started, again with 1, maybe 2 GPUs?
Thanks in advance,
Bob

 

[DrMrLordX]

I'm not sure what to think of it after a high level Russian official declared cryptocurrencies shouldn't be accessible for the average citizen.

https://www.coindesk.com/ethereum-foundation-strikes-deal-russian-development-bank/

Hopefully nobody already linked it, but:

https://news.bitcoin.com/moscow-stock-exchange-trade-cryptocurrency/

eep!

 

[bob4432]

Russia probably just wants to be on the front lines with this, another prong of their multi-pronged approach at being THE superpower, just my guess though. I could and may be waaaay off. Just thinking of Russia in general, not crypto-currency centric.

 

[Hitman928]

Got my Vega 56 to 37 MH/s on just the gaming driver. Using the BETA crypto driver it should bump up to 40 MH/s. I might be able to go higher, haven't tried yet.

 

[[DHT]Osiris]

Since the calculations are done w/ the GPUs, how much CPU do I need for say 3 GPUs as my rig in sig has 3x PCI-E 16x sized slots (2x8, 1x4 electrically) & 1x PCI-E x1 slot. Can the PCI-E x1 slot be used? Is this where a riser card is used? Or is there a need for for more bandwidth than a x1 slot supply? Last, with the amount that the cards create, I am assuming an open air case would be needed. Is there any in particular or since I have access to an aerospace machine shop, should I design my own and if so, what aspects do I need to be careful of? I could give the cards more space in between them since I am thinking that they are not going to be directly plugged into the motherboard but again, I am just in the very beginning of doing my cost analysis of this endeavor. While I do my cost anaylsis, is my rig in sig even worth starting up and trying this out? Or is my GPU to old and not even worth trying it out on and if that is the case, what is the 'weakest' GPU I should look at to even get started, again with 1, maybe 2 GPUs?
Thanks in advance,
Bob

Hard to recommend people jump into hardware right now due to ROI being >6mo, but for your questions:
CPU is barely needed, many go for simple celerons/i3's.
1x slots can be used for mining, the 'slot' is really just there for data transfer, makes no difference for mining. There's boards with 10x (and more) pcie x1 slots on it. Note that means vs x4, x8, x16. It's preferable to have PCIe 3.0 running for compatibility reasons (yours probably is). And yes, there's riser cards built for this purpose. I don't recommend any that draw power from the on-motherboard SATA slots (they're flakey).
Cooling is usually an issue, especially with higher TDP cards like 1080ti's. Right now I've got 5 ti's in my ~1200sqft basement keeping the whole room around 75-80F. You can get away with maybe 2 in a normal case without real issues but most end up with some kind of external case/octopus wiring system.
Card in sig is inadequate, the rest would be fine i'm sure.
You can technically mine with any rig which can support the given algorithm (some have vram requirements that eliminate <3GB cards for instance) but realistically, you need to get either an AMD 470/480, 570/580, or GTX 1070/1080ti. Those are the core miners right now, and carry a >MSRP price right now due to that. Your ROI will be on the order of 9ish mo if you buy now for any given card, assuming something catastrophic doesn't happen to either the difficulty or the price of BTC/what you're mining. For reference, about 4 months ago the ROI was more like 4 months.

 

[dajeepster]

Got my Vega 56 to 37 MH/s on just the gaming driver. Using the BETA crypto driver it should bump up to 40 MH/s. I might be able to go higher, haven't tried yet.

what's your power draw?

 

[bob4432]

Hard to recommend people jump into hardware right now due to ROI being >6mo, but for your questions:
CPU is barely needed, many go for simple celerons/i3's.
1x slots can be used for mining, the 'slot' is really just there for data transfer, makes no difference for mining. There's boards with 10x (and more) pcie x1 slots on it. Note that means vs x4, x8, x16. It's preferable to have PCIe 3.0 running for compatibility reasons (yours probably is). And yes, there's riser cards built for this purpose. I don't recommend any that draw power from the on-motherboard SATA slots (they're flakey).
Cooling is usually an issue, especially with higher TDP cards like 1080ti's. Right now I've got 5 ti's in my ~1200sqft basement keeping the whole room around 75-80F. You can get away with maybe 2 in a normal case without real issues but most end up with some kind of external case/octopus wiring system.
Card in sig is inadequate, the rest would be fine i'm sure.
You can technically mine with any rig which can support the given algorithm (some have vram requirements that eliminate <3GB cards for instance) but realistically, you need to get either an AMD 470/480, 570/580, or GTX 1070/1080ti. Those are the core miners right now, and carry a >MSRP price right now due to that. Your ROI will be on the order of 9ish mo if you buy now for any given card, assuming something catastrophic doesn't happen to either the difficulty or the price of BTC/what you're mining. For reference, about 4 months ago the ROI was more like 4 months.

Thanks for the info, makes sense why it appears that the cards have been going up lately from when I was looking at them a bit ago for updating my GPU for gaming...do AMD or nVidia have an edge in mining or does it depend on what you are mining?
75-80F, hell, that is my ambient room temp of the 'cool' rooms that are air conditioned (outside it is ~110F).

 

[[DHT]Osiris]

Thanks for the info, makes sense why it appears that the cards have been going up lately from when I was looking at them a bit ago for updating my GPU for gaming...do AMD or nVidia have an edge in mining or does it depend on what you are mining?
75-80F, hell, that is my ambient room temp of the 'cool' rooms that are air conditioned (outside it is ~110F).

Right now AMD probably has the edge on perf/$, or at least they would if cards were still being sold at MSRP. Due to scarcity/inflation it's really a tossup. One notable outlier is the 1080GTX, which doesn't perform as efficiently as either the 1070/1080TI (for the money/TDP) or the AMD offerings, hence it's price being mostly MSRP everywhere. Everything else is up anywhere from 10-100% markups.

Until relatively recently (~6mo ago) Nvidia cards were pretty crap at mining the popular coins, as a result they still have a relatively bad rap for mining among those not paying attention, but they are more than adequate and right now, both camps are so overpriced (and ROI's are so far out) that it doesn't really matter which you get.

If you don't have a way to get that heat out of your house, expect it to become unbearable, like 'i may as well not run the AC because I can't be in the same room either way' unbearable. Just with a 1080gtx and a 960gtx in my room in upstate NY, it's about 10F over the rest of the house. Basement is like 40F over ambient due to aforementioned 1080ti's. Anything more than a gaming system doubling as a miner when you aren't playing will probably push you north of 100F, AC be damned.

 

[Hitman928]

what's your power draw?

Wish I knew, I need to find my watt meter. I haven't found a software program yet that will read GPU power, or even voltages.

 

[Yakk]

Hopefully nobody already linked it, but:

https://news.bitcoin.com/moscow-stock-exchange-trade-cryptocurrency/

eep!

Not so sure... It's all confusing right now... there's another article saying the opposite :

https://www.coindesk.com/moscow-exchange-no-plans-launch-bitcoin-trading/

This follows what I've been reading informally, the Russian government seemingly is looking at ways to take control of cryptocurrencies away from ordinary people and control it themselves, or companies the government deems fit to appoint.

Which is why I mentioned earlier I'm not so sure seeing ETH publicly signing on with the Russian government is a good thing at all.

 

[Charlie22911]

Not so sure... It's all confusing right now... there's another article saying the opposite :

https://www.coindesk.com/moscow-exchange-no-plans-launch-bitcoin-trading/

This follows what I've been reading informally, the Russian government seemingly is looking at ways to take control of cryptocurrencies away from ordinary people and control it themselves, or companies the government deems fit to appoint.

Which is why I mentioned earlier I'm not so sure seeing ETH publicly signing on with the Russian government is a good thing at all.

I don't see how they could do that outside of some sort of 51% attack...

 

[Yakk]

I don't see how they could do that outside of some sort of 51% attack...

... Attacking the blockchain no, attempt at semi-controlling access to cryptocurrencies within their borders yes.

 

[Hitman928]

Thanks for the info, makes sense why it appears that the cards have been going up lately from when I was looking at them a bit ago for updating my GPU for gaming...do AMD or nVidia have an edge in mining or does it depend on what you are mining?
75-80F, hell, that is my ambient room temp of the 'cool' rooms that are air conditioned (outside it is ~110F).

What part of Phoenix are you in? I'm in the East Valley.

 

[bob4432]

I am in mid-Scottsdale, how far east are you?

 

[bob4432]

Right now AMD probably has the edge on perf/$, or at least they would if cards were still being sold at MSRP. Due to scarcity/inflation it's really a tossup. One notable outlier is the 1080GTX, which doesn't perform as efficiently as either the 1070/1080TI (for the money/TDP) or the AMD offerings, hence it's price being mostly MSRP everywhere. Everything else is up anywhere from 10-100% markups.

Until relatively recently (~6mo ago) Nvidia cards were pretty crap at mining the popular coins, as a result they still have a relatively bad rap for mining among those not paying attention, but they are more than adequate and right now, both camps are so overpriced (and ROI's are so far out) that it doesn't really matter which you get.

If you don't have a way to get that heat out of your house, expect it to become unbearable, like 'i may as well not run the AC because I can't be in the same room either way' unbearable. Just with a 1080gtx and a 960gtx in my room in upstate NY, it's about 10F over the rest of the house. Basement is like 40F over ambient due to aforementioned 1080ti's. Anything more than a gaming system doubling as a miner when you aren't playing will probably push you north of 100F, AC be damned.

Well that definitely puts a nail in the coffin. When I use to game, the office would be probably ~2-3F warmer than the rest of the condo, but sitting next to the computer, I would have to have the overhead fan on along with the AC with just the rig in sig, or if in winter, just the overhead fan. In the winter we RARELY use the heater and gaming would easily heat up the office. With the way Phx, AZ is set up, between being desert and so much concrete, asphalt, steel and glass we have what they call a heat island effect as in the summer, when it hits 110F during the day, it will still be 100F @ 9PM (give or take) and probably still in the 90s as the low for the day. Sounds like at most I could only mine with a relatively small rig from November through March, maybe April, so ROI would take years .

 

[Hitman928]

I feel ya bob, I've been mining seriously for about a year and a half now and it is a struggle in Phoenix for sure. Most of my gpus are actually in an Arizona room (open air). It's still doable and profitable but ROI at this point is definitely questionable. Depends on how optimistic you are on the coin you are mining. Even if it's not likely to get ROI now, if you Hold the coin for a while, it may end up appreciating enough to cover the cost of the card but that is obviously a risk. PM me if you want any help setting up a desert mining rig

 

[bob4432]

I feel ya bob, I've been mining seriously for about a year and a half now and it is a struggle in Phoenix for sure. Most of my gpus are actually in an Arizona room (open air). It's still doable and profitable but ROI at this point is definitely questionable. Depends on how optimistic you are on the coin you are mining. Even if it's not likely to get ROI now, if you Hold the coin for a while, it may end up appreciating enough to cover the cost of the card but that is obviously a risk. PM me if you want any help setting up a desert mining rig

Appreciate the info, and thanks for the invite to help set up a desert mining rig.

 

[DrMrLordX]

Not so sure... It's all confusing right now... there's another article saying the opposite :

Interesting. I'm not sure what to make of all that.

 

[[DHT]Osiris]

Well that definitely puts a nail in the coffin. When I use to game, the office would be probably ~2-3F warmer than the rest of the condo, but sitting next to the computer, I would have to have the overhead fan on along with the AC with just the rig in sig, or if in winter, just the overhead fan. In the winter we RARELY use the heater and gaming would easily heat up the office. With the way Phx, AZ is set up, between being desert and so much concrete, asphalt, steel and glass we have what they call a heat island effect as in the summer, when it hits 110F during the day, it will still be 100F @ 9PM (give or take) and probably still in the 90s as the low for the day. Sounds like at most I could only mine with a relatively small rig from November through March, maybe April, so ROI would take years .

Lived in TX for 23 years, and SC/GA for another 7. I feel you, 110F+ is a pile of crap.

 

[LightningZ71]

Bob, do you have access to a crawl space under your house, or a shaded area near your computer room? You could manage to do an external radiator with an outdoor rated fan, run a loop from that radiator to a small radiator in a small ice chest in your room, and run another loop from the PC into a radiator in that ice chest. Filled with water, you'll be able to run lower quality liquid in the long outside loop and high purity liquid in the inside one. The outdoor radiator can even be a junkyard car radiator.

Obviously, there will be a floor temperature that's a few degrees above ambient outside. If you want to go below ambient, you'll have to go below ground. Dig a nice pit or trench and run a coil or series of loops of copper tubing in it, fill with sand/sandy soil. You'll need to get a few feet down to get decent thermal difference from the air. If you can, it'll help thermal conductivity of the tubing for it to be saturated with water often. You can setup the drain from the bathroom wash basin and even the shower to run off into that area to keep it moistened without discharging sewage or having to use extra water.