Ethereum GPU mining?

[blckgrffn]

Is anyone here using HiveOS? I was going to use it instead of Windows for my spare PC (where I'm moving the 5700XT to), but I get mixed messages from people regarding using a USB. Some say it's fine (booting HiveOS from a USB), others say it's the worst thing you can ever do and your children will be eaten slowly by wolves... I guess I can try both. I have already put Windows onto the spare SSD I'm using.

Given how variable USB performance can be - and even trying to buy a decent one seems touch and go given how many fakes are on Amazon - this varied experience doesn’t surprise me at all.

A really good USB drive can cost the same or more than a 64 or 128GB SSD second hand or even new in some cases. That’s my take.

A few years back I used some reward money at one of the office supply stores and bought like three two packs of USB 3 drives explicitly for this purpose and installing operating systems. They work great. The free USB 3 drive from Microcenter is garbage and became the storage drive on our Wii U because it had terrible write speeds but OK read speeds in keeping with the existing storage on the Wii U

 

[aleader]

A really good USB drive can cost the same or more than a 64 or 128GB SSD second hand or even new in some cases. That’s my take.

This is the one I brought home the other day when picking up my new video card. I still haven't opened it yet, so could return it if it's garbage:

https://www.memoryexpress.com/Products/MX00115306

 

[blckgrffn]

This is the one I brought home the other day when picking up my new video card. I still haven't opened it yet, so could return it if it's garbage:

https://www.memoryexpress.com/Products/MX00115306

That looks pretty legit!

A name brand bought from a brick and mortar. If that can't do it then you know it's unlikely to work.

If I had been shopping at Microcenter (an equivalent?) I might have come home with this $20 marvel:

Inland Professional 120GB SSD SATA 3.0 6 GBps 2.5 Inch 7mm TLC 3D NAND Internal Solid State Drive - Micro Center

Get it now! Get SSD speeds and inject new life into your laptop or desktop PC with a solid state drive from Inland Professional. With a fast, reliable Inland Professional SSD, you will experience quicker boot-up and shutdown, quicker application response and data transfer speeds than with a...

www.microcenter.com

But I know I would have spent $30 and brought home the 256 GB version, who am I kidding?

 

[aleader]

I'm still deciding if I need the USB or not...haven't opened it. I rarely use USB drives these days, and when I do, the old ones I have more than suffice. People say Windows is unstable for mining, but I have two machines running now on Windows 10 and haven't had any issues yet.

If anyone is interested, I now have the 3070 up and running on PM 5.5c. My settings are below. Does everything look good here? I can't seem to get the power any lower than this. Anyone know of a way to lower it further?





One thing that really bugs me is there seems to be no way to monitor the memory temperature with the 30 series cards. Hopefully HWInfo updates that soon. I see the ETH price is starting to head down. Is this the end already?

 

[fleshconsumed]

I'm still deciding if I need the USB or not...haven't opened it. I rarely use USB drives these days, and when I do, the old ones I have more than suffice. People say Windows is unstable for mining, but I have two machines running now on Windows 10 and haven't had any issues yet.

If anyone is interested, I now have the 3070 up and running on PM 5.5c. My settings are below. Does everything look good here? I can't seem to get the power any lower than this. Anyone know of a way to lower it further?


View attachment 39184


One thing that really bugs me is there seems to be no way to monitor the memory temperature with the 30 series cards. Hopefully HWInfo updates that soon. I see the ETH price is starting to head down. Is this the end already?

Down? ETH just set another ATH of $1700. BTC is 2x of 2017 ATH right now, ETH 2x ATH would be $2800, so it may keep going for a while.

BTW what card is that and what are the actual fan speeds in RPM?

 

[aleader]

Down? ETH just set another ATH of $1700. BTC is 2x of 2017 ATH right now, ETH 2x ATH would be $2800, so it may keep going for a while.

BTW what card is that and what are the actual fan speeds in RPM?

I got that from a graph that popped up in google when I check to see my monthly totals converted to CAD. It showed it dropping, but when I did more checking, yah it's up.

The 3070 is an EVGA XC3 Ultra. Actual fan speed in Afterburner and GPU z shows 707 RPM. I may bump that a bit more as that's pretty low. When I bump it up to 50%, the fans hit 941 RPM.

On memory overclocks, is there a way to see the temps? Can I do damage to the memory by OC it too much? It doesn't seem to matter how high I push it, it stays stable, but I'm worried what the temp may be doing. The card temperature tells me nothing. I don't want to push this card too much as it's my main gaming PC.

 

[ElFenix]

and back to kicking myself for not jumping on this when the thread started with my 290. ah well.

hope my password works!

 

[VirtualLarry]

"If you're not mining, please start mining."

 

[Accord99]

and back to kicking myself for not jumping on this when the thread started with my 290. ah well.

What could have been. That would have been about 20 coins in a month.

The Eth pool approximated earnings estimates that I pull in about $100 USD a month on an R9 290, which definitely isn't all that much, [Feb 21, 2016]

 

[Kenmitch]

Gives a new meaning to burn in.

Chinese Miners Using RTX 30-Series Laptops for Mining Power

Nothing is safe from cryptominers

www.tomshardware.com

 

[EXCellR8]

Yea it's disgusting. All that good hardware going being molested in the name of greed.

It will be used up, then sold for parts and/or then be sent to a landfill.

 

[Shmee]

Hmm mining on a laptop sounds like a bad idea.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Hmm mining on a laptop sounds like a bad idea.

Ya think? I can't wait to see these companies change their RMA policies, based on this.

It's already bad enough, with some people doing DC (distributed computing, very compute-intensive) on laptops, and burning them up. I can't imagine mining. Then again, sometimes mining is less intensive than some DC apps.

 

[legcramp]

Is anyone here using HiveOS? I was going to use it instead of Windows for my spare PC (where I'm moving the 5700XT to), but I get mixed messages from people regarding using a USB. Some say it's fine (booting HiveOS from a USB), others say it's the worst thing you can ever do and your children will be eaten slowly by wolves... I guess I can try both. I have already put Windows onto the spare SSD I'm using.

HiveOS is so easy to use and I pretty much just used any USB sticks I had lying around and they worked fine. And if your mining system has a m.2 slot, you can just use a 16GB M.2 SSD drive that you can pick-up for like $10 on ebay if you're worried about using USB.

 

[KentState]

Hmm mining on a laptop sounds like a bad idea.

If they are buying them by the thousands, I'm sure they know what they are getting into.

 

[Shmee]

HiveOS is so easy to use and I pretty much just used any USB sticks I had lying around and they worked fine. And if your mining system has a m.2 slot, you can just use a 16GB M.2 SSD drive that you can pick-up for like $10 on ebay if you're worried about using USB.

Does HiveOS cost money though? I seem to remember one of the earlier ETH mining OS's based on linux had some fee or cost or something, and it was limited per computer.

 

[legcramp]

Does HiveOS cost money though? I seem to remember one of the earlier ETH mining OS's based on linux had some fee or cost or something, and it was limited per computer.

I believe it's free for four workers (four machines) else you pay a monthly fee for each machine after four or if you mine on their pool. Someone correct me if I am wrong. I am currently running two dedicated machines and it's been free so far.

Prices and Packages

Find a Hiveon OS package that will meet all your mining needs

hiveos.farm

I also love their app and how easy it is to push new updates and check on my machines from my phone.

 

[aleader]

HiveOS is so easy to use and I pretty much just used any USB sticks I had lying around and they worked fine. And if your mining system has a m.2 slot, you can just use a 16GB M.2 SSD drive that you can pick-up for like $10 on ebay if you're worried about using USB.

I just stuck with Windows as I wasn't up for learning yet another piece of software to do this. It's been stable. I may try HiveOS when I'm not so pressed for time.

Of interest (to me anyways), I just cashed out from Shakepay and couldn't believe the fees that were charged when I moved from my wallet to SP! These are the 'gas fees' I guess. I still don't fully understand how this works. On 0.07 Eth (around $158 CAD) I was charged $12.58 to transfer it in, and then another $2 to e-transfer. I am hearing these are 'surge' prices, but yet another cost to factor in when mining. It's obviously still profitable, but when the price is low, I don't know how these 'farms' make any money at this.

EDIT: I'm now being told on other (much more active) forums to switch to Nicehash because of the gas fees. That's the first time I've heard 'switch to Nicehash' since I started this...

 

[ultimatebob]

I'm surprised that someone hasn't figured out how to turn the Xbox One Series X or PlayStation 5 into a mining rig yet.

 

[ozzy702]

Does HiveOS cost money though? I seem to remember one of the earlier ETH mining OS's based on linux had some fee or cost or something, and it was limited per computer.

HiveOS is free for the first four workers. I just moved one of my rigs to it because I've had trouble with it crashing for the past week and despite extensive troubleshooting, can't find the cause. I wanted to rule out Windows so I spun up HiveOS and so far so good. I have to say, this would have been a major game changer for me back in the day, it's an incredibly powerful tool.

 

[Fallengod]

So, I am looking to build a second box for mining. I need some direction here. What type of a system do people run for these?

Does it matter if its AMD or intel for CPU? Does it even matter what speed anything is? Do I just go for some i5-2500k build or some cheap amd build?

 

[VirtualLarry]

So, I am looking to build a second box for mining. I need some direction here. What type of a system do people run for these?

Does it matter if its AMD or intel for CPU? Does it even matter what speed anything is? Do I just go for some i5-2500k build or some cheap amd build?

Well, do you want to build a gaming-rig style build, with only one or two GPUs, or do you want to build an open-air frame, or server-chassis style, with perhaps 6 to 8 GPUs on it? (some, possibly more).

Either way, most miners use a mining-specific motherboard, that has multiple (6 or more) PCI-E slots (x16 or x1, most mining boards have a load of x1 slots), as well as mining-specific BIOS features, such as being able to turn the PCI-E standard / rate down to PCI-E 2.0 or 1.1, and enable "Above 4G decoding", which is an important feature in getting many GPUs to work on one PC.

Some coins / algos are CPU-specific (Monero, RandomXMonero), and run best on Ryzen CPUs with large L3 caches and many cores/threads, such as Zen2 or Zen3. Most other CPUs are borderline profitable running monero, such as most Intel chips, and older 1st-gen Ryzen CPUs.

Other than the consideration for CPU mining, the actual GPU mining process uses very little CPU, and mostly, very little RAM, unless you're running Windows 10, then you want to max out the RAM, IMHO. Most miners that aren't mining Monero on the same box, use an Intel Celeron CPU, such as the G3900 or G3930. (But make sure to match it with your mobo.)

 

[Fallengod]

Well, do you want to build a gaming-rig style build, with only one or two GPUs, or do you want to build an open-air frame, or server-chassis style, with perhaps 6 to 8 GPUs on it? (some, possibly more).

Either way, most miners use a mining-specific motherboard, that has multiple (6 or more) PCI-E slots (x16 or x1, most mining boards have a load of x1 slots), as well as mining-specific BIOS features, such as being able to turn the PCI-E standard / rate down to PCI-E 2.0 or 1.1, and enable "Above 4G decoding", which is an important feature in getting many GPUs to work on one PC.

Some coins / algos are CPU-specific (Monero, RandomXMonero), and run best on Ryzen CPUs with large L3 caches and many cores/threads, such as Zen2 or Zen3. Most other CPUs are borderline profitable running monero, such as most Intel chips, and older 1st-gen Ryzen CPUs.

Other than the consideration for CPU mining, the actual GPU mining process uses very little CPU, and mostly, very little RAM, unless you're running Windows 10, then you want to max out the RAM, IMHO. Most miners that aren't mining Monero on the same box, use an Intel Celeron CPU, such as the G3900 or G3930. (But make sure to match it with your mobo.)

Ok. To be more clear, looking to mine Eth. I was in fact looking for this second box to be kind of like a server/gaming box that I can mine with. A second rig that I can leave on 24/7 that is also functional for maybe other server needs. So, I am really looking for one GPU and more of like a normal chassis. I was looking to use windows 10, I didnt know that wasnt the norm. So Amd/Intel? ddr3 or ddr4? Do I go with a cpu that uses the least power or what. Do I go with the intel celeron system or what? How much memory? etc

I am looking for the cheapest possible/efficient route here.

 

[VirtualLarry]

So, I am really looking for one GPU and more of like a normal chassis. I was looking to use windows 10

I am looking for the cheapest possible/efficient route here.

I was in fact looking for this second box to be kind of like a server/gaming box that I can mine with.

To be sure, a proper "mining box" (open-frame, multiple GPUs, low-power CPU, low RAM, may or may not be running Win10), is pretty-much the OPPOSITE of a "Gaming PC" (powerful CPU, powerful GPU or dual GPUs), running Win10, with sufficient RAM for gaming and mining.

The mining PC style is overall cheaper than the gaming PC style (well, except that "mining PC" motherboards are price-gouged right now). And the biggest cost is the GPUs themselves, whichever build style that you prefer.

Although, since the "gaming PC" style only hold one or two GPUs, you don't need a SUPER-high powered "mining PSU" or multiple PSUs.

So let's assume that you want to go "gaming PC" style, that you can also mine on.

Basically, that's what several of my rigs are. Build yourself a decent (though not cheap) gaming PC, Zen2 / Zen3 CPUs, 6C/12T or up, 32GB DDR4 of 3200 or 3600 speed, decent ATX mobo with at least dual GPU PCI-E x16 slots that are usable, and a decent but not overly large PSU, like an 850W to 1000W (for more powerful Ampere GPUs).

Running Win10, planning on either direct pool mining or running Nicehash, also doing CPU mining, when not gaming. Can attach HDDs and make it do server duty as well. (Though, if running NH, security concerns might be an issue.)

 

[MrTeal]

TBH, I wouldn't build a mining rig / server. Mining rigs can be a little bit finnicky, especially at the start. A server you want something with sufficient power for your needs, and then rock solid reliability and 100% uptime. Depends what you mean by server of course, but you may want to think about just building a proper machine for each.