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-   -   Crypto currency mining (https://forum.a8parts.co.uk/showthread.php?t=13153)

ainarssems 26th June 2017 02:39 PM
Crypto currency mining
 
This to to follow up from my online trading thread.

It seems like a no brainer if setup costs less than £2k for PC, £80 a month to run and returns over £500 every month. You build one, 4-5 months later it's paid of so you buy another one, after 2 months another, then after 6 weeks another... as far as your power supply will allow you to go (or internet connection)

So Mark if you could give a bit more details with the example PC build details. Which currencies are better to mine and if you can or if it's recommended to run several at the time to spread the risk. How fast internet do you need or anything else you think I should know.

MikkiJayne 26th June 2017 03:17 PM
I'd be interested to know if you need a high-end CPU to go with the GPUs or whether the GPUs do all the work. I've got some old HP Proliant servers kicking about which can take half a dozen PCIe cards so it'd be nice to make use of them.

Electricity at the workshop is half the price of home too :)

Hmm the Proliants would only take two of those double-height x16 graphics cards. Is that worth it?

ainarssems 26th June 2017 03:48 PM
While we wait for Mark to share his experience I will share some of my thoughts, it's just a gut feeling so nothing certain. I think you do not need high end CPU but at least half decent to feed the data t and from GPU's. When you look at old servers besides CPU's you need to consider amount and bandwidth of RAM and speed of PCIe bus, ist it gen 1, 2 or 3? And older tech also tend to be less power efficient so it might be wiser to invest in newer kit. I for example updated old Dell PowerEdge server with a new HP Mini server and power consumption went from over 300W to less than 50W in iddle while offering slightly more computing power. And it never does over 100W while the old one would go over 600W when pushed. I understand that on mining rig power consumption will be a lot more but still if it s 750W vs 1000W it makes sense to buy new kit.

Quote:
Electricity at the workshop is half the price of home too
Is that because of business rate or just down to location?

moltuae 26th June 2017 04:25 PM
I've been involved in cryptocurrencies for a few years now and had various discussions about it on some of the IT/tech industry forums I participate in. So to save me a lot of retyping, I'll start by copy-pasting some of the posts I made there.

(these are predominantly US-centric forums, hence the USD/GBP cost comparisons)


Some of this info may be a little out of date now but, to start with, here's a post I made comparing mining rigs and an Antminer S9 ASIC unit ...





Quote:
Originally Posted by Me
So the Antminer S9 arrived at the end of February, a few weeks earlier than expected. Shipping for this batch wasn't due to start until March. Since I had placed the order less than a month earlier (4th Feb), I assumed I'd be at the back of the queue and expected to have to wait until at least the end of March.


Here's the unboxing photos ....



http://i.imgur.com/q8xuzFg.jpg


http://i.imgur.com/JsF5gAC.jpg


http://i.imgur.com/gmg0x5K.jpg


http://i.imgur.com/ZNqRToM.jpg


http://i.imgur.com/xRVsmZk.jpg


http://i.imgur.com/bW4RS4a.jpg


http://i.imgur.com/KcHYf8l.jpg


http://i.imgur.com/Iw8Hm35.jpg


http://i.imgur.com/QO9nwkd.jpg



So this thing is presently heating my workshop while I experiment with different mining pools for the best profitability. I usually use electric heaters in my workshop but the S9 pumps out more than enough heat alone to heat it.

In colder climates (like the UK), used as a space heater it costs about the same to run as a small electric fan heater (around 1300W, I believe). Bottom-line profitability of course depends on electricity costs and the present Bitcoin value (or whatever cryptocurrency you're mining) but even with the relatively high UK electricity prices it seems to be able to manage to generate about twice as much as it costs to run.

It's too early to get a good mining average yet, but it seems to be able to achieve at least 11mBTC per day (presently around £11 or $14), which equates to over £300 ($370) per month or about £4000 ($5000) per year. So if, like my customer, you have a free source of electricity, or you use the thing as a heater, ROI is about 6 months, otherwise it's more like 12 months.

One point I should mention is that these things are quite loud when running! Not unbearably so. They're louder than a typical rack-mount server but a little quieter than the average vacuum cleaner. You can hold a conversation in the same room as an S9 fairly easily.



We began looking into GPU mining rigs too. This is where things get interesting. Somewhat surprisingly, with the right graphics cards, these can be just as profitable (if not more so). I'll post more on this later, but here's a photo of the test rig for now, complete with 2 x PSUs, 6 x GPUs (with risers) and 1 motherboard ...

http://i.imgur.com/1cX49FB.jpg



Quote:
Originally Posted by AnotherForumMemeber
If you're in a place with electric heat or free power (e.g. solar, wind or hydro that's not feasible to sell back into the grid) then these could make all the sense in the world. Would be interesting to see one of these set up tied to a thermostat - need more heat? Crank up another core!

Depending on the setup you might also be able to mount it to allow vertical airflow and get a bit of simple convection cooling, but that may crank out too much heat to do without the fans anyway. You can also do a limited chimney at the output, the rising hot air can actually pull air through faster for better cooling.
Precisely our thinking. As you say, if you generate ample electricity that you can't sell back to the grid (which is often the case) or you can make use of the heat, it becomes a no-brainer. My customer falls into both categories. They also have an ORC generator on-site and numerous solar panels. They're very excited by the results so far and they're already doing the math(s) and considering investing in many more rigs (and possibly more solar panels!). Installing these rigs for bushiness customers could prove to be very lucrative!

Now, what surprised me was how well the multi-GPU rig compared with the S9. In many situations, the GPU rig makes more sense ...

Antminer S9 Pros:
  • Ready-made unit. Purpose-built and comes with a 12 month warranty.
  • Compact size.
  • The most energy efficient ASIC miner available (~1300W).
  • Very easy to configure.
Antminer S9 Cons:
  • Loud fans.
  • Likely to have a low residual value in future.
The GPU rig probably pumps out a similar amount of heat to the S9. We haven't had chance to measure the electricity consumption yet, but we expect it to be comparable too. Noise-wise it's much quieter however (depending on choice of fans) -- not really any louder than a high-end PC. But, perhaps more importantly, since it uses off-the-shelf parts, its residual value is much higher. The used prices of these high-end graphics cards are very high. The S9 does its job very well, but it has no other purpose or value if it becomes no longer viable to mine with.

GPU rig Pros:
  • Readily available parts.
  • Much quieter operation.
  • Easily repairable/serviceable.
  • Good residual value (of parts).
GPU rig Cons:
  • Requires custom build/config.
  • Large & bulky (Takes up about 4 times as much space as an S9).

For a home/office mining rig/heater, the GPU rig probably makes the most sense, whereas the S9 is probably best suited to larger operations or warehouse mining farms.

Some more photos of the GPU rig:


http://i.imgur.com/33yVj3l.jpg


http://i.imgur.com/Bq1JJON.jpg


http://i.imgur.com/TuOfEwQ.jpg


http://i.imgur.com/ubVfr2x.jpg



We're running NiceHash on the GPU rig, and this is how much it's earning:

http://i.imgur.com/KVqeqNP.png

moltuae 26th June 2017 04:40 PM
Quote:
Originally Posted by ainarssems (Post 129614)
This to to follow up from my online trading thread.

It seems like a no brainer if setup costs less than £2k for PC, £80 a month to run and returns over £500 every month. You build one, 4-5 months later it's paid of so you buy another one, after 2 months another, then after 6 weeks another... as far as your power supply will allow you to go (or internet connection)

So Mark if you could give a bit more details with the example PC build details. Which currencies are better to mine and if you can or if it's recommended to run several at the time to spread the risk. How fast internet do you need or anything else you think I should know.
As far the internet connection and PC goes, you don't need anything special. It uses very little bandwidth and a cheapo Celeron CPU will do. 4GB of RAM is enough for 1 or 2 cards. 8GB or more is recommended for larger rigs.

If you're considering getting into mining, start with a single graphics card. I'd recommend using NiceHash to mine. It's a multi-algorithm program that automatically switches to the most profitable coin/algorithm.

Nice has have a profitability calculator for numerous different cards here:
https://new.nicehash.com/profitability-calculator

There are numerous builds and optimisations you can do but the basics are:
1) Install a suitable graphics card
2) Get a Bitcoin wallet
3) Run NiceHash and point it to your Bitcoin wallet



Quote:
Originally Posted by MikkiJayne (Post 129622)
I'd be interested to know if you need a high-end CPU to go with the GPUs or whether the GPUs do all the work. I've got some old HP Proliant servers kicking about which can take half a dozen PCIe cards so it'd be nice to make use of them.

Electricity at the workshop is half the price of home too :)

Hmm the Proliants would only take two of those double-height x16 graphics cards. Is that worth it?
The servers will work, if you can physically fit the graphic cards in them, but they're a bit overkill and will probably use more electricity than needed. You really only need a basic CPU and motherboard (preferably one with a few PCIe slots for multi-card rigs though of course).

ainarssems 26th June 2017 04:46 PM
I have built a lot of PC's over time so GPU rig is definitely more for me, can you share some configurations that you have built either for yourself or customers. And the software, algorithms to get it running ( hopefully on Windows but other OS are possibility if not too complicated).

Do you mine several currencies or use different algorithms on the same rig or is it one thing on each?

I understand any config would be fairly loud and while I would like to use heating effect in winter I think the rigs will need to be in garage.

I have old PC that I barely use with Q6600 @3.6GHz, 8GB RAM and GTX760, would it be suitable for testing purposes until I put something more suitable together or would it consume more in electricity than generate?

ainarssems 26th June 2017 04:48 PM
Sorry, missed your last post before reply, it seems more bitcoin orientated, what about mining other currencies?

moltuae 26th June 2017 05:02 PM
I'll add more info as I have time but just few more points to note:

Use a wallet for which YOU hold the private keys and NEVER leave any more of any cryptocurrency on an exchange than you can afford to lose. Exchanges are centralised organisations that can and do get hacked. Crytpocurrencies are distributed/decentralised and are very secure as long as you own and protect your private keys.

Examples of Bitcoin wallets are:

Armory: This is a 'full-node' wallet that downloads and validates the entire blockchain. As such it can take hours (even days) to synchronise the first time you run it. You can make 'paper backups' of Armory wallets.

Electrum: This is a 'seed' based wallet. A long passphrase is used as a seed to generate your private key, which in turn is used to generate lots of public addresses that you can use for receiving and storing funds. You only need your original seed and chosen password to recover this type of wallet on another computer/device.

Mycelium: While Electrum is also available as mobile app it's a bit clunky. Mycelium is one of the better mobile wallets.

Another good one for multiple cryptocurrencies is Jaxx.

On the point of other cryptocurrencies or 'altcoins' as they're often called, there are hundreds. You can get the info on most of them here:
https://coinmarketcap.com/

Many, like Ethereum, have amazing potential and lots of features. In fact, technically Ethereum isn't a currency at all. The currency called 'Ether' is the 'gas' that runs the Ethereum network, a network that is in fact a distributed platform (comprising of thousands/millions of computers) that can actually run applications, execute 'smart contracts' and so much more.


Be aware though that there are a lot of junk coins (aka 'sh1tcoins'). Some are just not worth investing in while some are downright scams.

moltuae 26th June 2017 05:08 PM
Quote:
Originally Posted by ainarssems (Post 129628)
Sorry, missed your last post before reply, it seems more bitcoin orientated, what about mining other currencies?
Just use NiceHash. It'll mine whatever is profitable and pay you in Bitcoin.

It'll all become clear when you download and run NiceHash. Like I said, just start with a single card until you get the hang of it. If you have a suitable graphics card already, even better, otherwise use NiceHash's profitability calculator to choose a card. We're mainly using RX 480 cards at present but (due to the recent increase in mining popularity) they're sold out everywhere. So we've just started switching to the Nvidia 1080Ti cards instead.

MikkiJayne 26th June 2017 05:08 PM
Quote:
Originally Posted by ainarssems (Post 129623)
Is that because of business rate or just down to location?
Business rate +++

I just discovered my house mate has a GTX960 sitting in a PC gathering dust - that could be earning £30 a month! :D Plus I have a couple of i7 laptops with GTX480s. Tinkering time tonight I think...

moltuae 26th June 2017 05:36 PM
Just to add, if like most people when they first discover cryptocurrencies (myself included here) you think they're a fad or 'geek money', or you struggle to get to grips with how they can have any value, I'd highly recommend watching some of Andreas Antonopoulos' talks. He has a couple of books on the subject too; one that's aimed at everyone, called 'The Internet of Money' and one for much more technical readers called 'Mastering Bitcoin'.

Some talks/interviews I'd recommend watching:


Andreas M. Antonopoulos: Bitcoin is Punk-Rock, You Can't Control it
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A6kJfvuNqtg


Introduction to Bitcoin
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l1si5ZWLgy0


This is a very interesting interview with Andreas on London Real.

This is Part 1. Unfortunately it seems like you have to register with London Real to watch the entire interview but registration is free.

Andreas Antonopoulos - The Death of Money - PART 1/2 | London Real
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DuoE5CXlIdY

1781cc 26th June 2017 05:47 PM
I've just been reading about all this, pros and cons and I don't think it's for me, been interesting though, is it really that profitable overall though?

ainarssems 26th June 2017 05:50 PM
So the RX 480 is not available any more with RX 580 taking it's place. Would it make any difference to mining whether it's 4GB or 8GB version? Also can you recommend motherboard&CPU on how much RAM would it need?

moltuae 26th June 2017 06:15 PM
Quote:
Originally Posted by ainarssems (Post 129635)
So the RX 480 is not available any more with RX 580 taking it's place. Would it make any difference to mining whether it's 4GB or 8GB version? Also can you recommend motherboard&CPU on how much RAM would it need?
You'll read a lot of info online that states the 8GB cards are better to mine with. We found that's not strictly true. It's actually the memory speed that makes the difference, it just happens to be that most of the 8GB cards have faster memory. The difference isn't massive either way. I think we were getting something like 25MH/s for the faster cards and 21MH/s for the slower (and cheaper) cards.

We've used various motherboards. You can really use any that's suitable (ie has enough PCIe slots). There are special 'BTC' motherboards that have 6 or more PCIe slots (there's even a new one due out soon with 13 PCIe slots). Initially at least, I'd recommend sticking to building rigs with no more than 3 or 4 cards. Not only are suitable motherboards for smaller rigs cheaper and more readily available but you'll have far less headaches getting smaller rigs working. With larger rigs you introduce problems like finding a suitably powerful PSU and you'll find that some GPU drivers have issues when running more than 4 cards. For smaller rigs 8GB of memory is sufficient, while larger rigs seem to run better with 16GB.

Here's what we have in one of our smaller (3 card) rigs that runs very stable:

Quote:
Operating System
Windows 10 Pro 64-bit
CPU
Intel Celeron G1840 @ 2.80GHz 25 °C
Haswell 22nm Technology
RAM
8.00GB Dual-Channel DDR3 @ 699MHz (10-10-10-25)
Motherboard
ASUSTeK COMPUTER INC. H81M-PLUS (SOCKET 1150) 28 °C
Graphics
EMULATOR (1920x1080@59Hz)
4096MB ATI Radeon RX 480 Graphics (Gigabyte) 53 °C
4096MB ATI Radeon RX 480 Graphics (Gigabyte) 56 °C
4096MB ATI Radeon RX 480 Graphics (Gigabyte) 55 °C
CrossFire Disabled
Storage
223GB Western Digital WDC WDS240G1G0A-00SS50 (SSD) 30 °C
Optical Drives
No optical disk drives detected
Audio
AMD High Definition Audio Device

ainarssems 26th June 2017 06:59 PM
Are you just mining bitcoin or other currencies as well. I understand that emerging currencies are less predictable but potentially could be more profitable.

Can you run more than one mining operation on the same rig either sharing resources or say one on GPU and another on other GPU?

ainarssems 26th June 2017 07:04 PM
I think I will test the waters with my current PC that I rarely use with GTX760, maybe upgrade GPU later. My currnt motherboard will take 2 GPU's but will be on x8 on each and gen 1 PCIe, not sure if it will affect performance. If it looks promising I might built a rig with 6 GPU's

moltuae 26th June 2017 07:31 PM
Quote:
Originally Posted by ainarssems (Post 129640)
Are you just mining bitcoin or other currencies as well. I understand that emerging currencies are less predictable but potentially could be more profitable.

Can you run more than one mining operation on the same rig either sharing resources or say one on GPU and another on other GPU?
We're using NiceHash so it mines whatever is most profitable. Also some GPUs are more suited to certain algorithms. When watching NiceHash running, I think most of the time it's mining Ethereum but occasionally other currencies too such as Zcash. Since we're only renting our hashing power to NiceHash though, it makes no difference which currency we're mining or how volatile the price of that currency is, since we simply get paid in Bitcoin for our hashing power.

Generally NiceHash pays more than mining directly, with the added bonus that you don't have to keep manually watching/switching algorithms to the most profitable one. It has been asked numerous times (on the Bitcointalk forums and other places) how it can be that NiceHash can pay more than the currency is sometimes worth. The answer, they explain, is simple: People don't always mine for profit. Think about this: Let's say you own a business and you want to get money out of the business under the tax man's radar. You could use company money to buy mining equipment and use the company's electricity to run it, OR you could pay to rent computing power (and put it down to business running expenses). Not that I'm suggesting anyone should use cryptocurrencies to hide wealth or avoid paying taxes, but clearly this sort of thing goes on.

Another thing to think about is that, if cryptocurrency prices continue to rise (and, considering the technology is still in its infancy, they should), whatever you acquire (be it by buying hashing power, mining or buying directly), could be worth far more in a few years time. Prices could also fall of course but you can insure against that to some extent by holding a few different cryptocurrencies.

moltuae 26th June 2017 07:36 PM
Quote:
Originally Posted by ainarssems (Post 129641)
I think I will test the waters with my current PC that I rarely use with GTX760, maybe upgrade GPU later. My currnt motherboard will take 2 GPU's but will be on x8 on each and gen 1 PCIe, not sure if it will affect performance. If it looks promising I might built a rig with 6 GPU's
That's precisely what I'd recommend doing and how we got started.

Pretty soon you'll get the hang of NiceHash and you'll be installing graphics cards in everything and building larger rigs.

I've even considered offering some of my customers 'free' computers, or rather rented computers that pay for themselves through mining, with the added bonus that they would double as office heaters.

ainarssems 26th June 2017 08:34 PM
So far I have set up bitcoin wallet now and Nice Hash mining but my Kaspersky Internet Security has gone viral. after pressing allow like 200 times it pops up again like every minute.
It only uses 5% of my old CPU na d about 50% of 8GB of RAM.

ainarssems 26th June 2017 08:55 PM
Rough calculations at this point show that I will be using £27 per month in electricity and getting back about £19. Decent graphics card should improves this but I have to run numbers first.

MikkiJayne how do you get business rate for electricity, is it as simple as registering company and then doing energy contract?

moltuae 26th June 2017 09:19 PM
Quote:
Originally Posted by ainarssems (Post 129648)
Rough calculations at this point show that I will be using £27 per month in electricity and getting back about £19. Decent graphics card should improves this but I have to run numbers first.

MikkiJayne how do you get business rate for electricity, is it as simple as registering company and then doing energy contract?
How are you calculating your electricity usage and which card is that?

Certainly some cards are far more efficient at mining than others. If you're building a rig specifically for mining or it's a PC that wouldn't normally be on 24/7 you do need to take the rig 'overheads' (CPU, drives, etc) into account when calculating the running costs. If you can't make use of the heat generated or you want to get electricity usage down to a minimum, building a larger multi-card rig might make more sense. The rig overheads will be greater when mining with just a few cards.

Also, depending on which card you use, you can usually make some adjustments to improve efficiency. For example, with the AMD cards you use the supplied AMD utility 'Wattman' to reduce the GPU frequency by about 15-20%. This has no significant impact on mining performance yet reduces power consumption from about 160W to 100W per card. For comparison, I have a 2 card AMD rig (RX 480) that consumes about the same as yours (~£27 per month) but makes about £100-£150 per month.

Quote:
Originally Posted by ainarssems (Post 129647)
So far I have set up bitcoin wallet now and Nice Hash mining but my Kaspersky Internet Security has gone viral. after pressing allow like 200 times it pops up again like every minute.
It only uses 5% of my old CPU na d about 50% of 8GB of RAM.
Kaspersky is probably just triggering when NiceHash switches algorithms or makes new network connections. While it's best to experiment initially on an existing system, you'll have better results running the cards on a dedicated system without such aggressive antivirus/firewall software.

Architex_mA8tey 26th June 2017 09:25 PM
I've moved this thread to "IT AV and other Tech" as it sits better here +++

ainarssems 26th June 2017 09:57 PM
Quote:
Originally Posted by moltuae (Post 129650)
How are you calculating your electricity usage and which card is that?

Certainly some cards are far more efficient at mining than others. If you're building a rig specifically for mining or it's a PC that wouldn't normally be on 24/7 you do need to take the rig 'overheads' (CPU, drives, etc) into account when calculating the running costs. If you can't make use of the heat generated or you want to get electricity usage down to a minimum, building a larger multi-card rig might make more sense. The rig overheads will be greater when mining with just a few cards.

Also, depending on which card you use, you can usually make some adjustments to improve efficiency. For example, with the AMD cards you use the supplied AMD utility 'Wattman' to reduce the GPU frequency by about 15-20%. This has no significant impact on mining performance yet reduces power consumption from about 160W to 100W per card. For comparison, I have a 2 card AMD rig (RX 480) that consumes about the same as yours (~£27 per month) but makes about £100-£150 per month.

I am calculating 7 hours at night rate and 17 hours of day rate per day of my current price.



Kaspersky is probably just triggering when NiceHash switches algorithms or makes new network connections. While it's best to experiment initially on an existing system, you'll have better results running the cards on a dedicated system without such aggressive antivirus/firewall software.
It's jut my old PC that I don't use anymore with GTX 760 and the CPU is is overclocked and overvolted so definitely some power savings to be had and more modern GPU would make it more cost effective as well.

MikkiJayne 26th June 2017 10:31 PM
Quote:
Originally Posted by ainarssems (Post 129648)
MikkiJayne how do you get business rate for electricity, is it as simple as registering company and then doing energy contract?
The landlord has the main electricity contract for the site and I pay him for what I use. It works out at roughly half what I pay at home.

Just setting up one of the laptops now. Core i7 with a GTX280 so we'll see what that can do to get going and then have a play with the 960 :)

MikkiJayne 27th June 2017 12:19 AM
Well that was a waste of time. Nethash Miner won't detect CPU or GPU on my i7 laptop :mad:

moltuae 27th June 2017 08:52 AM
Laptops are generally no good for mining. Even if they have supported hardware, they're not designed to be run at full power for extended periods. Cooling is very limited and frequently running BGA (ball grid array) type CPUs/GPUs hot can lead to faults caused by solder fatigue.

It's best to stick to using full size systems and one of the graphics cards listed here: https://new.nicehash.com/profitability-calculator

Delboy 27th June 2017 08:58 AM
Quote:
Originally Posted by moltuae (Post 129667)
Laptops are generally no good for mining. Even if they have supported hardware, they're not designed to be run at full power for extended periods. Cooling is very limited and frequently running BGA (ball grid array) type CPUs/GPUs hot can lead to faults caused by solder fatigue.

It's best to stick to using full size systems and one of the graphics cards listed here: https://new.nicehash.com/profitability-calculator
Your not wrong there, my Macbook is living proof of that, I had to send it away to have the gpu chip replaced for that very reason.

Following this thread with interest. +++

Is it possible to build a rig into a proper pc case or is it usually Frankenstein'd? I have a silverstone TJ-07 case thats never been used sitting in the loft.

Also surprised to see they don't use liquid cooling for quietness and maybe heat recovery to be used for the house?

moltuae 27th June 2017 09:07 AM
Quote:
Originally Posted by Delboy (Post 129668)
Is it possible to build a rig into a proper pc case or is it usually Frankenstein'd? I have a silverstone TJ-07 case thats never been used sitting in the loft.
Certainly, though you'll be limited by the number of cards you can physically fit in there of course. You'll be lucky to find a case that'll take more than a couple of full size graphics cards, though you may be able to squeeze an extra one into a couple of 5.25" bays if you can find a way to mount it. Also depending on the PSU the PC originally came with, you may need to upgrade that to cope with the extra wattage.

moltuae 27th June 2017 09:20 AM
Quote:
Originally Posted by Delboy (Post 129668)
Also surprised to see they don't use liquid cooling for quietness and maybe heat recovery to be used for the house?
Some people have used liquid cooling, but often it's just an unnecessary expense.

The fans in the GPU rigs aren't particularly loud and you can use the heat to heat your house/office. I used my Antminer S9 (which is loud!) to heat my workshop for the latter part of last winter. I usually use an electric heater but with the Antminer pumping out 1.3kW of heat continuously I didn't need any extra heating. So it didn't save be anything on my heating bills but it effectively cost me nothing to run either. Over a 3 month period it probably made me about £1000. I've since moved it to my customer's server room (where it has all the free electricity it can eat). This is the customer I'm helping to build a mining farm for, so I get to use their electricity for free as part of the deal :)

1781cc 27th June 2017 10:47 AM
Anyone looked into dumping a PV install on their garage roof and running one off that or would the power setup not work/be reliable enough? Just thinking aloud here... what sort of bandwidth drain does this have on your internet connection as well?

moltuae 27th June 2017 11:42 AM
Quote:
Originally Posted by 1781cc (Post 129675)
Anyone looked into dumping a PV install on their garage roof and running one off that or would the power setup not work/be reliable enough? Just thinking aloud here... what sort of bandwidth drain does this have on your internet connection as well?
The internet/network bandwidth needed is minimal. I don't have the figures but it seems to have no impact on the rest of the network, even when running multiple miners.

Using PV is quite popular for mining. This guy converted his shed into a solar-powered mining farm:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9AmMV-Bmhh8

MikkiJayne 27th June 2017 12:32 PM
Quote:
Originally Posted by moltuae (Post 129667)
Laptops are generally no good for mining. Even if they have supported hardware, they're not designed to be run at full power for extended periods. Cooling is very limited and frequently running BGA (ball grid array) type CPUs/GPUs hot can lead to faults caused by solder fatigue.
Normally I would agree with that, but these particular machines are designed to take a beating:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/atta...001-jpg.42797/

They're basically desktop machines in a folding case. I used to use them as portable Hyper-V hosts running Windows Server. I've got three of them just sitting about now so its most vexing they won't even run it.

Trying a dual Xeon gaming PC with a GTX 960 now...

MikkiJayne 27th June 2017 12:42 PM
That solar powered rig is very cool indeed +++

MikkiJayne 27th June 2017 01:14 PM
It won't recognise the GTX960 either :mad:

moltuae 27th June 2017 03:25 PM
That certainly is a hefty looking laptop!


The GTX960 looks to be supported. Try updating the drivers.

MikkiJayne 27th June 2017 03:28 PM
1 Attachment(s)
Seems like this stuff just wants a random pile of junk rather than a complete working machine :rolleyes:

This works fine apparently:

http://forum.a8parts.co.uk/attachmen...1&d=1498577195

Currently running at $1.52 a day.

moltuae 27th June 2017 03:41 PM
:ROFL:

Looking good. The pile of junk appearance is very in-keeping with the mining ethos. +++

Now you just need a few more cards, dangling from risers, to increase that daily rate.

I've just ordered a couple of 1080 Ti cards today at an eye-watering £650 each. They should make close to £10 per day between them however.

MikkiJayne 27th June 2017 04:33 PM
Is there much performance impact from running an x1 to x16 riser? I've got 1x1 and 1x16 on this board so I could at least get another 960 on it. The Xeon board has 2x16 and 2x8 though so I could get four on that if I can persuade it to work. It might have just needed a clean OS install. Not sure there's much point powering a pair of Xeons though since the Core2 Quad on this machine is just idling.

Delboy 27th June 2017 05:02 PM
1 Attachment(s)
Can I ask why you went with that choice of card, looking at the calculator would say otherwise or am i missing a key factor?

http://forum.a8parts.co.uk/attachmen...1&d=1498583194

moltuae 27th June 2017 05:27 PM
Quote:
Originally Posted by MikkiJayne (Post 129705)
Is there much performance impact from running an x1 to x16 riser? I've got 1x1 and 1x16 on this board so I could at least get another 960 on it. The Xeon board has 2x16 and 2x8 though so I could get four on that if I can persuade it to work. It might have just needed a clean OS install. Not sure there's much point powering a pair of Xeons though since the Core2 Quad on this machine is just idling.
For mining purposes there's no difference between x1 and x16. Mining only requires a single PCIe lane. As I understand it, there's relatively little data travelling to/from the card when mining; the card spends far more time doing the work than it does receiving work or returning hash solutions.

Depending on which Xeon CPUs you have there, you can probably mine with those too. You won't make a lot from them but they'll probably cover their electricity costs (just). Unlike GPU mining though, other applications may suffer reduced performance while CPU mining.

I often run NiceHash when I'm setting up new servers for customers as a kind of soak-test. It gives the CPUs, fans and PSUs a good workout and confirms everything is stable before I start installing and configuring everything. I have a HP ProLiant DL360p Gen8 on my bench right now. Here's a NiceHash screenshot of its workout a couple of weeks ago:

https://i.imgur.com/bWFNot5.png

I calculated the electricity usage to be a little over £1 per day, so I was making a small profit.


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