Crypto currency mining

[ainarssems]

In my experience, it's the other way around. Using NiceHash, both AMD and Nvidia cards will usually show about 8-10 compatible algorithms, however, it seems that most of the time NiceHash chooses to mine Ethereum on the AMD cards, occasionally switching to Zcash. With Nvidia cards, switching algorithms seems to occur much more frequently, with NiceHash selecting more algorithms/coins such as Lbry.

That's just something I found on web so could be wrong or could be out of date. Also apparently latest generation Pascal cards can do more than previous generations so best to stick with GTX10xx cards if you are going nVidia and not lower that GTX 1060 6GB version.

When I do benchmark with NiceHash there is only 1 algorithm for CPU in my HP Micro Server Gen 8, there was 4 or 5 on GTX 760 and 13 on RX480. Oh well I forgot to say that I received my first RX480 this morning and have been doing some testing. That thing is massive, I had to cut out HDD cage from the case to make it fit.

It turns out GTX760 was very power hungry at idle PC using 150-160W, with RX480 it only uses 90-100W but a bit more while mining. PC with GTX was 270W, RX is using 306-308W while mining. I might tweak clock speed and voltage settings to see if I can reduce power consumption. Very interesting considering that GTX had 2 power connectors 8 pin and 6 pin but RX only has 1x 8 pin connector beven if RX is using more power at full load. It could also be that be that CPU is using more power and not the card itself as with GTX it was only about 5% but now is about 15% CPU load. RX is also generating a lot more income, GTX was about 0.0002 BTC/day, RX is 0.0016 BTC/ day so x8 more while using 1.14x more electricity. I might also get away with my current 550W PSU and adding second card. PSU does gives 41A on 12V single rail but it might get loud at that load due to fan speed. I measure power consumption at the wall while it looks like that power stated on PSU specifications is output power 550W and online reviews show it consuming 640W at full load outputting 550W, 492 of them on 12v rail while providing stable voltage. I think with 2 cards at full load I will be about 500W from wall.

With single card I am looking at £65-80 per month at current BTC price while the PC is consuming about £24/month. With 2 cards it should be around £130-160 per month with £39 in electricity costs.

Another issue to address is how to wake the second PSU. You'll either need a relay driven by the first PSU to connect the appropriate terminals or you'll need an adaptor like this: http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Dual-PSU-a...-/191568455861

You just connect green wires on 24 pin plugs, it just gets connected to ground when you switch on PC. I suppose PSU wake up time could be issue when using 2 different PSU's so maybe best to stick 2 identical which should fire up in similar amount of time.

[moltuae]

I thought the RX 480 cards were big too .... until I saw a GTX 1080 Ti card!

The trick with the RX480 I found, is to lower the GPU speed by about 15-20%. At around that speed, the power consumption drops by about 50W with very little impact on performance.

Originally Posted by ainarssems

You just connect green wires on 24 pin plugs, it just gets connected to ground when you switch on PC. I suppose PSU wake up time could be issue when using 2 different PSU's so maybe best to stick 2 identical which should fire up in similar amount of time.

That's precisely what I did with the first dual PSU rig I built, although on high-end PSUs generally all wires are black so you have to work from the pin numbers instead. I prefer pluggable solutions though and it's easier/cheaper to buy an adaptor than to source and make plugs.

[ainarssems]

This is hypothetical but rig with 4 RX480 cards if you can get them or 2 GTX1080Ti cards should cost about £1500 and return over £200 in profit every month and if buying lot of parts probably land a decent discount as well. Obviously there is a lot of risk involved and uncertainty but I could get £15k loan for 4 years paying around £330 a month, make 10 rigs and get over £2k/month from mining so theoretically I could quit my day job ( or night job as it may be in my case). I had a £20k loan for 4 years which I took out to pay deposit for house and it was not too tight paying it back so even if it all goes down south I will be able to afford to pay off loan based on past experience. And in any way kit will be at least worth 50% of original price if it did not work out and I had to pack up mining. So it seems like risk might be well worthwhile. At 10kW+ it would provide enough heating for the house as well making additional savings just need to figure out how to distribute it around house without noise. Our house used to have hot air heating in the past (long before we moved in) and part of the channels are still in the place so that would be an option. I don't think I could go over 10kW which is 40A as I only have 60A supply to house and need to leave spare capacity to run other things so going beyond that would require supply upgrade or move to/rent other premises.

I am not filling in loan application just yet but definitely something to think about for long term and once I have proved I am actually getting money.

If I was to go large scale I would also probably need to think about switching to Linux or cram as much as possible GPU's on one system to avoid or reduce Windows licencing costs. I mean if you cheat and get a free copy or 2 of Windows 10 for disabled to use at home nobody will probably care if they find out who but if I get ten and use it to generate money I guess it could get ugly if get caught.

[ainarssems]

The trick with the RX480 I found, is to lower the GPU speed by about 15-20%. At around that speed, the power consumption drops by about 50W with very little impact on performance.

Still early day but a few options I tried it seems that if I spend £3 less on power per month I loose £3 in income per month, I guess it's not bad considering that hardware runs at lower temps so should be more reliable/stable and last longer.

[ainarssems]

Short term I could get GPU for my HP Microserver as it always runs anyway and while it generates a little money running mining on CPU it's not much. It has PCIe slot but power supply is only 200W and does not have PCIe power connector and does not have enough space inside. But I could get PCIe riser and second PSU to run another GPU outside of case. I am think just for variety and spreading risk somewhat maybe and nVidia card, probably GTX1080Ti.

[ainarssems]

While I am still on the roll, the bios mods seem to promise 25-31Mh/s for RX480 dependant on claimant while reducing power usage compared to 22-24 that I am getting now so might be worthwhile investigating.

[thebluewhale]

Originally Posted by ainarssems

I don't think I could go over 10kW which is 40A as I only have 60A supply to house and need to leave spare capacity to run other things so going beyond that would require supply upgrade or move to/rent other premises.

I wouldn't worry about it. The HRC fuses at the supply point have a fusing factor of at least 1.5 times the rating and you are entitled to an 80A supply as standard anyway. So if it blows your friendly local electricity company will come and fix it for you and will probably fit whatever they have 'in the van' which could be anything from a 60-100A

[thebluewhale]

I've been following this thread with interest so started researching. It looks promising but I found this:

Bitcoins per Block – Each time a mathematical problem is solved, a constant amount of Bitcoins are created. The number of Bitcoins generated per block starts at 50 and is halved every 210,000 blocks (about four years). The current number of Bitcoins awarded per block is 25. However soon enough the block halving will occur and the reward will be downgraded to only 12.5 Bitcoins.
Bitcoin Difficulty – Since the Bitcoin network is designed to produce a constant amount of Bitcoins every 10 minutes, the difficulty of solving the mathematical problems has to increase in order to adjust to the network’s Hash Rate increase. Basically this means that the more miners that join, the harder it gets to actually mine Bitcoins.


which to me looks as though from the next block halving you're on diminishing returns for the same processor/GPU power.


Or am I reading this wrong?

[ainarssems]

Well I though I will drop some early seeds in to my other half's mind if i indeed decide to go that way so that it is easier to convince her later. To my surprise she just said why haven't you done it yet if the numbers are right? So I went on explaining about the risks and that in worst case scenario we might end up paying £330/ month for 4 years for nothing. Well her answer was - who does not take risk does not drink champagne an she had not even had any champagne or any other drink for that matter at the time unlike me And she pointed out that we were paying over £400 for the loan to pay deposit on house and it was fine so £330 would be plain sailing.

I am still a bit vary, I think I need at least to see some money come back to me until I am committed.

[ainarssems]

Originally Posted by thebluewhale

I've been following this thread with interest so started researching. It looks promising but I found this:

Bitcoins per Block – Each time a mathematical problem is solved, a constant amount of Bitcoins are created. The number of Bitcoins generated per block starts at 50 and is halved every 210,000 blocks (about four years). The current number of Bitcoins awarded per block is 25. However soon enough the block halving will occur and the reward will be downgraded to only 12.5 Bitcoins.
Bitcoin Difficulty – Since the Bitcoin network is designed to produce a constant amount of Bitcoins every 10 minutes, the difficulty of solving the mathematical problems has to increase in order to adjust to the network’s Hash Rate increase. Basically this means that the more miners that join, the harder it gets to actually mine Bitcoins.


which to me looks as though from the next block halving you're on diminishing returns for the same processor/GPU power.


Or am I reading this wrong?

You are right about diminishing returns but it's still a return and if you look long term bitcoin price have gone up exponentially as well. So while your return might be decreasing in terms of BTC, it's been constant or increasing in terms of $. Also there are a lot of other crypto currencies out there so I think there will always be something pritable to mine. The margins might reduce with time but if it becomes un profitable nobody will do it which ultimately will lead to colapse of that currency which while not impossible is inprobable.