Crypto currency mining

[moltuae]

Originally Posted by 1781cc

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]

Originally Posted by moltuae

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:



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]

That solar powered rig is very cool indeed

[MikkiJayne]

It won't recognise the GTX960 either

[moltuae]

That certainly is a hefty looking laptop!


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

[MikkiJayne]

Seems like this stuff just wants a random pile of junk rather than a complete working machine

This works fine apparently:



Currently running at $1.52 a day.

[moltuae]

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]

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]

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?

[moltuae]

Originally Posted by MikkiJayne

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:



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