Crypto currency mining

[moltuae]

Originally Posted by 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?

I think ROI is an important factor but it's not the only thing to consider. A quick ROI would be top priority if the cards effectively became worthless after the ROI period, making it the point at which you broke even. However, graphics cards tend to hold their value very well, often selling used for the same price as new, which is especially true for high-end cards. So taking depreciation into account, a more expensive model may in fact represent a quicker ROI than a cheaper, less-desirable model.

Another thing to consider is that, once the card has paid for itself, it continues to make money at the same rate. So a card costing 3 times as much that only mines at twice the rate might seem like a bad choice but remember that it should continue to mine at twice the rate long after the ROI.

Having said all that, a lot of the time we just buy the card(s) that seem to be working well for everyone else. You can waste days crunching the numbers, comparing resale value, ROI, power consumption, hash-rates, etc etc. Sometimes it's better to just check what's in stock and buy (after a little research just to see if that GPU is relatively efficient and reliable for mining).

[ainarssems]

I returned my PC to non-overclocked state and this has reduced power consumption a little bit but with GTX 760 it's costing more to run that it is earning. Idle power consumption is 150-160W, when mining 260-270W costing about £0.71 per day to run and only earning $0.35-0.45. I have now bought RX480- 8 GB, this should improve things considerably. Only 1 for now as I am not sure if my 550W PSU will handle 2. I also noticed somebody selling modded BIOS for RX cards on e-bay for faster mining, is it something to consider or better to stick to stock to retain warranty. Updating motherboard, CPU &RAM would probably bring idle power consumption down by 100W.

I also tried it on my home HP Mini Server with Xeon E31265L CPU and while it does not generate much it consumes a lot less power. It is already running 24/7 and costing about £4 per month to run with power consumption around 50W, while mining power usage goes up to 70-75W costing only £2 per month extra. It has around 40% CPU usage, not sure why it's not using more CPU power, maybe memory is too slow. It's earning about $0.27 per day. It does not appear to affect anything else running on server. So it will cost about £6 per month to run and generate about the same but as it's running already without mining and costing £4 per month I am actually £4 better off. Nothing to get excited about but at least it's not loosing money.

[moltuae]

Originally Posted by ainarssems

I have now bought RX480- 8 GB, this should improve things considerably. Only 1 for now as I am not sure if my 550W PSU will handle 2. I also noticed somebody selling modded BIOS for RX cards on e-bay for faster mining, is it something to consider or better to stick to stock to retain warranty.

I haven't tried the BIOS mods. I could be wrong, but I'm sceptical that they'd make any worthwhile difference. What is worthwhile though, especially if you have one of the 'OC' series (pre-overclocked) cards, is to adjust the GPU clock speed in Wattman. I found that at around -15% to -20%, there was minimal reduction in hash rate but a reduction in power of nearly 50W per card.

A single RX 480 should produce a little over £2 per day presently, using NiceHash. I find it better to look at the mBTC rate though otherwise you have two variables (the rate that NiceHash are paying and the BTC/GBP price). NiceHash profitability is quite low presently, though it does appear to be rising again. A couple of weeks ago I was getting about 1.6 mBTC per card, now it's more like 1.1 mBTC. A couple of the tech forum members I've been discussing mining with have been experimenting with mining Ethereum/Zcash directly and claim they're seeing slightly higher earnings compared with the current NiceHash rates. I plan to experiment doing the same in the coming weeks so I'll report my findings.

This is what one of my 2 card RX 480 rigs is presently earning using NiceHash:






One thing to note when using NiceHash is that payouts only occur when you reach certain thresholds (see here) and there is a small fee for each payout. So if you're mining on various GPUs/devices, especially if they're lower hash-rate devices, it's probably better to use the same Bitcoin payout address on each device, that way it'll be one more frequent payout rather than lots of smaller payouts.

[tonupkid]

Speculating on cryptocurrency can bring huge rewards and, of course, losses. Timing and a big dose of luck

http://www.iii.co.uk/articles/424560...rce=SmartFocus

[moltuae]

Originally Posted by tonupkid

Speculating on cryptocurrency can bring huge rewards and, of course, losses. Timing and a big dose of luck

http://www.iii.co.uk/articles/424560...rce=SmartFocus

Agreed. Rather than gamble, trying to make profit from the price fluctuations, it's generally a better strategy to do some research first, investing a little in the most promising cryptocurrencies, those that have very active development and unique features. Don't try to make a 'quick buck'; just buy and hold.

Prices can be very volatile but if you zoom out and take a look at the longer period, almost all cryptocurrencies have been continuously rising for the last few years and, with growing adoption of cryptocurrencies in most countries, it's unlikely that trend will change any time soon.

The reported "crash" is nothing unusual. Plummets (aka "corrections") in price are a frequent event in cryptocurrencies, caused by panic selling and speculators looking to take a quick profit. If you look at the 7-day graphs to the right of the list of cryptocurrencies here, you can see most of them have already hit the 'support' level and begun rebounding. A few have already fully recovered.

You can of course make a lot of money by spontaneously buying and selling cryptocurrencies if you're lucky or very good at predicting the market. I've made some small amounts that way, but it can take a lot of time and effort and it's still really just gambling. Get it wrong and you could just as easily lose a lot of money. I prefer to buy and hold, investing in the most interesting cryptocurrency projects. While some of those have occasionally plummeted in value, every single one is worth more than I paid for it, in some cases a lot more. My entire portfolio of cryptocurrencies has been increasing exponentially and is now about 25 times the value of my original investments. When any of my investments increases 10-fold or more, I usually guard against losses by taking back my original investment amount, reinvesting just my gains.




Incidentally, for anyone who is interested to know why there's been such an explosion in cryptocurrencies when none existed a decade ago, it's because the release of this Bitcoin whitepaper made it possible. What that paper disclosed was staggering; it proposed a solution to the age-old Byzantine General's Problem and a way to make an incorrigible, distributed database that opened up enormous possibilities and applications (a store of value/money being just one of those). Many of the applications and possibilities are still being realised. To get some idea of enormity of it all and see examples of the possible applications, read about what some of the more innovative projects have to offer, like Ethereum, LBRY, Siacoin or Stratis (to name but a few).

[ainarssems]

Well my RX480 purchase was a bust. After searching far and wide for new RX480 at good price that was in stock I thought I got lucky find one. Unfortunately next day got e-mail saying it's out of stock with ETA 4-5 weeks so I cancelled and bought a second hand from e-bay paying more than for a new in the first place. Well actually bought 2 as the math show good investment and even if in unlikely event it does not turn out that good the second hand prices are high due to demand and no stock often exceeding new prices when new were available. The replacement RX580 which is also not available seems to be better in games but worse for mining and using more power. GTX 1080 TI is a lot more expensive and takes longer to pay back, but will generate more money after it's paid off. From what I have understood AMD cards are more flexible in terms of mining different currencies and different algorithms so you have more options to switch to if some currencies became non profitable to mine but I am sure if all of the ones you can mine with nVidia cards became unprofitable somebody would make new algorithms to use them, but it seems AMD cards are a safer bet with RX480 8GB being the best at the moment.
Short term crypto currency value can go up and down but over long term most of them have increased a lot in value. Obviously there is no guarantee that it will continue that way but if you look at the trends it should continue to increase in value. There are short term value fluctuations and you could make fair amount of money if you guess it right or were lucky buying and selling at the right time but the best idea seems to put your spare money into getting crypto currencies and keep hold of them. You can make more money trading with leverage but also loose more and if value drops suddenly and you do not have extra funds available to prop it upp you could loose everything you invested if trading with leverage, also cryptocurrencies are traded 24/7 unlike shares in London exchange for example 08:00-16:30 on work days so you can miss price hikes or drops while you are sleeping.

There are lots of different crypto currencies and I am doubtful there is enough market space for all them long term so there is a bit of risk deciding which ones you want to invest in to.

also tried to mine Ether directly it turns out you need at least 3GB GPU memory so at the moment I could not even try with my GTX760 2GB while waiting for RX480 to arrive.

Also looked into power supplies, if you are to run 4-6 GPU's you will need 1000- 1800W PSU depending on GPU model and quantity and those are very expensive, for me it seems to be a lot smarter to run 2x650W PSU's that will be less than £150 instead of single £300 1300W PSU. Then I looked even further and decided that it might be even better getting second hand server PSU's for GPU's. As they are made for servers they are made to run 24/7 and with reliability in mind and sometimes can be had for peanuts on ebay, only downside is that mostly they are a bit loud. You can get 750W PSU that gives over 60A on 12V line for less than £40 on BuyitNow and less on auctions.

[MikkiJayne]

Interesting info. I've always defaulted to Nvidia so was looking at the GTX 980ti as they seem to have decent stats on Nicehash. I might have a look at the AMDs instead. My GTX 960 setup didn't do so well - it averaged out at ~85p per day and used 40p of electricity even with a low-power CPU, SSD and minimal ram

I saw a pic of a 6-GPU rig using a proliant power supply the other day so I might have a tinker with one. I've got a bunch of 1KW units which can do 82A on the 12V line! Just a case of figuring out the connections hopefully. Very noisy little beasties, but a ducted 120mm fan would probably suffice and be much quieter. Maybe even just run them without a case and blow air at the heatsinks.

Would conventional PSUs mind being run in parallel? I guess its just DC, but its never occurred to me to try! Server PSUs obviously do as standard.

I'm still curious about what a bare-bones server would consume at idle compared to a desktop board, especially since they have such potent power supplies. 1 low-energy CPU, 2 sticks of ram, one hdd and minimum fans might not be too bad as a proportion of the total if it was loaded up with six GPUs. I'll have a play tomorrow

Edit - connections not a problem then... http://www.gigampz.com/store/c1/Featured_Products.html

[ainarssems]

Would conventional PSUs mind being run in parallel? I guess its just DC, but its never occurred to me to try! Server PSUs obviously do as standard.

I don't think running in parallel is best idea, I was thinking just to connect ground and 'on' signal wire so they come on at the same time but keep '+' separate. Run motherboard, CPU and one or 2 GPU's on stock PSU and then couple more on other PSU. Otherwise if you connect 2 in parallel they will not be 100% identical and one might try to keep voltage at 12.1V, other 12.2V and basically the one trying to get higher voltage will be pulling most of the load and it might be too much for it.

Long time ago I used to experiment with overclocking and I had similar setup where one PSU was running PC and other Peltier cooling element for CPU which was then cooled by water.

I think server motherboards are specifically made for running several PSU's and probably have extra circuitry for load balancing and redundancy.

[MikkiJayne]

Mmm thats pretty much what I was wondering about the voltages. That link I posted looks to be using the server PSU solely for the PCIe power so presumably the intention is to use a conventional PSU for the motherboard. Seems a bit of a waste though when the server PSU can make the other voltages too - it might as well run everything.

[moltuae]

Originally Posted by ainarssems

From what I have understood AMD cards are more flexible in terms of mining different currencies and different algorithms so you have more options to switch to if some currencies became non profitable to mine but I am sure if all of the ones you can mine with nVidia cards became unprofitable somebody would make new algorithms to use them, but it seems AMD cards are a safer bet with RX480 8GB being the best at the moment.

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.

Some algorithms are predominantly more profitable than others of course and, since NiceHash only switches when another algorithm becomes more profitable, the amount of time spent mining one algorithm over another doesn't necessarily reflect the difference in profitability. However, switching occurs much more often with Nvidia cards, suggesting that they are able to mine a wider range of algorithms with good profitability:



In the above screenshot, SHA256 is my Antimer S9 and the AMD cards are almost exclusively DaggerHashimoto. Everything else appeared after getting my Nvidia 1080 Ti cards up and running.

Incidently, here's a useful link about tweaking the GTX 1070 cards, much of which is probably applicable to other Nvidia cards too:
http://www.legitreviews.com/geforce-...w-power_195451

Originally Posted by ainarssems

There are lots of different crypto currencies and I am doubtful there is enough market space for all them long term so there is a bit of risk deciding which ones you want to invest in to.

I think you're absolutely right. I do think we're seeing the dawn of something huge. I don't think you can overestimate the enormous potential for this technology and I believe the world-changing implications of all the applications (digital money being just one of them) is vast, perhaps even bigger than the internet itself. However, while I think there are a lot of cryptocurrencies destined for big things, there's probably a LOT more destined to go nowhere.

Originally Posted by ainarssems

also tried to mine Ether directly it turns out you need at least 3GB GPU memory so at the moment I could not even try with my GTX760 2GB while waiting for RX480 to arrive.

I'm planning to experiment with direct mining soon too, if only to reduce my reliance on NiceHash and see how they compare.

Originally Posted by ainarssems

Also looked into power supplies, if you are to run 4-6 GPU's you will need 1000- 1800W PSU depending on GPU model and quantity and those are very expensive, for me it seems to be a lot smarter to run 2x650W PSU's that will be less than £150 instead of single £300 1300W PSU. Then I looked even further and decided that it might be even better getting second hand server PSU's for GPU's. As they are made for servers they are made to run 24/7 and with reliability in mind and sometimes can be had for peanuts on ebay, only downside is that mostly they are a bit loud. You can get 750W PSU that gives over 60A on 12V line for less than £40 on BuyitNow and less on auctions.

Originally Posted by MikkiJayne

Would conventional PSUs mind being run in parallel? I guess its just DC, but its never occurred to me to try! Server PSUs obviously do as standard.

I've looked at using server PSUs and I've setup a few dual-PSU rigs. You shouldn't try to run the PSUs in parallel but you must ensure that they share a ground connection. 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

I've found that approach inconsistent and unreliable though. If you get the timing of the PSUs wrong, you can cause GPUs to disconnect/reconnect while the motherboard is powered, resulting in system instability.

Because I'm building rigs for customers, I needed a more reliable and repeatable solution, using readily available parts. I've just ordered another 2 GTX 1080 Ti cards and a 1200W PSU. I'm planning to standardise on a 4 card rig, with all off-the-shelf parts. I think I've found a good way of securing the graphics cards and I'm in the process of designing a frame made from 20mm aluminium extrusion. I'll post the photos/details if all goes to plan.