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  #81  
Old 7th July 2017, 04:10 PM
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moltuae moltuae is offline
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Originally Posted by ainarssems View Post
Have been experimenting with couple of RX480 cards including over/underclocking, flashing modded BIOS. On the 2 cards I have there is not much room for memory overclocking but a little GPU under-clocking does bring energy savings without affecting performance much. Modifying BIOS did see increase in MH/s from 24-25MH/s to 28MH/s but was unstable resulting in lot of incorrect shares so actual return was lower. I only modified memory timing, maybe if I added a little bit of extra voltage it might be more stable but I don't want to fry it. Some people are lucky enough with their cards to have BIOS mod and also run memory overclocked resulting in 30 MH/s but did not work out for me. I have another 2 different RX 480 turning up hopefully tomorrow so I will see how they do. Also RX580 shows as generating less on NiceHash profitability calculator but apparently are more acceptable to BIOS mods and can do over 30MH/s with mods. Somebody told me get rid of RX480 while they are still £300+ and get RX 580 and mod them. Seems like a reasonable advice since you can get RX580 for less than 480 it's just that RX580 are pre-order only with expected stock 31/07. Might also look at GTX 1080 Ti.
I have wondered about GPU firmware/BIOS mods and whether they would be worthwhile but haven't yet gone down that route, so thanks for sharing your results

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Originally Posted by ainarssems View Post
I am still having itch for Antminer L3+. If I were to buy it what would be the best way since I do not hold any crypto-currency or USD accounts but I do have empty Bitcoin wallet.
You could simply purchase some Bitcoin. I've previously use Bittylicious to buy BTC ( https://bittylicious.com ). Your daily limit may be less than you need until you're verified though. The process is pretty straightforward as long as you have a bank account that you can send instant transfers from. You simply enter your Bitcoin address, how much you want to buy and you're given the bank account details of the seller, along with a reference code. Make sure you enter the reference code correctly and don't include any other references/notes in the payment, especially not anything referring to Bitcoin (as you can probably imagine, banks don't like Bitcoin much and some have been known to block payments that refer to it).

Make sure you're aware of the risks before buying an L3+ though. We're taking a big gamble buying 3 of them but I'm hoping it will pay off. My gut feeling is that Litecoin will increase in value greatly now, especially as Bitcoin enters a potentially very shaky few months (due to uncertainty and the imminent SegWit developments). It's also the third largest and most popular cryptocurrency (not counting Ripple, which isn't a true, decentralised cryptocurrency). There's also a risk of course that the price could plummet. Nobody really knows. Be aware also of the risks of buying from China. I've not had any issues with Bitmain myself, but a unit could get damaged/lost in transit. You will also need to purchase a power supply with the Antminer and you will be asked to pay duty on both of them (at the usual rate) when they arrive. I don't mean to put you off -- If it wasn't a gamble we felt was worth taking we wouldn't have ordered 3 of them! -- but you do need to be realistic and be prepared for the worst outcome.


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Originally Posted by ainarssems View Post
Mark, are you running all PC's on Windows or Linux as the licencing costs can mount up for several machines.
It really depends on personal preference and how legit you want to be. I mean Linux is great, if you're a Linux guru, but it can be a pain to get things working right if you're not. I don't work with Linux enough to be comfortable supporting it, so I'm using Windows. I know it all adds up, but a genuine Windows 10 OEM licence is relatively cheap compared to the rest of the mining rig so, for my customer's rigs at least, which are operating within a business premises/environment, we're sticking with fully licensed Windows 10 rigs --- It's more than my reputation is worth not to. You can actually buy Windows 10 OEM licences from ebay for about £30 though. Probably not genuine but, in a home environment, as long as the licence key works, do you care? Alternatively, you can go down the perpetual evaluation route: Windows 10 will work indefinitely without a key; there's just a few limitations, such as disabled desktop customisation. After all, these are just test rigs, right?

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Originally Posted by ainarssems View Post
Another question is where does it stand with taxman? I suppose you can offset all your purchase and electricity costs against income and it would only count as income only when you convert your earned bitcoins to fiat currency.
Essentially yeah, though it probably depends on your own situation. I'm self employed and I work in IT (mainly from my home office) so any IT purchases and electricity expenses lower my profits and reduce my tax bill.

More info here:

http://sterlingcoin.org/uk-tax-rulings/

http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/briefs/vat/brief0914.htm
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  #82  
Old 7th July 2017, 05:58 PM
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moltuae moltuae is offline
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Something else I should mention about the Antminers (if I haven't mentioned it already ) .... they're quite loud!
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Cars Owned:
The Tesla Era: 2020 Model S Performance Ludicrous+ (present)
(Black, with all black premium interior and carbon fibre décor, 21" sonic carbon twin turbine wheels and FSD capability)

The Audi Era: '97 A8 4.2 (Ming Blue) --> '96 A8 4.2 QS (Dark Green) --> '02 FE S8 (present)
The Citroen Era: '84 BX 1.6 RS --> '89 BX 1.9 DTR Turbo --> '94 XM 2.0L Turbo --> '96 XM 2.0L Turbo Exclusive --> '00 Xantia Activa 2.0L Turbo
The Banger Era: '76 1.2L Lada VAZ-2101 (Ruski Fiat 124) --> '80 1.7L Morris Ital HL, finished in Ermine White and Rust
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  #83  
Old 7th July 2017, 08:26 PM
ainarssems ainarssems is offline
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I got a payout of a whole £2.12 this afternoon! I only used £2.40 of electricity to get it too
I did as well, was not even expecting it as it always said next payout 11/07. I got a bit more, exact value may vary depending on Bitcoin exchange rate but about £14. That was with alot of downtime messing around and trying different things.

Quote:
I'm going to buy a GTX 980ti on Monday and see what that does
I am still a newbie but from what I gathered so far GTX10xx is different architecture and can run more algorithms so should be more future proof. 980 Ti will probably be a bit more expensive than 1060 6GB but should generate a bit more income, for me if I think about using it 3-4 years I would go for 10xx series for more future proofing. To mine Ether you need at least 3GB VRAM now but that is expected to rise to 4GB soon, so 3GB 1060 is out of question and 4GB cards probably will not last 3-4 years. So it needs to be over 4GB for me be it nVidia 6GB or AMD 8GB. I am thinking about buying couple of nVidia cards myself for variety/ risk spreading but it will be 1080 or 1080 Ti. Still like I said I am still newbie so my views are not necessarily correct just putting it out there for consideration.
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  #84  
Old 7th July 2017, 08:52 PM
ainarssems ainarssems is offline
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Make sure you're aware of the risks before buying an L3+ though
I am. I am thinking to diversify investment - AMD, nVidia cards and Antminer to spread the risk so if Antminer does not work out hopefully it will just mean longer time before I get back my costs for the whole operation.

Regards Windows, you can install pirated Windows 7 and then get free upgrade to 10 for people who use assistive technologies (I have tried it so I know it works). So it will work happily but I need to consider long term effects if I was to scale up operation re-investing my returns. Nobody will probably care I did it for 1 or 2 home PC's but if i ramp up production in future and use them to earn money it could come back to bite me. I think it I was to go over 2 rigs- 8 cards than it might be worthwhile to invest my time in Linux. I understand you can buy pre-configured SD card with Linux for this at reasonable cost and you do not need to do much other than entering your wallet address. But obviously you might need to reconfigure, update or change it in future as the things evolve.

Quote:
I have wondered about GPU firmware/BIOS mods and whether they would be worthwhile but haven't yet gone down that route, so thanks for sharing your results
I think it depends on your individual card, some respond well, others don't. To keep things simple basically you mod BIOS to use the same VRAM timings at 2000MHz(x4) as at 1500 or 1750. Some cards will work fine with 1500 timings resulting in best results, others with 1750 and some will not work correctly with modified timings or work reliably like in my case. Some people can get them to work with 1500 timings and then overclock VRAM from 2000 to 2200MHz with great results +25% hash rate. For my 2 cards it has not worked out. Also when overclocking VRAM with standard timings one will do 2200, other only 2100. Guess what?- the cheaper reference card does better that full fat version. A bit more VRAM volatge might help but I have not risked increasing it yet so something to consider for future.
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  #85  
Old 7th July 2017, 09:15 PM
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moltuae moltuae is offline
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A while ago, when we first started mining with the AMD RX 480 cards, I conducted a number of tests, adjusting GPU/memory speed and voltages using Wattman. I haven't performed any similar tests with nVidia cards, so I don't know if they would be any different, but what I concluded was that the only worthwhile adjustment is a slight reduction in GPU clock speed. Anything else seemed to provide no beneficial results or caused instability.

This is the results I recorded:

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The Audi Era: '97 A8 4.2 (Ming Blue) --> '96 A8 4.2 QS (Dark Green) --> '02 FE S8 (present)
The Citroen Era: '84 BX 1.6 RS --> '89 BX 1.9 DTR Turbo --> '94 XM 2.0L Turbo --> '96 XM 2.0L Turbo Exclusive --> '00 Xantia Activa 2.0L Turbo
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  #86  
Old 7th July 2017, 09:22 PM
MikkiJayne MikkiJayne is offline
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What does this general decline in payout over the last month represent? Every card on the profitability checker shows this same pattern. Is that representative of gradually increasing mining difficulty? Is it going to continue downward, or does it go up and down with some external factor?

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  #87  
Old 7th July 2017, 09:57 PM
ainarssems ainarssems is offline
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This is what I am getting wiht 2x RX 480 stock BIOS, VRAM 2100 on one card, 2200 on other card. GPU frequency -15%, power -20% in Wattman on both cards. Power consumption 390-400W for the whole PC from socket.

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  #88  
Old 7th July 2017, 10:16 PM
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moltuae moltuae is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by MikkiJayne View Post
What does this general decline in payout over the last month represent? Every card on the profitability checker shows this same pattern. Is that representative of gradually increasing mining difficulty? Is it going to continue downward, or does it go up and down with some external factor?
It's largely influenced by what people are paying for hashing power. It goes up and down often. I've tried to find a correlation with Bitcoin prices or cryptocurrency prices in general but I'm not sure there is one.

I intend to experiment with mining directly to see if it would be more profitable at times when NiceHash's profitability is low, but I haven't gotten around to doing that yet. You can't beat NiceHash for simplicity though and mining directly to a pool would result in altcoin payments rather than payments in Bitcoin (which may or may not be desirable).


Quote:
Originally Posted by ainarssems View Post
This is what I am getting wiht 2x RX 480 stock BIOS, VRAM 2100 on one card, 2200 on other card. GPU frequency -15%, power -20% in Wattman on both cards. Power consumption 390-400W for the whole PC from socket.

That's not bad. Slightly better than I'm getting from a 2x RX 480 rig, though I haven't done much tweaking on this one:

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Cars Owned:
The Tesla Era: 2020 Model S Performance Ludicrous+ (present)
(Black, with all black premium interior and carbon fibre décor, 21" sonic carbon twin turbine wheels and FSD capability)

The Audi Era: '97 A8 4.2 (Ming Blue) --> '96 A8 4.2 QS (Dark Green) --> '02 FE S8 (present)
The Citroen Era: '84 BX 1.6 RS --> '89 BX 1.9 DTR Turbo --> '94 XM 2.0L Turbo --> '96 XM 2.0L Turbo Exclusive --> '00 Xantia Activa 2.0L Turbo
The Banger Era: '76 1.2L Lada VAZ-2101 (Ruski Fiat 124) --> '80 1.7L Morris Ital HL, finished in Ermine White and Rust
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  #89  
Old 8th July 2017, 09:48 AM
MikkiJayne MikkiJayne is offline
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Originally Posted by moltuae View Post
It's largely influenced by what people are paying for hashing power. It goes up and down often. I've tried to find a correlation with Bitcoin prices or cryptocurrency prices in general but I'm not sure there is one.
Thanks that makes sense now. I hadn't made the connection that the value of the hashing power goes up and down as well as the value of the currency itself.
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  #90  
Old 8th July 2017, 12:26 PM
ainarssems ainarssems is offline
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Out of the 2 cards I received today 1 seemed to respond well to BIOS mod but started to get errors later so have to switch back to stock BIOS.



I am either unlucky with 4 cards failing to respond well to BIOS mods or it's just not happening for RX480. Might try RX580 when they are in stock.
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