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IT, AV and other Tech All computing, home cinema and technology that isnt car related |
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#1
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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.
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Currently 8less 2011 Q7 S Line 3.0TDI, 2016 Tesla Model S 90D 8 history: 2006 A8 Sport 4.2TDI quattro SOLD, 1997 S8, reached end of life with gearbox failure |
#2
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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? Last edited by MikkiJayne; 26th June 2017 at 03:26 PM. |
#3
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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.
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Currently 8less 2011 Q7 S Line 3.0TDI, 2016 Tesla Model S 90D 8 history: 2006 A8 Sport 4.2TDI quattro SOLD, 1997 S8, reached end of life with gearbox failure Last edited by ainarssems; 26th June 2017 at 03:51 PM. |
#4
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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:
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Mark ------------------------------------------------------ 2002 FE S8 Ebony Black Pearl ------------------------------------------------------ ------------------------------------------------------ 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 |
#5
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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:
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Mark ------------------------------------------------------ 2002 FE S8 Ebony Black Pearl ------------------------------------------------------ ------------------------------------------------------ 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 |
#6
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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?
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Currently 8less 2011 Q7 S Line 3.0TDI, 2016 Tesla Model S 90D 8 history: 2006 A8 Sport 4.2TDI quattro SOLD, 1997 S8, reached end of life with gearbox failure |
#7
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Sorry, missed your last post before reply, it seems more bitcoin orientated, what about mining other currencies?
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Currently 8less 2011 Q7 S Line 3.0TDI, 2016 Tesla Model S 90D 8 history: 2006 A8 Sport 4.2TDI quattro SOLD, 1997 S8, reached end of life with gearbox failure |
#8
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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.
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Mark ------------------------------------------------------ 2002 FE S8 Ebony Black Pearl ------------------------------------------------------ ------------------------------------------------------ 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 |
#9
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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.
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Mark ------------------------------------------------------ 2002 FE S8 Ebony Black Pearl ------------------------------------------------------ ------------------------------------------------------ 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 |
#10
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Business rate
I just discovered my house mate has a GTX960 sitting in a PC gathering dust - that could be earning £30 a month! Plus I have a couple of i7 laptops with GTX480s. Tinkering time tonight I think... |
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