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If you are new to GPU mining here is my advice to you.

Do not pay high prices for GPUs with the promise of great returns.
Do figure out how to stack discounts when buying online.
Do not buy anything on ebay unless it is truly a great deal.
Do consider buying a good PSU.
Do buy hardware when people panic sell.
Do not fear buying used, but always buy newer models from companies where warranty transfers such as Evga.
Do your research on the best models to purchase.
Do not sell your coins after the panic. Sell during the rush.
Do optimize your miners. This will pay off in the long run.
Do expect a long ROI at around 150 days minimum. This is not a get rich quick scheme unless you were mining in May/ June. Be willing to learn how to trade coins to maximize profit.
Zcash is your friend.

For science I purchased a bunch of GPUs in June to add to my existing arsenal. These rigs are 75%+ paid off already. If I can do it, so can you. Any questions feel free to ask.

For the PSU, I would add that only buy GOLD/PLAT/Titanium rates PSUs, these are going to be running 24/7 you want quality and efficient powersupplies

Good point. I recommend gold as a minimum. The cheapest way to power lots of rigs is to buy a small psu paired with an hp server psu. I personally have Corsair and Evga. Both  have been too nice to me. They send me back new PSUs anytime I've had issues.

EVGA PSU are nice and a bit cheaper but they annoying me greatly with them only have 6+2/6 PIN GPU connectors for thier 1000/1300w PSU it makes hard if you have cards with dual 8 Pins or just multiple 8-pin cards. I'd recommend Corsair 1000w RMX or Antec 1300w HCP.

I have this thermaltake titanium PSU that also fails with the 6+2. The rm1000x is a godsend as it does have a bunch of two 6+2 pin. To compensate, you can find some 8 pin to 2 6+2, but they can be pricey. I think they can go for around $3 per.

Reddit's sub Buildapcsales is a great place to find cheap GPUs and the people there are extremely knowledgeable about discounts on various websites and figure out ways to maximize cash back from multiple sites; for example today there were prebuilts with i5 7400s, RX 480 8GBs and 8GB DDR4 for $500. I bought one just to scrap the GPU and sold the rest of the parts for a nice amount. Communities are great places to start bargain hunting.

Nice!  thanks for sharing that.

Well this list is a generally pretty good list of tips but I do think you shouldn't be so certain in some of your statements.

For one your "If I can do it, so can you" statement is a bit misleading as you started in June and had three relatively good months of profit. Newcomers to mining are entering at the beginning of a rapid deterioration in profitability coupled with hardware prices still selling for a premium, this includes used equipment as well. Claiming users may need to wait up to 150 days (which is actually a quite good time for ROI) is also a bit misleading as the number is likely double that if not longer for the reasons I just mentioned.

Everything else though I agree with for the most part and can be applied to existing miners. I just don't think we should be encouraging new miners to invest so much at this point in time as the future is quite uncertain and once ROI projections get out to a year or more it really is questionable if they will ever recoup their investment.

I can see what you are saying. Regarding your first point, if you ignored all the gpu mining is not profitable in November December, January February, March and held on those were even better months to mine with the difficulty much lower. My main intention was to counter all the FUD with the "gpu mining is dead". Also most people want ROi in 2 months. I'm trying to set a baseline minimum. At current rate it might take even 200 days but I think there is another rally about to occur.

I think we should encourage others to try but not throw everything in. Risk only what you can risk.

 EVGA G2 1300 have 8 GPU connectors in stock form - all 6+2 - and if you get some extra of their "2 GPU connector" cables they can get to 12.

 Dunno where you are getting that "they only have 6 connectors" thing from, unless you think the PS end of the cables is the same as the GPU end (they are NOT).

actually you even don't need to pair PSU, just buy PICO Psu for mobo and ssd(hdd) and connect it to server psu.
HP 2450w platinums are great, for hi-end rigs like 8*1080ti I personally use delta dps 2980w platinum, but they are so loud, what I've modified them with one bid 2amp 120mm delta fan

I have to come back and read this post frequently. Too much to memorize in one sitting.

Great post.

 GPU mining WAS profitable in all of those months - if you had low enough electric costs.

 There is nothing inherently wrong with buying via eBay - Newegg in particular sometimes offers better deals there than on their own website (though you can sometimes browbeat them into MATCHING the deals via their own website via their "price match" policy).


 ZEC is only one option - I spent a few MONTHS making quite a bit more (about DOUBLE at some points) on the Nvidia 10xx based part of my farm working "merge folding" of Curecoin and FoldingCoin than those cards would have made on ZCash.
 There have been other times that they made more on other stuff like DGB-Groetsl or DGB-Skein and GameCoin, or even the ZCash spinoffs like ZEN.

 Don't lock yourself into a single coin and refuse to consider anything else.


 The profitability in June, July, and August was quite a bit higher than now - you're NOT going to see GPU rigs 75% paid off over the NEXT 3 months unless we see another major price spike - but if you are willing to tolerate much longer payoff timeframes AND have cheap enough electric, you'll pay off EVENTUALLY.

The person who want PSU then for a PSU I would like to prefer  plat, gold and titanium rates psu these are a quality and branded and also a big profit is that it is efficient power supplies.

Is staking coins more profitable than mining coins at the moment? dollar for dollar?

Seems like at the moment I am getting much better returns staking coins compared to mining coins.  This is assuming you put in at least $2000 to stake to see some daily staking coins.

Although the days of ROI in three months are behind us it's still a great time to be a hardware enthusiast/gamer. In the past I would usually stick to boards that are one or two steps down from the top but in today's world you can get a board like a 1080 Ti and have it mine enough to bring the cost down to a reasonable level. It's looking like it probably won't ROI... but it might. It's also looking like it will make 20-30% of the purchase price in the first few months giving you a nice discount on a sweet board.

the hardest part for me here is trading, I know I can maximise my mining profits with trading, but for years I learned nothing except buy high sell low... so I'm just sticking to mining, since the CPU, since my fx5200 was making profit on slush's, since S1 released.. So except trading for me it's never give up game

That's one of the most important things in mining rigs that I see a lot of people don't care about and regret it later.
PSUs is the MOST important thing in the whole process. It's what powers up the whole thing and it's gonna working all the time so people should take it more seriously and anything lower than gold is a no no.

Here is a friend of mine who didn't listen to me when I warned him several times that he should get a better one.
The cables were of such a poor quality that they started melting before the whole thing blew up.

https://i.gyazo.com/3469406e3d7bf803257a9f9061be0bbd.jpg

Believe me it hurts a lot seeing your money just gone.

Anyway thank god no kids or anyone was around when this happened. But it's a lesson to learn. Don't play with electricity ever.

wow glad that house didn't burn down,  That's a huge risk with mining is the potential fire hazards, Glad the floor wasn't carpet,  I removed my carpet and installed porceline tiles

Woah. I feel bad for the owner. Are all the GPUs dead or just the ones that are black?

Actually, is that mining rig actually setup to run in the bathroom? Seems like bathroom tiles to me. If yes, maybe that could have been the reason why your rig blew up too. Maybe some water splashed into your PSU while you were taking a bath. Lol.

just cannot agree more on the PSU part...
after i got two PSUs melt down...luckily the rigs are still fine, but only the PSUs... just because that I chose to buy the 150 bucks 1500w PSUs instead of EVGA which is 350 buck plus...
but my takeaways are I just wasted 300 bucks for the burned PSUs and two weeks mining time...
...
also, one more thing, do not run the PSU over 80% capacity, and my another lesson... :( :( :( :( :(

Still under warranty ;)?

I keep telling ppl not to buy those. cheap psu, either buy the server grade psu with breakout boards
or high quality japanese solid state cap
atx like evga, corsair etc 

There's also a good ROI on platinum/titanium psu. Imagine gold psu = 89% efficient, titanium = 94%.

The psu is 1500W, and you use 1200W. 5% efficiency difference is ~ 60W lost.

60W over a year = 60*24*365/1000 = 525KWH wasted due to poor efficiency.

If your electricity rate is $0.10, thats $52 lost. Over 5 years, that's $250 due to efficiency loss. If you're in mining for the long haul, it makes sense to go for platinum/titanium psu

ExactlY. You will net more in the long run. When there is a sale on platinum psus it is a good idea to buy a few. Also when purchasing I recommend browsing reddit build a pc threads. There are insane deals there sometimes.

The only reason to buy on eBay really is due no tax in most listings and they have a special 8% cash back - 10% if you sign up for receiving messages.I live in California and tax kills so its sometimes useful but people have to list their items higher because ebay has huge fees for listing. The place to go for stuff is B&H photo. It's tax free in Cali :).

Another thing is never reach the max hashrate of cards. Try to undervolt/ underclock to find the best efficiency of hashrate for long run. It will help rigs run cooler, longer, more stable.

I couldn't agree more to the list, especially the PSU part.
I'm currently running XTR850 80+ GOLD. PC draw 550W from wall so that is approx 65% of max power of PSU. In case I want to add more cards or buy more power hungry I would definitely change the PSU for stronger to stay within 70% of power draw.

I'm new to mining, I just started mining the new Gopnik Coin for fun but I was told it's really not efficient because it is a Scrypt algorithm.
So if I understand correctly, I should be mining ZCash with GPU? I have AMD R9 280X, does this even matter? ZCash is the most profitable for all GPUs?

I think the PSU like the heart. People or animal with strong heart will live longer for sure.


Try to research here https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?board=159.0 and you will find your answer. IMO, find new potential coins have best algorithm for your cards and low diff.

the price of gpu at my place drop arround $50-$70'i think time to buy gpu again?

I believe that hashes around 170-180 h/s which is fairly decent. If you own any nvidia 10 or 9 series zcash all the way. Since you have AMD I would read around for several popular coins and calculate ROI based on other peoples tests.

Yes. Great example is I had this rx 570 8gb that hits 660 H/s on Monero while my rx 580 8gb gets around 680 H/s. To top it off the cards would stay around 43 degrees C which is incredible temperature while using almost 80 watts per card.

This phone difficult to mass quote. What prices are cards? It may be time soon again if $50 off AMD.

+1 for the PSU part of the topic above. I couldn't agree more. However, I would like to add following: You system is only as good as weakest link in it. Now when it comes to mining rig you could think that is not so important but better to be safe then sorry.

I was fortunate to bump into my rig one night while passing trough basement. One line from power cable on one of the PCIE risers has apparently disconnected itself from connector and found itself next to metal (I think aluminum) frame of my rig. When I bumped it in the night there was sparks everywhere. After closer inspection I wound the wire and it already burned trough few milometers of aluminum. The rig was working normally and I was not aware of any problems and it could have burned everything down :)

Metal is only one material for rig case. Remember PC cases made of steel or aluminium

It should be added Do use ONLY flame-proof materials for your rig to:


If you don't do this the following could happen:

On small scale mining is considered less profitable due to the electricity rates. So if you have good efficiency that means output to input ratio than there is no need to pay attention to GPU panic.

I am sorry for the guy that burned his miner, it is a shame ur investment is gone :(

Actually I feel quite to opposite, it is probably a good thing it caught fire but did not burn his house down. This will be a very strong lesson and reminder for him going forward to do things correctly and not cheaply. Imagine if that had started on fire in the middle of the night and say he has young kids in the house. While it may suck to lose a few pieces of hardware, the result could have been much worse.

Anyway, I also agree with the consensus that you should not cheap out when building a mining rig. Buy a quality name brand PSU and only run it at most to 80% of its capacity. Also same is true with the circuits feeding your miners. If you are in the US that means a circuit can only continuously operate at 80% of its breaker rating, thus a 20 amps breaker/circuit can only supply 16 amps of current. On a 120V line this would only allow about 1900 watts of power, so this could feed only two 1000 watt PSUs running at 800 watts (to system) and will probably draw 850 watts (at wall) or about 1700 watts. Keep this in mind as well when adding rigs to your home to help minimize fire risks.

wow, one of the most horrifying pictures for miners.

 I have yet to see a "staking coin" offer returns that beat a good Certificate of Deposit, much less a decent "high yield" stock.
 They're not even in the same BALLPARK with PoW mining unless your electric cost is insanely high.


 If someone's GPU rig caught fire, they were doing something SERIOUSLY WRONG with it's setup.


 PC cases are ALMOST ALWAYS made of steel - aluminum is sometimes used on high-cost "vanity" cases but it's not the norm.
 Keep in mind though that most serious miners don't use cases at all, as they add needless cost and hurt ventilation (unless you add HIGH AIRFLOW fans that soak a fair bit of power).

For the long run it is really important to also keep the cards cool with MSI Afterburner app to keep fans 60-80% and place the mining rig not in a hot place. Keeping cards cool prolongs their lives. Also the PSU is the most important part of a mining rig and I would not settle with anything under Corsair,Evga or CoolerMaster. Also you have to be patient and to not expect great returns nowadays, a rig with 6 x RX 580 can make 200-250 usd in a month and this is an optimistic prediction considering the profitability totally down from Gpu mining.

There is a lot of types of mining some very trusty while some are not so trusty but it depend on the person choice what he want and which quality he want. Mostly GPU   have no good quality as you are expecting  for which you can paid a very high price.

 Most Gold rated power supplies do noticeably better than 89% efficiency across most of their rated power range - EVGA and Seasonic in particular usually just MISS "Platinum" rating on their G2 and X series power supplies.

 Also, long term you aren't likely to be profitable at 10 cents / kwh - the last few months have been a noteable exception but NOT the norm - since most of the BIG farms are paying less than 5 and commonly closer to 3.

Wow, that is scarry!

How could this happen? Everything in PC world is usually made of non burnable materials.. cables etc, or at least should be! Do you think it was some respectable brand of PSU? Or did it caught fire from PSU at all?

So true, the competing factor still a big thing.

You have to be very careful, I saw a guy on  a video putting things close to the psu and other components that catch fire. You should never do that. The place you are mining should be zero contact with anything else and needs to be a larger room and most important you must distant them from other things.

 Looks like an "overloaded cables" issue.

Also worth noting that most (if not all) PSUs do show their best efficiency at approximately 50%-60% of their maximum rated load capacity.

I've been searching this forum for a good advice in mining especially gpu mining. I do want to build a rig someday to farm some profitable tokens. Upon reading your thread it covers most of the questions in my head such as buying 2nd hand gpu's, what is a better psu to use and power or efficiency. Nice thread OP! I'm saving up to buy some gpu's do you have any recommendation for starters?