Bitcoin Forum

 ??? Hello all, I have been reading and searching  for more than two weeks. Its really hard to figure out whats the best direction to go. I thought at first to go and mine bitcoin with S7's but after really figuring power and setup cost im not sure i would ever ROI. I have about 6k to spend on a mining setup and would really like a 6 month or less ROI. I have read and read till my head hurts. I was thinking of getting 3 of the ibelink ASICs but they are now out of stock and who knows when they will be back. After much research and doing some figuring with cost Im thninking maybe I should just get 2 or 3 GPU rigs up and running. There are so many GPUs to choose from. IDK what is the difference between the gigabyte, msi, and sapphire. They all make the same R series cards. I was thinking maybe going with the Nano even though it is a bit more expensive it should be able to mine for sometime. Would love listen to anyone that is willing to help. My power is about .10 after taxes for residential rates. I would like to get started sooner than later.  ???

I build R9 -380 ----6 GPU rigs. They hash right at 120 MH/s my cost is under $1700 rig...they will mine $300/month at current ETH prices. Stick to MSI or sapphire cards.

due to my bad electricity i'm not making anymore much from ethereum, only around $80 with 4 gpu per month, so i must assume that your electricity is 4x cheaper, around 0.05-0.10

Thanks for the response. I guess if prices would stay the same it would be about a six month ROI. However we all know that wont happen. What has your mining experience been like before ether? Was you able to make a decent profit? I have considered waiting until the new AMD HBM cards are released. I really dont have much knowledge of how that will improve mining but I did read somewhere that it might be a good idea to wait till the release. I really considered the S7 but power costs and with bitcoin forking im not sure any of this would be a good idea. I have tried to read about the changes but i really guess at this point no one knows what will happen. Will the fork cause the difficulty to go down (along with price) or will it stay the same?

Edit: Will 1600 watt 80+ supply be enough for 6 380x gpu's? Just using a 53w processor on btc pro board.

Electric is around $0.098 to $0.105 or so here. I also have 5 KW of solar panels in Florida sun to offset some of the electric costs.

I typically use a 1300W EVGA Supernova Gold or 1200W EVGA Platinum, to run 6 - 380's. My Killawatt shows a 1150-1200 watt draw. Figuring these are ~ %90 efficient...that means that actual draw is around 1000 watts on the PSU.

That sounds good. I guess i will go with a 1300w EVGA since it doesnt pull that much. I hope to tune these up a bit and get the power down just a little bit. I have decided to go ahead with a 6 GPU rig with the MSI 380x cards. I know ether will be gone soon but i can have these running by the weekend and who knows maybe we shall have another coin before long. Lost my tail end with XPY. Hope to not let that happen again.

Edit: Are there any additional cables or anything i need in order to have this up and running. In my cart i have 6 gpus, 1300w power, mother board, CPU, USB powerd riser x6, 120gb SSD and 8gb memory. I have built a PC before but nothing like this. I will be making my own rack.

That sounds like a complete list. Depending on what OS you run, you can shrink the RAM and SSD size some too. I run a 16G SSD and 4G RAM on linux. Windows you would want the 8G and 64G SSD.



EDIT: You might want to look at the cards more closely, I too wanted to undervolt but it seems most 380 series cards are voltage locked. I have not tried to modify BIOS yet on them. I mostly just use the aticonfig and atitweak command line tools.

Gigabyte cards tend to be good for mining as well, though I have a small personal preference for Sapphire over Gigabyte and quite a bit over MSI.

 Avoid HIS in general - too many of their cards use cheap die-fast fans, though the IceQ model blowers seem to be fairly good quality.
 Says a lot that Newegg STOPPED CARRYING HIS in any way shape or form, not to mention my own personal issues with EVERY card of theirs I've ever bought due to crap fans failing except the IceQ (I thought I had problems with it, but turns out the PS I was trying to use it on was flaky - it's working FINE now at 1200Mhz mining Ethereum while powered by one of my X1250s).

Sapphires are a favorite for many, they cost a bit more though. I have better hashing results from my MSI cards than the Gigabyte ones too. At least the reported hashrate is a full 10 MH/s across a 6 GPU rig.

Thanks for all the info. This is the card I currently have in the cart. http://www.amazon.com/Sapphire-DL-DVI-I-DL-DVI-D-Graphics-11250-01-20G/dp/B017WMD8ZM?ie=UTF8&psc=1&redirect=true&ref_=ox_sc_act_title_5&smid=ATVPDKIKX0DER

That's a good card...but I dont think the 380X hashes any faster than the 380 non X. You are paying a premium for that X. However if you can undervolt the card...it would be worth it.

Are your cards 2 or 4gb? Im sure i want 4gb im not sure the 6gb or 8gb cards would benefit much at this point am I correct? After looking the X card is about 30 dollars higher than the regular 280. Can any one with experience with the 280x say if there is a way to under clock and if its worth the price difference.

I seriously considering the nano. Would the future of mining ever make it worth buying the nano?

I use both. The 2GB cards might run out of memory space before ETH switches to POS. They might not. 4GB will not run out of memory. I dont know anything about the 280 series cards. I too would like to know about undervolting the 380's you can change the clocks all you want. The undervolting it what saves on your power draw.

I did say 280 but i did mean the 380 series. Thats just a typo.  ;D

You will probably wont ROI at if you start mining now. Earning is dropping by about 20% every month due to the increase hashrate.

roi is possible with gpu even if now there less profitable, you will never now what will happen in the future, if another "ETH" will coem out, if another crazy rally on another random altcoin will be ral

in the end you will roi, just keep mining when there is profit

Opinions I've seen on MSI were mostly positive. I have no personal experience with them though.
Sapphire makes good cards, both by rep and my own experience with them.
EVGA - seems to be making a bit of a push lately into video cards, I've got a few I'm trying out that were on a Real Good Sale price when I got them, we'll see how they work.


 After Ethereum profits drop too low, it'll be time to look at other options - which is why I'm going NVIDIA right now over my long-prefered AMD, seems like most of the current options either prefer NVIDIA (Ethereum and RC5-72 being noteable exceptions, but Maxwell cards are competative on a hash/watt basis in Ethereum even when they lose on hash/$ somewhat) or it's more-or-less a tossup.



 Scary thing - I just noticed I'm #4 or #5 (depending on the day) on hashrate on my Litecoin mining pool.....

Just wanted to thank everyone for posting and the advice. I have ordered and will have all hardware here by Wednesday. Ordered last Friday morning and total was about 1900. So with a little luck everything running late Wednesday night. I went with the sapphire 380x (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814202183) Guess we shall see. Ether prices are looking good so maybe i can ROI in a decent amount of time. Very excited and very nervous as well. Its kinda hard to control myself. LMAO

EDIT:Can someone post a link to the best miner for this card. I know there are many out there but the most optimized would be great. Thanks in advance.

check out the dual miner from Clover...I think thats his name...its in this mining section. It mines Decred and ETH at the same time. Only runs on Windows at this time. I run Linux and have ETHos on a couple of rigs. Genoil is another ETH miner that is supposed to be pretty good.

Awesome will check it out. I want the max profit right now so if a duel miner is the way to go then i will set it up. Off to read about the duel miner.

Claymore's dual miner seems, by most reports, to be a bit less efficient at Ethereum mining - though the Dcred (sp?) mining income might make up for that.

 You really don't have a lot of options though - most folks seem to be using the Genoil miner, qtminer, or the Claymore dual miner - there's only one other option I know about but it seems to have been not worked on for a while and seems to be getting ignored for being slower than anything else.


 Doesn't seem to be much hashrate difference between any of them, and some of the highest reported hashrates are outdated due to the growth in the DAG file making EVERYTHING slower over time.


 Definitely go with 3+ Gig ram on the cards, if possibly - I've got some 2 Gig NVidea cards that are still working, but my 7870 2Gig is NOT able to mine at all at this point for some reason.
 (Edit - it's working now, figured out I needed more SYSTEM ram for some reason in that machine - but running at 12.something even overclocked a lot, I suspect the figures posted in that database in the 14-16 Mh range are from much earlier days when the DAG was smaller and everything was faster. On the other hand, I already HAD the card so whatever I make with it less electric cost is PURE PROFIT).

I'm currently trying to play around with driver options, but as a long-time Slackware user I am finding Ubuntu and especially bleeding GRUB to be a major pain - but the only miner packages available to me are Ubuntu-specific, as I CAN NOT ACCESS GITHUB NO MATTER WHAT I HAVE TRIED to get access to the bloody source code or anything other than qtminer or Windows64-specific compiled versions of the other stuff.

I really appreciate this. I am going to try a few and decide which one works best for these cards. I will be running windows 10 more than likely so hopefully i can get these tuned up and mining at top speed in a short amount of time. Should have most of the parts today. The CPU and memory are being deliverd tomorrow. :( I spent right at 2k for this setup and ready to get some money coming back in. I would love to sit on the ether for a bit and see what is going to happen but would really like some of my investment back. IDK Would love to watch this go big like BTC did.

Make sure you don't push the cards too hard in your quest for hash rate. Reported and effective hash rates are two very different beasts. Plus your cards will last longer under less stress.

http://90d5dd.ethosdistro.com/ my rigs, I'll be adding 11 more cards over the next week.

Yep. Thanks for the concern and the reminder. I remember seeing a bios update to lower voltage somewhere. I want to make the most as efficient and as safely as possible. Time to start looking for that post. In your opinion will we ever need a card with more than 4gb? Would the cost to purchase a 6 card Nano setup be worth the expense? I have enough for another build. Just not sure how What i want to do yet. I really wanted an x11 asic but they are sold out currently.

Your cards hashing away nicely. How many do you have all together?

25 running now with 5 more to add in over the next week 18 Gigagbyte 4GB R9-380's, 5 MSI 2GB R9-380's, and two XFX 8GB R9-390's. The R9 390 XFX cards I got from Best buy when Amazon was blowing them out for $309.91. I got them to price match on two cards that they had on the shelf. Then, I purchased 4 - R9 290's refurbed from GPUshack last night @ $259 a card. They will get added to a rig later in the week. I am also sending the 2GB cards back to Amazon, ordered 6 more Gigabyte R9-380's to replace them. They just take forever to start mining after a shutdown.

4GB is going to be enough for ETH and I hear that DAG chunking is going to be able to get around the memory limits at some point.. However ETH will switch to POS before that is an issue. We'll see.

Oh, and if you hover your mouse over the GPU count, rig name, on that ethosdistro, you can see what rig is running what cards. You can also click on the fans and temps to see your metrics collected over time graphed out. I clock the MSI cards lower than the Gigabyte Windforce, they get a better effective hashrate that way. Makes no sense, but that is what works best for my setup.

Thats awesome. I see the rigs and GPUs listed. Im a damn noob. I think im gonna order 6 more myself maybe 12 if the wife dont find out. How were you able to send the 2gb cards back to amazon? Just tell them they are bad and replace under warranty with a new 4gb card!!

Not quite...they are still within the 30 days since I purchased them. I have Prime and buy a ton of gear from them.

A couple of pics of the setup.

http://prntscr.com/azt3wk
http://prntscr.com/azt43l

Thats looks pretty sweet. I will try to get some of mine when they are up and running. Does it put out alot of heat?

That looks awesome! I want to build my first rig and had a few questions for you.

1) why didn't you go with all 390 s? (I see you have 1 rig with 390's) Is it because 380's are more bang for the buck ?
2) Can one psu run a 6 card 390 rig ? Like this ?
http://www.amazon.com/EVGA-SuperNOVA-Crossfire-Warranty-120-G2-1600-X1/dp/B00MMLUIE8?ie=UTF8&keywords=evga%201600&qid=1462303778&ref_=sr_1_2&sr=8-2
3) Where did you buy the racks that the rig is built in ?

Looks awesome :)

You nailed it bang for the buck. 20 MH/s for $200 or 30 MH/s for $350....the math just made sense and they draw less wattage. You can run a 1600 watt supply on 6 390's but that will push that PSU hard. I run 6 380's on a 1200 watt platinum or a 1300 watt gold, depends on what amazon feels like selling me. For 6 390's, I would instead use two PSU's, one 1000 watt gold 80+ AND a 850 watt gold 80+. Run the Motherboard and powered risers and three GPU cards on the 1000 watt PSU then just use the 850 watt PSU for the 12v supply to three cards. DO NOT cross power the risers or motherboard from the second PSU though. The 12V rails are isolated on the GPU's so that is all you want to run on them.

Those rigs I made and I sell them on ebay. http://www.ebay.com/itm/Custom-GPU-Ethereum-mining-rig-frame-6-GPU-USB-1x-X-16x-PCIe-risers-ATX-style-/252368784979?

Yes, lots of heat.

Just need a good case to handle the airflow needed to deal with the heat.

 After some digging, I DID find a few "designed to mount 4 dual-slot card" cases, ALL of which seem to be at least somewhat serious about the capability to move massive amounts of air through them.

 I even went to through the process of putting together a planned buy for a new 4-card rig - but then ran across a couple articles about Pascal and Polaris, and decided to put off buying ANYTHING for a couple months as the first of the next-gen GPU cards are being talked about as available sometime this summer (NVidia has specifically stated "before back to school season" which specifies August timeframe at the LATEST for their first Pascal releases).

(Edit - late May for the GTX1080 and June 10 for the GTX-1070 - I'm now VERY HAPPY I decided to wait!)

 Since both NVidia AND AMD are finally going to the 14/16nm process node this generation, we should see some killer improvement in efficiency from both, and likely some significant increases in performance as well.



 As far as my existing cards go - the FIRST thing I did with EVGA PrecisionX was to DROP the target temp, make it PRIORITY, and kick the fan profiles up to something sensible (100% by 75C, among other things - their STOCK profile was a pathetic joke that seems to be intended to deliberately overheat the cards if they're used 24/7 for anything seriously demanding).
 There's a REASON I'm to the point "ball bearing fans or I won't even LOOK at your stuff".



 On the good news side - figured out my HD 7870 is actually fine, it just had issues 'cause the power supply I was trying to run it on was flaky. It's pumping 1050Mhz quite comfortably the last week running on one of my Seasonic X1250s. Currently building up another Xubuntu64 with AMD drivers right now in the hopes of getting it running Ethereum - if that won't work, worst case I'll start folding with it for now (the Nvidia version I have on one of the other machines wouldn't clone properly, think it was a conflict with the Nvidia drivers not letting the AMD card work right).

 (Edit - hashing Ethereum at a little over 12Mh with 1200/1250 clock the last 2 days, comfortably cool despite yesterday getting WARM. VERY VERY picky about the memory clock - higher gets WORSE fast, lower gets WORSE fairly fast - not picky about cpu clock other than higher = faster).

 Sadly, the 7850 I have appears to have been damaged after all when that power supply got flaky, or *IT* flaked out badly and damaged the PS when it did. Still runs, but anything over about 550Mhz and it's crash city. Only a 1 Gig card though, so it's happy running dnetc probably for the rest of it's life.

Well after getting everything all set up im one power cable short for my last GPU. I ordered the Lepa 1600 and it come with 5 cables plus one that is 8+4. That kinda sucks but guess i will get another orderd unless maybe im looking at this wrong.  ???

Im having a difficult time getting these cards to start. After hooking up five of them, one of the cards fans spins really slow and another one starts turning and then goes off every couple of seconds. None of the other cards will start or do anything. Pulling my hair out currently. PLease help!!

shit bro how much you making a month

Finally up and running. Going to run over night to see how things go. I am one power cable short so only running 5 GPUs for now. If any one can post a link to where i can find a Lepa 12 pin to 2x6  pin GPU power cable. I have looked and cant seem to find one. There maybe a different solution to this so any thing to get this up and running. Thanks

You dont need a specific LEPA cable. I think they all work the same from one manufacturer to the next. You can also get a splitter too. I used some of them for cards that need 2 power connectors.

http://www.amazon.com/Phobya-6-Pin-PCI-E-Splitter-Sleeving/dp/B007OULOZY/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1462463177&sr=8-4&keywords=VGA+PSU+cable

Or you can use a couple of these to pull power from SATA ports on the PSU,

http://www.amazon.com/Akasa-SATA-power-adapter-cable/dp/B0097I74N2/ref=sr_1_48?ie=UTF8&qid=1462463331&sr=8-48&keywords=VGA+PSU+cable

that varies with the price of ETH and how many rigs I have running. Since I build and sell rigs, that varies. Currently my hash rate is around 525 MH/s Tomorrow when more cards arrive I'll be pushing 675 or so.

Wow I had no idea people were building mining rigs to mine ETH. I thought GPU mining was more or less dead. But I guess as long as you start in the very beginning its good.

I think GPU mining is far from dead. Something will come along after ETH goes POS. I'm willing to bet the GPU manufacturers figure out a way to keep sales hot on them. In game currencies...etc.

Hey man thanks for the info. I am ordering those cables now along with another 6 GPUs. Finally got this up and running. It was shutting down but i think it was too hot. Got a fan on it and its running about 65c. Hash is bouncing around from 120 to 150 on the suprnova pool. Not sure if thats accurate or not though.

Supernova? Leave...go mine at ethpool.org Your losing some 10 to 20% at suprnova. Ethpool is as close to solo mining as it comes. That rig at 120 MH/s should net you a block every 2.5 days or so

Really. Suprnova is that bad? Wow changing asap.

Yeah, they have a much smaller chunk of network hash rate and pay zero for uncles, I think. In the last 4 days I have generated 4 uncles at ethpool. That was another 11 or so ETH I never would have mined on suprnova

X11 is still GPU viable (DASH) - for now - if you have an efficient rig (NVidea and AMD both do well on X11 mining, NVidia wins for now due to lower power usage but it's close, and the next-gen of both should make it interesting).

better to mine ethereum, dash is on par with vertcoin, as for profitbaility, or decred, they are all heavy mined with high diff, and earning is half of ethereum at the moment

Can i use any wallet address for ethpool.org? such as my Yobit ether address.

What is the difference in ethpool.org and ethermine.org? Does one paymore? Im sorry for all the questions but im still trying to figure this all out.

http://ethpool.org/miners/7037de7f52b4d253013d85298441b95834a8b4aa#workers

Looking at shares at the bottom it doesnt show any. Is this because no block has been found or because its not mining correctly? I would like to be able to monitor my mining in realtime. I hate not knowing WTF is going on. LMAO!!

Really hope im not wasting energy right now!! Can anyone chime in on this?

go with dwarfpool, much better, you can also use their stratum proxy, which give you 10%, guaranteed, supernova was always short for me on the revenue, losing up to 20% some times, i was using it only with the rig rental, but they shut it down

What is best settings for 380x on dwarfpool using stratum proxy? These two rigs running steady at 129mh each on ethpool. Just not sure what settings should be on dwarfpool.

 For now and probably for a few more months. I'm looking further ahead though, when the mass influx + the announced "exponential diff mod" stuff will probably drive Ethereum to marginal on profitability - and of course the switch to PoS will kill it outright eventually (sometime next year IIRC).


 ethpool is "semi-solo" payout method, ethmine is standard PPLNS type pool.

 As far as I know any ethereum address should work with it - mine is pointing to the exchange I normally use for now, don't even have a wallet set up.

 I don't think it waits on a block to be found to show your shares, but you DO have to have submitted at least one share before you start seeing stats - and it takes a while for the graphs to start showing anything as they're based on the 24-hour average (Ethmine anyway, I never tried Ethpool).

what setting you're talking about? you can only change the payout and use stratum instead of getwork i think, nothing else can be changed