Bitcoin Forum

Hello community!

Im thinking about mining ethereum and zcash, but im not sure since i have never mined and have a few questions that dont know if even reading all the forums i might be able to have them answered.

1. Last news i heard about when ETH transitions to PoS is early-mid 2017? Are there any recent news?

2. Is zcash going to always be GPU friendly or is it going to be mined by ASICs in the future?

Will i be able to make profit once the hardware is paid months ahead assuming i pay around 13 cents for electricity? What do you think?

electricity too expensive

Zcash uses Equihash algorithm for POW which is ASIC resistant. Also they aren't going to be mined by asic in the future.
Your electricity costs are very high, if you want profitable mining, than it don'y worths because while mining with many gpu, also at the same time you need fan engine to protect them from overheat. Every GPU has fan good fan engine but while you are using them with full power, you need that.

13 cents for power is okay for 1 or 2 builds  don't go nuts.

1) can you use the heat it makes?
2) do you have any parts at all?

Thanks, guys!

Its good to know that zcash is asics resistant. Even though electricity is high looks like the numbers can make themselves up in about 10 months. Does difficulty raise a lot or can we expect 1$ per card profit for long? thats what bothers me because i know for bitcoin its pretty difficult even to make ROI...

Does anybody mine altcoins seriously or is it too risky. Maybe i can consider a different location if planning for 3-4 years or getting a good electricity deal some way... But since you can resell later the equipment makes me feel altcoins could be better?

Well if ETH go POS difficulty of Zcash will rise for sure. There are a lot of people who mine altcoins seriously. Like philipma1957  if you are planning to build 1 or 2 rigs(up to 12 GPUs) your electricity cost is fine. There is no reason to hassle yourself because of it. And yeah, if you are mining bitcoin for example you need ASIC miner which is pretty much worthless when it's not profitable anymore, but with altcoin mining you can always sell GPUs when you are done with them.

Why is 13 cents ok for 2 rigs but not for 20? I made some numbers and my real costs would be more like 10 cents as today. Also possible to negotiate a deal for fixed kw per month for what a friend told me in my location... At which size would i need to change the electric installation to meet the necesities? I dont have any spare parts and wouldnt reutilize heat.

Could you estimate if it would profitable investing like 20-30k usd (in btc) right now? Im not used to the market so i couldnt profit much from that too... Also investing btc looks risky if it appreciates vs dollar if my goal is to accumulate btc isnt it?

What do you think? And also... is it much work/will run with lots of trouble as mining noob? :)

I pay 0.23/kW, just optimized the shit out of my rigs, I'm currently just over 7$ of profit a day at current Zec price.

You'll be more than OK with 13cts OP.

I guess from the numbers i ran a few days ago that you talk about a 6 or 7x rig of rx480? Thats meets what i saw... Where can i see actual hashrates given from the GPUs? because i see a lot of optimizations and it changes a lot. What do you mine with?

mine zcash currently the best one for amd, hashrate is at least 200 sol for the 480

you need to use clymore miner for that speed

Whats the best PGU mining specs is best use to effectively mine them?
I think our electricity cost here is less than 13cents. If specs can easily be customized, I guess I can set them up and mine coins.

 (1) no new news, and the timeframe is still "up in the air" a bit not specific last I've seen.

 (2) I suspect it will be as I dount it's going to get major market adoption that will keep the price and market cap high enough to make an ASIC worth building for it.
      On the other hand, I never expected to see ASIC for X11....


 13 cents for electric is quite marginal for mining. You might make enough to achieve ROI but probably *ONLY* if you can resell the used gear for close to new pricing when the profitability of actual mining for you drops to zero - or if some other coin comes along that is profitable for a while at your electric rate and you hung onto the gear.

 ZEC and ETH profitability have been dropping pretty consistantly since about a week after ZEC went live - and I don't see any reason for that trend to change. It's still good for NOW, but I'd not bet on it for the long term - and when ETH goes Proof Of Stake that's gonna be a TON of rigs looking for a new home and HAMMERING profitability on anything else that is GPU mineable.

 You should see some significant profits for a few months, though. Enough to ROI ... if you optimise your rigs well enough and have a viable exit plan, perhaps.



 If you are only running 1 or 2 rigs, you're probably going to save most or all of what you spend on electric in your heating bill, this time of year if you're Northern Hemisphere.
 20 rigs, you're going to have a TON of waste heat that won't be offsetting your heating bill and the electric cost is much more of a factor.


 For perspective - last winter I was living in a older mobile home with mostly poor insulation. Ballpark 10kw of mining gear (mostly S5 and A2 ASIC units) not only kept the place 75-80 degree warm ALL WINTER IN AN IOWA WINTER, I had to keep a couple windows cracked with thermostat-controlled fans running in them to avoid OVERHEATING the place. I never turned the furnace on all winter.

 Year before that which was one of the colder winters on record, "only" had about 5KW worth of mining gear - and didn't have to turn the furnace on 'till it got down to about 15-20 degrees (f) outside.


 20 "common" 4-card GPU rigs will go through 7-9kw using RX 470/480 cards. That's a lot of heat.

 20 of the 6-card type rigs would be 10-12kw. That's a LOT of heat.

I've got 14c kwh summer rates (5 months) and 11c kwh winter rates....so have it co-located at maxumark's sever colohub farm. Ave for the year is 11c kwh approximate.

(mainly because he keeps my titans up w/o hassle in that he has his there too)

so 11c kwh can work..but iffy iffy gamble with zcash

worse case I will have 2 nice mining rigs for my share..and sell the other gpu's someday....(cost was 4K) say I make a little of mining for a bit

I figure worse case I'm out 1.5k for the gamble on a gpu rig and zcash and/or other coins (if I use the 2 high end gaming rigs I'd also get ..have not had any of them in 9 years)

the mental hoops one will jump thru to have 'toys' but damn sick of ASIC's at least this way no pre-order scams..no eventual complete doorstop status some day like ASICs

but anyway did this in my rosy optimistic 'before trump as president ....btp days...not so sure when it becomes after trump president ...atp days ..don't ya know) :)

being somewhat to the Left of Bernie Sanders...no issues for me in the future right :)

anyway I'd pass if I was gonna do it now (esp 2 rigs) then 6 weeks ago when I pulled the trigger....2 was too many (5 gpu rigs) ..not sure about 1 5 card rig thou...the jury is stil out.

Well at least they have a 2 year warranty and I did not break down and pre-order a group buy on the A4 Scrypt miners...that would have been worse imho ...shudder ..them poor folk...

There is just way too many people getting involved with mining these days....

I resemble that remark......(My main thrust is LTC mining) ....but built 2 five card rigs for zCash...so we will see.....my pure
'speculative' gamble may not work out too well) :(

Interesting thou..if ETH goes POS coin..and heck say ETC also does.....what is a guy gonna mine with a
GPU besides Zcash? ...of a reasonable POW coin variety anyway?

Oh well ..live and learn..at least it was not a pre-order ASIC A4 scrypt miner or other :)

It was bound to happen anyways. We always have coins to mine, that has been something true for as long as crypto has been alive, so profit and such will not be an issue. Besides, one can always sell their rig for cash again as components are used elsewhere other than mining, so you get a nice cash injection even if you don't reach ROI. Nothing wrong with it, everything profitable will eventually become somewhat saturated.

Thanks guys, especially QuintLeo.

Ill have one rig tomorrow and see if i can make it work first. I bought sapphire rx480 nitro 8gb even though looks like numbers are better for 470 4gb, but i see people buying rx480 8g because resell value only?

Tough decision later because i expect some btc mooning next year... Thats the most gambling part i see from all this, sadly (besides gambling time for just ROI).

Currently I have 3 rigs:

-4x RX470 8Gb ~ 660H/s (+2 cards coming in)
-4x RX470 4Gb ~ 600H/s (+2 cards coming in)
-2x R390X 8Gb ~ 565H/s

The whole thing uses 1260W @ Wall

The hashrate for a RX470 8Gb ranges from 170 to over 200, depending on if you overclock and don't care about wattage. Personally, with my electricity price, I'd rather hash a bit slower but save a lot on Wattage. I've gone relatively low on core clock on my cards but if you sum the whole thing up, the ratio is about ~0.7W/H so I'm happy with this, nets me between 0.2 and 0.25 ZEC/day depending on luck etc.

All rigs are under Windows 7. I was a linux person at first, but the AMD GPU PRO driver just sucks donkey balls.

Well, like I've said before, I honestly don't think it makes a huge sense to get into mining nowadays. Just to ROI one rig will take a long time. ETH is falling, ZEC is uncertain...not much else to mine.

Numbers are a bit better for the 4Gb because they cost less and can do almost as well as 8Gb cards. But, like the 2Gb, they will become obsolete a bit earlier. I don't think there's that much resale value in either of them.

For me it was more about the fun and I've learned quite a few things along the way.

You have 1260W and 1825H/s. That is about 0.69 J/H. That is very efficient considering you have 3 rigs in total.

I got the rig working, but had to buy ethos. Couldnt manage to install drivers properly in Ubuntu i guess. Is there any special trick? :) Ill give it a try again this week, but just wanted to mine straight...

Im having trouble to get them hash at expected rates. My 4x 480 nitro 8g give me 480-525 h/s total, but i think i dont installed the optiminer. Is that the way to go for mining ZEC? I see some controversy in forums and dont know how should i mine ZEC today as it is the most profitable by calculators.

Also, please, what is the conversion between h/s and sol/s? i see people posting stats in both units...

edit: when using globalminer zcash-miner it gave 300h/s. When just introducing optiminer it gives me between 480 and 525 depending on powertune. I didnt install optiminer i think because the link provided is not useful more, but then i dont understand why boost to 480...

I think u need to install windows and use claymore miner. Check how much hash is pulling a 480:
 
https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/ZCash_mining_GPU_Comparison

Man mining under linux is a headache, the gpu pro driver is a piece of crap. I abandoned and went for Windows, less hassle.

Sol's vs hash is the same thing, there is no unit of conversion.

I see... I went to ethos because i remember reading people using claymore and getting the expected around 200 sol/s per rx480... But i dont know how to use claymore with ethos... Optiminer mode just gives 500 sol/s for the whole rig :(

How can i get some windows? remember desisting a few months ago when needed for another thing. Remember finding one in cnet but wasnt advised to use it. Ill get in touch via irc with ethos later, theres not much info in the forums...

Yes you can use the heat:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2_HwPJlPalY

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=USlMM2koe1g