Bad connections can happen with ANY connector type, especially if you plug and unplug the connector a lot.
Molex one downside is that it can be a bit of a pain sometimes to get the pins aligned properly when you push the connector into the socket - if you do that with care you should never have an issue.

 One thing I HAVE noticed is that a lot of riser makers seem to "cheap out" on the soldering job, I've seen a few MOLEX risers where the MOLEX connector wasn't soldered AT ALL, just a press fit - which is a DEFINITE recipie for failure on a frequent basis.

 Version 6 should be the MINIMUM riser generation to consider - not that they're more efficient, but they're more RELIABLE than anything older.

Bitmain has a long-standing policy that they target "6 month ROI" as the price on their miners.
I think they might have changed that to "9 month" or so on the S9 since there wasn't going to BE a "new generation on a new procss node" for years.

 I'm a bit amazed it took them THIS long to bump the price up, nor does HOW MUCH it jumped shock me at all.

 I'm not going to go into the ETHICS of this kind of price change, or the total LACK of ethics of them FORCING the use of that BCH coin they back for purchases from them.

Mining is low bandwidth - I doubt that any change to Net Neutrality would affect it.

 Drywall is "fire resistant" rated.
 Your rig could burst into flame and it would die out before the drywall had issues.

Since I never found a good reliable pool with a LOW payout threshold for CryptoNight (Monero) mining, my CPU miners are pointed at Nicehash.
I had the one Vega doing something else while NH was down (not cryptocoin related), it's also pointed at Nicehash.
The rest I'm keeping away for now.

75 is tolerable in a hot room when mining, but if you're in a cool room you should be seeing lower.

 IMO set your fan speeds a little higher - 60% looks like it would be enough for your setup.

SHA256 miners like the S9 can ONLY be used on coins that use the SHA256 algorithm.

 Monero uses the CryptoNight algorithm - and there is no ASIC-based hardware available for it (and given how much RAM it uses, ASIC wouldn't offer much of an improvement in hash/$ most likely).


 Right now, *IF* you can get ahold of them at semi-close to MSRP, the Vega GPUs are the best option for Monero on new cards.

Nvidia 750 ti cards are pretty cheap, and will pull 250 hash or so on about 35 watts actual power draw.

 While the numbering is Kepler generation, they were actually Maxwell cards like the 9xx series.

Coboc or Mintcell "version 8" with the 3 power connector option is my preference at this time, as I've yet to find a good MOLEX only riser that I don't have to wait a month for China shipment for.

 Had a batch of those Weitec (probably misspelled) same-type risers that 3 of 6 were BAD out of - definitely avoid.

Are your 1080 cards amazingly cheap, or is your 1080 ti amazingly overpriced?

 1080 ti normally runs more like 50% higher price than a 1080 of the "same model", not double.

 The REAL debate would be "3 x 1070 ti  vs 3 x 1080  vs 2 x 1080 ti" based on normal pricing I see.

 Not sure how you figure that - the ONLY coin I've seen get into the top 10 by total valuation that is NOT mineable is Ripple (Ethereum will get there eventually, but not for probably another 6 months at least and more likely a year).

 What are these 5 top 10 coins that you claim to not be mineable?



 And no, I don't see mining dying anytime soon IF ever.
 

Also covered in the main Gridcoin thread here.

 For the EVGA G2/P2/T2 line this ends up being an ISSUE as they only have 4 connections for VGA cables, and their "dual" cables are always 8+6 - so the G2/P2 850 definitely prefers the 3 x 1080 ti setup as it has the right cabling out of the box to support that.
 The G2/P2 850 also has a shortage on available connections to power risers with for a 5 card rig.

 The EVGA G2L line is an odd duck with it's "universal" connectors, I believe a G2L 850 it would work either way - but I got shorted on power cables on the only one I have so I'm not SURE on that.

 For Seasonic X-850 or SS-860, not an issue either way - more VGA cable and connections available, AND more "peripheral" connections to power risers.

 If you are going to push the cards well past their more efficient point, you have to go to at least a 1000 watt PS and the connections issues no longer matters at all.

 IF you set them for the same power usage, the 1070 ti cards will provide more hashrate (on ZEC anyway, haven't played with the 1070 ti at all on anything else but ETH which is a BAD choice) - tradeoff is the "more cards to manage/space taken" question, and it's pretty close either way.

 Neither option is a BAD option, it's more about personal preference on "rig density" vs "best hash/$ + hash/watt" and the efficiency isn't majorly different either way.

 If you used an external wallet or a pool deposit address, it still works.

 You only need a new wallet if you used a Nicehash wallet.



 I am "on hold" for new card buying at this time - Bitpay that Newegg uses seems to be getting some major issues due to holidays overload.



 http://cryptomining-blog.com/tag/sleeve-to-dual-ball-bearing-fans link shows GIGABYTE fans having sleeve bearings replaced with ball bearings on the fans, NOT SAPPHIRE.

 Only on the "dual mine" side, and the only REAL improvement on ETH hashrate out of his miner was due to the Blockchain Drivers out of AMD.

 His miner on just ETH is STILL little to no better than Genoil's final release of LAST YEAR, while charging that ripoff 2% fee that is more than any hashrate improvement Claymore has ever shown.

 I wish I had 10% of his income from his ripoff level fees - he's probably earning more than ANY mining farm short of Bitmain's from that bloody fee.

The 821 runs optimally on +12VDC.

 The power supply that FEEDS it might require 220 VAC, or might be happy with 110 OR 220 but will run a little more efficiently at 220.


 I expect the 821 to end up being ballpark $3000, possibly as LOW as $2500, based on current S9 pricing.
 Caanan/Avalon has always had a price premium compared to whatever Bitmain product they're closest too, unless they were a TON lower on hashrate, and I don't see them pricing the 821 much if ANY lower than S9 since they're fairly close on hashrate and efficiency.
 They might MATCH the price of the S9 due to the hashrate difference, but they won't go lower - Bitmain will tolerate "same price" most likely because they can point at the higher hashrate AND slightly better efficiency, but a lower price would probably prompt a price war.

From what I've seen the last few weeks when I've looked, availability on this motherboard has gotten DIFFICULT and a lot of price gouging is going on.

 Seems like ASUS didn't expect it to be as popular as it has gotten.

 That's a "talk to Nicehash about it" thing - if this miner works with Nicehash at all (they do a couple "odd" things with their pools setup that sometimes break miners that don't know about and work with those "odd" things).

@echo OFF
REM Change the following address to your Zcash taddr.
SET ADDRESS=YOURTADDRESS.WORKERNAME
SET USERNAME=%ADDRESS%.PASSWORD
SET POOL=us1-zcash.flypool.org:3333
SET SCHEME=stratum
START "Bminer" bminer.exe -uri %SCHEME%://%USERNAME%@%POOL% -api 127.0.0.1:1880



 This was NOT obvious due to the totally weird (by ANY other miner standards) command line setup this miner uses.

 Why does the pool name and password all get munched together into ONE parameter, VERY VERY confusing - and how is this going to work on pools that need to pass OTHER parameters in the username, like suprnova and it's "fixed difficulty" adjustments?

Do keep in mind that miners DO get to a point that they are optimized to the max and no future speed increases are POSSIBLE.

 As an example, Claymore's ETH miner didn't perform noticeably if ANY better ON ETH than the final Genoil offering - his only REAL improvement was the "dual mining" mode which SOMETIMES offers higher profitability.