Thanks to all show have posted good info on Nvidia GPUs. I still hope to build that GTX rig in the near future but think I will build a Vega 56 rig first since I already have 3 of them sitting here that I luckily got for about $430 each (avg cost). Was really trying to find a 4th but they are completely gone from OEMs and retailers and now even used ones on ebay are going for ~$600!  Sorry, but i refuse to pay at least 50% mark-up from the $400 retail on these things, even if it means going with a 3x rig for now.  

My question for those who are running Vega's... are there any different components needed to support them, as per say, vs am Rx-470 rig?  I'm assuming my ASRock BTC R2 mobo will suffice, but what about the CPU & RAM?  I just ordered a couple G3260's to fit that 1150 socket (previously used G3258s but those are pretty much gone)... assuming this should work with Vega right?  but what about RAM?  I've heard some saying that you need higher rated/speed RAM to fully utilize the HBM2 in those Vega's but does anyone know if this is true?  My rx470 rigs are all using 2x4GB DDR3 1600. Will that be sufficient to run these Vega's?

I know a lot of you are going to (or at least experimenting with) the 8-GPU and up Mobos... but for those of you still potentially in the market for a 4-6 GPU rig, NewEgg has probably one of the best Mobos for this back in stock at the moment at only $70.

https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813157724&cm_re=asrock_btc-_-13-157-724-_-Product

I have 2 rigs built on this and they are by far my 2 most stable (vs the other 2 that are on BioStar TB85). I just picked up 2 in case I end up keeping my Vega's & building a GTX rig.

Great info thanks!  This helps me eliminate the 1070 from my search in putting together a 6-GTX rig.  Although, if I go with maybe 3 1070ti's and 4 1080's could I be in trouble wattage wise with only a EVGA 1KW Gold PSU?  I think that would be no problem at all with 6 x 1070 but not sure what the bump in power draw is for those other 2 cards.

Do you happen to have wattage pull for your 1070ti & 1080's at that top 4.4 efficiency #?

Seems Phil and others like these blower/reference style GTX cards... I personally have never owned this style (although i do have 3 Vega 56's but they are still boxed while I decide what to do with them)... but I have heard that they tend to be much louder and have poorer cooling than the versions with 2-3 fans.  Am i missing something with these?  I had kind of narrowed my search to the fan-based ones but maybe that's a mistake.

Yup, RAM has been on the upswing for more than a year now. I noticed this first when the price nearly doubled in the 4 months from when i built my first rig (Sept'16) to my 4th rig in Feb-17.  In addition, I deal with various kinds of memory in my current job, so have a lot of trending data from that as well.  Historically, it's been a U shaped curve with lots of ups and downs, but as noted, the last year plus has been spiking for almost all typed of RAM. it's interesting that even some of the old tech like DDR3 has even risen more (as a %) because there's just not as much of it in the supply chain but there is apparently still demand for it.  Now I heard HBM2 is experiencing really bad supply issues, so likely won't end any time soon.

Good discussion on 1070/to/1080s here but Im just getting more confused now lol! But really, I think the best point made was that these 3 can be so close in performance, it's all about getting the best deal, so I think that's the stance I'm going to take on building this rig.

Meanwhile, BTC and almost all Alts continue going through the roof. This is really astounding... several times over the past few weeks I have been on the cusp of selling off maybe 10% of my portfolio but then i stopped myself every time and now very glad i did.  It's very hard to make yourself sell in a market like this, but eventually I really need to cuz there is no way this can continue, can it?!?!

A couple of trading nuggets over the last weeks...

- good:  bought into Cardano (ADA) at .02 and it's now at .15 and up almost 200% over past 24 hours!
- bad:   I was on the cusp of buying into IOTA when it was at ~.35 cents just about 2 weeks ago. For some reason, I didn't do it, now kicking myself cuz it's now at $1.50!

BTC just ecplipsed $10k and doesn't appear to be stopping! ETH almost $500, XMR just broke $200... even ETC getting tasty at $32!  And LTC broke $100!  Damn, I again missed that boat... was heavily considering a bit buy-in when it was at $4... this was back when XMR started it's initial rise to $50-$60 and a lot of poeple thought LTC would follow... sure enough it did, which prohibited me from buying in. Oh well. water under the bridge lol.

hey Phil... thanks for linking that EVGA 1kw PSU!  I just picked one up as that is by far the best price on this or any other good 1kw PSU i've seen in a long time! 

I am actually finally about to take the plunge into Nvidia mining so this PSU should be perfect for what I think might be a 6x 1070 rig.  I have eliminted both 1060's and 1080ti's from consideration but still trying to decide for sure between 1070/1070ti/1080.  All seem to be about the same cost/hash/watt/profitability ratio... at least from what I have gleaned so far.

Any recommendations between these 3?  I assume I can mix and match?  maybe something like 2 of each?  Any recommendation on brands? EVGA seems to be good in this space but seems like they have various versions even within say the 1070.  It's a bit confusing coming from Radeon-only GPUs so far, so any recommendations would be welcomed.

For instance, these 2 look identical spec wise but the 1st is $25 cheaper than the 2nd. I am missing a nuance? And is that nuance important for mining?

https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814487265
https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814487248

Also, has anyone here put 1070ti's to use and compared vs regular 1070s?  What kind of difference hash-rate and wattage have you seen between the 2?

A- yeah, after a crash and reboot, that 6th GPU that was showing Grpahics before did indeed change to Compute, so that issue has been rectified
B- well, the Compute vs Graphics settings do indeed stay intact after crash/reboot, but sadly the actual individual settings (clock speed, undervolt, etc - all on the wattman tabs) do not save, even after hitting apply, so have to be reset after every reboot   another posted recommended a 3rd party app that I will be trying soon, so hope to alleviate this as well.

Big thanks to the several people who posted tips to update my drivers for ETH + DCR mining! I was finally able to get my hashrate almost back to what it was earlier this year. I am still about 10-12 Mh/s short but this is much much closer than the 35-40 short i was per rig, so thank you very much to all that contributed!

Here is exactly what I did (in the hopes it might help others with this same issue):

1- Updated DDU to current version (I was using old version on previous attempts)
2- Rebooted in safe mode and ran DDU (I was previously running in regular mode)
3- Installed latest Crimson drivers 17.11.2
    (At this point I did NOT try installing the Pixel patcher that was recommended)
4- Rebooted and updated Afterburner to v4.4.0
    (Font size and icon size seemed good at this point but when i checked watt-tool and AB & Device Mgr, nothing was showing up)
5- Downloaded Pixel-patcher and ran it
    https://www.monitortests.com/forum/Thread-AMD-ATI-Pixel-Clock-Patcher?page=1
6- Rebooted again and now everything in Dev Mgr & Watt-Tool was showing up ok
7- launched the new AB but everything was zero value and grayed out
8- opened up the dreaded AMD wattman
    a- switched all 6 GPUs from Graphics to Compute (WM had to restart each time)
    b- went in and lowered core and voltage settings and increased clock speeds (had to do this 6 times of course, again ridiculous)
     (watt-tool undervolts showed as before but they were NOT taking effect as my power draw prior to wattman changes was through the roof!)
9- Launched Claymore and speeds were very close to expected

Couple of issues still:
A- 1 of my 6 GPUs would not change from Graphics to Compute. I tried several times and it would not take effect. So that GPU is now running about 4 Mh/s slower than the other 5. Anyone know how to address this issue?

B- It took FOREVER to update all of those settings in wattman! Reminded me again how much I hated working with that POS before i discovered watt-tool and AB. 
My question here is... are these settings essentially saved there once applied? Or am i going to have to go through all of that again if that rig crashes or reboots?

Thanks again!

Thanks to both for your suggestions and tips!  I spent about 2 hours today trying to get 1 rig with updated drivers but to no avail.

First attempt:
- Ran DDU as Admin to clean out currently installed (16.10.2) drivers
- Did clean install of current version Radeon Software Crimson ReLive Edition 17.10.2
http://support.amd.com/en-us/kb-articles/Pages/Radeon-Software-Crimson-ReLive-Edition-17.10.2-Release-Notes.aspx

- after install and reboot, driver did NOT take. Got the dreaded super big font that appears with no drivers installed. Confirmed in watt-tool that all gpu timings were 0's (also classic sign on no or bad driver install). Finally looked in Dev Mgr and had the ! warning on all 6 GPUs. even tried "update driver" option from there but it returned the "current driver already installed" message

rebooted again but same result.

2nd attempt:
- Ran DDU as Admin to clean out 17.10.2
- Did clean install of blockchain drivers 17.30.1029
http://support.amd.com/en-us/kb-articles/Pages/Radeon-Software-Crimson-ReLive-Edition-Beta-for-Blockchain-Compute-Release-Notes.aspx

- after reboot, exact same issue as above, not working at all

Finally i DDU'd this as well and went back to 16.10.2 and it works fine... well, with the 25% hashrate hit on ETH of course.

Note sure why neither of these won't work since this rig is on W10 64-bit and most of the issues I've heard have been on W7 or Linux.

Does anyone have any ideas what could be missing here?

edit: looks like a newer 17.11.1 was released on 11/12 so maybe i can try that tomorrow. but Im still not optimistic given the other 2 didn't work above, including the blockchain version that so many had been using for so long.

Hey everyone... happy Black Friday!

Was wondering if someone could provide some insight that is currently (or recently) mining ETH with RX 400 series GPUs.  I had my 4 6x 470 rigs mostly on cryptonote for the last few months but am now looking to switch back to ETH+DCR.  However, I am still on the 16.10 drivers and know that with those I will only get about 75% of max capacity, so need to update my drivers and possibly other apps.

As far as drivers go, I know AMD published Blockchain drivers that apparently fixed the reduced hashrates but caused other issues with power management etc.  I think these are here:

http://support.amd.com/en-us/kb-articles/Pages/Radeon-Software-Crimson-ReLive-Edition-Beta-for-Blockchain-Compute-Release-Notes.aspx

but this says beta version not to be updated. so, is the best driver to use for 470s currently? or is there a better one out there?

Also, I believe that I am at least 1 version behind on Afterburner. I've read that the newer drivers also require newer AB, so if someone could also elaborate on that it would be appreciated.

Finally, is there anything else that I need to be aware of when updating to a more current driver?  For instance, will watt-tool still work? I use that for my master under-volting settings and manage over-clocking in AB.  Can this still be achieved with the newer drivers?

Look, everyone has their opinions on this but this advice is quite risky IMO.  At current rates (DASH, daily profit, ebay market for D3), the OP is looking at a break-even to what he could sell one of these for in a whopping 600 days! And, that is with DASH price exploding... up 65% in the last 2 weeks to about $575 now!  I know a lot of people are optimistic about further rise in DASH price, but in reality, it would have to go to 3-4x it's current price for the OP to even have a shot at recouping the 900 Euros he could currently get for 1 on ebay.  Can anyone really say with a straight face that they count on DASH hitting $2k in the near future?  As a DASH holder i would personally love that but in reality, it's not going to happen.

Also, about the other X11 coins... DASH is currently the most profitable to mine and there are only a couple others that are barely profitable at the OP's high electric rates. Half of them he would be mining at a loss.  It would be very very speculative to mine any of these coins just hoping for some miracle spike in the future when he can get 900 per unit now, but maybe if he's feeling very brave, he could sell one and mine with the other?

I know it's tough to pull the trigger and sell for a loss but all the factors here point to those D3s only going down in price from here. You can't think of selling one for 900 as a 1,600 loss... you need to think of it as mitigating a loss that has already happened. Would you rather have 1,800 in your hand today or wait a months, realize mining is never going to recoup even than 1800, then be forced to sell them for 1,000 or less combined?

And, think of it this way... the only possible way to come out ahead of the 1,800 now is if DASH goes into the $2k range, right?  And in that case, maybe you end up breaking even (to the 1800) or exceed it by a couple 100 if you're very lucky.  Well... if you sold your D3s now and bought 4 DASH with that 1,800... you would be looking at $8k if DASH really does hit that high mark. Even if it only doubles, then you are in the range of recouping your original $5k investment.

lmfao... thanks for your "expert" advice lol. Did you actually bother to read my prior posts?  If you would have, you would realize that I actually did NONE of the things you mention regarding login faults.  Nothing of mine was compromised and as stated, I actually had a different and unique password set since I wasn't sure of Cryptopia's legitimacy yet (ironic, i know).  I doubt that you know what other exchanges have in place to prevent dumping, and your assertion that it can happen "legitimately" is further proof of that.  In what "legitimate" case does someone sell $1000 in coin they just bought for $30?  Maybe there are 1% chance of a legit reason for this that I cant think of but surely 99%+ of this is used to commit the crime I described.  Again, as stated before I have all options now set with the best 2FA GA.  However the dumping issue aside, the bottom line is that they did not have reasonable login protocols in place and that is how the hackers go into my account, so they are legally culpable for full restitution.  If they really do block acct after 3 failed attempts as you say, then the hackers were somehow able to reset this counter so that they could continue to try after 2 bad attempts. This again would be completely the fault of Cryptopia due to leaving hacking vulnerability in their code to allow said resets.

And... all 5 brands of Vega 56 now out of stock at NewEgg.  Luckily I got 3 of them in the last week for avg cost of about $430.  Now debating on whether to sell them for profit (assuming the shortage continues) or try to scramble and find 1 more to upgrade my 6x 470 rig with.

You made some fair points and you're somewhat right about the brute force statement.  However, Cryptopia themselves are the ones that notified about the "multiple" attempts. Granted, there is no way for me to know exactly how many "multiple" means, but most certainly in implies more than 3, which should be the floor for beginning of acct locking protocols (as you described above).  Since this clearly was either not in place at all or way too easily circumvented by the hackers, which on it's own is more than sufficient grounds for me being due full restitution from Cryptopia.

Although I have now switched over all 6 types security to Google Auth 2FA, this is still insufficient for the trading/withdrawal loophole I mentioned.  Cryptopia admitted that the 2FA (PIN at the time) had temporarily thwarted the hackers from just sending all of the LTC they accumulated to an external LTC wallet. But, they used the trading loophole that i described to artificially dump an unknown shyt-coin at 3% its cost (to obviously another acct they owned).  So bottom line, if a hacker somehow accesses your account, even their 2FA protocols will not protect from your account be liquidated. This is another huge security gap IMO.  Not sure what the bigger, well-respected exchanges has in place to thwart this but there has to be a way.

This may be somewhat true for some users but I actually had a different PW for my Cryp acct than any other exchange, so this does not apply to me. And as stated, I had 2FA in place for withdrawals but the hackers were still able to circumvent that Cryptopia "protection" by selling off the coin they converted at 3% of cost to obviously another either hacked or legit Cryp account they owned.  Cryp apparently offers NO protection against this type of obviously criminal activity, which is baffling to me because there is nobody on the planet that would sell be legitimately trying to sell what they just bought at 3% the cost.

That aside, the fact that the hackers were even able to log into my acct in the first place after "multiple failed attempts" is ABSOLUTELY the fault of Cryptopia!  Again, almost every site on the planet will lock your acct after 3 failed attempts, but a site where people have a ton of money in coins doesn't offer this basic protection?  Clearly a major fail.  On top of this, my original CT PW was not only different from my other exchange sites but was also unique vs any PW on any other site, period.  I did this because i was unsure of CT (also the reason I only put a few coins here to start, thank god), so there ls literally no way the hackers could have poached my PW from any other site... once again confirming that there had to be multiple attempts in the hundreds or thousands or more before they got in. 

I still have not heard back (3 days now) regarding my request for full restitution. I suppose I have another 4-5 days until they even read the e-mail, given their recent support response history.

I find it comical that the OP, a newb with 11 posts, posts some pretty short-sighted assumptions then gets pissy when people apparently don't disprove his nonsense... even though many posts have done exactly that.

One little nugget for you OP... if you are not already in mining (with paid off hardware, etc), you most likely will not be able to ROI any new rig you put together.  The only way current miners are able to stay profitable is to sell there old GPUs and turn around and build upgraded rigs that provide high hash-rate.  So for instance, the cost me going from a 6x R470 rig to a 4x Vega 56 rig is really only about $400 out of pocket. ($1800 for the Vega's less $1400 from selling off the 470's).  That new rig will get more than 2x it's current hashrate on all cryptonote coins which will enable me to ROI that extra $400 spent upgrading in about 2 months.  However, if you're builiding that 4x Vega rig from scratch you will be out of pocket about $2,500 and unless XMR goes to $1,000, you will never ever ROI that rig.

So bottom line... just give up lol.  Orvif you want to be smart just invest that money into coins and stop worrying about trying to figure out things you clearly have no comprehension of. ;-)

Hey everyone... a bit off-topic for this thread i know but wanted to give you all a heads-up about something since many of you here have helped me so much in my mining endeavors over the past year.

This warning is for anyone either with or considering opening an acct with Cryptopia. You can read more details in the thread linked below, but in a nut-shell, my account there got hacked in early Sept and I lost about $1,200 USD in coins, even though I had safety protocols in place that prohibited withdrawals without 2FA.

According to their support, there were multiple log on attempts to my account and finally they were successful. First huge red flag is in their statement about multiple attempts. how on earth was my account not automatically locked after 2-3 failed attempts?  whatever the answer, this is completely the fault of Cryptopia.  In addition, as mentioned, I have 2FA in place for withdrawals, but the hackers circumvented this buy buying up some unknown shyt-coin then dumping it all at 3% of the cost... obviously to themselves via another account that was not withdrawal protected, but again, this is a huge short-coming on their part to not have some kind of stop-gap in place to prevent such obvious criminal behavior.

The other thing I will mention is the ridiculous response times from their support. It took them 1 week to initially respond to my message about my acct being locked, then another full week to respond to my response.  They did explain what had happened but at the end, only apologized for any inconvenience or loss and made no offer of restitution.  After confirming the activity myself, I responded to them stating that I expected full restitution since both measures I mentioned above were their responsibility meaning I had no culpability in this whatsoever. Of course, it's only been a day but no response as of yet.  one thing is for sure... if they do not return the coins to my wallets as before the hack, I will make it my mission in life to make sure everyone in this and other forums know what a complete joke they are. Maybe they will surprise me and do the right thing who knows... but I am not going to hold my breath.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1669443.new#new

yup, sounds very similar to my situation (2 posts above yours). There are/were apparently some major gaps in their security protocols that allowed these things to happen. I have yet to hear back about what they are going to do about the loss it caused for my account, but their response and what they are willing to do to rectify these issues are going to make or break them long term. If they do the right thing and return the funds to those who were hacked due to insufficient site security & also fix those gaps ASAP,  then I think Cryptopia will have a long prosperous run.  If not, then I can't imagine them being around much longer. After all, who is going to put any coins there if they are susceptible to hacks and then won't even make it right with their customers?

If these were available now... or even by the end of this year... I would get at least 1 of the DCR models as currently it's $170 net profit/day so only about 2 weeks to ROI.  Unfortunately, there are a couple of big drawbacks with these.

1- Won't be shipped until at least mid-2018... so about 8-9 months from now lol!  This is a complete joke imho.  That is FOREVER in the crypto world... so much can happen that could make these defunct upon shipping. Most notably is the increasing difficulty of DCR.  It's already spiked bad in the last 2-3 months and although it most likely won't get ridiculous to the degree that DASH has recently, 8-9 months is still a VERY long time. It's entirely possible that DCR rewards will be down to $10/day by the time these ship, meaning they will never ROI.  I guess you could make an arguement that with ETH mining almost done, DCR diff will stay relatively flat since I think most people are dual mining ETHash & DCR, but there are still some other ETHash coins that will likely remain profitable to mine... esp if AMD can get their damn drivers fixed for Vega... and more Vega's hit the market... so this just seems really risky to me.

2- I have a big problem tying up $2,500 in capital for 8-9 months.  Right now that's about .33 BTC but by mid-'18, BTC could very easily be at $15k... meaning I effectively lost $2,500 off the bat... then probably won't even recoup the other $2500 due to what I mentioned above.

I would suspect that this is why they haven't sold many of these yet. Seems WAY riskier than even recent Bitmain releases... and look what happened with their recent LTC shipments.

I would say there are 2 much better options to use $2500 now.  1- build a 4x Vega 56 rig and either dual mine ETC + DCR or put it on XMR/ETN or other cryptonote coin.  or 2- just invest it in BTC or another coin.  2 months wait i would do it... 8-9 months? no freaking way!