I have MSI GTX 1080 Gaming X and get ~550 H/s with +165 core clock +550 memory clock at 70% TDP

Use a thumb drive less than 32GB and format with FAT32.

Most miners go with AMD because it's been around longer for mining. Until more recently Nvidia support for mining was not very good. The cost per hash is generally better with AMD cards. With the latest 10 series GPU's, that is not as much the case any more and Nvidia is most certainly in the game.

The other reason miners like AMD cards is they are more hackable. To get the most out of the RX cards for ETH you have to adjust the memory timings in the Bios. You should easily be able to ~29 MH/s with just a memory timing mod.

The $190 PNY GeForce GTX 1060 3GB Graphics Cards can do 23.5mh ETH and 268 SOL/s ZEC each @ ~60W per card.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1uhSfOpvHks&feature=youtu.be&t=7295

Hard to beat if you can get it for less than $200. The only disadvantage is with 3GB VRAM, you're not going to be able to dual mine.

Nvidia mining support is better on Windows than on Linux. You can also run AMD and Nvidia cards on the same rig. My MSI GTX 1080 Gamining X gets 550 H/s on ZEC @ 180W with 70% TDP. The 1080 ti gets ~100 H/s more.

I just have my own personal experience of not having any bad experiences from lost power, but I live in a big city. A UPS is essentially a surge protector with a battery back up in the event of a power loss. With a high draw most can't run on the battery for very long which is why I just use a power strip for some additional protection and have not had any problems.

You can certainly use two PSU's if you hook them up properly.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1951414.msg19383499#msg19383499

As far as the UPS, IMO it's an unnecessary expense for a mining rig unless you are in an area with really bad power service. Just use a good power strip with surge protection and it should be fine. You can set the rig to restart automatically after a power loss in the Bios and use a bat file to start mining after Windows loads.

With PSU's you always get what you pay for. I would stick with name brand EVGA, Corsair or similar platinum or better, which are also more efficient and will save you money in the long run. The PSU is what keeps your rig running and if it goes down, so does your whole rig. If you want to save money, look in to using two PSU's or a server PSU's if you don't mind the fan noise.

http://www.parallelminer.com/product-category/power-supply-kit/

Been there and done that. Back towards the end of 2014 ASIC's started taking over Scrypt and X11. With difficulty increasing, $650 BTC and dropping, mining was a losing proposition and I took a break. Now I wish I had stuck it though. The good thing is I held on to most of the coins I mined and I'm glad I did.

I think a GPU rig is a pretty low risk proposition ATM considering you can pay the whole thing off in 2-3 months. After that it's all profit after you pay the electric bill and you still have the hardware that can be resold or repurposed. What you could possibly go wrong with that?

Good point! If it's a 15 AMP circuit for the whole room, at 120V it can continuously run up to 1200 W MAX and about 1800 W on a 20 A MAX. The R9's can use 250W+ each. The RX 4XX/5XX use about half that without any power mods.

I agree the the older GCN 3 cards like the R9 would be a good option, just make sure they are more than 2GB VRAM so you can mine ETH. I wouldn't go with older cards than that since GCN 1 and 2 cards are not supported in Linux with the current AMDGPU drivers. The other problem with used cards is no warranty. For new cards I would look at the Sapphire Nitro+ RX cards. Lots of miners love those cards, easy to mod overclock well, and are not overpriced.

https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814202279

$2000 would get you an AMD 5 card rig or 6 cards if you buy them right. That would give you you the biggest range of options. If you to go with Nvidia, then look at ZEC or skein coins.

True, there is a good supply and deals when there is availability. At least you can find those RX 480 cards. I've been looking to add a couple more to complete my rig, but the Asus RX 470/480's have all but vanished here since the past two weeks as well as the rest of RX 470/570 and 570/580 cards unless you want to buy from resellers charging $500+. There have been some Rx580's for a decent price on Newegg in the last couple days but they are being limited to 1 per account. I picked up an ASUS RX 580 8GB Top OC model for $299 - $20 rebate.

As long as the hashrate is about the same, it's normal for the same type of cards to run at different temps with the same settings. When hashing together the cards don't do the same amount of work and the one submitting more shares usually run a bit hotter. Each card also has different ASIC quality.

I got both of my Asus STRIX-RX480-O8G-GAMING OC edition, which is highest overclocked model for $265 - $30 rebate. I get ~315 H/s on ZEC. Personally I would not pay more than $300 here in the USA, even with the shortage.

I recently upgraded to a dual power supply setup which had me researching on how to connect them safely.

I came across posts suggesting powering the riser and PCI-E power connector on the card with the same PSU. Others say the psu that powers the motherboard must also power alll the risers. The slave psu should only power the PCI-E power connector on the cards.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1761303.msg17825999#msg17825999

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1843586.msg18351224#msg18351224

Ultimately, I did follow the latter suggestion as it seems logical the same power supply that powers the motherboard should also power the risers connected to the PCI-E slots on the motherboard. The second slave power supply only powers the 6 & 8 pin auxiliary power connector on the video cards. According to another post I came across that connecting the PSU's that way ensures they share the same ground, which is important.



https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=443540.msg4878774#msg4878774

I also noticed BBT in his latest live stream set up a 9 card dual PSU rig and also explained that when setting it up, you need to power the risers with the same PSU that powers the motherboard and only use the second PSU to power the GPU's.

https://youtu.be/pQ-EAunoAqY?t=988

Have you tried uninstalling the drivers in safe mode using DDU and then reinstalling the drivers?

The newer PCI-E specifications can deliver more power through the slot, but the speed of the slot is not an issue. My old Dell XPS 700 had PCI-E 1.0 slots and I had no problem mining with three cards using powered risers. The problem I had was I could not access the Bios when a newer PCI-E 2.0 card was installed in the primary PCI-E 16x slot, but it still mined.

No problem at all as long as the motherboard supports the number of cards you want to use. Most mining motherboards come with only 1 16x PCI-E slot and the rest are 1x.