This is a hardware issue, not a software issue. No operating system, mining software or driver will increase performance to what it used to be on your GTX 1080 Ti. You are stuck at 37 Mh. This hashrate will keep declining in the future as the Ethereum DAG grows.

That's right, Pascal cards decline in ETH hashrate because of the translation lookaside buffer:
https://forums.developer.nvidia.com/t/blockchain-drivers/110847/12

This is why my Tesla P100 16GB cards only got 31.5 Mh on ETH instead of 72 Mh, as the memory bandwidth would suggest. They get 56 Mh on ETC because the DAG is smaller.

But I plan to use these cards for mining other coins, like FLUX, anyway.

Yes. Just don't buy RTX 3080 12GB's or the RTX 3050, because they are LHRv3.

Yeah, I typed up that comment just before I read the news about Quickminer.

I'm happy because now my RTX 3060 12GB LHRv2 cards, plus my RTX 3080 Ti, will probably appreciate in price. The FHR prices on feeBay tend to be 20-30% more expensive than the LHR versions these days.

Will network hashrate increase? Here's a conservative estimate.

GPU share of hashrate: 80%
nVidia share of GPU hashrate: 50%
LHRv1/v2 share of nVidia hashrate: 50%
Hashrate boost for LHRv1/v2 cards: 25%
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When you multiply these factors, it is 5% at most. Not to mention the miners who will forget to upgrade. So the real growth in hashrate will probably be 3-4%.

The people who benefit from this hack are miners with LHR cards, while miners with FHR cards will see the value of their cards drop.

Isn't the open-source Ethminer obsolete by now?

I also want to add that for U.S. miners, depending on the market, it makes sense to consider selling the coins at the end of the year, then buying more equipment. That's a nice tax write-off under Section 179, which can cancel out the income from the mining profit during the year.

The real nostalgia was when you could buy GTX 1060 6GB cards for $130 each... or RX 570's for $100 after the 2018 crash

Yes, I started mining ETH on 2GB Radeon R9 270 video cards back in mid-2016. They got 14-15 Mh/s. God I wish I saved those ethers instead of selling them!

I have an RTX 3080 Ti card. It sucks for mining! The highest ETH hashrate I can get is 78 Mh. Dual mining ETH+CFX is not possible because the VRAM gets extremely hot. The card is only good at ERGO, where I get 260 Mh at 250w.

That's right. I would not buy any video card for mining with less than 8GB of VRAM. I prefer 12GB or higher because of the dual mining potential.

I don't know why we are even talking about the RX 6950 XT, because it only has slightly more memory bandwidth than the RX 6800 card. Therefore the ETH hashrate will be about the same. Only gamers will want to buy this card. The RX 6800 XT and RX 6900 XT are no better for mining either than the regular 6800, as we know.

If you only have 6 video cards, I recommend you just buy a regular gaming motherboard with more slots than usual. Buy a few M.2 PCIe risers or a 4-way x1 to x4 PCIe splitter card.

That's one of the biggest reasons I decided not to invest in an ASIC farm myself. I'm still looking into managing/maintaining other people's farms with proprietary software, though.

That has not been my experience at all. Video cards, as well as other PC components, very rarely fail when the power is turned off even multiple times a day at full load. UPS batteries are a complete waste of $$. What I installed in my previous warehouse was a whole-panel surge protector, which cost < $400.

This was the price back when I started the thread. The prices have declined obviously.

I decided not to start an ASIC mining farm, so it doesn't matter anyway.

The days where one could buy a Radeon HD 7970 and pay it back in 30 days on DOGE, or an Avalon that paid for itself in 4 months are long gone. ASIC mining will have the same return as any other business, which is 5-10% per year. GPU mining returns seem to be falling in the long term as well. The last of the glory days was summer 2017 where I could buy RX 480's for $300 which made $6/day of profit. Now I think the return on GPU mining post-PoS will be 20-40%, which is fine, but much lower than usual.

The U.S., especially Texas, has a large population that consumes a lot of energy per capita. In Texas everybody has big houses with a lot of A/C that use lots of energy, not to mention the 8-lane express highways built on top of each other that carry 20 foot long pickup trucks. The grid can handle gigawatts of power and the deregulated energy market is very efficient at sourcing more supply. 300MW is a drop in the bucket. In fact, the average American's electricity consumption peaked around 2000 and has declined. So the grids are running under capacity in most places.

So it does look like the U.S. will become as dominant for global hashrate as China used to be. The only brake is manufacturing capacity or BTC price. These billionaires will pile more capital into farms until ROI is zero, then only will they scale back. The unique tax situation here makes them not care about initial losses if they can get a 41% tax write-off. That's what venture capital does to every new business idea.

Every single distributor or wholesaler selling new cards will charge a price over MSRP. That's still the current market reality, regardless of how many you want to buy. Same for used markets. The only way you will get to MSRP is if ETH falls to $2000, the difficulty bomb explodes, or proof-of-stake happens (current projection: Q4 2022).

I would stay away from all Ngreedia GDDR6X video cards since they have VRAM thermal issues. Replacing thermal pads is risky and time consuming.

Why not buy RTX 3060 Ti cards? The new ones with LHR can be unlocked to 76-78% 100%. I also like the RTX 3060 12GB since it can do 48+ Mh @ 120w. If you want FHR, RTX 3060 Ti's / 3060's are probably available used in bulk from Reddit Minerswap or this forum. Those are more efficient than the RTX 3090 for ETH. Do not buy FHR anymore, only buy LHR!

If you only care about ETH hashrate, why not consider the Radeon RX 6800 16GB? The efficiency is second only to the RTX A2000 while the Mh-per-dollar ratio is among the best on the market.

Even though I think the price can go as low as $30k this year, we're close to the bottom boundary of the HODL price model. The lower the price goes, the less likely I think it is to drop lower than that.

I will simply dollar-cost average my mining revenue ($1500/month) into BTC. If it falls, I will end up buying more coin.

I currently lend the coins I mine on Hotbit in the form of USDT. But I will trade all coins that I mine (ETH, FLUX, CFX, KDA) for BTC, HODL that BTC on Hotbit, then lend it for 6% interest. I think BTC price is low enough that it's a good time to buy now.

We will definitely be able to mine until November. But unfortunately, Beiko said defusing the difficulty bomb again is a low priority which would be done later in the process. I remember what happened back in 2017. Every 3 weeks, difficulty jumped by 10%. That's a 46% increase in just 3 months, which means 32% lower revenue. But if the devs end up defusing it, at least diff will plummet back to where it would be without the bomb instantly.

I expect revenue on other GPU coins to follow the same downward spiral.

The hot/cold aisle separation will not work with GPU rigs unless you have fans tied to the racks which force the air in the direction you want. You also need some kind of curtain or barrier between the hot & cold areas.

Yes, all ventilation fans will perform at lower CFM when static pressure is higher (when the duct is longer). These grow tent fans are designed for high static pressure, so you shouldn't have a problem. The worst type of fan for static pressure are Lasko box fans, where the 2500 CFM rating drops to near zero with even a small amount of airflow constriction.

I just recommend buying a grow tent, which will already have holes for ventilation that you can easily connect the ducting to. They already have air filters or they're very easy to install. Place the shelf inside the tent.

You won't need to open that little side duct as long as the airflow through the mining room is high enough. I recommend a minimum of 100 CFM per kW. If you use 60A of that 100A panel, which is 14.4 kW, you need 1440 CFM. So your ceiling fan will be enough.