It has a very good change to hit $5k this week as it already was close to $4700 today. It is now starting to drop a little as I type this but nothing too major, but maybe it is on track for a Wednesday or Thursday push to get there.

I want to upgrade my main Gaming rig with a Intel Core i7-8700K, but currently NewEgg is out of stock. Has anyone done research yet on a good motherboard to pair it up with. Since this is a gaming rig it would only need to support 2 GPUs at the most and of course need a M.2 slot. I am thinking going with Asus but haven't had a lot of time to do in-depth research.

100% fan speed is not good as you will wear out your fans in no time. Best to try and keep fan speed below 70% for longer lifespan of the fans. Now you also need to keep the temperatures cool, your 60C is a good goal to aim for. You may need to separate your GPUs and either relocate them to an cooler environment or direct an external airflow over them such as a box fan. The other thing to watch for is power surges or brownouts. A good surge suppressor in front of your PSU is recommend.

As far as lifespan of the cards themselves, I have some 3+ year old cards still mining away. Their mining efficiency decreases over the years simply because newer more efficient cards are released, but they are still working just as good as the day I bought them.

Ok, re-read your first post again and looked at your image I must have missed earlier.

Yes, that is indeed a 14-30R. So you will need something like these two parts:

http://www.homedepot.com/p/Conntek-1-5-ft-10-4-Adapter-Cord-30-Amp-NEMA-14-30P-4-Prong-Dryer-Plug-to-30-Amp-L14-30R-4-Prong-Locking-Female-Connector-14330/301794882

http://www.homedepot.com/p/AC-WORKS-Locking-Adapter-NEMA-L14-30P-30Amp-125-250Volt-4Prong-Locking-Plug-to-L6-30R-3Prong-30Amp-250Volt-Locking-Female-ADL1430L630/301828761

That should get you to the point you can plug a 30 amp PDU into the circuit and then power your rigs of of that.

Buy something like this:  http://www.homedepot.com/p/HDX-6-ft-10-3-3-Wire-Dryer-Cord-HD-627-833/100672782 and combine it with something like this: http://www.homedepot.com/p/AC-WORKS-AC-Connectors-NEMA-L6-30R-30Amp-250Volt-3Prong-Assembly-Locking-Female-Connector-ASL630R/303108451

This assumes your dryer outlet has three prongs. If the dryer outlet is 4 prongs, you can buy a 4 wire dryer cord and modify it a bit. The 4 wire version corresponds to hot-hot (red and black), neutral (white) and ground (green). You will only use the red, black and green wires for the receptacle, just cut and electrical tape off the white wire.

The 4-wire versions are for newer dryers (and homes) that have some portion of their controls use 120V, so they take a hot leg and the neutral to run the electronics. Older dryers simply use the 3 wire for hot to hot, and a ground. I should note that the ground wire in both cases is simply for chassis grounding and safety as no current should normally flow through it.

Also to help you out, the NEMA receptacle/plugs for dryers are typically: 4-wire - NEMA 14-30, 3-wire - NEMA 10-30.

The P at the end designates its a "plug" and an R designates its a Receptacle. Also, the "L" in front means its a locking type connector, most dryer outlets and plugs are of the non-locking variety and is probably the source of your confusion.

Here is a good link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NEMA_connector

All you got to do is Keep on keepin' on man!

As has been said if you are mining to a pool, which you most likely are since solo mining ETH would be pointless unless you have 1000's of miners under your control, you can just go about your normal business.

I like the Dual Bios as well and wish more company's offered it, but one feature doesn't change the fact they manufacture sub-par products. I own quite a few cards from various manufacturers and it is Sapphire that I consistently have trouble with. I got two cards in for RMA right now and they are giving me static and trying to charge me to repair them.

The big problem is they hand their warranty off to Althon Micro which IMHO isn't very good. I suppose they bid for the work and they submitted a cheap bid, now that they are being flooded with defective products so they try to weasel out from the warranty terms. The first two times I had to send a card in to Althon it was no problem, they returned a new or refurbished card within a week or so. Then the 3 and 4th ones (this is over a period of about 18 months, not all at once) I had to answer a barrage of questions, did I remove the heatsink, no, and on and on. After feeling me out to see if I modified or abused the GPU they finally honored the warranty.

This got worse every time one of their crap cards would die until now where they are claiming based on my past RMA's I must be doing something to them. I try explaining I have lots of cards, Sapphire and many other brands and it is the Sapphires that keep dying and I treat them no differently. Then they mention mining and I state the box and advertising indicate they run OpenCL and yes I am using a OpenCL program 24/7. Then they give me static about these are meant for gaming, blah, blah basically trying to get out of repairing their defective cards.

Out of all my current AMD GPUs (RX570 through RX580's and a few Vegas) I would say Sapphire only represents about 20% while MSI probably is 50%, and XFX, Asus, and Gigabyte round out the remaining 30%. Out of all these cards during a 18 month period I have had to send 2 back to MSI, 1 to XFX and 1 to Gigabyte and over a dozen to Sapphire. So just looking at the ratio of failed cards versus the number of each owned I can safely say that Sapphire has a lower quality control than the others.

Man this is so true. I know many people with a nice house, nice cars, nice clothes and who are in debit up their their eyeballs and beyond. You are right the net worth of the homeless man with no debt and a few coins in his pocket is higher than most of the debt slaves living in their bank owned houses, bank owned cars, and wearing their credit card charged clothes as their paychecks for the next 40 years are already allotted to someone else.

If Bitcoin even has a small impact on changing this scenario for even a few people the world will become a much better place.

Yes, but the problem with that advice is how do you combat the person creates a new account, buys a 99 cent item, and then gets his 1 positive feedback before going on their scamming spree? Ebay changed it a long time ago where sellers are very restricted on who they can exclude. Ebay is perfectly safe until you as a seller finally get screwed over by a scammer.

Agreed. Yes, if I had the financial means I would have tried taking them to court over it, but for a couple of used graphic cards worth maybe $300 combined at the time it just wasn't worth it to proceed financially, even if it was worthwhile on principle. In the real world only those with deep pockets have the luxury to pursue legal options based on principle alone. I found it simpler to just walk away and no longer give them my business. For the most part it has become a shell of the company it once was anyway with most sales now dominated by Chinese firms.

Sapphire is shit and they don't honor their warranty. Myself I actually have had pretty good luck with the MSI brand, but I suppose every manufacturer has bouts of low quality cards slip through. The trick to most of them is to end up with Samsung memory if you can.

For Nvidia EVGA is my go to brand. Too bad they don't deal with AMD GPUs, but perhaps the cards are crap compared to Nvidia so they feel they couldn't stand behind them.

The key words here are "Should have". Now that you went ahead and asked for permission and have been turned down, you may be on the landlord's radar for a surprise visit one day to make sure you are not messing with his electrical system and end up burning down his rental unit. I am not commenting on if it is better to ask permission or not (it probably is), just to realize that now you may be under scrutiny simply for asking, the world is funny that way sometimes.

I think it would ultimately be a good thing for Bitcoin so it can grow with out the constant Chinese drama manipulating price every other day. Also I think it would be great if they shutdown those big Chinese mining farms and give everyone else in the world a better shot at mining. I am sure that situation would' last too long though, as while maybe a pain and expensive, the equipment could be relocated to a nearby mining friendly country, maybe South Korea or something.

This is actually a  good thing and allows people to plan accordingly before the fork. Unlike some forks with other coins that wait until the last second to announce they will list it. Remember when Ethereum hard-forked, everyone ahead of time said there will only be one coins afterwards and only support the main chain, the Poloniex listed ETC and basically fucked everyone over. With Bitcoin this type of BS would be a PR disaster and would sours a lof of people on the whole concept, especially newcomers.

I only own a couple of GTX 1060 GB cards but unfortunately they have Micron memory. As far as the ratio, it may not be that high. I remember when MSI first launched the Armor RX580 I ordered in 5 from New Egg (that was their per order limit) and was pleasantly surprised to find they all had Samsung memory. So I ordered another 5 and had my brother-in-law order 5 more for me and lucky me again they all had Samsung. Since then I have been stuck with Hynix every time I ordered more.

I wish the manufacturers would leave a hint somehow as to the type of memory they use. They claim they are concerned about gamers not having cards available due to the mining demand, but I bet if they listed cards as with Samsung or with Hynix/Micron, they would suddenly find plenty of the later ones on the shelves for gamers.

Yes, that is exactly why it is tripping. Basic math, 2000 + 850 = 1850 watts/120V = 15.4 amps. While you may not be running at the exact maximum, you are probably pushing very close to that. In addition to the GPUs your system draws a little power ~50-75 watts and depending upon your PSU's efficiency it could add another 50 watts to the total draw. Have you used an external watt meter to measure the load being pulled from the PSUs? Just from the info you give and adding in system and UPS you could be right around 1400-1500 watts for both rigs.

I have some high quality Tripp-lite surge suppressors and they have a built in breaker that trips at 12 amps as they are supposed to be used on a 120V 15 amp circuit. The NEC limits a 15 amp circuit to 80% continuous load, which is 12 amps, thus why it is a commonly found breaker size on surge suppressors. On a 120V circuit, 12 amps equates to 1440 watts, or probably close to your total system draw. Maybe you surge suppressor is a bit weak, but you are also drawing a lot of power through it.

With your setup, you would need to power each rig off of a separate surge suppressor. You could run both rigs off the same circuit IF and only IF the breaker that feeds it is rated for 20 amps. Be thankful the surge suppressor is tripping as it is probably saving you from a far worse outcome.

I do not think there is an exact definition and many times the terms get used somewhat interchangeability. But I agree that in general "coin" is used for the representation of a blockchain based cryptocurrency such as Bitcoin, Litecoin, Ethereum, Zcash, etc., while "token" is used more often to represent something that is issued in an ICO offering such as OMG, EOS, etc. You will probably get dozens of different responses, especially when it comes down to the specific usages and semantics, but in general I think these loose definitions are accurate.

This is similar to my maintenance plan. If everything is working correctly (i.e. the rig is stable and temperatures are ok) there is no need to go in and mess with your hardware as you have a greater chance of screwing something up yourself. Physical dust build-up, while unsightly doesn't necessarily affect cooling as much as you would think by visually looking at it.

All these components we use are designed to go into a computer case, which often times will not get opened up for over a year. I have seen normal PCs (not mining rigs) that have had a year plus of dirt, hairballs, dust-bunnies, etc., build up inside and when it does get opened, say to upgrade a graphics card you wonder how it even ran. The point is manufacturers know these components will be used in dusty conditions so they are built to some degree to survive in this. I actually think open air frame shave an advantage here as even though they may look dirtier since there is no enclosed case to hold in heat the ventilation (even dirty) is far superior.

With all that said, there comes a time when a simple cleaning is required, but I would say this should be performed no more than once or twice a year.

I believe the setx GPU_MAX_ALLOC_PERCENT 90 command pertains more to how much maximum memory on the GPU can be allocated for process to use. Likewise the GPU_SINGLE_ALLOC_PERCENT command sets the amount of memory a single process can utilize. Both of these settings deal with the allocation of memory and not the core utilization. To adjust that you would need to change settings within cgminer itself if available.

Since mining programs are meant to utilize the GPU as much as possible to deliver maximum hashrates you may be better off trying to improve airflow so your cards will naturally cool down. Are your cards in an enclosed case? if so you may need to add more case fans, or alternatively you can simply remove the side panel for more airflow to see if it helps. If they are in an open-air frame you may need an external fan blowing ower it to help cool it down more.

I do not think Bitcoin will replace Gold or a lot of other things that have intrinsic value. What it may replace though are things that really have no more value that Bitcoin itself, such as fiat currency's. In the end Bitcoin is just an alternate means to transfer value from one person to another, so I do not think it will replaces things that store value as much as it will complement them.