Awesome Miner is very flexible.  You can use the free version for two "miners".  What are "miners"... well, they can be external miners, which is what you would use for an ASIC or a non-windows based rig.  Or they can be managed miners, which is where you run the agent on a remote computer (or just run AM on the rig itself).  Then you have a profit miner, which again depends on the agent or the local install of AM.  The managed miner and the profit miner are highly configurable abstractions that allow you assign concepts such as pools, pool groups, online services (like zpool, miningpoolhub, etc.), hosts, managed software and more.

It's kind of like software-defined mining... in the same vein as software-defined networking or virtualizing operating systems.  The pieces that you need to mine something are software-defined, and you then piece together these objects to do what you want.

If you wanted to do something simple, like mine a single coin, then you setup the pool.  Then you setup a host, where the host is a single computer.  You then setup a managed miner, which brings those pieces together.  There are a lot of the most popular mining software baked into AM, and you also tell the managed miner what software to use.  The manage miner runs the pool and the software on the host.  The reason why a managed miner is a different concept than just the host, is because the host can run multiple managed miners.  For instance, you can run a GPU-based mining software like Claymore's for your GPUs, and then a CPU-based mining software on your CPU.  You can also split GPUs on the same host, so if you had 3 AMD cards, and 3 nVidia cards in the same rig, you could run 3 managed miners on the same host.

You can get very complex, or very simple with these setups, and with the profit-miner, you add a new wrinkle.  For instance, if you wanted to mine all the pools at Suprnova, you would setup each pool, and then group them in a pool group.  Then activate the Custom Pool option for profit mining, then the profit miner will use the pool group and statistics from Whattomine to choose the most profitable coin, select the appropriate mining software for that algo, point the profit miner to that pool, and mine away... all automatically.  It will check every X number of minutes that you tell it to to check to see if that coin is still the most profitable, and change when necessary.

When you use services like zpool, hashrefinery, or miningpoolhub, all of those pools are already built in, and if activated will use those services in addition to the pool group you setup to mine the best coin, or service that gives you the most profit.

If you don't like the built in software, then you have the option to upload your own, and define it as "managed software".

It all may sound complicated, but it's meant to allow you to use these various pieces to let you build a "mining rig" to do exactly what you want.

You can join us at the AM thread, there are lots of questions, but lots of good experience to help you with AM.  The developer is very active and will usually take improvements and turn them around in new versions very quickly.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=676942.0

Well, as you mentioned, Awesome Miner will do it for you... or you can just login to the pools that you mine to to check up on things.

I mine the algo that is good for the GPU or ASIC.  If you have a bunch of rigs with the same GPU, then you can spread your hash around, but you need to believe in the coin.  Otherwise, if you are in it for profit, just go with the most profitable coin for that algo.  Unfortunately, that changes quite often, so you need to keep up with it.

There are many schools of thought... pick one and experiment, then pick another and experiment.  Eventually, you will have a sound strategy.

Don't do cloud mining.  Minergate is not a good choice either.

What kind of hardware do you have?  Do you have any GPUs?  What kind and how many?

First you need to figure out what algorithm is good for your hardware.  Check whattomine.com for some ideas.  Then you go get the miner suited for that algo.  Search and read some threads here for some ideas, and how to set them up.

It's impossible to tell you what an individual card will produce in hashrates, only a general sense of what you can expect.  There are way too many factors that play a part in hashrate... mining software, over/underclocks, not least of all the silicon lottery.

For motherboards, I highly suggest the boards that are made specifically for mining.  They will give you the least amount of trouble since this appears to be your first real mining rig.  As for dual mining... Sia and DCR are always favorites combined with Eth.

You will need to setup every algo from ahashpool as an individual pool in AM, then group them together using a pool group.  Then you can use the Custom Pool option in the profit switching and select this new pool group.

I did this for all the Suprnova pools... its a little time consuming, but worth it in the end.

What about us old folks (or young) who don't use social media, and prefer old school methods like forums... like Bitcointalk?

You also have to understand how pools like Zpool work and profit-switching in general.  When you mine a coin that is "most profitable" in the moment, many, many rigs get pointed to it through the various profit-switching software and pools that are out there.  This raises the difficulty on the coin causing it to slide down the ranks.  The coins that you did mine at Zpool (or other services) then get sent to the exchange, where it may not be as profitable as it was when you first mined it.  Depending on how fast the coin gets exchanged, it could be worth much less BTC.  I have some Nist5 coin that I mined at Zpool that has been at the exchanges for over 2 weeks.

This is why you should never set AM or any profit-switching algorithm to "current" statistics, but 24 hour averages or longer.  Coins slide up and down from the top spot constantly, and you are chasing the tail of the spike if you are using current statistics.  If you are in it for profit, then you are better off mining coins that average in the top 5, as you want consistent profit.

You will need to setup two managed miners, one for each set of cards.  Then you will have to select mining software that lets you include or exclude specific GPUs... like Claymore's.  So on one manage miner, you have it run the mining software only using the 1060s, and on the other, you set it to only mine with the 1080s.  It's a complex setup, but it is doable.  The key is that the mining software has to allow you to include or exclude GPUs.

No thanks... and this is against the forum rules... read the stickies.

There are plenty of other services... Miningpoolhub, zpool, hashrefinery, and many more.

Hardware mining will always be the best way to mine.  There is no way a cloud mining setup will beat mining with your own equipment.

Yes, zpool will have your rigs mine the most profitable coin they have, send it to the exchange and return to you the Bitcoin equivilent.

Awesome miner is fantastic, by the way.  I use it myself.

You can copy these to your rigs and then specify the path to the miner EXEs in your rig settings in AM.

Or you can set them up as Managed Software

http://awesomeminer.com/help/managedsoftware.aspx

There's no difference from your perspective using a credit card vs borrowing money from an investor.  The investor is the credit card in your scenario, and depending on the deal you made, they could have a perpetual stake in your mining profits.

If I'm not mistaken, price speculation posts are not allowed in the Announcement forums.  You'd want to go to the Speculation forum to ask and get responses on this topic.

Why so many coins for a masternode?  wouldn't you want a large number of nodes to help support the network?

So what exactly is flagging the miners?  A raw install of Windows is all you need.  You don't need AV on a dedicated miner.

It's the same thing.  If you already know the path, you can just paste it in the "path" setting.  If you don't know the path, you can use the "Specify mining software exe-file" button to search the rig for the EXE to point AM in the right direction.

You need to install Visual C++ Redistributable for visual studio 2015 (VCRUNTIME140.dll) to make DSTM run.  I had the same issue.