To generate a log file, launch the miner with

Bonus answer:

If you want a time-stamped formatted log file kinda like CM, use something like this:


then your log files will appear like:  2017-01-15@12-41-58_log.txt  in a YYYY, MM, DD @ HH, MM, SS format.


I like to keep the formatting of the example batch file, so I assign the log file to a variable earlier on:


this way I can keep the actual launch command line easier to read similar to:

I was simply suggesting to use what you already own to get a feel for the current state of mining before spending a bunch of money. You indicated in the OP you had a 7970, which while not modern will allow you to experiment around and work out the kinks in mining, as you also indicated you had troubles with before. This will allow you to mine the various coins on different pools and work up some profitability figures based on your electrical rates, etc. Once you have all this and you think you can make it work, then go ahead an invest in new cards.

I agree as far as new equipment and AMD, the RX470 is probably the sweet spot right now for dedicated mining.

A little pump and the Litecoin is officially dead thread is back from the dead!!!

I'd be happy if we can get above $5 for the short-term and worry about the rest later.

Monero is a good coin to GPU mine now in 2017 as well, welcome to the future!

You can also try your luck with ETH, ETC, and ZEC coins, as they are all profitable to mine with a GPU.

I would mine with your 7970 for awhile and get back into the swing of things before buying a dedicated rig, this way you can find out what coins will work out best and what pools to try.

Dwarfpool is currently the big name in pools when it come to Monero, so you might want to start mining there. I would recommend Claymore's Cyptonight miner as well for XMR (Moenero) as it is pretty stable and easy to get setup and running. Once you are again familiarized with the basics, you can try different software and pools and by then you should be able to determine if buying a dedicated rig will make sense for you, and more importantly your electrical rate, which is probably going to be the main determining factor in any coin you mine.

Most of your question about which coins to mine can be answered by visiting sites such as: http://whattomine.com/coins and inputting your hash rate.

I also have been using these risers for a couple of months now and have had nothing but good luck with them. I bought 10 at first to test out (shipped from China) and they worked out so well I placed a second order for another 60. I do like these for rigs using server PSUs and breakout boards as I can then feed each of them from a dedicated 12V PCIe cable, but I also have used them successfully running two risers from a 4-pin Molex adapter cable on consumer PSUs.

It is good to see these getting more attention and hopefully they will have more availability in the US.

Yes, the website has been down for me the past couple of hours as well, but my shares are still being accepted. The question now is if they are being correctly counted/credited.

First question is what brand and model is your PSU? Top end units from eVGA, Corsair, Seasonic, etc. can handle higher continuous loads than lesser units.

Second question is how did you measure the power draw, with an at-the-wall measurement or with some other means? An 800 watt PSU will draw more than 800 watts from the wall at its maximum capacity based upon its efficiency. For example, an 90% efficient 800 watt PSU will draw around 890 watts from the wall at its maximum capacity. Conversely, if you have the same 800 watt PSU and are measuring 800 watts at the wall, the PSU is only delivering around 720 watts, so a good PSU (as explained earlier) might be well within its long-term usage limits.

A good website that mainly covers PSUs is http://www.jonnyguru.com/  They not only review popular PSU's, they have many good articles explaining different aspects of what makes up a good PSU.

In any case, it is still a good idea to have some spare headroom, or margin as you call it, and 20% is a good figure to aim for.

Yeah it is more than possible, it is the perfect size under most algorithms. I mainly keep my rigs to 5 GPUs for this very reason as 1000w is the ideal size before needing to go to a higher wattage and more expensive PSU.

ETH I can get by with ~700 watts as it likes higher memory but I can turn back the core clock a bit, but Monero and ZCash like a higher core which means I cannot under-volt as much, so I end up around 800-850 watts. These are measurements taken at the wall, so factoring in the PSU efficiency (say 90%) the actual wattage the PSU is delivering is closer to  750-800 watts. This puts it right around the 80% load mark which is an often recommended figure when a PSU is used for continuous (24/7) operation.

EDIT: I should have added that these measurements were all after VBIOS mods and under-volting settings were applied. A fresh rig with factory settings may exceed a 1000w PSU's capacity if you push to hard, so be careful when first setting it up. Might want to dial in your changes with just 4 cards at first and once you get your power readings down then install the 5th card.

Not as far as the resulting hashrate. With the settings you list on the same rig I get 3200 H/s, or only 640 H/s per card.

I am still playing around with trying different settings, but it is looking like the 2, 512, 4 settings are the ones to beat so far, at least for me.

My bad, I was doing the testing on a rig which had cards with the default VBIOS on them.

With the modified VBIOS (memory straps mod) I get around 720 H/s each or 3600 H/s on a 5x RX470 GPU rig with these settings.
      
   "threads": 2,
   "rawintensity": 512,
   "worksize": 4

If you are a beginner I assume you want to try and get started with what you already own. If you have a fairly recent PC and a dedicated GPU (recent model AMD or Nvidia) you can begin mining some coins such as ZEC, ETH, and their variants, or even Monero (XMR) immediately. Just search the forum for the appropriate mining program.

Claymore has windows based miners for the three coins I listed and would be a good place to start with minimal fuss. You will also need a wallet to mine your coins to, but you can just use an exchange wallet to get your feet wet. Once you learn more about how mining works you can get your own dedicated wallet, which I would recommend for larger amounts. Poloniex.com is a popular exchange with many coins that you can use to generate a deposit address (or wallet) you can use to begin mining with. You can also easily convert any mined coins to BTC if you prefer using an exchange.

Bitcoin and Scrypt based coins such as Dogecoin or Litecoin have moved on to what is known as ASIC (Application Specific Integrated Circuit) based devices and are no longer profitable to mine with just a PC and a graphic cards.

I just tried this out with both sets of these parameters and I get about 30 more sols using:

        "threads": 2,
   "rawintensity": 508,
   "worksize": 4

which gives me about 590 sols on a single RX470 4GB (1250/1850).

If I up the rawintensity slightly to 512 I can get about 610 sols, which is still far short of the 690 sols per card that tony_crunk reported.

Why do you need to check them 20 times a day? Most rigs once setup can run unattended 24/7 with minimum interaction. I check on mine maybe twice a day via web-page status monitoring but even then it is rare I need to interact with one.

On the more mature mining programs, such as Cryptonight or Ethereum ones, I can have Windows rigs run for months without issues. The only time I would reboot is when physically cleaning the rig. With newer coins such as ZEC, with the constant changes and bugs I had to reboot a couple of times, but the more recent version are fairly stable.

If you are experiencing rigs locking up a lot, you need to look at your system as a whole. Are they getting too hot, are your pushing your PSU too much, are you overclocking your cards too much, etc.?

While more people might have been ready to mine ZEC on launch, you must also consider that Ethereum actually had 72 million coins in existence before normal miners could mine the first block. So even now Ethereum's equivalent to ZEC's "founders reward" stands at nearly 80% of the total coin supply.

So in this regard ZEC has an even better chance of another surge as the current 20% founders reward is not a heavy weight hanging over its head as is the case with Ethereum.

My thoughts exactly.

This is the same pattern that happened with Ethereum, when those who stuck it out were able to mine cheap blocks due to the low interest/difficulty and when it pumped later they made out big time.

Mining is anything but consistent. Count on it varying wildly as your second example, $30 profit some days, $45 other days with an even greater degree of volatility than this. This is not only influenced by the price, but the moving of hash-rate to more profitable coins. When wearing your mining hat, you are also forced to wear one of a speculator as well, as some days the profitability of a given coin may be low but the hash-rate also fell off. So you may want to mine that particular coin in the hopes that the price recovers somewhat in the future. This means at times you may need to mine and hold versus realizing immediate profit and is always risky.

Thinking this way is foolish and naive. Yes, Bitcoin is currently more popular and as you say stronger in terms of value per unit, but there are some serious altcoin contenders up and coming. The whole cryptocurrency "scene" is still in its infancy and basing such predictions on just a few years history is foolish. I believe bitcoin will maintain a strong presence, at least for the next few years, but who knows what will happen in the next 5, 10 or even 20 years.

Yes, it is getting hard to make ends meet currently. If you already have the rigs there is still some profit to eek out, but if you are just starting out I would advise to try and start with 1 or two GPUs and utilize your existing computer if possible rather than buying a dedicated rig. This way you can work out the numbers yourself as the various online calculators are usually overly optimistic with their profitability predicitions.

The ASRock Z170 Pro4S also runs well with 5x GPUs.

I cannot get more than 4 GPUs running on the MSI Z170-A PRO mobo, although it has 6 PCIe slots.