Lmfao... so how do you guys REALLY feel about bios flashing lol?  Certainly that extra step for AMD cards is a major PITA! but to be fair, I have not had any problems with flashing but 23 of my 24 AMD GPUs are the exact same model... MSI 470 4GB... and those happen to be very easy to flash and the strap method worked very well for me.  However, looking forward to future rigs, this would likely become a monster to try to manage because it will be nearly impossible to build a rig with all the same GPU model due to the shortages. Therefore, you're left with having to investigate many different bios flash methods which leads to more confusion, wasted time, and likelihood of bricking a GPU.  Right now I have 3 Vega 56 that I have committed to sell. But I also have 2 MSI 570's. School is still out on those... if I think i can get 4-5 more relatively quickly I may still build that rig as a dual miner. But, I am definitely selling those Vegas and will use that $ to buy more 1070ti's as soon as they hit the market.

ummm... you don't like standard business practices that every e-commerce site on the web partakes in lol?  Clearly you are very new to all of this so let me give you a couple of pointers. If you really want to have a chance to get a GPU from a retailer in this environment, then you need to have an account already established at every retailer you will consider buying from. The reason for this is that the minute any of these sites get any GPU back in stock, it will be gone in 1 minute or less. There are not only 1,000s of miners going for these things but I think the stupid 2x 3x prices some morons are paying have brought non-miners into the game as well cuz they know they can double their money if they stay diligent and get one of these when they briefly come in stock. So, next time maybe do a little research before you come on here and blast a solid company like newegg and make yourself look like a total fool lol.

ah, so you are talking about building a rig with just 1 GPU on it?  (as opposed to 5 or 6?)

Since you are new to mining, I would HIGHLY recommend going the Nvidia route.  I have mined with both and Nvidia is BY FAR more user friendly and easy to use than AMD cards, esp the Vega's.  right out of the box the Nvidia will always be better... the only way you can get AMD cards performing as well or better is to do a bunch of tweaking and even then, they usually have stability issues.

First choice should be 1070ti as those are better on ETHash than 1080 & 80ti.  2nd choice probably 1080, then 70, then 80ti... assuming prices are somewhat normal for all.

OK... to be a bit more fair to the demand analysts at both companies... I agree that it's maybe not reasonable for them to predict the DEGREE of this mid-Nov to early Jan... but most certainly some kind of Q1-Q2'17 pump should have at the very least been included in their scenario analysis.  I would give them almost a complete pass on that early '17 situation since there was no precedent for it. But that event itself should have been considered as a potential precursor for another such rise in prices, and hence, demand for GPUs.  As someone who has done this type of work, I would be expected to at the very least to make management aware of these scenarios. Maybe they did and they were just quashed by moron directors that know nothing about crypto, we will never know for sure... but most certainly, somebody dropped the ball big time at both companies. Again, not saying they should have predicted the Degree of spike but they clearly ignored the possibility outright.

As to the timeline of stock disappearing... this is what I observed:

- I was able to get 3 Vega 56's from NewEgg in mid-Nov for $450 each.  Maybe 7-10 after that I realized prices going up, then they were pretty much gone by first week of Dec
- This is what started me looking into Nvidia cards. I was out of the country for about 11 days and back just after xmas and in the next few days, was able to get 4 1070ti's for about $500/each.
- By the time i decided i wanted more just a few days later, they were either gone or way above retail.
- That started me looking into rx 570s. Was able to get an MSI 570 8GB from newegg for $300 on Jan 3rd and 4GB variety for $270 on Jan 8th.  Since then, nothing readily available at all for a reasonable price.

So, it seemed that top-end AMD dried up first, then top-end NVidia (1070 and up - actaully 1070 & 70ti's seemed to go first closely followed by 1080s. I remember there still being 1080tis available for $800 when I was looking for more 70ti's), then AMD mid-range (570-580) was next to go.  Granted, it seems very likely that a big cause of the Vega shortage is the shortness of HBM2. Once those intitial blower style Vegas were gone, it's just been way too long for any amount of custom ones to hit the market, and only a very very few have.

I am still astounded at how easy setting up and running my Nvidia rig has been. Firstly, the drivers install in like 3 minutes... vs a about 20 for AMD.  Since launching, it's been running 2-3 days on ETH+DCR then another 4+ on ZCL.  In that time, not 1 crash, 1 restart... nothing! Running smooth, silent and cool non-stop since launching it! I cannot say anythign even close to that for my 470 rigs... even the 2 better ones lol.  Needless to say, I am now a big fan of team green and not only will be selling my Vega's to eventually get more 1070ti's but also considering not building the 570 rig I've been collecting parts for. So much less to worry about with Nvidia, although certainly i have a small sample size in only 4 cards running for 1 week so far.  But, i lost almost half a day on one of my 470 rigs yesterday... windows update (since I was wary of that intel bug and wanted to patch it). Once it finished, it took me about 4 hours to get it back up and running. Yes, partly my fault cuz i forgot i had to run the pixel patcher after re-installing new drivers, which was already after running DDU in safe mode lol. But still, just a major frustrating PITA!

you ingrate commies are so pathetic it's ALMOST comical!  Are you really missing SO much by paying a 2% fee for using software that will make you a lot of money?  After all, you get to keep 98% of what you mine, and in almost every aspect of life, you're not going to get even close to that kind of 49:1 ratio of profitability.  Furthermore, you are not being charged anything up-front, so you are free to try out all of these miners for no cost at all. Again, almost nowhere else on earth can you really find this kind of opportunity. This allows cheapskate, penny-pinching commies like yourselves to experiment with different miners before committing any money upfront, which we all know "people" like you cringe at.

Another thing... it actually matters 0% what any dev makes on their software. But, in the real world, people who are able to provide a unique tool or skill that most others cannot even attempt, will naturally be rewarded monetarily for their work. This is true in every aspect of life, at least in the civilized, non-commie world. Would you ingrate cry-babies criticize Steph Curry for making millions and millions for being the best shooter on the planet?  Would you attempt to steal his rightfully earned money because your ignorant opinion is that he makes too much? And who decides what is too much? Guess what commies... that's not up to you.

You all should feel very fortunate that devs spend the time to makes these miners for us. The fact is that their tools have made many miners rich, or at least a lot more comfortable financially than they previously were.  So, why do you losers have to go out and try to figure out ways to steal the money that they have earned?  

Here's a little nugget for you commies... if you spent half as much time optimizing your rigs than you did scouring the earth for a way to steal devs money, you would almost assuredly make up for WAY more than that 2%.  But of course, then you couldn't whine and complain about someone making an honest dollar in a free market society. I suggest all you commies complaining about dev fees go move to China. Then report back here with how your mining operations are going lol.  Oh, that's if you can even get on this site from there lol.

Wow, I just checked out that Autominer on their website... looks really enticing although not sure about investing that much on lower-end GPUs.  Since I was already looking at building a 570 rig, the AMD option looks interesting, but if they are using 4GB cards, again, not really great for future-proofing.  I would maybe take 1-2 4GB 570s on a personally built 7 or 8x 570 rig but really looking to build it mostly with the 8GB variety.  I will shoot them an email to confirm 4 or 8, unless anyone here already knows that.

Yeah, this is really a crazy situation. Again, both AMD & Nvidia's demand forecasters severely screwed up and now the entire world (well, at least of miners and gamers lol) is feeling it.  I've had a couple of close calls the past 2 days... was within seconds of getting another Asus 1070ti advanced edition from newegg for $549 but just missed it, now sold out again for who knows how long.  Also got a notification for MSI 570 Gaming for $300 but it was the 4gb version so I didnt pull the trigger right away, then thought twice 5 minutes later, but that was probably 4.5 minutes too late lol.

As to retailers like Microcenter engaging in price-gouging... I am highly against that.  I don't have a big issue with nominal increases in times like this (similar to what newegg sometimes does) but 2x is insane! I don't have a huge issue with actual people trying to sell at 2-3x retail... heck, I am most likely going to sell my 3 Vega 56's on ebay for about $1k each... but retailers should not be engaged in this kind of gouging imo.

oh what a difference a few months makes in the crypto world lol!  Now, instead of CL being flooded with cheap GPUs, you can't find a decent mining GPU anywhere for less than 2-3x retail (including used ones) and CL has about 3-4x the number of "buying GPUs" ads than it does for those selling them... and the latter being at huge markups.

1 ad made me laugh... the guy was "generously" offering to pay "extra" for several models... like $600 for a 1080ti or Vega 56/64.  yeah... thanks for the offer man but i think i will sell mine for $400-$500 more than your "generous offer" on ebay lol.  Crazy kids ;-)

nothing really... unless you have a ton of i7's sitting around not dedicated to anything else.

the problem is that any coin that is technically minable with CPU (like XMR or ETN)... there are by comparison SO many high end GPU's already mining it, it literally would get you pennies a week.  1-2 years ago you could have done ok, but frankly, it's not worth it at this point. There are millions of GPUs cranking on every algo out there, any 1 or few CPUs is not going to amount to anything.  If you just want to do it for fun, maybe try ETN or SUMO, but you really must get into GPU mining id you want to make any $ at all.

Thanks Citronick and all... just got DSTM  (since Im on W10) up and running and my 4 1070ti's getting 500 sols straight away with 150/500/70%.  Need to play around with AB a bit but assuming i can increase my current rate of 4 sols per watt by at least a bit.  man, i really wish I would have bought more of these 70ti's while they were available for near retail about a month ago!  Seems like more are starting to trickle in though... got a few auto-notify's last 2 days but still too much competition to get them within 1 minute of being notified lol.

Thanks Citronick! Appreciate the feedback! For EWBF, the latest version i found was v0.3.4b, released on June 24 '17 here:

https://github.com/nanopool/ewbf-miner/releases

Is that what you are using on your rigs?

Phil... can you give us an idea of what you will have up for sale and when? I've been very pleased with my purchases from you in the past so  hoping we can do business again as I am looking to build out a few rigs in the next month or so.

Thanks to everyone here who helped me get my 1070ti rig up and running. Let's just say that I have been very pleasantly surprised by the extreme ease of setup and use of these Nvidia GPUs! Makes me kick myself for waiting so long to branch out from AMD.

I've had this rig running on ETH+DCR for a few days without 1 single crash or issue. I know that ETH is not the best use for these but wanted to try it out with a miner/coin i was very familiar with out of the gate.

Now that I know it's super stable, I was about to start mining ZClassic via MPH. But, I just realized that Claymore's Equihash miner is AMD-only, so I would like to ask for some recommendations for good Nvidia miners.  

The 3 I have seen mentioned are EWBF, Silent Army, and Nicehash (I am not using NH is that makes a difference)... so was wondering what your experiences have been with these 3 and any others. Thanks!

Yeah, Im with you on that!  When I got my 4 1070ti's a few weeks back, I could have gotten more (in the $480 range) but held off. Then when i noticed supply getting worse, i still could have gotten enough 570 8GB for close to retail to build a rig of those, but I didn't pull the trigger.  Also, could have had a few good Mobos and more PSUs for much cheaper than they are now. at least i got a 1KW EVGA G2 for $100 and a Rosewill 1500w Plat for $280, but yeah it is very frustrating to realize that you could have bought these things even 2-3 weeks ago and now they're gone or way to expensive.

But Im also down with NOT paying the 2-4x markups just to complete rigs. It's better to just build a partial rig and then complete it with more GPUs later when availability gets better.  That's what I am going to... at least with my 1070ti's.  Im now on the fence about my 3 Vega's.  I could probably sell them for close to or over $1k each in this market...and not sure i really wanna deal with the issues that come with them... so might be better to just bank that $3k and invest elsewhere, but not sure yet.

Yeah... i didn't get so lucky... got a notification on a Vega 56 from newegg earlier and logged on 30 seconds later and it was already sold out.  aside from those low odds crap-shoots, there is literally nothing available anywhere for at least 1 week now.  Not only that but mining Mobos and any PSU 1KW and over are either not available or 2-4x original pricing. Lets just say that if you don't have 80%+ of your components already, you will have to pay through the roof to complete it. I keep thinking that more stock will ease this up but it doenst appear to be the case yet.

For Phil and others here running Nvidia 10xx rigs... I have what is likely a silly question but since I'm coming from only AMD rigs to date, thought I would ask to make sure:

Is it true that GPUs like 1070to, 1080, etc can easily be optimally tuned for mining solely through the settings in MSI After Burner?  Meaning... with my rx 470's, I needed to mod the bios with memory straps in order to get good mining performance from them. Is this piece not applicable at all to Nvidia GPUs?

If the above is true, are there some standard starting points for settings in After Burner that you can recommend? I am relatively familiar with AB as I used it for a while with my 470s, but some of the settings typically mentions for Nvidia tuning did not seem familiar from what I did with the 470's, although maybe that's just due to terminology differences.

Citronink, please check your PM... I sent you a message about your Z270-A's.

Regarding the Z370-A... can anyone confirm for sure that these will support 6-8 GPUs like the 270 does?  I'm assuming so since it seems to be just the next generation board of the same family, but looking to verify.  It looks like Newegg does have some in stock currently... However, if I am reading the specs right on the 370, it seems it will ONLY take Coffee Lake CPUs and therefore not backwards compatible with Kaby Lake, which is what I can get a very good deal on.  I need to build another system with an AVX2 CPU to support expansion of my Burst Mining operation but dont really want to pay a premium for a Coffee Lake CPU that literally won't provide any extra benefit over the i5-7600 I am considering.

Yeah, I have heard mixed views on that Asus z170 and i dont want to risk building on a "problem" board for fear of potentially wasting many hours trying to get over 4 GPus running on it.  Plus, I am not lucky to live anywhere near a Microcenter and pretty much every decent piece of gear I've found on there... well, pretty much ever... has been limited to in-store purchase/pickup only. Makes me wonder why they even have a friggin website but whatever lol.

I am also still awaiting an electrician's assessment of my house's capabilities. I am currently running 4 rigs and based on my limited understanding and an analysis of my breaker box, pretty sure I can get a modest rig added in my garage. but that will only work until maybe June as there is no ventilation in there.

Also, if I feel confident I have enough power to add that garage rig, I might just go ahead and build it on that ASRock H81 BTC that I already have. Since I only have 4 1070ti's anyway it wouldn't make a difference and at least I could get it up and running and not have to wait for that 1151 Mobo to arrive.  If I go that route then i could eventually use the 1151 Mobo to build a 7-8x 570 rig.  Lots to think about... crazy thing is that i have partial components to build 3 rigs but not 1 would be "complete". But I think first priority is getting those 1070ti's online.

Believe it or not, the miner supply issue is continuing to worsen.  Not only are essentially all good mining cards gone (off retail market anyway), but now it is nearly impossible to find any mining mobo (that supports 6+ GPUs) and it's even carried over into the PSU market, where 1000-1300W PSUs typically used for mining are mostly gone.  This continues to baffle me, but I guess just goes to prove that the majority of the world still either doesn't know about or doesn't believe in the longevity of crypto. To me, this shortage seems worse than the one back in Q2'17.

The really crazy thing is not that 3rd parties are trying to price gouge (not completely against this actually, as everyone deserves a chance to make a legal buck) but it's the fact that there are a lot of people actually paying these 2x, 3x, even 4x retail prices for components.  Here are a few I have observed lately:

- 6-pack of rx 570 8gb sold on ebay for $3,400! That's close to $600/card lol, or 50% more than retail for a Vega-56 lol.
- Several USED Vega 56's selling on ebay for over $900!
- Many mining Mobo's with retail prices at or below $100 are going for over $300!

I actually ordered an Asus Prime Z270-a from Amazon for $150 but it's not in stock and no indication of when it will be in stock. I actually have another ASRock BTC board but was looking to build my next rig with an 1151 chip i got for half price. Plus, I like the the idea of easily being able to accomodate 7 GPUs with a relatively easy path to an 8th via the M2 slot.  So, end-state goal would be 7-8 1070ti/1080 with my 1500W Plat PSU. of course, I only currently have 4 70ti's but more have to come in stock eventually... don't they? ;-)