I don't know why everyone is getting their panties so wadded up about this. ETH developers had close to 72 million coins already pre-mined when mining first started, so that represents nearly 84% of the almost 86 million coins available today. ZEC developers and investors will not get their full reward for 4 years, whereas I don't hear anyone concerned about other coin developers running off. Their investment will only grow as they continue to develop it.

To me this is one of the more fair launches I have seen in that they don't get insta-reward but have skin in the game as well. The first 4 years is what usually makes or breaks a coin anyway, so I see that as a pretty reasonable timeline.

You got to take this in perspective, the only reason it was so high at launch was due to the scarcity, not only the normal scarcity of a new coins coming on line, but compounded by the fact of a slow start with fractions of a ZEC as a block reward for the first many blocks.

Further more, much of this "hype" was probably due the speculative manipulations of traders. Keep in mind just because some insignificant amount of zec, say 0.00001 zec sold at 1,300 BTC, doing the math it comes out to 0.013 btc or roughly $10.00. So compound this over many trades and some well off trader who has access to a lot of early mined zec can spend a couple thousand dollars buying some small trades like this to "set" the market price, then sell into the fomo of others. He/she may have even just bought their own sells for a period of time to establish this fake price point.

So understanding all of this, we can see that the block reward was only 1/10th of what it will eventually be most of this period. Right now it is still around 1/3rd of the eventual 10 zec per block the miners will see (with founders getting the other 2.5).

So ignoring the crazy initial bids of the first day(s), as well as to make the math simple, we had a period when the 1 zec block reward was worth roughly 1 btc.

Now we have ~3 zec block rewards when zec is worth ~0.35 btc, so the full block reward is still roughly worth 1 btc in total.

By the end of the month when the block reward is worth the full 10 zec to  miners, I would expect the price to be somewhere around 0.1 zec/btc, or again roughly 1 btc for the full zec block reward.

I am sure it will bounce around all over and go under that somewhat, but then again miners have already left so the difficulty has gone down slightly and the chances of any given miner to earn zec has also went up slightly as a result. In the end it will usually balance out so miners can make a profit, but no it will not be a instant money making machine.

Thanks for the suggestion. I might play around a bit more, but according to Claymore's last post this version was mainly for the older cards anyway. I don't run anything but the miner and VNC on the rigs once I get them dialed in, so I doubt setting the task priority higher will help much, but I will test it out anyway.

Thanks for the clarification! Great job though on increasing the performance on the older cards. Now I know to focus on tweaking them and not worry about my RX rigs for now, I'll keep them on V2.0.

Added another 5% or so on all my rigs with older cards using the -i 2 switch.

On my Rigs with newer cards, such as the RX series, I actually seen a slight decrease versus version 2.0. I have tried all three intensity levels and even the -i 2 gives a bit less sols and the CPU usage is greater than in version 2.0. I am still playing around as it might have been my lowered clocks, but it seems this version was geared more toward the older cards.

Yes, the newer version of Claymore does use about 5% more power, but also gives around 5% more sols, so it's about even in that regard.

The thing is, when keeping settings the same you can switch from ETH to ZEC and notice about a 10% power drop with no other effort as has already been mentioned, but if you make a custom ZEC WattTool profile you can drop another 10% off this as ZEC will allow you to drop the wattage more than ETH will without crashing. So it is a bit more work, but I modified my launch batch files to run WattTool with GPU initialization files customized to ZEC for lower power and another customized for ETH.

I hope you have some big fans pointed toward that thing... The proximity of all those cards is going to generate massive amounts of heat in a very confined space. I would have kept a bit more separation between the two shelves, but as long as you have good air movement  at all times you should be ok.

There are actually quite a few profitable coins right now to mine compared to say last year at this time. Even with some of the hash leaving ZEC, which is a good thing actually, the ETH, ETC, and EXP prices are high enough to still comfortably make money mining. As others have suggested, once enough hash-power moves back to other coins, the profitability of ZEC will stabilize somewhat. Sure the windfall profits are gone, but you can still ROI on a rig in under 6 months, which IMHO is still quite good when compared to equal opportunities outside of the Crypto world.

Yes, from what I recall a black freeze screen indicates core issues and a blue freeze screen indicates its the RAM being pushed too aggressively. Either back down the clocks a bit or up the voltage a smidgen.

Edit: Seen your update, even if it appears fine now if you haven't made any changes to rectify the original cause you may run into future issues. I would still back off slightly or adjust the voltage up a bit to head off future troubles.

Yes, indeed I meant Amps. Thank you for pointing that out. Corrected.

If you have $3,000-$4,000 to spend I would separate your mining and gaming PC into two different rigs. You can build a nice 5-6 GPU rig for about half that budget that uses a lower end CPU, 4-8 GB ram and a small SSD. There are a few good socket 1150 mobos that work well as a mining platform that won't be a good gaming candidate. The famed ASRock H81 Pro BTC board (hard to find) is one example that can run 6 GPU's. There are even a couple that can support up to 7 GPUs (such as the MSI Z97 Gaming 5).

You can get RX470 or RX480 AMD GPUs for around $179-$229 each, with the price difference depending mainly on the amount of on-board memory (4 GB or 8 GB). This would set you back (rig and GPUs) around $1,600-$1,800 but you could always start out smaller and buy additional GPUs at a later point to save a few $$. For the dedicated miner you can construct an open air frame as cooling is the most essential feature when you have this many cards in close proximity to each other. You would need USB powered risers to bring the cards up and away from the mobo, but these can be found for around $8 each.

Then spend the remaining funds on a higher quality PC with a i7 processor more ram, a large SSD and so on. Plus this way you don't need to avoid the Z170's mobos which can be great for gaming rigs. You can outfit it with two AMD RX 480's with 8GB onboard memory and use them in cross-fire mode when gaming. When you are not gaming you can utilize these GPUs for supplemental mining. I wouldn't go with more than two GPUs in an enclosed case that you would probably want for your gaming rig.

So with a little effort I believe you could have two nice rigs, one geared to dedicated mining and the other geared toward gaming which would give you 6 GPUs full-time and up to 8 during off-hours to point toward mining. I think with careful shopping you could stay right around that $3,000 point too, maybe stretching a bit to $3,200.

Motherboard manufacturers recommend no more than three GPU's per motherboard unless they have additional 4-pin Molex connectors like the H81 BTC or variants. Even in this case, I still use powered risers. Get the USB type variants like this one:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Slim-PCI-E-Express-1X-to-16X-Riser-Adapter-USB-50cm-Cable-w-MOLEX-Power-Adapter/222148816398?_trksid=p2047675.c100005.m1851&_trkparms=aid%3D222007%26algo%3DSIC.MBE%26ao%3D2%26asc%3D39823%26meid%3D676f67ca3aba4bd2b4541b1552a49c19%26pid%3D100005%26rk%3D1%26rkt%3D6%26sd%3D191856126605

I like this one as it has a nice adapter that terminates into a 4-pin Molex. Do not hook more than two of these up to a single Molex run to your PSU. If you do get the ones that come with a SATA to Molex adapter cables, toss those adapters out and plug your 4-pin Molex connectors directly into the riser board itself.

As far as your technical answer, the PCIe slot can supply up to 75 watts to the GPU and remain within specification. At three GPUs you are pushing up to 225 watts through the mobo, not counting its usual load with CPU, Fans, memory, etc. Now this is peak value and depending upon many factors, including the card make/model, algorithm you are mining, temperature of the card and its environment, overclocking, and so on, this value may be close to peak or a fraction thereof. So since it will be impossible to properly figure all of this out without lab type bench equipment, you would be advised to follow best practices.

So in the end it is up to you. You can follow the advice of the people who have had bad experiences and have learned from their mistakes or choose to wait until someone gives you that precise value you are hoping for and risk the consequences in the meantime.

Yes, mining is inherently dangerous, although it is an often overlooked aspect of the hobby/business. I am surprised more of us haven't burnt our house's down...

So while I am aware of the danger, I try to minimize the risks. Use quality components, do some research and figure out the maximum loads for wires, etc. For example, a SATA adapter can only supply 4.5 Amps (54 watts) to a powered riser whereas a 4-pin Molex connector can supply 9 Amps (108 watts) more than satisfying the 75 watt specification. Details like this do matter and knowledge is fire prevention.

Also, try not to keep you miners in areas with flammable materials, curtains, rugs, sheets on bed, etc. I have my miners in either the basement or in the garage on cement floors with only hard (Sheetrock) or cement walls nearby. I try to keep anything that may easily catch fire at least 6 feet away as sparks will fly a long ways. Also keep smoke detectors in the vicinity and of course outside your bedroom(s).

What mikhan said...

These cost a few bucks, but they have made my life infinitely easier when managing multiple rigs remotely: http://www.ebay.com/itm/0ship-HDMI-EDID-DDC-Plug-Headless-Linux-Windows-Mac1920x1200-emulator-dummy-USA-/191567271934?hash=item2c9a4c97fe:g:bcgAAOSw~OdVb-7m



Sure you can do the resister short trick to simulate a monitors presence, but you are still stuck with low resolution. These are well worth the expense if you have more than a few rigs. He offers discounts on bulk orders, but you need to message him.

Well if you are OK with taking you pay in ETH, you could simply point that percentage to a pool using your own wallet address. Say you were paid 5% to maintain a 10,000 MHash farm, you would point 500 MHash to your own address. Of course you would need to explain this to the owners and get their approval, but I would think it would make no difference to them as they need to pay you one way or another.

My shares appear to have gone up in lockstep with my hash-rate, as seen on the pool side. My payments have also gone up too, but trying to pin a definitive cause and effect on anything right now is hard as not only is difficulty still rising, but the block rewards are gradual increasing as well due to the slow-start. Once we are past 20,000 blocks and the difficulty settles down we will be able to understand the patterns and relationships better. I think right now we tend to read into things too much when there is really nothing abnormal going on at all.

As long as fixing doesn't decrease the sols anymore If it is a trade-off between the cpu running a bit harder or losing sols, I would rather take the former. Of course I spend the extra $10 and put more than the cheapest Celeron I could find in my rigs, so it is not as big of an issue.

Wow I read the thread title and it was like a blast from the past. Yes, dogecoin is pretty much done from the home mining perspective as it is now merged mined with other scrypt coins such as litecoin with industrial ASICs.

You can buy it pretty cheaply though if you want to hold some, it does tend to do a pump and dump every so often. You might be able to double or triple your money in the next couple of months, although I wouldn't risk anymore than just pocket change on such a gamble as it could also just as easily go to 0.

Yes, without powered risers any more than 3 GPUs will exceed your motherboard's capacity to feed them. While a good chunk of wattage does indeed go through the 8-pin connector, enough remains going through the PCIe bus to cause issues with more than 3 cards. Personally I never run more than 2 cards directly off the mobo, and most of the time it is either just one or they are all on powered USB risers.

The USB powered risers can be found easily for under $10 each, often less in multiples, so trying to save $10 or so when $100's or even $1,000+ of equipment is at risk does not make a lot of sense.

I'll add that I learned this the hard way way back in early Bitcoin/Scrypt  mining days as one non-powered ribbon cable got some warm it started smoking and melting until I heard a loud pop and the rig shut off. (I didn't notice the smoking and melting until after the rig popped). Another thing to look out for is if you use the Molex to 8-pin adapters, as these too are a weak link and can overheat. I had a couple of these melt down on me too. In both cases, they ran for day/weeks until the trouble first appeared. I am just glad it didn't happen in the middle of the night and the internal circuitry was able to shut them down.

Normally computers are pretty safe and are designed that way when running under there designed intention. Building hobbled together rigs and then pushing them to and in some cases beyond their limit is a sure recipe for disaster.

TLDR: get the powered risers.

It looks like they "just" started paying out again. My balance updated on the pool page and I have a 0 of 24 confirm deposit waiting on Polo.