Yes, servethehome.com has whole series on how to setup docker to mine for Monero.  Obviously, mining Monero on server CPUs, but it works.  I tried it for a little while earlier this year.  They also have a guide on using nvidia GPUs in docker to mine Monero.  I still have the VMs laying dormant on my vmware cluster.

Check it out:

https://www.servethehome.com/?s=monero

Yes, if you want to use the coins tab, you would put your individual pools in a Pool Group, and then select the Pool Group on the Profit Switching tab after checking the Custom Pools option.  As for separate wallets, it really depends on the pool.  Some pools require you to mine to an external wallet, and many times you can just use an exchange wallet.  Then some pools, like say Suprnova.cc, collect the coins for you until you are ready to cash out to an external wallet or exchange.

What is best to do for most profit?  That really depends on your priorities.  If you want to exchange for BTC right away, then using Nicehash, zpool, or MPH with the auto convert turned on will just go ahead and convert your mined alt coins to BTC or another coin of your choosing.  It's my personal belief that you will not get the "most profit" doing it this way unless you have a ton of hashrate, and even then, I've written reasons why you may still miss out on the "most profit" earlier in this thread.  You don't have to convert just to BTC, you can do other coins.
 In MPH, you have to tell it what to convert to on the website, and zpool you have to use the -p coin=XXX custom command line option.  You'd have to apply this at the Managed Software options, but it could do funny things if you switch between different Online Services... so it's probably best to stick with conversion to BTC at zpool, but it's doable with Awesome Miner.

If you are not interested in converting directly to BTC right away, you can use MPH and leave the auto convert turned off on their website.  This way you will accumulate a lot of interesting coins that are the "most profitable" from time to time.  If you keep feeding those coins to an exchange like Bittrex, they have an instant sell feature in their Labs section where you can probably sell for slightly more profit than letting MPH do it for you.  The reason being is that MPH waits until you and the pool has enough coins to send to an exchange, where you have no control over the timing, and the exchange may not be as favorable as you automating it going to an exchange and letting the exchange do it for you.

And lastly, you could just mine at MPH or a custom Pool Group and just accumulate interesting coins that are the "most profitable" from time to time, and then exchange them whenever you want.  If you like to "hold" coins, this is the best way.  For instance, DGB could be "most profitable" for about 30 minutes, and then it may not be again for hours or days.  But you will have DGB that you can play with at the exchanges to setup sell orders at the profit level you want.  If DGB hits that level again you already have the sell order waiting at the exchange.  If it doesn't... well you are holding and then a week, month, or years later decide what to do with those coins.

Unless you are running long distances (we are talking about 100-200 feet) it usually doesn't matter.  But, I would suggest Cat 5e minimum these days.

6 pin PCIe connectors can carry more than 75 watts.  18 gauge wire can theoretically carry up 10 amps each. There are 3 leads that are +12V on the 6 pin PCIe connector... so theoretically 12V x 10A x 3 feeds = 360 watts.

No manufacturer uses that maximum though, but that gives you an idea of what is possible.

I have a question Kingcarsen...  are you staking your pre-mined coins?

That's not the scenario for miners at all.  Miners don't have a price point for the coin to wait for... they can either dump for profits now, to offset their capital investment, or hold and wait for higher prices at any time.  At no time does a miner operate at a "loss" except when electricity costs more than the revenue the mining is bringing in.



This is very true.  I think Alan Greenspan called it "irrational exuberance" prior to the markets crashing in 2008.




And I agree with a little bit of sanity checking... my only disagreement is when people say just buying the coin is a better way, and they don't take the full life cycle of a miner into account when trying to show the calculations.  Ignoring resale of equipment is not painting the correct picture between mining versus just buying a coin.



People have been saying this about Bitcoin for years now, but people still mine it for a profit.  Granted, the barrier to entry is a lot higher now, as you have to continuously purchase better and better ASICs.  But, as long as there are PoW coins, there will be miners.

This is also disingenuous.  Traders also bought and sold at those price milestones as well.  Very few people actually bought in at $7 or less and held for long term.

Gamers will still buy GTX 10 cards.  The market will determine their value on the secondary market, and that price will fluctuate depending on how many miners are dumping to upgrade or to get out of mining completely.  Heck, gamers are still buying GTX 900 cards if the price is right, and they are up to 2 years old at this point.

This is a valid hypothetical scenario... but only one of a thousand different hypothetical scenarios.  What happens if you buy a coin, and it never goes back to the price that you bought it for?

Which profit mining services do you have enabled?  (Nicehash, zpool, Miningpoolhub, Miningrigrentals, or custom pool groups?)

There are two methods that AM uses to determine profitability... on the Coins tab, this is the whattomine.com list of profitability based on your benchmarked hashing rates.  Those rates need to be set in a profit profile, and applied to your profit switching miner.  If you aren't mining pools directly, then using the Coins tab to determine "what is most profitable" will not always be correct.

The second method is if you have Nicehash, zpool, miningpoolhub and miningrigrentals enabled in profit switching, then AM will also use those services (profit can be found on the Online Services tab) in addition to the Coins tab to determine which is the most profitable.

If Zpool says mining lbry is more profitable on it's service (Online Services tab) than what you see on whattomine.com (Coins tab) then AM will use Zpool's profit information and point your rigs to it.

I don't disagree with the warnings for newer miners, but I disagree with the calculations people provide in those arguments.  The disagreement comes from the advice that buying a coin is a better prospect than mining a coin, and not taking into account at least *some* capital recovery when selling the GPUs, and motherboards on the secondary market.  Those proceeds from selling old GPUs will either bolster overall profits when the miner quits, or will go towards upgrading to more powerful/efficient equipment.

I do agree that new miners thinking they will recoup their capital investment costs (not ROI) in less than 6 months are gone for now.  They must be prepared to stick it out for a year or more at this point... and no one knows what the future will bring.

I wouldn't put more than 1200 watts through one of the breakout boards.  Spread out the PCIe connectors across both when you set it up.

Since you bought nVidia GPUs, you should look at the algos/coins that they do better.  Etherium is fine on nVidia, but equihash coins like Zcash, Zencash, Zclassic, HUSH are better.  Library is also a good coin for nvidia... skunkhash coins, tribus coin like Denarius, and plenty more.  Just go to whattomine.com put in the number of your 1060 GPUs and see what is the most profitable today.

It's jut one PSU, but it has two connectors, so the load is spread out between those two connectors and breakout boards.

I disagree, but we can agree to disagree.

There are still plenty of miners who will snatch up your GPUs at a reduced cost because they have cheap power or are willing to stick it out.  And the gaming market is much larger than the mining market, and gamers are always on the lookout for a bargain GPU.

Many miners will buy 2 or more ATX power supplies to spread the load.  Buying two 750W ATX power supplies can be cheaper than a higher wattage single ATX power supply.  Also, many miners are switching to server power supplies with breakout boards, as they are designed to run in challenging environments.  But if you run a server PSU near it's maximum loads the tiny fans can be loud, so make sure your rigs will be away from your living areas if you use these.

I think most miners also calculate the resale value of their GPUs as a hedge which your calculations don't account for above.  Granted this summer has been an anomaly when it comes to GPU resale pricing, but even getting 50% of the original value of your GPU a year after purchase is probably do-able.

So... add an extra $1000 from that initial $2000 GPU purchase investment.

It is a bit disingenuous of the PBOC to ban IOCs and Bitcoin exchanges while turning a blind eye to the Forex market in China, which is big business there.  Many common people put their savings into Forex trading instead of banks there, and bitcoin is just another currency.   I think bitcoin was just an easier target to tackle by the PBOC before cracking down on Forex later.

My 6x 1080ti rig is easily the most stable rig, running on Win10 for 30+ days until yesterday when the power cable mysteriously came loose from it's 2400W server power supply.

My 6x 1070 rig was also very stable  but a week ago, I was having lockup issues while I was profit-switching.  I put it back on one coin and its been stable again.  It's running on a 1200W server power supply.  I'm wondering if the 1200W supply is having issues when it's being stressed at the high end on algos that require a bit more power.  It's been running 4 days pretty stable on equihash right now, so I'm going to leave it.

There are many threads here (use the search feature), blog posts, youtube videos, and more out there.  Google is your friend.