The old GC3355 based Gridseed gear is at best break-even unless your power cost is less than 4c / KWH at current difficulty / pricing - but diff is starting to rise noticeably with Innosilicon shipping A4 units.

 Still worth running *barely* in the 2 counties of the USA that have the cheapest power, but getting real marginal even there.
 Definitely still worth running if you have FREE power, but I wouldn't say "worth buying" unless you get a VERY VERY good deal on any of the gear.

 alternate Scrypt coins are at best a tossup with Litecoin for profitability - Doge in particular is a BAD choice as a ton of it is "mined" via merge-mining by Litecoin mining folks.

Interesting, I've never seen a PCI-E 6-pin connector that only used 2 wires though.
On the other hand, I stick with high quality PS that don't scrimp....

 9-)

 Odd, I was mining Scrypt profitably with GPUs for a couple months into the Gridseed era - "private kernels" did NOT kill Scrypt mining.

 Why yes, I DO base my "efficiency" numbers off current conditions - but I don't just look at ONE algorythm that's still new and not optimised for NVIdia, I also look at others that ARE optimied for both and are similar in conditions.
 Keep in mind that I SPECIFICALLY STATED "Genoil's miner" for ETH. Your comments about "that was Dagger" just show you didn't bother to read what I POSTED.

 RX 480 has faster (8000 Mhz effective) but narrower (256 bit) memory than the R9 290 and R9 390 that gives it overall slightly better memory bandwidth than the R9 290 (5000 Mhz effective at 384 bit) but slightly worse than the R9 390 (6000 effective Mhz at 384 bit).
 The RX 480 has 12.5% MORE compute cores (2304 vs. 2048 for exactly a 9:8 ratio) at quite a bit HIGHER clock rate than the R9 390 and even more so than the R9 290.
 RX 480 and R9 390 are both PCI-E 3.0 cards, R9 290 is only PCI-E 2.0, but that has little or no measurable effect on most mining.

 The RX 480 is NOT "close or a bit less than a R9 290" but in fact is a superior card across the board except ONLY for memory bus width (which is made up for and more by it's much faster memory), but it's speed on ETH and ZEC is almost identical, definitely NOT seeing 12.5% better speed much less it's actual 12.5% MORE CORES TIMES IT'S HIGHER CLOCK SPEED which would be the case on a compute-limited algorythm.
 On an actual compute-limited algorythm like SHA256 (which is still used by a few sites like GPUBoss for a benchmark), the RX480 blows the R9 290 and R9 390 completely out of the water.

 Might also want to pay attention to the R9 290x vs the R9 290 as they have the same memory system but the 290x has the same 2304 cores that the RX 480 does - yet doesn't hash any faster than the R9 290 despite having 12.5% more cores.


 Am I saying there isn't room for improvement on the NVIdia side for ZEC mining? Definitely not!
 Am I saying I doubt that NVidia will surpass AMD on ZEC? Given the obvious "heavy memory usage for ASIC resistance" design of ZEC and th very similar memory systems on both sides, definitely.


 
 Yes, I'm fully aware that the FuryX and Nano have 4096 cores and fairly high core clock rates (Higher than most if not all R9 390 as I recall, definitely higher than any R9 290, but not quite as high as the RX480) - which just MAGNIFIES my point as they should be completely destroying anything else AMD on both ETH and ZEC if the protocals were compute-bound, but in actual fact the RX 480 hashes ETH noticeably better and is close or better on ZEC from the benchmarks I've seen posted.
 Apparently HBM 1 has some latency issues that make it quite a bit slower than it's "raw memory access speed" would indicate, which doesn't apply when comparing various cards that all have GDDR 5 to each other.

 LTC has been more stable the last year or so, but NewEgg among meny others doesn't seem to have any problem with selling in BTC at reasonably current pricing.
 On the other hand, it DOES seem odd that the biggest Scrypt mining manufacturer doesn't accept LTC...

 Quite a few bricks out there in the 12v 7A and 12V 10A configuration that were used on Gridseed 80 "Blades".

 The efficiency levels on that potential 15-chip pod though are.... not impressive, seems like it should be eating a lot less power.

 4 pods 1080 GH at 560 watts is a quite close match to the S5 (it IS the S5 at a slight underclock give or take manufacturing variation).

  What would it look like if you put all 15 chips in series on one string?

 You have to crunch the numbers for YOUR situation.

 For me on the rigs I was running ZEC on, it became a tossup a week or so ago, and definitively more profitable a couple days later.

 For others, it may very well be more profitable NOW and for another month to stick with ZEC.


 Profitability on the two is close enough that specific variations can AND DO dictate that there is no "one true answer" to that question other than "it varies".




 
 Not on ZEC, but I've got parts on the way for my next triple-card machine for doing "something else".
 Unfortunately, seems like profitability on all the higher-profit coins has dropped quite a bit the last week, as folks drop out of ZEC in large numbers and go back to "what they were doing a month ago".

EVGA 1300 G2 does NOT fit worth beans in 4 of the 5 A2 units I have - the only one it WOULD fit in would be the 88 MH/s unit I have.

 I have *2* of the 110s running quite nicely on the Seasonic X-1250 which is a quite good fit in place of the original PS.

 NO MODS NEEDED.


 Might depend on which version of the hash boards your 110 has, though - by report some of them had the power connectors set up as EPS 12v 8-pin configuration NOT as PCI-E configuration.

The miner had massive design issues, the chip may or may not have been OK.

 Dunno if they still exist or not.

1070s are consistant 600k PPD folders at stock clocks, bit higher with a mild overclock - 675 would require a pretty serious overclock, and I'm not generally willing to push cards that hard as I prefer LONG TERM reliability.
They are still the sweet point overall for folding IMO.
New rig will be a near-duplicate of the last pure-NVidia triple-card rig I built (different "hard drive" setup, and I went a bit lower on the APU), but I'm planning to take the time to finally get Slackware working for my folding rigs (I am tired of fighting with GRUB issues and problems and PAIN OF TRYING TO CLONE BLOODY GRUB DRIVES) so it might take me a few days to get up and running.

Once I get it working, I'll probably start swapping ALL of my rigs over to that software setup as I have come to HATE bloody GRUB and vastly prefer LILO and the Slackware way of doing things in general (though I probably WILL install apt as that's the only thing about Ubuntu I prefer over Slackware).


 2 x EVGA 1070s (whatever the ones Newegg had on sale at $389 last week were)
 1x Gigabyte "ITX" version 1070 for the third slot to let the middle-slot card get resonable cooling.
    (most of my triple-card rigs have an old low-profile AMD HD7750 in that slow for cooling reasons).
 Asrock Extreme 6+ MB
 AMD A10-7860K
 2 x 2GB DDR3 2133 (I think, I might have gone with DDR3 1800 this time around)
 Seasonic X-850 (I like some leeway on the PS even on good stuff like Seasonic units, gives me room for future upgrades).
 SanDisk Ultra USB3 128GB (Have one of these running on an older 2card system, doesn't seem to be any slower than the SATA drives I have on most of my folding/mining rigs).


 The last rig I think had Gigabyte 2-fan models instead of the EVGAs, but I consider EVGA and Gigabyte pretty much interchangeable.
 Last rig also had an A10-7890K but that turned out to be a bit overkill.

 GPU side of the APU runs the Distributed.net RC5 client via the BOINC MooWrapper project (and collects a few GridCoin), CPUs cores are unassigned to ensure max production from the GPUs.



 Once you factor in the overall SYSTEM cost, the 1060D loses out noticeably to the 1070 - it would be closer on a 6-card rig but would still lose.
 1060D is proably a good choice for someone on a tight budget or that just wants to dabble in folding.

 

 Perhaps not on an RX series card, but a lot of us run the older R9 2xx and 3xx series cards (and a few of us run even older HD 78xx/79xx series cards) that can't DO 1750 Mhz memory and in some cases can't even do 1500.

 Try the real world - BIOS by TheStilt were big mostly because they optimised memory timings and gave VERY NOTICEABLE improvements in actual memory throughput.
 Even before I played with the core clocks, just flashing the BIOS gave me a noticeable hashrate improvement on my set of R9 290s on ETH, while DROPPING the memory clock from the previous optimal 1350 to 1250 after the BIOS change increased hashrate as well.
 *THEN* I started playing with the core clock - and I found the optimal was to max it as high as it could go within the limits of overheating stability.


 The point however is that your "theoretical optimal" ratio has ZERO basis in the real world for some reason, as dropping my R9 290s to 625/1250 or my R9 280x cards to 750/1500 would result in a HUGE hashrate drop from their currently optimal 1100/1250 and 1100/1500 respective settings, which indicates your theory is incomplete or incorrect.


 I can't speak to the RX series cards as I don't own any of those.

125 watts or less per connector?

 Trivial - the PCI-E standard for 8-pin connections uses the *SAME* 3 pins for 12VDC as the 6-pin connection yet is rated by the PCI-E group at 150 watts.
 The actual CONNECTORS used for the PCI-E 6-pin connections are rated at 288 watts - the PCI-E standard is EXCESSIVELY conservative in rating them at 75 watts.



 As far as A7 reliability - there is NO track record for it, though the A6 had a generally good record which implies but does NOT specify that the A7 should as well.

 ETH and ZEC are both memory-limited algorythms - and are where AMD is currently shining once again.
 NoeS, Lyra2v2, and Lbry don't make much - even with the limitations of the memory system on a 1070 being no faster than the AMD RX 470/480 I still see better profitability out of my 1070s on ETH than any of the coins based on those algorythms.


 Scrypt died for GPUs when the Gridseed and later ASIC showed up for it - had nothing to do with AMD vs Nvidia.
 I wasn't around early enough for the Bitcoin GPU days but it appears that the same thing happened there.


 Also, I never specified memory bus width - I'm talking OVERALL memory access, the stuff that keeps the R9 290x hashing at the same rate on ETH as the R9 290 (among other examples).
 The reason the R9 290/390 and such are competative on ETH and ZEC is that their bus width and other memory subsystem design makes up for their much lower memory speed, but the algorythms used in ETH and ZEC are very much memory access limited more than compute limited (or the R9 290x would hash noticeably better than the R9 290 does - on ETH at least where the code has been well optimised, they hash pretty much identically presuming same clocks and same BIOS memory system mods).

 Do keep in mind that for ETH at least there IS a miner (genoil's) that started out as CUDA specific and is well optimised for NVidia, yet the AMD RX series cards match or better the NVidia GTX 10xx cards on that algorythm on both raw performance AND hash/watt and at a much lower price point.
 This isn't the case as much for ZEC (the code is still getting optimised), but it's become apparent that ZEC is yet another "memory hard" algorythm by design and implimentation that does not reward superior compute performance past the point that the memory subsystem starts hitting it's limits (if not as much so as ETH).


 No, I'm not an "ETH baby" - all of my early ETH rigs were Scrypt rigs back in the day (give or take some cards getting moved around) that spent their time after Scrypt went ASIC doing d.net work (and most of the HD 7750s from my scrypt days are STILL working d.net via the BOINC MooWrapper project).


 I don't know where you're comming up with NVidia being 40% more efficient than the RX 4xx series - right now it's looking like actual efficiency is more or less a tossup, but very dependent on what you're actually working on with a given card. Even on Folding where NVidia offers a clear performance lead, the RX 480 is a tossup with the GTX 1070 on PPD/$ at the card level and very close at the system level, and very close on PPD/watt (less than 10% per the data I've seen at the card level).
 I do NOT see a 40% more efficient benefit to NVidia even in one of it's biggest strongholds.

I wish I could make it to a Pattaya meetup.
I have some fond memories of the 5 days my ship spent anchored off there during Westpac '79 when I was in the US Navy.

 

Doesn't match up to reality on the R9 290.

 Best results I get out of my R9 290s on ETH (running ANY of the ETH miners) has been with 1100 core / 1250 memory clocks, at least since I flashed them with one of TheStilt BIOS (before that they overheated long before I could get them to 1000).

 I can't speak to ZEC on them as ALL of my AMD miners are on LINUX and none of the LINUX miners for ZEC are even close to competative on hashrate to the Windows ones.


 I see the same thing on my R9 280x, best ETH results at 1100/1500.

 In both cases, downclocking core OR memory clock result in a decrease in hashrate.



 I suspect the situation is a LOT more complex than you believe, due to interaction of multiple compute units trying to access memory at the same time, wait state timings on the actual memory, etc.

The RX 480 is a tossup with the GTX 1070 on memory access - which is why they're comparable at best in performance on algorythms like the ones ZEC and ETH use despite the GTX 1070 cost being almost twice as much.

 On most compute-bound stuff like Folding@Home, the GTX 1070 blows the RX 480 completely out of the water on raw performance, and is slightly superior on a PPD/$ basis while being much superior on a PPD/watt basis.

 The ONLY compute-bound project I am aware of that the RX 480 is competative with the GTX 1070 on raw performance is the Distributed.Net RC5-72 project - but on that project the R9 290 (for an example I've specifically worked with) blows BOTH of the other cards mentioned completely out of the water on raw keys/sec rate and on keys/sec per $, and is very competitive on a keys/sec per watt basis despite being 3 generations (appx) older.
 The HD 7870 at FOUR generations older and down a few steps on the "high end" level from the R9 290 can almost match the raw performance of the RX480 and GTX 1070 while arguing very well on keys/sec per watt and blowing both away VERY hard on current pricing.

 RC5-72 however only uses a very small part of the GPU specifically including ZERO floating point, and is small enough to fit in CACHE ram when it's run on anything semi-recent of a CPU, and does very little memory access at all. The closest thing in Cryptocoin mining to it is SHA256 (Bitcoin), and even that's not a good comparison 'cause SHA256 uses more memory.


 Nvidia gets the "scraps" on mining because most mining algorythms don't use most of the parts of a NVidia card that makes it competative with AMD cards on general or compute-bound usage at a given price point, and as a result few folks use NVidia cards to mine on which makes them a much lower priority for development.


 It's not "lack of development" ALONE that keeps Nvidia uncompetative on a hash/$ basis for ETH and ZEC (and derivatives using the same algorythms).
 It's the inherent design of the ALGORYTHMS that keep NVidia uncompetative on a hash/$ basis coupled with the higher PRICE of their cards that have competative memory access even when development IS mature.

 For a day or two while the bulk of folks upgrade, then it's back to the same level more-or-less.

And the power usage on ETH for the 1070 vs the RX 480 is also very similar - pretty much a dead heat on a hash/watt basis.

 Unfortunately for ETH or ZEC miners the 1070 is almost twice the cost of the RX480 while not offering comparable hash/$.

 LINUX drivers exist for every AMD card that has a Windows driver - specifically including the entire RX4xx series to date.

 AMD *DOES* tend to be a bit behind on releasing drivers for LINUX vs Windows (Windows is the bigger market after all), but they're not normally SEVERAL MONTHS behind any more.

 I'd refer him to Phil who has direct experience.

 9-)