Ubuntu 14.04 has been the long-running "standard" for most mining under LINUX though 16.04 is starting to supplant it.

 I've got one working folder rig on a home-rolled XUbuntu (couldn't find a working download link for XUbuntu 14.04 so I ended up rolling my own, as XFCE is INFINITELY easier to work with than Trinity especially for being able to autorun stuff AFTER X is up), just haven't gotten around to figuring out the "much more painfull" NVidia-based LINUX tools to be able to set fanspeed and optimally overclock stuff before I move the whole FARM over (I've been running AMD too long, I KNOW that stuff but the NVidia stuff seems to be noticeably more convoluted to get working).

 Once I get THAT rig working to my satisfaction and the fanspeed/OC stuff set up, it's TRIVIAL to clone it using standard LINUX tools for the other rigs.


 What I wish is that MSI would port Afterburner to LINUX. SO MUCH EASIER to set stuff up with that than any of the available LINUX tools I've been able to find.

I had to do that "mount the SD card on a linux system" edit thing on my A2s when I got them from Zoomhash - they had the *last 2* octals of the IP address written on them, but NOT the FIRST 2 - and it turns out they were all on the Class B subnet range and were ALL OVER that subnet.

 I've never been able to SSH into them - but they've been rock-solid reliable since I got them set up on the RIGHT subnet for *MY* network.

 Mine are getting a bit less than that but I'm running them at stock clocks for the most part, they DO seem to respond positively to bumping the memory clockspeeds up but I've not gotten series about tuning them yet.

On the "products" page of your website, your "giant" model is listed as 40 watts power consumption.

 Also, why do you use such a HUGE fan on a miner you list here as 270w or less ballpark consumption?

I run the same Afterburner custom fan profile on my EVGA 1070s that I run on the Gigabytes (I have 2 of the EVGA FTW 2-fan cards, the Gigabytes are a mix of 2-fan and 3-fan Windforce OC models and one of their ITX cards).

 I don't see any higher temps on the EVGA as I see on the Gigabyte when used in the same cooling situation.

 They MAY have tried to set their DEFAULT fan profile to not run the fans hard enough - but that is an issue for ANY card used in 24/7 operation like mining.

(1) Ubuntu 14.04 and it's direct derivatives like XUbuntu 14.04 seem to be BY FAR the most supported, but 16.04 is starting to get some traction now that AMD has drivers that actually WORK under the newer version.

 (2) Very much a matter of opinion, but since very few other distributions are supported at all I'd have to go with Ubuntu for this as well.

Played with clock settings a bit on my 1070 rigs, memory seems to affect the hashrate a little but core clock doesn't seem to matter.

Looks like ZEC is intensely memory-subsystem limited, like ETH but perhaps a bit more so.


 Also played with running the DNet client (which is intensely core-limited and uses almost no memory) on one machine for a while - didn't change sol rate noticeably, nor power consumption, but the dnet side was VERY VERY slow.

Nothing new to any of those ideas - but you'll find that "economy of scale" works AGAINST any of them being less than just paying the power company for almost ALL situations (the exceptions are generally so far off the grid it would cost MANY THOUSANDS to get power to that location).

 Also, as you have noticed, the STARTUP capitol costs are quite high for any form of "alternative" energy on a single-user scale, which is what makes many of those forms like wind and solar prohibitive in most cases.

The RX 480 vs the RX 470 generally comes down to "what is on sale right now" - the performance is close since the cards are so similar, and the price is usually very close to the same ratio as the performance.

 Both are a ton more efficient than the R9 390 or R9 290, though the x90 cards can do a little higher hashrate on some coins they also eat a TON more power.


 The other tradeoff is "can you get a 290 or 390 at low enough cost to make UP for the efficiency" - the RX series didn't exist yet when I got my R9 290s (and 280xs) or I'd probably have gone for the newer card, as teh cost I paid for my 2xx series cards was very close to what the RX series is running now (but I've had the cards long enough they're pretty much paid for, and my electric is cheap enough they're still highly profitable).

What Scrypt miner did 146 MH/s?

 Closest ones I know about would be the Innosilicon A2 at 110 or the Alcheminer at 250 (Titans were 300+ IIRC if all the cubes and die were working).

It's all about "is there still going to BE a market for our ASIC machine in sufficient demand several months to a year from now to repay the $MILLIONS in cost for an ASIC company can get the machine designed and built".


 I'm still a bit supprised at the *multiple* X11 designs that showed up this year.

 No and I have some doubts there will be.
 Unfortunately.


 Given how unstable the ZCash mining situation is right now, I wouldn't even think of trying to build an "optimal ZCash miner machine" - could very easily be a new "more optimised" miner show up the next week or even next DAY that works a ton better for the other side of the Red/Green debate and throws ALL calculations of optimal off.

 375.90 is junk.
 I made the mistake of trying that one on my new 3-card build.
 Makes the ENTIRE machine unstable, lots of artifacts, even though it's running with an AMD A10 and even when the screen is hooked to the APU it gets artifacts under that junk driver (the AMD-run display should NOT be affected by a NVidia driver at all).

 I think most of my machines, possibly all of them, are running 372.70 'cause it WORKS and is stable.


 This kind if issue is why I REFUSE to install that "Nvidia Experience" junk, or allow the AMD equivilent to do "automatic updates" - too often the "update" BREAKS WORKING MACHINES.

 It's ASIC resistant, and while it uses a completely different algorythm it seems to be about as GPU resistant as XMR (Monero) - I suspect that a lot of the current reason CPUs are being fairly competative is that the code for them is more mature than the code available for GPUs, though both are still pretty new and raw and probably not well optimised.

There's a Nicehash varient (originated from flypool I think but Nicehash seems to have turned around and re-released it or did the same thing) that supports stratum, seems to work on pretty much any pool BUT that propriatary one with the MAJOR payout issues.

 Been stable on all of my NVidia Win7 based rigs except the one that's not stable on ETH (it's tossup on ETH or ZCash for stability on THAT rig, which seems to be having some sort of hardware issue I've not yet had the time to dig into and fix).

 It IS picky about driver version - do NOT use the latest 375.70 driver version or the one before that, makes the entire system VERY unstable on both 950/960 based systems AND 1070 based systems. I've had to revert those to 372.70 which has proven to be VERY stable for all mining type work *AND* gets along with my AMD APU/GPU drivers.

 The coin itself doesn't seem to be a scam, it's just early days and not a lot of time was given to write good miner software - YET - and the pools are still having issues, likely in part due to the BROKEN WALLET issues.
 On the other hand, that one "propriatary" pool DOES seem to be somewhat scammy - no clue why they decided to support a non-standard protocal for interfacing to their pool if they're NOT trying to scam folks.

 Genoil, in particular, is using "solver" code from other folks and hasn't taken the time to "roll his own miner" yet (I wish he would, it would probably work a lot better and be a lot more reliable).

 I'd really like to see that, and a miner out of wolf0, so Claymore has some competition when he releases something. 8-)




 Nice part all of the "swing" of hashrate into ZCoin has made my OTHER rigs noticeably more profitable too. 8-)

There is no such thing as a ASIC immune coin.
There are coins that are ASIC "resistant" but most of them are just too small a market for any ASIC maker to bother with.

 Right now, the hot non-ASIC coins seem to be Zcash and Ethereum.

 Price seems to have stabelised again - and a lot of PPD seems to have moved over to Zcash while it's hot (including my Win-based machines, as I can't get a LINUX based ZCash program running for anything).

 I'm sure most will be back soon, can't see ZEC maintaining it's current crazy pricing vs. BTC

 Looks suspiciously like the same version http://zcash.flypool.org/ came up with - which was modified from the nicehash code which "borrowed" from previous code.

 Lotta "incest" going on in the ZCash miner world right now - optimally leading to a good high-performance works on all miner for a change!

LTC has been pretty stable around $4 (with a brief surge to $5ish) for a year now.

 I don't see ANY issue with an A4 achieving ROI - just won't be in 3-4 months like some miners managed in WAY BACK days.


 If you want high pricing, consider the original GridSeed 80 blade units at $3000 - those probably NEVER DID achieve ROI for anyone, and I suspect most of the ones that sold at $1600 a couple months later never achieved ROI either.

 I don't anticipate an A4 managing to ROI in the "current conditions 9 months or so with very very cheap electric" as the network hashrate and difficulty will climb once they start shipping in numbers, but I DO anticipate them achieving ROI in 12-18 months timeframe as long as LTC pricing doesn't collapse (and right now, it's CLIMBING to follow Bitcoin's recent rise, as usual).


 If you don't like the high A4 pricing though, and your electric is cheap enough, A2s will be profitable for quite a while longer (just not AS profitable as over the last yeah or so). For that matter, the Gridseeds are still marginally profitable if you have VERY VERY cheap enough electric, though I suspect not for a lot longer.

LiteGuardian has always worked well for me.
As I recall, they were one of the few pools that never had issues with the Alcheminer....