Nice project! Good to hear you got all 8 cards working. I will definitely check out your YouTube channel as well when you post it.

May I ask if you are running a Skylake or Kabylake processor on the motherboard? Reason I ask is I heard that some boards have had issues running too many GPUs with Kabylake processors.

I'll add another thought, since Eth was trading very close to $220 not too many hours ago, you would be more likely to ROI in less than 4 months simply buying now during the dip. If it would drop to $110 you could get 2 ETH and you would have a very good and realistic chance of doubling (or better) your money in that same time period, if not much sooner.

Again, I just cannot see how investing in mining contracts at this point in time (or ever) makes any sense. Even buying 1.5 Eth (@ $145 current price each) there is a much greater chance of Eth hitting $300 in 4 months than there is for a mining contract to earn your ROI back in the same time-frame, much less doubling your money.

Just say no to mining contracts, they are designed to make the cloud providers rich not you.

The problem with those calculators is they do not take into account the future total network hash-rate and difficulty for the coin you are mining. So if it says you will make $60/mo at this point in time, by next month it may be down to $30/mo, then $15/mo and $7.5/mo etc. The difficulty is not a static number and will fluctuate with the coins price as more miners on-board and join the mining train for the "free" money. As long as a coins price continues to increase, this can keep mining profitable, but should we get a severe and prolonged correction, say ETH drops to sub $50 for several months, the difficulty is much more slower to come down and sometimes these cloud mining contracts do not even manage to break-even.

In the end you are essentially speculating on the continued price appreciation of Ethereum, so in that respect you might be better off just buying and holding the coins than get stuck in a mining contract. These same challenges exist even for people who physically own mining hardware, however they always have the option of turning them off and selling the hardware, whereas a mining contract is fixed and you are locked in for the duration. Also some cloud mining providers have a stipulation that once the coin in no longer breaking even, meaning you are not making more than the expenses to run (which can be arbitrarily inflated to suit their needs) they can cancel the contract without any further obligation to you.

Again, imho if you are investing you would be better off waiting for a dip (which we have right now) and purchasing the coins directly as it would have a much greater chance of success than purchasing a mining contract. If you need more convincing just go over to the Zcash forums and look at all the people who got trapped in contracts and will never see their investment back, they will be lucky in some cases to get even 10% of their investments back. There may be a few instances where some lucky timing of events a few people somewhere made money off buying a mining contract, but in most cases they only work out well for the cloud provider and not the investor.

With the inflated price of hardware the average 6x GPU rig has went from around $1600 (6 RX480/580's, 1000 W PSU, CPU, Mobo, SDD, Risers, etc.) to nearly $2,000. Considering the network hash-rate and difficulty is also increasing at a rapid rate, any sustained downtrend in the coin prices will be hitting these recent sub-optimal rigs hard, and even be putting the hurt on ROI times for the more optimal rigs as well.

The current "correction" may be temporary, but should Ethereum drop back to the $40-50 range (which was excellent profitability just 2 months ago) , the ROI on the above rig would exceed 365 days, or one year. The problem with such a rapid run-up in price and the concurrent on-boarding of new miners makes it almost mandatory for the price to continue to inflate at the same rate to keep up. Once this stops the effects are compounded and those rosy 60-70 day ROI projections are going to quickly turn into year+ endeavors.

The purpose of this post is not to necessarily discourage getting into mining, but more to caution against just blindly throwing money at anything can can produce a hash-rate and think it is going to pay off. RX560's will be hard pressed soon to even turn a profit. Wait a month or two and I suspect a lot mining hardware will be plentiful and cheap on ebay and elsewhere.

I left Dwarfpool a long time ago just for these "irregularities".

Sad to see things haven't changed much since then and people continue to blindly mine coins that promise decentralization at these Big "centralized" pools, just because they are big.

Interesting reading the comments in this thread, both from 2 months ago and also those that are more recent.

An interesting theme that I picked up on is most people feel that 1: Ethereum can't do this because that would mean Bitcoin would need to be worth x price. And probably more dominate 2: Ethereum can't do this because that would mean it's marktetcap would be worth more than Bitcoin.

What I find amusing is that a lot of people feel there is like some unbreakable law somewhere that an "Alt Coin" cannot possibly overtake Bitcoin, ever! Also, the false assumption that only one coin can rise, or more precisely if one were to rise too much that would be Bitcoin would need to fall like there is some finite amount of money in cryptocurrency or something.

My thoughts are that yes, Ethereum can very well be worth $1000 each, and it may even happen this year yet. Bitcoin also may remain top dog and be worth $10,000 each, or to the horror of many, maybe it will only be $3,000 and second place to Ethereum's market cap.

As the final chuckle, the recent comment even with Ethereum recently seeing $200 in that "oh no, to reach $1000 that would mean it would need to be 5x what it is worth now". Do you people not keep abreast of what is happening. Not too long ago (5-6 months) Ethereum was trading at under $7 and it recently spiked close to $210 meaning it has seen a 30x rise in just the last 6 months, so tell me why is that extra 5x rise this year so impossible again?

Yes, as Phil said those 240 Volt 30 Amp PDUs will need to derate to 24 amps maximum when used 24/7. The APC has two banks, or busses internally, each one can safely supply up to 12 amps so you would not need the separate power bars. I do believe Dell also makes a larger unit as the APC with two internal busses if you prefer that brand.

The whole thing you can probably run eight 5-6 GPU rigs off of safely, maybe 6 rigs if you do 7x GPU rigs. I am not sure if the Dell PDU's have monitoring, but the APC has both a web interface and a digital display on the bar itself cycling though bank one amps, bank two amps, and total amps. It can also be configured to trip if one or both banks over-current, or even if an individual outlet on the bar over-currents.

The 30 amp outlet Phil linked is also the same one to use for the 30 amp APC PDU, it is best to run dedicated circuits for the supply power and if possible use metal conduit. In any case, you will need to run at least 10 gauge wire if the run is under 50' from your breaker panel, and maybe down to 8 gauge if much further than that. You will need two conductors connected to the breaker and a dedicated ground wire.

As far as the chance of catching fire, no it is not necessarily higher, but the point I was making is that rigs plugged directly into a 240V high amperage circuit could potential get hot and short but yet not trip the breaker thus leading to a higher potential of fire. It is always best practice to try and keep a lower rated breaker as close to the rigs as possible  to help prevent this. By using a quality PDU, most of them will have breakers rated for much lower than the 30 amps than would be required to trip the main panel breaker.

Other benefits of using a PDU include surge suppression, delayed start of each outlet if for say a power loss (I space my starts 5 seconds apart to minimize startup load if that should happen) remote off/on of each outlet, logging of power usage, and can even be configured to send an email or SMS if something happens. Some of the features will depend on the brand/Model of PDU you buy, but many of these units were pulled from data-centers and were probably $800-$1200 when new so are usually pretty capable.

There are a few different styles as you have seen, but for most home outlets I have been using something like these: http://www.homedepot.com/p/Leviton-20-Amp-250-Volt-Straight-Blade-Grounding-Plug-Black-White-5466-C/301304708

You can also buy the matching receptacle. http://www.homedepot.com/p/Eaton-Commercial-Grade-20-Amp-Straight-Blade-Single-Receptacle-with-Side-Wiring-White-1876W-BOX/203492426

While they look similar to a 110V 20 amp plug and receptacle, the blades are reversed, with the positions switched so a 110V will not fit a 220V and vise versa. Since you will use only half the amperage when running at 220V then you would at 110V, you can probably run 4 or 5 rigs per 20 amp circuit.

An alternative and what I also do, is run a few L6-30R twist lock receptacles to the garage feed off a 30 amp 240V breaker and then plug a PDU into it. This way you can pull up to 24 total amps safely with the entire PDU while further protecting each individual outlet down to a more safe 4-5 amps. The danger with the first method without a PDU is that the circuit would need to pull close to 4800 watts before tripping the breaker, and in the case of only one or two rigs would most likely mean they would be on fire first....

These PDU's and cords are often used in server setups and both the PDU's and server cords can be found on ebay. Here is the first result I could find, simply to illustrate what I am talking about as I do not know or vouch for the seller: http://www.ebay.com/itm/APC-AP7841-Rack-PDU-Metered-Power-Strip-Distribution-Unit-30A-200-208-230-240V-/322503049461?hash=item4b16ae00f5:g:duwAAOSw~AVYqTn2

I do have a couple of APCs like the one listed, and they can be individually turned on/off via a web interface as well as they can individually trip if the outlet would overload at a much lower amperage as stated earlier. If you plan to do many rigs this is probably the better way to go.

The server cords with the correct ends to fit the PDU also can be found on eBay (again first result I found, no affiliation): http://www.ebay.com/itm/6-foot-IEC-320-NEMA-C13-C14-10A-18AWG-PDU-to-CPU-AC-Power-Cords-/262844530164?hash=item3d32c13df4:g:BsQAAOSwtfhYnCQc

Actually undervolting your cards is good in all cases where it does not reduce the hash-rate, even with free electricity.

Undervolting will reduce overall power consumption, which in turn will reduce the heat produced (can be an issue even in a dorm room), as well as reduce the needed power capacity of your electrical system. Most free electricity arrangements usually only have minimal circuits to use, so reducing the overall wattage a rig uses will maybe allow for more rigs to be installed.

Go into group policy editor (type GPEDIT into Cortana and select the match Edit Group Policy), then expand:
 
Local Computer Policy -> Computer Configuration -> Administrative Templates -> Windows Components -> Windows Update (way at the bottom)

Under Windows Update you will find a policy to "Do not include drivers with Windows Updates".

Set this to enabled and apply.

You might also want to look at: Configure Automatic Updates (I set it to enabled and option "2") as well as the other polices to see what works for you.

This will not completely lock out the windows update mechanism, but it seems to have minimized the worse behaviors of it at least for me. I still get notified of updates but this way I can choose when to apply the non-driver updates on my schedule.

Yep, from what I and others have gathered so far if you have Samsung memory use the 1:xxxx timings, if you have Micron memory use the 2:xxxx settings.

No, no signature check issues at all. Windows 10 64-bit and Crimson ReLive Edition 17.4.3

arrogance

    :  an attitude of superiority manifested in an overbearing manner or in presumptuous claims or assumptions
    : an insulting way of thinking or behaving that comes from believing that you are better, smarter, or more important than other people


The faulty assumption you thought someone was mistaking in talking about virtual memory instead of virtual machine just because they both can be abbreviated as VM and your statement of getting a kick out of this perceived mistake is the very definition of the display of arrogance. Implying someone has displayed arrogant behavior is not inferring any insult has happened, just pointing out a fact. The rest of my response was simply to clarify upon this fact.

You might want to have a look here: https://www.techpowerup.com/vgabios/

They have the best collection of original GPU BIOS images around.

That's funny, I bought some of the MSI Armor RX580 8 GB as well and I am getting 30.5 Mh/s on each of them mining ETH while drawing about 105 watts/card measured from the wall, GPU-z shows 75-80W. May I ask how you modded them? I simply copied the 1:1750 strap to the 1:2000 and I am running 1125/2275 clocks with 0.900 core voltage. They work just as good as the RX480's, not any better but not really any worse either.

I was selling all my 2 GB cards as fast as I could in the second half of last year as I knew the DAG limit was coming, but ever since ZEC came out in late October I quit selling and put them back to work. I think I have made more in profit mining Zcash than I would have selling them anyway, so now I will probably just run them into the ground or toss them if/when ZEC mining with becomes unprofitable. All of them have paid for themselves multiple times already, and there seems to always be a new coin that you can squeeze some more profit out of.

Good airflow and lots of it. Does your basement have any windows, even those small ones by the ceiling? If so, you might want to try and setup a fan in the window to try and exhaust some of that hot air outside.

If you only have one rig, a larger basement might be able to dissipate the heat to some extent. It may get warm but not excessively hot. With multiple rigs and/or a more confined space, you will definitely need to look into getting some airflow into and out of the space.

Myself, I get a kick out of how arrogant some posters are.

The OP was asking two separate questions, one about system RAM and the second about running on a VM.

Myself, I was addressing the first portion, thus why I spelled out Virtual Memory and not just used the VM abbreviation, as you pointed out can mean multiple things. With only 4 GB RAM you would need to enable a larger amount of Virtual Memory within Windows, since Claymore for one even suggests 16 GB, than you would with a larger amount of physical RAM. So yes, the virtual memory discussion was relevant as it relates to his first question.

As far as his second portion I have no experience mining with Virtual Machines so I did not address it.

Search the forums, these threads have been popping up since GPU mining began in 2011/2012. At first it was Bitcoin mining, then Litecoin, Dogecoin, etc, etc. Now its Ethereum, Zcash, and many others. Tomorrow it will most likely be coins we haven't even heard about yet.

Sometimes the profitability does drop to where mining margins are squeaky thin, but I believe the entire period has been profitable for those willing to keep their options open and move to the next coin when needed. There are of course no guarantees, but I suspect a year from now we will still be seeing these posts. The other thing to keep in mind is that unlike many other investments, most GPU based mining equipment holds good resale value for the gamer market. If you get even 50% ROI on your mining investment, worse case is you can recoup the other half on eBay.

The best strategy is to buy quality parts with good resale values, look for the most power efficient cards and search the forums on how to optimize your rig for the best power/hashrate you can get. For most people the electrical costs will be the deciding factor for their eventual breakeven point, so the more you can hedge your setups in favor of higher hashes per watt, the longer you can withstand a downtrend.

The constant heat might make the air slightly less humid and a brand new rig may off gas some chemicals the first few hours/days of operation, but other than that I do not think running a miner is any worse than running any of the many other appliances we have in our homes. If anything, the air quality is probably cleaner for me, especially in the winter time, as I can now leave windows cracked open for fresh air pretty much year round. There are a couple of months in the peak summer I need to close up and run the A/C, but I usually shutdown most of my in-house rigs then and/or move them out to the garage. The garage is another story however, summer time it is a virtual oven and I need constant air-flow or bad things will happen.