Need help with mining rigs

[navydude]

  Hello all, I have been reading and searching  for more than two weeks. Its really hard to figure out whats the best direction to go. I thought at first to go and mine bitcoin with S7's but after really figuring power and setup cost im not sure i would ever ROI. I have about 6k to spend on a mining setup and would really like a 6 month or less ROI. I have read and read till my head hurts. I was thinking of getting 3 of the ibelink ASICs but they are now out of stock and who knows when they will be back. After much research and doing some figuring with cost Im thninking maybe I should just get 2 or 3 GPU rigs up and running. There are so many GPUs to choose from. IDK what is the difference between the gigabyte, msi, and sapphire. They all make the same R series cards. I was thinking maybe going with the Nano even though it is a bit more expensive it should be able to mine for sometime. Would love listen to anyone that is willing to help. My power is about .10 after taxes for residential rates. I would like to get started sooner than later. 

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[WarrEagle]

I build R9 -380 ----6 GPU rigs. They hash right at 120 MH/s my cost is under $1700 rig...they will mine $300/month at current ETH prices. Stick to MSI or sapphire cards.

[Amph]

I build R9 -380 ----6 GPU rigs. They hash right at 120 MH/s my cost is under $1700 rig...they will mine $300/month at current ETH prices. Stick to MSI or sapphire cards.

due to my bad electricity i'm not making anymore much from ethereum, only around $80 with 4 gpu per month, so i must assume that your electricity is 4x cheaper, around 0.05-0.10

[navydude]

Thanks for the response. I guess if prices would stay the same it would be about a six month ROI. However we all know that wont happen. What has your mining experience been like before ether? Was you able to make a decent profit? I have considered waiting until the new AMD HBM cards are released. I really dont have much knowledge of how that will improve mining but I did read somewhere that it might be a good idea to wait till the release. I really considered the S7 but power costs and with bitcoin forking im not sure any of this would be a good idea. I have tried to read about the changes but i really guess at this point no one knows what will happen. Will the fork cause the difficulty to go down (along with price) or will it stay the same?

Edit: Will 1600 watt 80+ supply be enough for 6 380x gpu's? Just using a 53w processor on btc pro board.

[WarrEagle]

I build R9 -380 ----6 GPU rigs. They hash right at 120 MH/s my cost is under $1700 rig...they will mine $300/month at current ETH prices. Stick to MSI or sapphire cards.

due to my bad electricity i'm not making anymore much from ethereum, only around $80 with 4 gpu per month, so i must assume that your electricity is 4x cheaper, around 0.05-0.10

Electric is around $0.098 to $0.105 or so here. I also have 5 KW of solar panels in Florida sun to offset some of the electric costs.

[WarrEagle]

Thanks for the response. I guess if prices would stay the same it would be about a six month ROI. However we all know that wont happen. What has your mining experience been like before ether? Was you able to make a decent profit? I have considered waiting until the new AMD HBM cards are released. I really dont have much knowledge of how that will improve mining but I did read somewhere that it might be a good idea to wait till the release. I really considered the S7 but power costs and with bitcoin forking im not sure any of this would be a good idea. I have tried to read about the changes but i really guess at this point no one knows what will happen. Will the fork cause the difficulty to go down (along with price) or will it stay the same?

Edit: Will 1600 watt 80+ supply be enough for 6 380x gpu's? Just using a 53w processor on btc pro board.

I typically use a 1300W EVGA Supernova Gold or 1200W EVGA Platinum, to run 6 - 380's. My Killawatt shows a 1150-1200 watt draw. Figuring these are ~ %90 efficient...that means that actual draw is around 1000 watts on the PSU.

[navydude]

That sounds good. I guess i will go with a 1300w EVGA since it doesnt pull that much. I hope to tune these up a bit and get the power down just a little bit. I have decided to go ahead with a 6 GPU rig with the MSI 380x cards. I know ether will be gone soon but i can have these running by the weekend and who knows maybe we shall have another coin before long. Lost my tail end with XPY. Hope to not let that happen again.

Edit: Are there any additional cables or anything i need in order to have this up and running. In my cart i have 6 gpus, 1300w power, mother board, CPU, USB powerd riser x6, 120gb SSD and 8gb memory. I have built a PC before but nothing like this. I will be making my own rack.

[WarrEagle]

That sounds like a complete list. Depending on what OS you run, you can shrink the RAM and SSD size some too. I run a 16G SSD and 4G RAM on linux. Windows you would want the 8G and 64G SSD.



EDIT: You might want to look at the cards more closely, I too wanted to undervolt but it seems most 380 series cards are voltage locked. I have not tried to modify BIOS yet on them. I mostly just use the aticonfig and atitweak command line tools.

[QuintLeo]

Gigabyte cards tend to be good for mining as well, though I have a small personal preference for Sapphire over Gigabyte and quite a bit over MSI.

 Avoid HIS in general - too many of their cards use cheap die-fast fans, though the IceQ model blowers seem to be fairly good quality.
 Says a lot that Newegg STOPPED CARRYING HIS in any way shape or form, not to mention my own personal issues with EVERY card of theirs I've ever bought due to crap fans failing except the IceQ (I thought I had problems with it, but turns out the PS I was trying to use it on was flaky - it's working FINE now at 1200Mhz mining Ethereum while powered by one of my X1250s).

[WarrEagle]

Gigabyte cards tend to be good for mining as well, though I have a small personal preference for Sapphire over Gigabyte and quite a bit over MSI.

 Avoid HIS in general - too many of their cards use cheap die-fast fans, though the IceQ model blowers seem to be fairly good quality.
 Says a lot that Newegg STOPPED CARRYING HIS in any way shape or form, not to mention my own personal issues with EVERY card of theirs I've ever bought due to crap fans failing (except the IceQ, it's flaky 'cause the power supply I had it on crapped out and appears to have done some damage to the card when that PS died - or the card went flaky and killed the PS? never did figure that out for sure).

Sapphires are a favorite for many, they cost a bit more though. I have better hashing results from my MSI cards than the Gigabyte ones too. At least the reported hashrate is a full 10 MH/s across a 6 GPU rig.

[navydude]

Thanks for all the info. This is the card I currently have in the cart. http://www.amazon.com/Sapphire-DL-DVI-I-DL-DVI-D-Graphics-11250-01-20G/dp/B017WMD8ZM?ie=UTF8&psc=1&redirect=true&ref_=ox_sc_act_title_5&smid=ATVPDKIKX0DER

[WarrEagle]

Thanks for all the info. This is the card I currently have in the cart. http://www.amazon.com/Sapphire-DL-DVI-I-DL-DVI-D-Graphics-11250-01-20G/dp/B017WMD8ZM?ie=UTF8&psc=1&redirect=true&ref_=ox_sc_act_title_5&smid=ATVPDKIKX0DER

That's a good card...but I dont think the 380X hashes any faster than the 380 non X. You are paying a premium for that X. However if you can undervolt the card...it would be worth it.

[navydude]

Are your cards 2 or 4gb? Im sure i want 4gb im not sure the 6gb or 8gb cards would benefit much at this point am I correct? After looking the X card is about 30 dollars higher than the regular 280. Can any one with experience with the 280x say if there is a way to under clock and if its worth the price difference.

I seriously considering the nano. Would the future of mining ever make it worth buying the nano?

[WarrEagle]

I use both. The 2GB cards might run out of memory space before ETH switches to POS. They might not. 4GB will not run out of memory. I dont know anything about the 280 series cards. I too would like to know about undervolting the 380's you can change the clocks all you want. The undervolting it what saves on your power draw.

[navydude]

I did say 280 but i did mean the 380 series. Thats just a typo. 

[Iegion]

You will probably wont ROI at if you start mining now. Earning is dropping by about 20% every month due to the increase hashrate.

[Amph]

You will probably wont ROI at if you start mining now. Earning is dropping by about 20% every month due to the increase hashrate.

roi is possible with gpu even if now there less profitable, you will never now what will happen in the future, if another "ETH" will coem out, if another crazy rally on another random altcoin will be ral

in the end you will roi, just keep mining when there is profit

[QuintLeo]

Opinions I've seen on MSI were mostly positive. I have no personal experience with them though.
Sapphire makes good cards, both by rep and my own experience with them.
EVGA - seems to be making a bit of a push lately into video cards, I've got a few I'm trying out that were on a Real Good Sale price when I got them, we'll see how they work.


 After Ethereum profits drop too low, it'll be time to look at other options - which is why I'm going NVIDIA right now over my long-prefered AMD, seems like most of the current options either prefer NVIDIA (Ethereum and RC5-72 being noteable exceptions, but Maxwell cards are competative on a hash/watt basis in Ethereum even when they lose on hash/$ somewhat) or it's more-or-less a tossup.



 Scary thing - I just noticed I'm #4 or #5 (depending on the day) on hashrate on my Litecoin mining pool.....

[navydude]

Just wanted to thank everyone for posting and the advice. I have ordered and will have all hardware here by Wednesday. Ordered last Friday morning and total was about 1900. So with a little luck everything running late Wednesday night. I went with the sapphire 380x (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814202183) Guess we shall see. Ether prices are looking good so maybe i can ROI in a decent amount of time. Very excited and very nervous as well. Its kinda hard to control myself. LMAO

EDIT:Can someone post a link to the best miner for this card. I know there are many out there but the most optimized would be great. Thanks in advance.

[WarrEagle]

Just wanted to thank everyone for posting and the advice. I have ordered and will have all hardware here by Wednesday. Ordered last Friday morning and total was about 1900. So with a little luck everything running late Wednesday night. I went with the sapphire 380x (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814202183) Guess we shall see. Ether prices are looking good so maybe i can ROI in a decent amount of time. Very excited and very nervous as well. Its kinda hard to control myself. LMAO

EDIT:Can someone post a link to the best miner for this card. I know there are many out there but the most optimized would be great. Thanks in advance.

check out the dual miner from Clover...I think thats his name...its in this mining section. It mines Decred and ETH at the same time. Only runs on Windows at this time. I run Linux and have ETHos on a couple of rigs. Genoil is another ETH miner that is supposed to be pretty good.