My second ZEC + XMR+ ETH thread builds info links thoughts and photos.

[GabryRox]

Probably a lot of people have done this already, but I am jumping ship on freaking ZEC!  Further drops almost every single day... now headed towards a pathetic $43 or lower by end of day!  Frankly, I should have switched weeks ago but was hoping against hope there would be some kind of rally in price.  Alas, in reality, how can we expect a crypto coin that STILL does not have something as basic as a working Z-wallet (at least on Bittex) to appreciate in value?  yeah I know there still could be a pump but it is infuriating to sit here mining it, only to have the total value of the whopping ~3 ZEC i have mined drop in value almost every day, despite accumulating more each day.

So... yesterday I finally switched over rig#1 back to ETH.  My calcs show my profit from that to be about $2.20/day, as opposed to the pathetic $1.30 it was making from ZEC.  I was going to keep rig#2 on ZEC for a while longer but I doubt I will do that now.  The only thing holing me back at all on that is the fact that I haven't strap-modded the GPUs on rig #2 yet and certainly dont want to start mining ETH on that one until I do so.  Still, I may even give XMR a run on that and see what it does.  I am actually now running Claymore's CPU XMR miner on all 3 of my PCs now and actually projecting a modest net profit of about $25/month.  Have yet to run his GPU XMR miner on any of my rigs so may give it a shot tonight and see what the results are. 

[1714682605]

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[1714682605]

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[citronick]

Probably a lot of people have done this already, but I am jumping ship on freaking ZEC!  Further drops almost every single day... now headed towards a pathetic $43 or lower by end of day!  Frankly, I should have switched weeks ago but was hoping against hope there would be some kind of rally in price.  Alas, in reality, how can we expect a crypto coin that STILL does not have something as basic as a working Z-wallet (at least on Bittex) to appreciate in value?  yeah I know there still could be a pump but it is infuriating to sit here mining it, only to have the total value of the whopping ~3 ZEC i have mined drop in value almost every day, despite accumulating more each day.

So... yesterday I finally switched over rig#1 back to ETH.  My calcs show my profit from that to be about $2.20/day, as opposed to the pathetic $1.30 it was making from ZEC.  I was going to keep rig#2 on ZEC for a while longer but I doubt I will do that now.  The only thing holing me back at all on that is the fact that I haven't strap-modded the GPUs on rig #2 yet and certainly dont want to start mining ETH on that one until I do so.  Still, I may even give XMR a run on that and see what it does.  I am actually now running Claymore's CPU XMR miner on all 3 of my PCs now and actually projecting a modest net profit of about $25/month.  Have yet to run his GPU XMR miner on any of my rigs so may give it a shot tonight and see what the results are. 

According to http://www.whattomine.com/

ZEC is still profitable.
Followed by Monero/XMR
Then NeoScrypt/Feather coin
and then ETH.

[GabryRox]

Probably a lot of people have done this already, but I am jumping ship on freaking ZEC!  Further drops almost every single day... now headed towards a pathetic $43 or lower by end of day!  Frankly, I should have switched weeks ago but was hoping against hope there would be some kind of rally in price.  Alas, in reality, how can we expect a crypto coin that STILL does not have something as basic as a working Z-wallet (at least on Bittex) to appreciate in value?  yeah I know there still could be a pump but it is infuriating to sit here mining it, only to have the total value of the whopping ~3 ZEC i have mined drop in value almost every day, despite accumulating more each day.

So... yesterday I finally switched over rig#1 back to ETH.  My calcs show my profit from that to be about $2.20/day, as opposed to the pathetic $1.30 it was making from ZEC.  I was going to keep rig#2 on ZEC for a while longer but I doubt I will do that now.  The only thing holing me back at all on that is the fact that I haven't strap-modded the GPUs on rig #2 yet and certainly dont want to start mining ETH on that one until I do so.  Still, I may even give XMR a run on that and see what it does.  I am actually now running Claymore's CPU XMR miner on all 3 of my PCs now and actually projecting a modest net profit of about $25/month.  Have yet to run his GPU XMR miner on any of my rigs so may give it a shot tonight and see what the results are. 

According to http://www.whattomine.com/

ZEC is still profitable.
Followed by Monero/XMR
Then NeoScrypt/Feather coin
and then ETH.

Yeah, there seems to be a big problem with the defaults on that site.

They have ZEC set at 630 HR using 660W, which is reasonably close to the 710H/610W i get from my 4-GPU rig.  But their ETH default H/R for equivalent wattage is WAY off!  They have only 48 MH/s for 660W but my 4-card rig is getting 108 with almost exactly that wattage.

So, if I change both to what I am getting on my rig, and bump the electricity to 11 cents, it shows ETH net profit of $2.83/day (about 25% higher than my own calc), while ZEC comes in at $1.46/day (about 20% higher than my calc).  Granted, my net calcs are probably a bit conservative since I am using peak wattage and the average is probably going to be a bit less, but either way, ETH is almost twice as profitable as ZEC at this point, at least for me.

I just started mining XMR with my 5-GPU rig, so will report back on that later. Initial speeds reported only about 2.8 Kh/s (not even 600 Mh/s per GPU) but it was still warming up... and I haven't tweaked the settings in Claymore at all yet, so will see how that turns out.

[AriesIV10]

Probably a lot of people have done this already, but I am jumping ship on freaking ZEC!  Further drops almost every single day... now headed towards a pathetic $43 or lower by end of day!  Frankly, I should have switched weeks ago but was hoping against hope there would be some kind of rally in price.  Alas, in reality, how can we expect a crypto coin that STILL does not have something as basic as a working Z-wallet (at least on Bittex) to appreciate in value?  yeah I know there still could be a pump but it is infuriating to sit here mining it, only to have the total value of the whopping ~3 ZEC i have mined drop in value almost every day, despite accumulating more each day.

So... yesterday I finally switched over rig#1 back to ETH.  My calcs show my profit from that to be about $2.20/day, as opposed to the pathetic $1.30 it was making from ZEC.  I was going to keep rig#2 on ZEC for a while longer but I doubt I will do that now.  The only thing holing me back at all on that is the fact that I haven't strap-modded the GPUs on rig #2 yet and certainly dont want to start mining ETH on that one until I do so.  Still, I may even give XMR a run on that and see what it does.  I am actually now running Claymore's CPU XMR miner on all 3 of my PCs now and actually projecting a modest net profit of about $25/month.  Have yet to run his GPU XMR miner on any of my rigs so may give it a shot tonight and see what the results are.  

According to http://www.whattomine.com/

ZEC is still profitable.
Followed by Monero/XMR
Then NeoScrypt/Feather coin
and then ETH.

Yeah, there seems to be a big problem with the defaults on that site.

They have ZEC set at 630 HR using 660W, which is reasonably close to the 710H/610W i get from my 4-GPU rig.  But their ETH default H/R for equivalent wattage is WAY off!  They have only 48 MH/s for 660W but my 4-card rig is getting 108 with almost exactly that wattage.

So, if I change both to what I am getting on my rig, and bump the electricity to 11 cents, it shows ETH net profit of $2.83/day (about 25% higher than my own calc), while ZEC comes in at $1.46/day (about 20% higher than my calc).  Granted, my net calcs are probably a bit conservative since I am using peak wattage and the average is probably going to be a bit less, but either way, ETH is almost twice as profitable as ZEC at this point, at least for me.

I just started mining XMR with my 5-GPU rig, so will report back on that later. Initial speeds reported only about 2.8 Kh/s (not even 600 Mh/s per GPU) but it was still warming up... and I haven't tweaked the settings in Claymore at all yet, so will see how that turns out.

I was on ZEC a few days ago, but have switched to ETH and realize a $1.04 Net Increase per 1300 SOLs over ZEC.

[bitass]

nice rig you guys have

[Za1n]

Yeah, there seems to be a big problem with the defaults on that site.

They have ZEC set at 630 HR using 660W, which is reasonably close to the 710H/610W i get from my 4-GPU rig.  But their ETH default H/R for equivalent wattage is WAY off!  They have only 48 MH/s for 660W but my 4-card rig is getting 108 with almost exactly that wattage.

So, if I change both to what I am getting on my rig, and bump the electricity to 11 cents, it shows ETH net profit of $2.83/day (about 25% higher than my own calc), while ZEC comes in at $1.46/day (about 20% higher than my calc).  Granted, my net calcs are probably a bit conservative since I am using peak wattage and the average is probably going to be a bit less, but either way, ETH is almost twice as profitable as ZEC at this point, at least for me.

I just started mining XMR with my 5-GPU rig, so will report back on that later. Initial speeds reported only about 2.8 Kh/s (not even 600 Mh/s per GPU) but it was still warming up... and I haven't tweaked the settings in Claymore at all yet, so will see how that turns out.

Yes, this is exactly what I need to do as well. On a 4-GPU rig I use 600 watts mining either ETH and ZEC, but I need to change ETH hash-rates to a more reasonable 108 value and ZEC to 840. So the defaults are definitely way off.

Using my values from above, ETH currently shows it is earning about $0.75 more per day on this rig than it would on ZEC. The interesting thing is the ZEC network hash rate has kept rising over the past 24 hours, so not sure if site like What-to-mine influence this trend or not. I would think most miners shoudl be able to figure this basic error with the default values.

[philipma1957]

Probably a lot of people have done this already, but I am jumping ship on freaking ZEC!  Further drops almost every single day... now headed towards a pathetic $43 or lower by end of day!  Frankly, I should have switched weeks ago but was hoping against hope there would be some kind of rally in price.  Alas, in reality, how can we expect a crypto coin that STILL does not have something as basic as a working Z-wallet (at least on Bittex) to appreciate in value?  yeah I know there still could be a pump but it is infuriating to sit here mining it, only to have the total value of the whopping ~3 ZEC i have mined drop in value almost every day, despite accumulating more each day.

So... yesterday I finally switched over rig#1 back to ETH.  My calcs show my profit from that to be about $2.20/day, as opposed to the pathetic $1.30 it was making from ZEC.  I was going to keep rig#2 on ZEC for a while longer but I doubt I will do that now.  The only thing holing me back at all on that is the fact that I haven't strap-modded the GPUs on rig #2 yet and certainly dont want to start mining ETH on that one until I do so.  Still, I may even give XMR a run on that and see what it does.  I am actually now running Claymore's CPU XMR miner on all 3 of my PCs now and actually projecting a modest net profit of about $25/month.  Have yet to run his GPU XMR miner on any of my rigs so may give it a shot tonight and see what the results are. 

I am zec man till 2017.

then ?

[ps_jb]

I am zec man till 2017.

then ?

I'm last week with ETC - like how it is going

[LoneRangir]

** I will continue to update this posting as I get my images uploaded, and story straight   **

I told Phil I was migrating one of my open air bench-top rigs to an actual computer case.  He encouraged me to share some pics.  

This is our "favorite " Biostar Z170 board, and four reference 480s WITHOUT BACKPLATES. The lack of backplates in a back-to-back configuraiton is important to make sure the cards can get enough air to be cool, especially in an enclosed case.

I removed a few cables in the process.  I went from a 2.5" SATA drive to an m.2 drive.  

Here is a link to the Thermaltake case.  Note that is has 8 PCIe slots on the back. Most standard ATX cases have 7.  When I bought it, it was on sale for $65, and had a $20 rebate.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811133253


Here are couple "before" images:






Here is one with the board without the cards.  Nice, open case with plenty of room.  I could not hook up the front panel USB3, since the 4th card covers the header, and the cable is not that flexible.  Good thing the front panel power/reset leads are flexible. I'm not installing any 3.5" HDD, nor DVD drives.  It's quite bare inside.



The cards are installed.


I'm using a headless HDMI dongle to make sure the video come up upon reboots.  I'm going to put this thing in the garage and use a USB dongle to connect it to the internet.  It's -5 where I live, my wife said I can keep it in the house for now!

[philipma1957]

You may need a fan upgrade for the case fans.


Scythe makes a 120 mm by 38 mm fan

3000 rpm moves a lot of air

Amazon has them.

[Hotmetal]

I was on ZEC a few days ago, but have switched to ETH and realize a $1.04 Net Increase per 1300 SOLs over ZEC.

I've almost automated the entire process to mine whatever is the most profitable using a 5 minute rolling window average.



Just finishing the last bits of the code and then I can just sit back and watch. Manual switching is too tedious even with just 2 rigs.

[GabryRox]

How is it possible that you show ZEC even even with ETH & XMR, much less slightly more profitable.  Given the current rates around $43/$8.10/$8.35, both ETH & XMR are considerably more profitable than ZEC... at least with RX 470's.  My understanding is that 480's get a bit more hashing power than 470s but consume more energy, so the profit ratio seems that it would be similar between the 2 cards, maybe a bit better for the 470s.  I could almost understand if you had something like 6x390x, given that those cards seem to be monsters on ZEC, but that doesn;t appear to be the case so Im a bit baffled.  I understand that everyone's rigs are different, but for me, the profitability isn't even close now with ZEC dropping under $43.  My profit from ETH is close to 2x ZEC and models indicate XMR could even be better, but I need more mining time with it to prove that out. My modelling indicated that if ETH & XMR stay in the $8-$9 range, ZEC would have to get back over $60 to rival their profitability.  Can't predict the future of course but seems much more likely ZEC will go lower than $30 before EOY than anywhere near $60, so I will likely be doing ETH/XMR for the foreseeable future.

Aside from the valuing issue, I am curious about something else.  I really like that auto-switching feature in theory but if values are quite close and switch often, wouldn't that many switched hurt productivity?  Meaning... my experience with both XMR and ZEC is that they take some time to ramp up to full speed.  I started mining XMR via Claymore GPU and it started low then continual increases, for several hours actually. Similar thing with ZEC although usually not as long.  ETH seem to get to max quickly but I would like that the ramp up time would hurt you with too many switches.

[Hotmetal]

How is it possible that you show ZEC even even with ETH & XMR, much less slightly more profitable.

My RX480's are underclocked and undervolted. Look more closely at the graphs and you will see spikes where ZEC is more profitable.
This has more to do with network difficulty dropping (you're getting more ZEC for the same hash rate and same price).

I understand that everyone's rigs are different, but for me, the profitability isn't even close now with ZEC dropping under $43.

You're looking at the ZEC price and only using that as a benchmark and that's where you're going wrong.
As the price fluctuates, so does the difficulty as miners chop and change.

 My profit from ETH is close to 2x ZEC and models indicate XMR could even be better, but I need more mining time with it to prove that out.

All my tests are done at the wall in terms of electricity usage and are extremely accurate.

Aside from the valuing issue, I am curious about something else.  I really like that auto-switching feature in theory but if values are quite close and switch often, wouldn't that many switched hurt productivity?  Meaning... my experience with both XMR and ZEC is that they take some time to ramp up to full speed.  I started mining XMR via Claymore GPU and it started low then continual increases, for several hours actually. Similar thing with ZEC although usually not as long.  ETH seem to get to max quickly but I would like that the ramp up time would hurt you with too many switches.

I work around all ramp-up times with code.

Edit: To clarify: worst case ramp up time is ~20 seconds at most but the actual mining when switching is near instantaneous.

[Rabinovitch]

** I will continue to update this posting as I get my images uploaded, and story straight   **

I told Phil I was migrating one of my open air bench-top rigs to an actual computer case.  He encouraged me to share some pics.  

This is our "favorite " Biostar Z170 board


Here is one with the board without the cards.  Nice, open case with plenty of room.  I could not hook up the front panel USB3, since the 4th card covers the header, and the cable is not that flexible.  Good thing the front panel power/reset leads are flexible. I'm not installing any 3.5" HDD, nor DVD drives.  It's quite bare inside.

You can connect more GPUs using a PCIE riser cables. Like this: https://ru.aliexpress.com/item/PCI-E-PCI-E-Express-1X-to-16X-Riser-Card-USB-3-0-Extender-Cable-SATA/32742035476.html?spm=2114.13010608.0.0.5BxV06&detailNewVersion=&categoryId=200001097

So you should be able to install a 5 GPUs configuration in the same case. May be even 6.   1 or 2 cards can be installed right above the CPU in parallel to the MB.

A nice 25-mm 120x120 fan that I would recommend for your setup: https://ru.aliexpress.com/item/Free-shipping-12025-high-speed-air-volume-fan-12-cm-1-24A-FFB1212SH-for-delta/32612064782.html?spm=2114.13010608.0.0.r5JxPM

p.s are those HDD/SSD racks removable?

[QuintLeo]

According to http://www.whattomine.com/

ZEC is still profitable.
Followed by Monero/XMR
Then NeoScrypt/Feather coin
and then ETH.

 Again, it depends on your specific hardware and electric costs.

 Be sure to out YOUR numbers in, some of THEIR numbers are a bit on the "optimistic" side.


 I'm showing my pair of RX 470s to be more profitable on ZEC at the moment, but they're stock and don't mine ETH real well - and even then it's CLOSE.

 1070s - hands down ZEC via nicehash most of the time, but something else pops up occaisonally.

 HD 7870s are hand-down ZEC, but they're 2GB cards and about out of the ability to mine ETH at all.
 Ditto the little HD 7750s.

 My GTX 950s/960s seem to not like either most of the time - think the 960s are mostly on libr and can't remember for sue on the 950s.


 Keep in mind that I have "fixed" energy cost at this time, I'm sure the next place I move to I'll have to start factoring in power usage again.

[QuintLeo]

Here is a link to the Thermaltake case.  Note that is has 8 PCIe slots on the back. Most standard ATX cases have 7.  When I bought it, it was on sale for $65, and had a $20 rebate.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811133253

If you play some "move and pull" games on the HD/FD brackets, you can mount a couple of 120x38 Delta fans in the front of that case for some SERIOUS airflow.

 Mount one HD tray in the middle, pull the other 2 trays on fan low one fan high and a 25mm fan in the middle.

 Plenty of space on the back side behind the MB mounting tray for cable management too.



 I bought one of those on sale early this year, if I had to go back to using cases it would be one of my "seriously consider it for my go to case" options.

[Hotmetal]

According to http://www.whattomine.com/

ZEC is still profitable.
Followed by Monero/XMR
Then NeoScrypt/Feather coin
and then ETH.

 Again, it depends on your specific hardware and electric costs.

Not just that but people tend to leave the settings standard on http://www.whattomine.com/.

Everyone must measure their hash rate and power usage (at the wall!) and enter in the values there.
Even then, the profitability swings continuously as prices and network difficultly fluctuates.

[vg54dett]

How is it possible that you show ZEC even even with ETH & XMR, much less slightly more profitable.

My RX480's are underclocked and undervolted. Look more closely at the graphs and you will see spikes where ZEC is more profitable.
This has more to do with network difficulty dropping (you're getting more ZEC for the same hash rate and same price).

I understand that everyone's rigs are different, but for me, the profitability isn't even close now with ZEC dropping under $43.

You're looking at the ZEC price and only using that as a benchmark and that's where you're going wrong.
As the price fluctuates, so does the difficulty as miners chop and change.

 My profit from ETH is close to 2x ZEC and models indicate XMR could even be better, but I need more mining time with it to prove that out.

All my tests are done at the wall in terms of electricity usage and are extremely accurate.

Aside from the valuing issue, I am curious about something else.  I really like that auto-switching feature in theory but if values are quite close and switch often, wouldn't that many switched hurt productivity?  Meaning... my experience with both XMR and ZEC is that they take some time to ramp up to full speed.  I started mining XMR via Claymore GPU and it started low then continual increases, for several hours actually. Similar thing with ZEC although usually not as long.  ETH seem to get to max quickly but I would like that the ramp up time would hurt you with too many switches.

I work around all ramp-up times with code.

Edit: To clarify: worst case ramp up time is ~20 seconds at most but the actual mining when switching is near instantaneous.

Hometal, how do you deal with the sale right time ?
Mining when it's more profitable (less difficulty or better price) is obviously good, but it takes time to get the mined coins to a wallet and from my experience, when you are ready to sell, profitability has changed (mostly price as coins are already mined) and you don't earn what you expected.
Have you find a way to improve ?

[vg54dett]

vg54dett - bluescreen will need hard reset - and the reboot batch file will not work on your scenario.

I think you need to solve this bluescreen issue separately first. I suspect, GPU driver or RAM related issues. What is your rig config and setup?

In basic setup, reboot.bat need to be saved in same folder as Claymore miner.

In your file manager browser, type "shell:startup" and hit enter. In this folder, you can put a batch file to run Claymore miner or any other app. When Windows boots up, it will run all programs and batch files in this startup folder.

Thanks for following my case !
The bluescreen is something I get on any of my rx470 rigs ! all rigs sometimes have it ...
They can mine for days without any problem.
But if a GPU hang, miner restart , and I get blue screen (showing driver failure) , and a reboot.
So when I come back , I have y desktop ready but iddle. I will try your advice to get claymore run after any windows boot.
It should help a lot !

In my case, I guess the blue screen is linked to risers and/or overclocking.
I have H81 pro BTC with 4 or 4 gb DDR and all moded RX470 (5 to 6 per rig)
I'm on the way to change all my powered ribbon riser to usb ones. Would be better I think.

I still have a diffculty to understand what is the difference with the reboot batch file launched by ethman (not used yet) , and the watchdog feature that restart miner ?

[Hotmetal]

How is it possible that you show ZEC even even with ETH & XMR, much less slightly more profitable.

My RX480's are underclocked and undervolted. Look more closely at the graphs and you will see spikes where ZEC is more profitable.
This has more to do with network difficulty dropping (you're getting more ZEC for the same hash rate and same price).

I understand that everyone's rigs are different, but for me, the profitability isn't even close now with ZEC dropping under $43.

You're looking at the ZEC price and only using that as a benchmark and that's where you're going wrong.
As the price fluctuates, so does the difficulty as miners chop and change.

 My profit from ETH is close to 2x ZEC and models indicate XMR could even be better, but I need more mining time with it to prove that out.

All my tests are done at the wall in terms of electricity usage and are extremely accurate.

Aside from the valuing issue, I am curious about something else.  I really like that auto-switching feature in theory but if values are quite close and switch often, wouldn't that many switched hurt productivity?  Meaning... my experience with both XMR and ZEC is that they take some time to ramp up to full speed.  I started mining XMR via Claymore GPU and it started low then continual increases, for several hours actually. Similar thing with ZEC although usually not as long.  ETH seem to get to max quickly but I would like that the ramp up time would hurt you with too many switches.

I work around all ramp-up times with code.

Edit: To clarify: worst case ramp up time is ~20 seconds at most but the actual mining when switching is near instantaneous.

Hometal, how do you deal with the sale right time ?
Mining when it's more profitable (less difficulty or better price) is obviously good, but it takes time to get the mined coins to a wallet and from my experience, when you are ready to sell, profitability has changed (mostly price as coins are already mined) and you don't earn what you expected.
Have you find a way to improve ?

I've now completed all the code to automatically switch to whichever coin is most profitable.

To answer your question:

If you look at prices for ZEC/XMR/ETC/ETH, there's no real MAJOR hard ups or downs in terms of pricing.. It's either a slow increase or decrease.. (yes, there are exceptions to this rule but in the long term, everything averages out). Most of the profitability switching comes from network difficulty either dropping or increasing.

Since I mine directly to the exchange:

I'm busy with the code now to poll / connect to the exchange's API, check all balances and immediately sell any coin that is available at the current sell order rates.

I can just keep buying rigs / video cards and know that as I get more hash rate, it will get more and more accurate / profitable.
It's too tedious doing things manually .. This way I can go on holiday, spend time with the family and thanks to the monitoring system, I will only be alerted when processes are not running or switching isn't working correctly.

The joy of opensource software