Review of Panda Miner coming up.

[QuintLeo]

Tried Niceheash Windows Miner v 1.7.3.11 -- running normally - will run overnight to see if it can hold.

During installation, required .NET 3.5 installation as prerequisite.

GPU benchmark listed only Dagger-Hashimoto and Equihash coins.

Strange - running this NH miner on normal rig lists more than this 2 algorithms.

However, if you choose to also include CPU mining, it will list more algos like LYRA2RE, HODL and Cryptonite.

This version supports 3rd party miners like latest versions of Claymore ETH and ZEC miners.

This NH Windows Miner is probably the most easiest to set up and ideal for mining newbies.

 I believe you are required to install 3'd party miners to support some of the other algorythms.
 I've always done that on my NH installations, so not sure.

 NH also supports the Genoil ETH miner, if you don't like the double-whammy fees involved in running Claymore on ETH.

 IMO most folks are better off not running Nicehash at this point on anything but NVidia.

[citronick]

Tried Niceheash Windows Miner v 1.7.3.11 -- running normally - will run overnight to see if it can hold.

During installation, required .NET 3.5 installation as prerequisite.

GPU benchmark listed only Dagger-Hashimoto and Equihash coins.

Strange - running this NH miner on normal rig lists more than this 2 algorithms.

However, if you choose to also include CPU mining, it will list more algos like LYRA2RE, HODL and Cryptonite.

This version supports 3rd party miners like latest versions of Claymore ETH and ZEC miners.

This NH Windows Miner is probably the most easiest to set up and ideal for mining newbies.

 I believe you are required to install 3'd party miners to support some of the other algorythms.
 I've always done that on my NH installations, so not sure.

 NH also supports the Genoil ETH miner, if you don't like the double-whammy fees involved in running Claymore on ETH.

 IMO most folks are better off not running Nicehash at this point on anything but NVidia.

agreed - they are too many AMD options out there - and claymore, optiminer, sgminer, wolf, genoil....

Nicehash seems to be siding NVIDIA of recent

if quick and easy mining direct to BTC - this NH miner will be easiest.... but surely not the most profitable.

[citronick]

Question for you Phil.  I know that you said Eliovp's linux build will boot up and start mining automatically, but would the image straight from the factory be able to run headless?  Basically without a monitor, keyboard or a mouse plugged into it?  Will it boot without video connected to it if you set it to auto login and throw the batch file into the startup?  Thanks.

Yes, completely headless.

Start up, mining will start automatically.


Greetings

Eliovp..... would we need a VNC or Teamviewer builtin into the Linux OR.... the your management and monitoring module takes care of all the essential mining stuff.

I am keen on lights out operations, headless and KISS.

[Eliovp]

Question for you Phil.  I know that you said Eliovp's linux build will boot up and start mining automatically, but would the image straight from the factory be able to run headless?  Basically without a monitor, keyboard or a mouse plugged into it?  Will it boot without video connected to it if you set it to auto login and throw the batch file into the startup?  Thanks.

Yes, completely headless.

Start up, mining will start automatically.


Greetings

Eliovp..... would we need a VNC or Teamviewer builtin into the Linux OR.... the your management and monitoring module takes care of all the essential mining stuff.

I am keen on lights out operations, headless and KISS.

Manager takes care of almost everything. If you do need access for some reason you can always ssh into the system (you can use putty or some other client on Windows to do that.).

Greetings

[philipma1957]

Question for you Phil.  I know that you said Eliovp's linux build will boot up and start mining automatically, but would the image straight from the factory be able to run headless?  Basically without a monitor, keyboard or a mouse plugged into it?  Will it boot without video connected to it if you set it to auto login and throw the batch file into the startup?  Thanks.

Yes, completely headless.

Start up, mining will start automatically.


Greetings

Eliovp..... would we need a VNC or Teamviewer builtin into the Linux OR.... the your management and monitoring module takes care of all the essential mining stuff.

I am keen on lights out operations, headless and KISS.

Manager takes care of almost everything. If you do need access for some reason you can always ssh into the system (you can use putty or some other client on Windows to do that.).

Greetings

mac  mini  and ssh  works nice I prefer to ssh into systems  with that.

[generalt]

Question for you Phil.  I know that you said Eliovp's linux build will boot up and start mining automatically, but would the image straight from the factory be able to run headless?  Basically without a monitor, keyboard or a mouse plugged into it?  Will it boot without video connected to it if you set it to auto login and throw the batch file into the startup?  Thanks.

Yes, completely headless.

Start up, mining will start automatically.


Greetings

It would need to be set to turn on after a power outage.


that is in the power settings for windows 7 and I have a few pc's set that way.
I could look at this right now to see if I can set it to power on after a blackout.


  it is set to auto login.



 you would then need to setup a batch file.

Thank you both for the information and replies.

[m1n1ngP4d4w4n]

Hey man, just a technical curiosity, how do you manage "miner discovery", because if you wish for a true headless setup, your "master console" would have to know how many miners there is in the network, the ip's a all the shebang, snmp trap maybe ? custom client/listener ? automatic ARP discovery ?

Also did you think or already created a centralized managment of miners like "press button" "all my pandaminer go to mine XXX" i know u'll have a console to do all this, just curious

just wondering as a fellow tech guys what are your current implementation and ideas

keep up the good work !

[Eliovp]

Some nice progress today.

Some screenshots

Login
Account
Manager
Change Wallet
Success 
Massreboot
Rig Settings
Overview

Auto flashing is also as good as finished


A big thx to PiMP and Ethosdistro.
I combined the best of those two Operating Systems and learned a lot from them.


Just to be clear.
I'm definitely not interested in making this public, if you want an OS that's equally as good or perhaps even better i would suggest to go for either
Ethosdistro or PiMP.
They both have an awesome community and offer great support.
I do not.

Plus, this is not designed to support any other system besides the Pandaminer.


Greetings!

[m1n1ngP4d4w4n]

Some nice progress today.

Some screenshots

Login
Account
Manager
Change Wallet
Success 
Massreboot
Rig Settings
Overview

Auto flashing is also as good as finished


A big thx to PiMP and Ethosdistro.
I combined the best of those two Operating Systems and learned a lot from them.


Just to be clear.
I'm definitely not interested in making this public, if you want an OS that's equally as good or perhaps even better i would suggest to go for either
Ethosdistro or PiMP.
They both have an awesome community and offer great support.
I do not.

Plus, this is not designed to support any other system besides the Pandaminer.


Greetings!

Looking nice man !

[yun9999]

Some nice progress today.

Some screenshots

Login
Account
Manager
Change Wallet
Success 
Massreboot
Rig Settings
Overview

Auto flashing is also as good as finished


A big thx to PiMP and Ethosdistro.
I combined the best of those two Operating Systems and learned a lot from them.


Just to be clear.
I'm definitely not interested in making this public, if you want an OS that's equally as good or perhaps even better i would suggest to go for either
Ethosdistro or PiMP.
They both have an awesome community and offer great support.
I do not.

Plus, this is not designed to support any other system besides the Pandaminer.


Greetings!

ELIOVP, you never failed to impress us.  Very very well done!  You just made these Pandas worth their price of admission.  You've made it so easy to manage a large farm of pandas that Awesome miner may not even be necessary.  Looks amaging and super intuitive!

[citronick]

Some nice progress today.

Some screenshots

Login
Account
Manager
Change Wallet
Success 
Massreboot
Rig Settings
Overview

Auto flashing is also as good as finished


A big thx to PiMP and Ethosdistro.
I combined the best of those two Operating Systems and learned a lot from them.


Just to be clear.
I'm definitely not interested in making this public, if you want an OS that's equally as good or perhaps even better i would suggest to go for either
Ethosdistro or PiMP.
They both have an awesome community and offer great support.
I do not.

Plus, this is not designed to support any other system besides the Pandaminer.


Greetings!

Impressive.... can you show how the selecting the miner works on the dashboard?

Apart from Claymore for ETH and ZEC, I also use sgminer-gm for XMR.

Depending on profitability of the 3 coins, how easy is it to switch from one coin to the other with miner of you choice?

[ps_jb]

citronick and Phil,

Topic is quite a mess of Panda Miner review, Unix build, Win 10 Ent etc

Could you please summarize on first page some important parameters:

Mining speed/Power used/Noise level
- ETH
- ETC
- XMR
- ZEC

Also, which PSU do you use with miner? If use platinum PSU - will it positively affect the efficiency?

Is it possible to use WiFi dongle (not for Phil with AFB nearby) instead of cable? Upgrade possibility?

[citronick]

citronick and Phil,

Topic is quite a mess of Panda Miner review, Unix build, Win 10 Ent etc

Could you please summarize on first page some important parameters:

Mining speed/Power used/Noise level
- ETH
- ETC
- XMR
- ZEC

Also, which PSU do you use with miner? If use platinum PSU - will it positively affect the efficiency?

Is it possible to use WiFi dongle (not for Phil with AFB nearby) instead of cable? Upgrade possibility?

ps_jb,
For the record, this thread and review is Phil's own initiative. My comments below are from my own personal evaluation criteria with slight bias on my own group's requirement. I leave the technical and speed measurement to Phil.

Chipping in my non-techie findings and conclusions listed below:

1. I used Claymore for ETH, XMR and ZEC. Of recent, sgminer-gm for XMR. optiminer for ZEC.

2. I am particularly interested to use the Pandas for XMR mining mainly, and a system having ability to "profit switch" to ZEC, etc. ETH maybe....

3a. Over time (more than an hour), all my Claymore runs with ZEC v10 and XMR v9.7 have ended in reboots. However, sgminer-gm XMR mining can mine longer but still reboot backs to mining. Unlike my current open DIY 5-6 GPU rigs that can run for weeks without reboots with Win7, Win8.1 and Win10 Pro.

3b. The mash-up of Win10 and Enterprise licensing to get the 8-GPU config may have something to do with the overall stability of the system, IMHO, hence #3a.

3c. For example, after many reboots, it will get stuck or shutdown page and manual power reset is required to fully power off and on the Panda - this is a Windows thing, even for so called Enterprise edition.

4. The PSU, I used is an old Bitmain 1600w server PSU that I bought together with S7. I have a few of them still and used it to good use here without any problem. Eventually, the planned Phase 1 PandaRack (10 x Pandas per rack) will ship to Labrador and they use EVGA 1300 and EVGA 1600.

5. The ultimate expectation for the PandaRack is 24x7x365 XMR mining - so I need custom and hardened Linux as OS for best results without the worries of Win10-Ent/Licensing/Good old Windows Memory Leaks/Virus/Hacks/etc. Also, "lights out" and good monitoring/mgmt/alerts operation just like my BTC, X11 and Scrypt farms.

6. As far as build and product construction is concerned - thumbs up to Panda. It is certainly above average and definitely have my A rating for the "hardware". They should leave the "software" to other parties who understand mining and programming in general. Marry these two sides and I think we have a winner here.

Disclaimer: I am a recent retiree, and manage small BTC, X11 and Scrypt mining farms for my group hosted in Cryptoboreas Inc. Labrador-NFL Canada. My group has agreed to deploy the first 10 Pandas and will be making the purchase for direct shipping to Labrador as soon as we test Eliovp's OS.

[ps_jb]

Thank you, citronick!

I think restarts can be also related to overheating GPUs or other components of miner.

[Eyedol-X]

Some nice progress today.

Some screenshots

Login
Account
Manager
Change Wallet
Success 
Massreboot
Rig Settings
Overview

Auto flashing is also as good as finished


A big thx to PiMP and Ethosdistro.
I combined the best of those two Operating Systems and learned a lot from them.


Just to be clear.
I'm definitely not interested in making this public, if you want an OS that's equally as good or perhaps even better i would suggest to go for either
Ethosdistro or PiMP.
They both have an awesome community and offer great support.
I do not.

Plus, this is not designed to support any other system besides the Pandaminer.


Greetings!

Can you elaborate on "I'm definitely not interested in making this public" ? Are you saying that you're going to only sell this software or are you saying that you're only going to sell it along with a panda miner you modified?

I missed a few pages of this post so this question may be answered already but I'm looking for clarification. I know I saw somewhere there was talk about reselling pandaminers you modified.

Great Work on this btw

[philipma1957]

Thank you, citronick!

I think restarts can be also related to overheating GPUs or other components of miner.

Yeah thread got sidetracked a lot   with the windows 10 enterprise LTSB issues. plus the possible  linux replacement.


The gpus don't overheat.  The heatsinks are huge  the fans are powerful.

The gpus have a custom bios that  has been flashed to them.

They are undervolted to .975  which is not stock.

My unit is using an Evga 1600 g2
I did test the oem psu.

I get about 1.6 to 1.7  h for  zec  at 1030 watts  with the evga 1600g2------using claymore 9.3 that I installed
I get about 1.6 to 1.7 h for  zec   at 1065 watts with the oem psu.

Eth crashes the drivers crash from 1 to 2 hours
I did not test any other coins

My garage is 85 to 95 f

The gear is fine the software is not.
I have yet to get into the bios.


at citronick did you get into the bios?  if so what key did you use.

[citronick]

Thank you, citronick!

I think restarts can be also related to overheating GPUs or other components of miner.

Yeah thread got sidetracked a lot   with the windows 10 enterprise LTSB issues. plus the possible  linux replacement.


The gpus don't overheat.  The heatsinks are huge  the fans are powerful.

The gpus have a custom bios that  has been flashed to them.

They are undervolted to .975  which is not stock.

My unit is using an Evga 1600 g2
I did test the oem psu.

I get about 1.6 to 1.7  h for  zec  at 1030 watts  with the evga 1600g2------using claymore 9.3 that I installed
I get about 1.6 to 1.7 h for  zec   at 1065 watts with the oem psu.

Eth crashes the drivers crash from 1 to 2 hours
I did not test any other coins

My garage is 85 to 95 f

The gear is fine the software is not.
I have yet to get into the bios.


at citronick did you get into the bios?  if so what key did you use.

Fellow miner Tradewiz shared with me that he used "del" key upon boot up.

This was the first thing that I did when I got the unit but was not successful.

Could you do the test -- maybe give it a few tries with the DEL key.

As soon as you get into the BIOS, changing the boot sequence should make the USB port handle bootable images.

[philipma1957]

Thank you, citronick!

I think restarts can be also related to overheating GPUs or other components of miner.

Yeah thread got sidetracked a lot   with the windows 10 enterprise LTSB issues. plus the possible  linux replacement.


The gpus don't overheat.  The heatsinks are huge  the fans are powerful.

The gpus have a custom bios that  has been flashed to them.

They are undervolted to .975  which is not stock.

My unit is using an Evga 1600 g2
I did test the oem psu.

I get about 1.6 to 1.7  h for  zec  at 1030 watts  with the evga 1600g2------using claymore 9.3 that I installed
I get about 1.6 to 1.7 h for  zec   at 1065 watts with the oem psu.

Eth crashes the drivers crash from 1 to 2 hours
I did not test any other coins

My garage is 85 to 95 f

The gear is fine the software is not.
I have yet to get into the bios.


at citronick did you get into the bios?  if so what key did you use.

Fellow miner Tradewiz shared with me that he used "del" key upon boot up.

This was the first thing that I did when I got the unit but was not successful.

Could you do the test -- maybe give it a few tries with the DEL key.

As soon as you get into the BIOS, changing the boot sequence should make the USB port handle bootable images.

I did the delete key no go
I did the F1 key no go
I did the F2 key no go
I did the F6 key no go
I did the F10 key no go.

So I am waiting for software from Eliovp

I did figure a way to make the gear  get activated.

Use a kms key for windows 10 enterprise  from microsoft  pages then buy a windows 10 enterprise key.  there are legit sellers of windows 10 enterprise keys  but I can not find a legit seller of windows 10 enterprise LTSB key.

[citronick]

Thank you, citronick!

I think restarts can be also related to overheating GPUs or other components of miner.

Yeah thread got sidetracked a lot   with the windows 10 enterprise LTSB issues. plus the possible  linux replacement.


The gpus don't overheat.  The heatsinks are huge  the fans are powerful.

The gpus have a custom bios that  has been flashed to them.

They are undervolted to .975  which is not stock.

My unit is using an Evga 1600 g2
I did test the oem psu.

I get about 1.6 to 1.7  h for  zec  at 1030 watts  with the evga 1600g2------using claymore 9.3 that I installed
I get about 1.6 to 1.7 h for  zec   at 1065 watts with the oem psu.

Eth crashes the drivers crash from 1 to 2 hours
I did not test any other coins

My garage is 85 to 95 f

The gear is fine the software is not.
I have yet to get into the bios.


at citronick did you get into the bios?  if so what key did you use.

Fellow miner Tradewiz shared with me that he used "del" key upon boot up.

This was the first thing that I did when I got the unit but was not successful.

Could you do the test -- maybe give it a few tries with the DEL key.

As soon as you get into the BIOS, changing the boot sequence should make the USB port handle bootable images.

I did the delete key no go
I did the F1 key no go
I did the F2 key no go
I did the F6 key no go
I did the F10 key no go.

So I am waiting for software from Eliovp

I did figure a way to make the gear  get activated.

Use a kms key for windows 10 enterprise  from microsoft  pages then buy a windows 10 enterprise key.  there are legit sellers of windows 10 enterprise keys  but I can not find a legit seller of windows 10 enterprise LTSB key.

https://www.kinguin.net/

[citronick]

Thank you, citronick!

I think restarts can be also related to overheating GPUs or other components of miner.

Unlikely overheating, like Phil said the fans are very good and powerful.

Its likely some bug in AMD drivers for Windows (or Claymore?)

In Eliovp's test run on Linux, the temps are correctly shown and the fans are so good the GPUs stay very cool.