Third alt coin thread last two were too big. Builds links thoughts etc

[philipma1957]

decred not pasc

the test above is using 6 rigs 5 with 2 gpus and 1 with 1 gpu.

all rigs normally use 4 cards.

the cards are

rx 470 4gb
rx 470 8gb
rx 480 8gb


no one is going to do this normally run a 6 card rig with 3 gpus and an i5
or in my case a 4 card rig with 2 gpus and an i5

normally these rigs all use 4 cards.

interesting, when i mined decred as 2nd i remember -decri being in the 40s but never benched beyond that iirc. ill probably swith to decred in a few days.

what cpus were you using? thought you ran mainly celerons  and a 6400t or two.

I got good prices on i5 6400ts. So all i5 and 1 i7

[1714763940]

1714763940

[1714763940]

1714763940

[AriesIV10]

Learning Lesson:

I just came across an issue of one of my RIGs restarting every 7-20 minutes. 
After MANY hours of changing GPUs, Reloading Many Versions of Drivers, going to previous versions of programs and settings and switching out Risers; I swapped out the PSU and IT WORKED!

WOW what a chaotic situation.  Have an extra PSU around.

[philipma1957]

Learning Lesson:

I just came across an issue of one of my RIGs restarting every 7-20 minutes.  
After MANY hours of changing GPUs, Reloading Many Versions of Drivers, going to previous versions of programs and settings and switching out Risers; I swapped out the PSU and IT WORKED!

WOW what a chaotic situation.  Have an extra PSU around.

yeah

1 spare psu
1 spare mobo with a cpu and ram and os
1 spare gigabyte switch




this could be good for some.

im waiting for a decent miner oriented pico psu adapter for my sidehack server psu/breakout board too.

needs:
6 pin pcie input
4 pin cpu power cable (long)
sata power lead (long)

The Pico Finksy / Hawkfish will work with all the breakout boards that uses 6Pin.  You won't be needing the CPU power from the PICO.  It's a 160W Pico with custom cablings.  The 6pin splitter will have a pigtail that have the barrel connector to power the Pico and another adapter for the 8 Pin EPS CPU connection.  It will also have the 1 molex and 1 Sata because like you, I still want to have the option of Running Windows for undervolting or ROM flashing if I want.  

Finksy is sending me a unit in a couple of weeks to test.  I just lacked the patience so I tried to Jerry Rigged a solution from Ebay to play and be more familiar with it.  My plan is to replaced all the baby ATX psu with PICOs to reduce cabling and the space used up by the ATX PSU.  This will improve my air flow to allow my Exhaust fan to be much more efficient.  Not to mention it will be much easier to troubleshoot and get GPUs in and out of the rack.

I also ordered a lot of supplies for Cryptowatcher as he volunteered to design some even nicer cabling options.  Will update everyone and show the different options since many of us including myself are not very experience with Picos.  It will help save everyone headaches and frustrations.  The best part is that they will try to get it to use cheaper than if we were to go out and Jerry Rig 1 for ourself.

my newer version of it, better wires (18 awg) but the input from psu is too short, i might mod them longer but it's ok for my setup.



don't say i don't share or off topic !

i've bought at least 5 different versions & run tests on them, so far this is best. Rated 150W MAX 210W (OPP) built in OVP/UVP

not promoting any sales but i am in for competition which the OP encourages, i will price match & offer a LOWER PRICE !

Black 6 Pin PCIE connects directly to breakout board

White 4 Pin connects to mobo, it will power a 4/8 connector on the mobo

2 x Black SATA, well we all know what it does.

[takagari]

little pico's are awesome. some cheap ones on ebay under $30
Finding a good reliable one.. not so easy. the one you quoted above, the op is not yet selling.

[philipma1957]

little pico's are awesome. some cheap ones on ebay under $30
Finding a good reliable one.. not so easy. the one you quoted above, the op is not yet selling.

yes you are correct.  it is not ready for primetime.

it does appear to be higher quality and may be worth waiting for.

In my case with the riserless rigs and smaller psu i don't need it but felt it should be mentioned.

[yslyung]

yeah, not yet as i am low on stock & i have to mod the barrel connector to a 6 pin pcie. i am trying to lower or offer a more competitive price by buying them in larger bulk.

let's see how things goes, yun have pm'ed me so let's see how things goes.

shipping will be costly if i am a direct walk in.

pls be patient.

the nearest person to me should be citronick, if he's interested i can easily send 1 for him to test n review.

stay tuned, thx phil for sharing.

[citronick]

yeah, not yet as i am low on stock & i have to mod the barrel connector to a 6 pin pcie. i am trying to lower or offer a more competitive price by buying them in larger bulk.

let's see how things goes, yun have pm'ed me so let's see how things goes.

shipping will be costly if i am a direct walk in.

pls be patient.

the nearest person to me should be citronick, if he's interested i can easily send 1 for him to test n review.

stay tuned, thx phil for sharing.

I have maxed out what power I can afford in my tiny farm.

I wish I pico-ed when I started the farm.

Oh well, no harm trying out a unit or two for the next project...

... who knows I may know someone who has access hydro power in Laos 

[philipma1957]

my  4 card reduced to 2 card rigs are amazing  look at the decred numbers.  I finally found reason to have good cpus [i5 6400t mostly]

they were stable  at -ethi 21 and - dcri 44

now testing -ethi 23 and - dcri 50

Once I found I can jack the -ethi  to 23 the eth hash does not drop off

I will keep pushing to see what it can go to.

The pandaminer has special bios for its gpus.  So no dual due to low end cpu spot welded in.

I find  I set -ethi 1  and get 195mh  stable and I can run fans slow (9 volts) and quiet.

It can do -ethi 3  and get 222mh  stable but fans are louder as they need 11 volts to stay stable.



citronick I followed your advice   pointing everything at nicehash.

I am using 13 amps x 240 volts = 75 kwatts per day x 31 = 2325 a month

this is about 232.50 usd in the winter for me
this is about 465.00 usd in the summer for me

i am earning about 750 in btc  so   518 a month to the good for now.

this is 13 gpus and the pandaminer.

[citronick]

citronick I followed your advice   pointing everything at nicehash.

Although I still think 3% fee is a tad high from Nicehash but.... there are more pros than cons by selling/renting out your hash.

Sadly, I lost faith in many of the trusted popular pools... with exception to ethpool, ethermine pools for ETH which basically saved my group's ass in 2015-2016 during the ETH hey days.

The rest of pools for ZEC and XMR were getting bad to worse and struggling all the time. Payments are erratic too and at the same time, the exchanges get to charge us transfer fees because we still have to transfer final amount to Coinbase or cold wallets.

I feel that we should not be side tracked on whats going on now which is the critical cross road of Bitcoin and BTC price itself. The value of an ounce of gold is now less than 1 BTC. The first US$20M ETF will see its fate on March 11th... many things to look forward to for BTC this year.

Therefore, I made a strategic move to focus all mining operations to eventually convert to BTC as fast as possible via NH - at least for this year to maximize my chances having lots of BTC, when price hits 1500, 3000, 5000...... etc.  

Using NH to take up front risk and pay per share submitted (ie. no bloody confirmations for coins etc before payment), IMHO that is worth the 3%.

With SRR now installed in my farm, maximum uptime is now the new measurement.

Off topic since its non-alt coins --- I also made some major changes in the 1.3PH S9 (currently gbminers.com) and 720TH A7 (currently kano.is) farms -- to use NH-SHA256 as the backup pool. I rather RENT OUT than use so called "decent" PPS paying pool (Antpool, F2pool etc.), because they are a lot of crazy people out there who basically throw money to buy expensive hash in NH SHA256 marketplace. Hey, I dont mind taking their money - they can enjoy my 2PH anytime for a premium. If the crazies continue to come and play at NH SHA256 marketplace, I am willing to point the entire 2PH farm to them.

[philipma1957]

citronick I followed your advice   pointing everything at nicehash.

Although I still think 3% fee is a tad high from Nicehash but.... there are more pros than cons by selling/renting out your hash.

Sadly, I lost faith in many of the trusted popular pools... with exception to ethpool, ethermine pools for ETH which basically saved my group's ass in 2015-2016 during the ETH hey days.

The rest of pools for ZEC and XMR were getting bad to worse and struggling all the time. Payments are erratic too and at the same time, the exchanges get to charge us transfer fees because we still have to transfer final amount to Coinbase or cold wallets.

I feel that we should not be side tracked on whats going on now which is the critical cross road of Bitcoin and BTC price itself. The value of an ounce of gold is now less than 1 BTC. The first US$20M ETF will see its fate on March 11th... many things to look forward to for BTC this year.

Therefore, I made a strategic move to focus all mining operations to eventually convert to BTC as fast as possible via NH - at least for this year to maximize my chances having lots of BTC, when price hits 1500, 3000, 5000...... etc.  

Using NH to take up front risk and pay per share submitted (ie. no bloody confirmations for coins etc before payment), IMHO that is worth the 3%.

With SRR now installed in my farm, maximum uptime is now the new measurement.

Off topic since its non-alt coins --- I also made some major changes in the 1.3PH S9 (currently gbminers.com) and 720TH A7 (currently kano.is) farms -- to use NH-SHA256 as the backup pool. I rather RENT OUT than use so called "decent" PPS paying pool (Antpool, F2pool etc.), because they are a lot of crazy people out there who basically throw money to buy expensive hash in NH SHA256 marketplace. Hey, I dont mind taking their money - they can enjoy my 2PH anytime for a premium. If the crazies continue to come and play at NH SHA256 marketplace, I am willing to point the entire 2PH farm to them.

Fees are high but the price being paid is high.
I am converting all coins to BTC.
I am trying to balance  coins-- gear-- cash

At the moment I bumped cash and lowered both gear and coins.

say 7k cash   10k gear    9k coins almost all btc

I may sell more gear.

you need to have cash on hand in case coins dump.

We may see coins go way up or crash.  So I see 2500 or 600   not  say 1000-1300 flat path  by years end.

[vapourminer]

citronick I followed your advice   pointing everything at nicehash.

Although I still think 3% fee is a tad high from Nicehash but.... there are more pros than cons by selling/renting out your hash.

ive had my single dedicated rig dual mining at nicehash for the last month or so. it is definitely more convenient than shifting pools and hitting exchanges every few days or whenever to get btc. just mines to my btc wallet.

i do keep the one 390 on my daily driver doing eth only and pointed to an eth pool (dwarfpool atm) to dribble eth to my wallet.

so basically 4 out 5 cards at nicepool.

[KaydenC]

Found this. A ready built mining case for $72 USD.

https://world.taobao.com/item/39828632022.htm?fromSite=main

They even have a prebuilt mining rig with 6x Rx 470D (470D is slightly nerfed from rx 470). I bought an empty case with fans. Shall see how it turns out.

[citronick]

Found this. A ready built mining case for $72 USD.

https://world.taobao.com/item/39828632022.htm?fromSite=main

They even have a prebuilt mining rig with 6x Rx 470D (470D is slightly nerfed from rx 470). I bought an empty case with fans. Shall see how it turns out.

Good find this Kayden. I will try and get a unit over too.

I usually order from Aliexpress, trying to create account in Taoboa.com but its all in Chinese 

[GabryRox]

So, I got my 3rd mining rig up and running this weekend. Almost identical to my last build (W10, 6 MSI GPU, BTC Pro2 Mobo) except for a cheaper G3258 CPU (vs 4790k) & 8GB RAM (vs 16).

Initial boot Win7 install and W10 upgrade went well. Copied over all my mining stuff via USB stick from other rigs, including Crimson 16.10.  Just started with 1 new MSI 470 from Amazon. Started up Claymore dual ETH & DCR (both at default intensity) and ran fine for about 15 minutes before I got a weird crash. But, seems like a fluke as after that, it ran for over 2 hours with 1 GPU just fine.

Now the strange thing... after 2 hours running 1 GPU, I shut down and install the 2nd (again, brand new from Amazon). But, when I turn it on, the system doesn't recognize the GPU... not Wattool, GPUz, or Device Manager... even after "scanning for new hardware".  So, over the next few minutes, I swap out risers, USB cables, and try different PCIe x1 slots. Nothing works. The thing i noticed is that the MSI logo on the top of the GPU lit up, but the red lights at the other end never lit up on any of the attempts. This GPU is plugged into the same molex & PCIe PSU cables as GPU#1, so I don't think that's the issue.

Does this seem like a likely dead GPU to anyone?  Or, is there something else I need to check to prove that out before returning it?  Ultimately, I will find out as soon as the 4 used GPUs I bought from Phil arrive today, but would like to know if there is anything relatively easy to check that I haven't tried yet.   

[GabryRox]

So, I got my 3rd mining rig up and running this weekend. Almost identical to my last build (W10, 6 MSI GPU, BTC Pro2 Mobo) except for a cheaper G3258 CPU (vs 4790k) & 8GB RAM (vs 16).

Initial boot Win7 install and W10 upgrade went well. Copied over all my mining stuff via USB stick from other rigs, including Crimson 16.10.  Just started with 1 new MSI 470 from Amazon. Started up Claymore dual ETH & DCR (both at default intensity) and ran fine for about 15 minutes before I got a weird crash. But, seems like a fluke as after that, it ran for over 2 hours with 1 GPU just fine.

Now the strange thing... after 2 hours running 1 GPU, I shut down and install the 2nd (again, brand new from Amazon). But, when I turn it on, the system doesn't recognize the GPU... not Wattool, GPUz, or Device Manager... even after "scanning for new hardware".  So, over the next few minutes, I swap out risers, USB cables, and try different PCIe x1 slots. Nothing works. The thing i noticed is that the MSI logo on the top of the GPU lit up, but the red lights at the other end never lit up on any of the attempts. This GPU is plugged into the same molex & PCIe PSU cables as GPU#1, so I don't think that's the issue.

Does this seem like a likely dead GPU to anyone?  Or, is there something else I need to check to prove that out before returning it?  Ultimately, I will find out as soon as the 4 used GPUs I bought from Phil arrive today, but would like to know if there is anything relatively easy to check that I haven't tried yet.  

It's the risers, stupid!  (props to those of you who are old enough to get that one lol)

Well, Phil saved me on this one even though he hasn't replied here lol!  I got the 4 470's I bought from him and tried one as the 2nd GPU... no dice... still same issue as described above.  So, steaming a bit, I proceed to change around all of the PSU cables and even re-installed the Crimson drivers... still nothing!  To make matters worse, somewhere along the line, the 1st GPU that had been working fine 24 hours stopped, and I couldn't even get my rig to boot up!

Finally, as a last-ditch effort before pulling what little hair I have left out, I decide to try 1 of the 2 risers that Phil threw in as a nice bonus. First I try GPU#1 and bam! Lights up fine, rig boots fine. Install GPU#2 with Phil's 2nd riser and bam!  Lights up and after boot, both GPUs recognized and now churning ETH + DCR just fine!

So, firstly... a BIG thank you to Phil as without those risers you included, I would have had a sleepless night tonight for sure!

Secondly, I am baffled at how ALL of these risers can be bad. I got 5 from Amazon seller XRP, whom I have ordered most of my previous risers from and all have worked fine.  However, this new batch has a red PCIe slot, not black or blue like the previous ones, so they are clearly from a different batch and apparently, it's a horrible one.  I have tried all or parts of 4 of the 5 and apparently they were what were causing all of my problems. I haven't opened the 5th one but what's the point because even if it worked initially, I would have zero confidence of its long-term capabilities, since the 1 worked for 24 hours then crapped out.

So... now I need to find a reliable supplier of USB powered risers so that I can get the remaining 4 GPUs up and running ASAP.

Can anyone make a recommendation here?  Ideally, it would be a US-based seller that offers expedited shipping but I would be willing to sacrifice a few days for more reliability if necessary.

edit: actually just found these on Amazon from Sintech. They are a bit more expensive but have better reviews and actually look very similar to the ones Phil sent me.  Anyone ordered from these guys?

https://smile.amazon.com/dp/B00HZ0M9F2/ref=psdc_464394_t1_B00IMYODGS

[64dimensions]

I haven't had any problems with this seller (Now Ver 5S):

http://www.ebay.com/itm/311645080581?_trksid=p2057872.m2749.l2649&ssPageName=STRK%3AMEBIDX%3AIT

[KaydenC]

From taobao: https://world.taobao.com/item/544561558622.htm?fromSite=main&ali_refid=a3_430620_1006:1105386629:N:2017%E6%AC%BE%E6%8C%96%E7%9F%BF%E7%BA%BF:43c0f0406d171c26f54c2d0fd7c4349c&ali_trackid=1_43c0f0406d171c26f54c2d0fd7c4349c

These new risers use 6pin power instead of molex, and I think it's more convenient as we can simply use a splitter. No more sata to molex. Not sure if it's available on Amazon though.

Amazon has the older molex risers: https://www.amazon.com/Mining-Machine-Enhanced-Extender-Adapter/dp/B01CU1U2XG/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1488858597&sr=8-1&keywords=pcie+riser

[philipma1957]

Should be itop on eBay.

I got a six pack from him did a review you can go pcie to the riser.

Somewhere there is a review and a link

[citronick]

Should be itop on eBay.

I got a six pack from him did a review you can go pcie to the riser.

Somewhere there is a review and a link

I get mine from this shop in China HK Vivid Electronics via Aliexpress. Need to dig up the URL.

Got a few from pieces in 2015 to test and shipment fast and the risers are very good.

Version 3 back then and the one with the white USB3 cable... eventually I bought more 200 from them.

They are still around - I guess a good gauge to see if a e-shop is legit or not is the number of years in business.

[philipma1957]

http://www.ebay.com/itm/272456808280?

6 for 58.90

tell him I gave you the link.

I have found you can use  the pcie direct  and not use the sata to pcie