Longtime lurker, about to start mining

[FreeMeBTC]

Hello all,

I've been involved with BTC for six or eight months now, having first heard about it in NPR's Planet Money podcast in summer of 2011, and have been lurking on the forums for a while. I bought in back in October, figuring that I could afford to risk a few $100, only to now regret that I didn't put every cent that I had into BTC. I went to the Bitcoin conference in Philly in December, which is what really got me excited about what Bitcoin can and will do in the future. My personal 10,000 BTC pizzas will be the two T-shirts that I purchased there for 1.2 BTC each (facepalm).

The reason that I finally decided to make an account is that I just purchased a 7950 to start mining (the $250 after-rebate sale that Newegg was running) and wanted to use the time that it was in transit to get my account set up. I haven't done too much research into the details of running my mining rig, so if anyone could point the way, that would be great. Specifically any good resources on mining pools, operating systems/mining programs/drivers, tips and general best practices, or anything else that you think a new miner should know would be great!

Thanks!

-FreeMeBTC

[Tomintx]

Specifically any good resources on mining pools, operating systems/mining programs/drivers, tips and general best practices, or anything else that you think a new miner should know would be great!

Thanks!

-FreeMeBTC

I am also new here - Been mining full time for about 10-12 days. 

OS : Linux/Ubuntu if you know what you're doing.  Windows otherwise. 
Mining program: I am using BFGminer and it seems to be stable and (more importantly) resilient.
Mining pool: I am using Eclipsemc, but you might want to pick something different.  Look for low-cost PPS pool, will do better for small scale miner.  There is a link on this site with fees and everything you could want to know.
Other consideration - airflow.  Make sure you can keep the rig from getting too hot.  Open up your case and point a cheap fan in there.

Set it up, Turn it on and let it run.

- TomInTx

[Chrithu]

As someone who just started mining himself I highly suggest looking up the mining subforum in here. It has links to the important guides in stickied threads.

With an AMD card as far as my research goes your best set using guiminer. It's the easiest way to get it started. As far as pools go BTCGuild and Slush are the most popular and as far as I can see the most profitable pools for Bitcoin mining. I am using BTCGuild and I'm happy so far. The process is real simple. How to set things up is explained on their site in detail.

As far as your end goes: Make sure to have MSI afterburner downloaded (works also on non-MSI cards), because that gives you easy control over Core and Memory Clocks of your card aswell as Fanspeeds, plus monitors your cards temperature.

In general on your miner you want to reduce temperature and power consumption. So if you don't mind the noise have the GPU Fan running at high speed to keep the temp as low as possible. Only put in the bare minimum in hardware to reduce the number of devices that consume power. Underclock (reduce) the Memory clock of your card as far as possible. Mining doesn't need much or fast memory on the card so in oder to reduce both temperature and power consumption of the card you might aswell keep that at a minimum.

[FreeMeBTC]

Thanks to both of you for the info! I'll definitely start working through the mining subforum.

I'm reasonably experienced with Ubuntu, so I was thinking that it or another flavor of Linux would be best from a stability and possibly power consumption standpoint, but I wasn't sure how the drivers and utilities compared with Windows. I was hoping to run the OS off of a USB stick, to avoid running an HDD or CD drive and save on power, so I think that might limit me to Linux also (or can Windows 8 do that now?).

Also, is the general advice that it's best to use an open/no case with a box fan or similar, or to use a well-ventilated but closed case?

Thanks!

[Chrithu]

Thanks to both of you for the info! I'll definitely start working through the mining subforum.

I'm reasonably experienced with Ubuntu, so I was thinking that it or another flavor of Linux would be best from a stability and possibly power consumption standpoint, but I wasn't sure how the drivers and utilities compared with Windows. I was hoping to run the OS off of a USB stick, to avoid running an HDD or CD drive and save on power, so I think that might limit me to Linux also (or can Windows 8 do that now?).

Also, is the general advice that it's best to use an open/no case with a box fan or similar, or to use a well-ventilated but closed case?

Thanks!

Well if you know your ways around in linux (console/terminal, not the Windows mimicing mode that Ubuntu is ;-)) that is a good place to optimize things as, like you said, you can reduce power consumption by only running the daemons you need and thus have the CPU run at low clock.

Windows from USB? I think it was doable with XP. I think the newer ones are not or at least it will be a lot more complicated than running linux from USB.

As far as the case goes: That depends on the room. If it is clean and cleaned of dust regularly you should be able to run in an open case, which of course beats a closed case temperature wise, if you're not using watercooling. Generally I wouldn't suggest running without a case or an open case. Dust in the wrong places can kill hardware just as water does. It's too risky in my view. I'd go with a case that has good 120mm coolers at places that provide a good airflow in the case.

[FreeMeBTC]

I'm pretty comfortable in bash, writing scripts, etc., just not a computer science major (although I've met a few of those who could barely code, so...).

Not to argue the point, but I'm pretty sure that at least as recently as Windows 7, booting from a USB stick was not possible (I'm not referring an HDD or CD/DVD drive connected through USB, but rather specifically to USB pen-drives, e.g. similarly to Linux LiveUSB). Something makes me think that this capability was perhaps added with Windows 8, but I don't know for sure and it may be only in certain versions.

In any case, I'm leaning towards Linux.

I'm thinking that I'll go with a closed case, as I'll be running the rig in my basement, which is cool but definitely not clean-room-clean, so the dust would probably be more of an issue than the temperatures.