New to Mining: OS and Hardware

[Asgaroth]

Hi!

First of all, I want to say that this forum is a gold mine of information, so much so that it can be overwhelming to a newcomer like me to mining, so, thanks to all the folks out there that have shared their experiences.

I've been toying with the idea of mining for about 2 years now and only recently decided that I'm gonna hop in and give it a shot, so, here's what I've ordered:

Motherboard: ASUS B250 Mining Expert
Memory: 2 x 8GB DDR4 2400 Corsair modules
CPU: Intel G3930
AMD GPU: 2 x PowerColor RX580 Red Devil Golden 8GB
              1 x Sapphire Radeon Nitro+ RX580 8GB
nVidia GPU: 2 x Zotac 1070 TI AMP Extreme 8GB
Case: Tanli Open Air Mining Rig Stackable Frame 14 GPU
T-Connect 6 pack risers kits
PSU: EVGA SuperNOVA 1600W G2

The motherboard I selected was based on a couple youtube clips I watched and thought it would provide longevity and expandabilty, hopefully the BIOS will be sorted out by the time I reach 19 GPU's being used.

The PSU I chose because:
 (a) A forum member posted in here in another thread to go with EVGA G2 power supplies as they are rock solid, and
 (b) 1600W because the ASUS manual recommends 3 x 1500W PSU's connected for optimal operation when max configuration is applied.

GPU's were selected based on another member here posting some links to BitsBeTrippin youtube channel, and these (Powercolor and Zotac) cards seem to be very good bang for buck (if you exclude the fact that they are overpriced anyway).

So, I'm hoping for members to comment on their thoughts/experiences with similar hardware and what I should be reading up on between now and the parts arriving (couple weeks delivery time). Things like bios mods to gain optimal performance would be appreciated.

The other issue, probably more importantly, is which OS to run, personally, I would like to run a linux variant, but I'm open to suggestions from people more experienced with this than I am.

I am fortunate enough to have Solar PV here at home too so, hopefully during the summer months it should cover the electricity during the day, if I manage to get a reletively decent power draw from the initial system.

I'm still up in the air as to which altcoin(s) to mine, but from reading the forums, it appears that ETH/XMR seems to be very popular, any suggestions here would be appreciated too, or links to posts even better.

Cheers
Asgaroth.

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[leonix007]

Hi!

First of all, I want to say that this forum is a gold mine of information, so much so that it can be overwhelming to a newcomer like me to mining, so, thanks to all the folks out there that have shared their experiences.

I've been toying with the idea of mining for about 2 years now and only recently decided that I'm gonna hop in and give it a shot, so, here's what I've ordered:

Motherboard: ASUS B250 Mining Expert
Memory: 2 x 8GB DDR4 2400 Corsair modules
CPU: Intel G3930
AMD GPU: 2 x PowerColor RX580 Red Devil Golden 8GB
              1 x Sapphire Radeon Nitro+ RX580 8GB
nVidia GPU: 2 x Zotac 1070 TI AMP Extreme 8GB
Case: Tanli Open Air Mining Rig Stackable Frame 14 GPU
T-Connect 6 pack risers kits
PSU: EVGA SuperNOVA 1600W G2

The motherboard I selected was based on a couple youtube clips I watched and thought it would provide longevity and expandabilty, hopefully the BIOS will be sorted out by the time I reach 19 GPU's being used.

The PSU I chose because:
 (a) A forum member posted in here in another thread to go with EVGA G2 power supplies as they are rock solid, and
 (b) 1600W because the ASUS manual recommends 3 x 1500W PSU's connected for optimal operation when max configuration is applied.

GPU's were selected based on another member here posting some links to BitsBeTrippin youtube channel, and these (Powercolor and Zotac) cards seem to be very good bang for buck (if you exclude the fact that they are overpriced anyway).

So, I'm hoping for members to comment on their thoughts/experiences with similar hardware and what I should be reading up on between now and the parts arriving (couple weeks delivery time). Things like bios mods to gain optimal performance would be appreciated.

The other issue, probably more importantly, is which OS to run, personally, I would like to run a linux variant, but I'm open to suggestions from people more experienced with this than I am.

I am fortunate enough to have Solar PV here at home too so, hopefully during the summer months it should cover the electricity during the day, if I manage to get a reletively decent power draw from the initial system.

I'm still up in the air as to which altcoin(s) to mine, but from reading the forums, it appears that ETH/XMR seems to be very popular, any suggestions here would be appreciated too, or links to posts even better.

Cheers
Asgaroth.

Welcome to the of world mining. you have a nice choice of hardware

So, I'm hoping for members to comment on their thoughts/experiences with similar hardware and what I should be reading up on between now and the parts arriving (couple weeks delivery time). Things like bios mods to gain optimal performance would be appreciated.

for Nvida you just read on the proper clocks

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2054800.0

for RX 580 bios mod is required

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1954245.0

The other issue, probably more importantly, is which OS to run, personally, I would like to run a linux variant, but I'm open to suggestions from people more experienced with this than I am.

If I were you, start with the OS that you're most familiar with, then go play with other OS you want

I'm still up in the air as to which altcoin(s) to mine, but from reading the forums, it appears that ETH/XMR seems to be very popular, any suggestions here would be appreciated too, or links to posts even better.

A Profitability Calculator will always do with regards to your hardware

whattomine.com

[Asgaroth]

Hi,

Thanks for the thread info on the AMD Bios mod and nVidia timings. I'll have a read through those

I just came across HiveOS (Linux), looks interesting, I might give the OS a go. What I like about it is that there appears to be a publicly availble list of OC settings people have put in for their cards, available for all to look at and test with here

[Vann]

Mining is not an exact science, nor is it rocket science. All the information you need to get started is available here and elsewhere. GPU Mining is also not plug-and-play. You have to try out various settings and configurations to find out what works best for you and your setup, if you want to get the most out of it. BBT on YouTube is an excellent resource from the perspective of someone with the experience and knowledge of someone that's been doing it in scale for longer than most.

[Asgaroth]

Mining is not an exact science, nor is it rocket science. All the information you need to get started is available here and elsewhere. GPU Mining is also not plug-and-play. You have to try out various settings and configurations to find out what works best for you and your setup, if you want to get the most out of it. BBT on YouTube is an excellent resource from the perspective of someone with the experience and knowledge of someone that's been doing it in scale for longer than most.

Hi, thanks for the info, in-fact, if I'm not mistaken, I think it was a previous post from you that got me onto the BBT youtube channel, thanks for that, I've spent hours watching his vlogs now

On a side note, I just saw a post from you where you are dual mining using your 13 gpu rig, I was wondering, does this reduce the hash rate of each coin being mined as apposed to mining a single coin on the cpu, or, does it actually increase the returns even at the reduced hash rates? I'm just wondering about the 3 x RX 580's that I have, would it be better to dual mine rather than single mine with those cards.

Another question, when using an OS like HiveOS or SMOS, is it possible to, for example, allocate a miner to GPU0-1 and another miner to GPU2-4, or is it ones of those scenarios where the miner app detects the GPUs and uses all of them for that instance?

[mjamell]

How is your mining rig doing?

I'm starting my mining venture with similar hardware.

I bought 2 of the ASUS B250 Mining motherboards and 8 AMD 580 8GB video cards - just arrived today.

Will expand to more video cards as time permits.

[Asgaroth]

How is your mining rig doing?

I'm starting my mining venture with similar hardware.

I bought 2 of the ASUS B250 Mining motherboards and 8 AMD 580 8GB video cards - just arrived today.

Will expand to more video cards as time permits.

I'm still waiting on my parts to arrive, although, I have a server motherboard here and am testing out various settings on the AMD 580 cards. So far, using BBT's BIOS mod for the PowerColor Red Devil Golden Sample RX580, I'm getting around 745H/s per card mining electroneum, which seems to match up with his performance that he got while testing the cards out.

I'm playing with HiveOS while doing these tests, I like the OS, and the website is clean. Granted I've not tested any other OS's out other than this one. I did run BBT multiminer on windows for a bit while trying things out, but at the moment, I'm using HiveOS. Give it a go and see if you like it.

Good luck with your rig. I wish shipping was much quicker, cannot wait to get going. I need to read up on online trading, never done that before, so should be fun as we go along.

[Asgaroth]

I have another noob question, when a mining pool mentions different ports for low/medium/high end hardware, what would the classification be, I'm just wondering which ports to connect to.

Currently I'm guessing using the following (in my mind)

Low:
  (a) CPU
  (b) Older AMD/nVidia graphics cards, eg: GTX 680/780
  (c) Single GPU rigs (even with high end video cards)

Medium:
  (a) New-ish GPUS, AMD RX 4XX/5XX, nVidia GTX 9XX/10XX range

High:
  (a) Multi-GPU (2+ GPU's) configs
  (b) RX Vega/GTX Titan et al


Is the above a reasonable assumption? I'm guessing there is more to this than just the hardware, does anyone have a link to a page I can read that would help me understand this better, the mining pool pages I've been to don't really break it down for noobs like me.

I'm also guessing that each pool/port will have different difficulty settings and thereby increasing/decreasing your returns if you connect to a pool/port which doesn't quite match your hardware.