[XPM] [ANN] Primecoin High Performance | HP14 released!

[crendore]

Its funny because this is an interesting niche market.  You really just want high CPU that you can floor, with small HDD space and virtually 0 bandwidth.

Problem is you're paying for all these extras you don't want with these hosts.  You don't really need redundant HDDs, who cares if it crashes if you have it setup right you already have that coin in your local wallet.  Who cares about 1 TB bandwidth you probably only do like 500 MB in a month.  Who cares about HDD space, all you really need is like 5 GB give or take.

I think there is a market here, for a new type of hosting company that just whores out CPUs on low bandwidth.  Shit i could do this out of my garage for much cheaper than amazon AWS.

Thoughts? would people be into this kind of service? i guess it's only valuable as long as primecoin cpu mining is valuable.

[Qantaqa]

Its funny because this is an interesting niche market.  You really just want high CPU that you can floor, with small HDD space and virtually 0 bandwidth.

Problem is you're paying for all these extras you don't want with these hosts.  You don't really need redundant HDDs, who cares if it crashes if you have it setup right you already have that coin in your local wallet.  Who cares about 1 TB bandwidth you probably only do like 500 MB in a month.  Who cares about HDD space, all you really need is like 5 GB give or take.

I think there is a market here, for a new type of hosting company that just whores out CPUs on low bandwidth.  Shit i could do this out of my garage for much cheaper than amazon AWS.

Thoughts? would people be into this kind of service? i guess it's only valuable as long as primecoin cpu mining is valuable.

Same came to my mind as I own a company that could easily deliver this, the only thing I worry about is how future proof this is. If there isnt a good CPU coin at a certain time, the product is void.

[Entz]

There is that.. Hard to say what the future will bring.

To put things in perspective, just the processors in a cc2.8xl are $3200, a dell with 4GB of ram and something similar to those two well over $5000. You would need one hell of ROI to make that work. Of course lower end/used stuff is cheaper but storing/powering and cooling 50-100 servers aint cheap.

[blackboy]

I did some pretty massive research on servers and tried a bunch before buying on server4you. The Opteron architecture is cheap and performs very well for primecoin mining. That's what I'm using and it yields anywhere from 60 to 80% at current diff levels.

However:

- ovh.co.uk offers probably the best servers for this task. They offer servers with decent processors and very low ram/disk space for less than 10 dollars. Problem is you have to live in the UK to rent these.

- You can also try the Hetzner action and rent servers for up to 50% less than their normal price. https://robot.your-server.de/order/market

- And you can try cheap providers at http://lowendbox.com/. Just make sure to choose recent architectures or good price performance ratios.


I also have some boxes running on routerhosting. Those boxes don't perform as well but they are profitable if you tune them well (about 20%). The key benefit of this provider is they accept payments on bitcoin, so that's a major plus.

Hope that helps...

[Entz]

I did some pretty massive research on servers and tried a bunch before buying on server4you. The Opteron architecture is cheap and performs very well for primecoin mining. That's what I'm using and it yields anywhere from 60 to 80% at current diff levels.

That is not bad at all. EC2 for me at least is in the 10-20 range on a good day. Might spin a few up just to see, see if they will wave the fee for a bulk set.

[gigawatt]

There is that.. Hard to say what the future will bring.

To put things in perspective, just the processors in a cc2.8xl are $3200, a dell with 4GB of ram and something similar to those two well over $5000. You would need one hell of ROI to make that work. Of course lower end/used stuff is cheaper but storing/powering and cooling 50-100 servers aint cheap.

Yeah, but nobody is going to run Intel Xeon processors in a desktop.  They're horrendously expensive for their return.
I paid ~$80 for my AMD Phenom II X5 955 and it churns out ~0.80 chains/day.
I paid about $100 per 1.00 chains/day, whereas Amazon paid $1200 per 1.00 chains/day.

You don't need server grade hardware for poor man's number crunching.

[Entz]

Yeah, but nobody is going to run Intel Xeon processors in a desktop.  They're horrendously expensive for their return.
I paid ~$80 for my AMD Phenom II X5 955 and it churns out ~0.80 chains/day.
I paid about $100 per 1.00 chains/day, whereas Amazon paid $1200 per 1.00 chains/day.

You don't need server grade hardware for poor man's number crunching.

No but those comments were in response to those posting about starting up a high cpu, low ram/disk based service. As I said you could do it with lower end hardware, you just need to scale up a great deal (which has its own issues for maintenance/cooling/reliability etc)

[gigawatt]

I did some pretty massive research on servers and tried a bunch before buying on server4you. The Opteron architecture is cheap and performs very well for primecoin mining. That's what I'm using and it yields anywhere from 60 to 80% at current diff levels.

However:

- ovh.co.uk offers probably the best servers for this task. They offer servers with decent processors and very low ram/disk space for less than 10 dollars. Problem is you have to live in the UK to rent these.

- You can also try the Hetzner action and rent servers for up to 50% less than their normal price. https://robot.your-server.de/order/market

- And you can try cheap providers at http://lowendbox.com/. Just make sure to choose recent architectures or good price performance ratios.


I also have some boxes running on routerhosting. Those boxes don't perform as well but they are profitable if you tune them well (about 20%). The key benefit of this provider is they accept payments on bitcoin, so that's a major plus.

Hope that helps...

lowendbox looks pretty nice.  Thank you for that.

I also took a closer look at server4you.  The vServer section is a bit more appealing, but I'm turned off by the sudden price shift based on billing period.  For 6 months is $20/month, but if you only want just one month, that'll be $45.   

[Entz]

The vServer section is a bit more appealing, but I'm turned off by the sudden price shift based on billing period.  For 6 months is $20/month, but if you only want just one month, that'll be $45.

sigh, yeah. This seems to be a common BS practice among a lot of the providers..

[bcp19]

There is that.. Hard to say what the future will bring.

To put things in perspective, just the processors in a cc2.8xl are $3200, a dell with 4GB of ram and something similar to those two well over $5000. You would need one hell of ROI to make that work. Of course lower end/used stuff is cheaper but storing/powering and cooling 50-100 servers aint cheap.

Yeah, but nobody is going to run Intel Xeon processors in a desktop.  They're horrendously expensive for their return.
I paid ~$80 for my AMD Phenom II X5 955 and it churns out ~0.80 chains/day.
I paid about $100 per 1.00 chains/day, whereas Amazon paid $1200 per 1.00 chains/day.

You don't need server grade hardware for poor man's number crunching.

I thought the Phenom was better at running this, my 2400 and 2500 are at .86/.88.

[Schleicher]

I thought the Phenom was better at running this, my 2400 and 2500 are at .86/.88.

0.80 sounds about right for 4 cores/3.2 GHz. My Phenom II X4 910e makes about 0.67 cpd with 2.6 GHz.

[Trillium]

While sitting in your chair running VPS remotely is nice, I preferred to take an alternate route.

I originally got a bunch (read: 12) old HP servers with 64-bit CPU's at an IT auction. Turned out they were far too inefficient (about 350 watts for <0.2 chainsperday). Ended up selling most of these and making a nice profit anyway.

A much better option is 2nd hand desktop PC's, core2duo CPU are the minimum I settle for now. These kind of machines can be had for more or less free if you find companies trying to get rid of their end of life systems and avoid disposal costs. Even at auctions I see systems like these go for <$20 every week.

I am running four on a wattmeter right now, about 300 watts total which is about $60/month in electricity for 1.2 chainsperday. It's not as great as some VPS by numbers alone, but at the end of the day I have accumulated a bunch of computer systems and parts that are still can still be sold as tested parts on eBay. I already operate a store on eBay so this is in my interests anyway.

[rocks]

Hi, I am just starting to look at Primecoin and wanted to know if anyone has advise on which miner is best. After looking through the threads it seems there are two main options:

1) Use mikaelh's miner from this thread and solo mine only.
2) Use the jhPrimeminer and pool mine at yPool.

From reading, it seems that mikaelh's miner is more efficient and will mine more blocks over time. But if you want the stability of a pool the only option is jhPrimeminer which sounds like it is a little bit less efficient.

Is this correct? If not what's the best option to get started mining? Any opinions appreciated. Thanks

[TheSpiral]

Hi, I am just starting to look at Primecoin and wanted to know if anyone has advise on which miner is best. After looking through the threads it seems there are two main options:

1) Use mikaelh's miner from this thread and solo mine only.
2) Use the jhPrimeminer and pool mine at yPool.

From reading, it seems that mikaelh's miner is more efficient and will mine more blocks over time. But if you want the stability of a pool the only option is jhPrimeminer which sounds like it is a little bit less efficient.

Is this correct? If not what's the best option to get started mining? Any opinions appreciated. Thanks

Yes, basically correct. There are several versions of jhPrimeminer to tinker with, though. And you won't necessarily get more blocks solo'ing, but there's a chance you will get some and a chance you won't, whereas pool mining will give you a steady trickle of XPM.

[Trillium]

Hi, I am just starting to look at Primecoin and wanted to know if anyone has advise on which miner is best. After looking through the threads it seems there are two main options:

1) Use mikaelh's miner from this thread and solo mine only.
2) Use the jhPrimeminer and pool mine at yPool.

From reading, it seems that mikaelh's miner is more efficient and will mine more blocks over time. But if you want the stability of a pool the only option is jhPrimeminer which sounds like it is a little bit less efficient.

Is this correct? If not what's the best option to get started mining? Any opinions appreciated. Thanks

You can install both and then compare them. With mikaelh's HP9, make a shortcut to the .exe and append '-gen' to the end of the target field. Then let it download the blockchain and let it start mining for a few minutes. Use 'getmininginfo' in the console and see what your CPU gives you. Currently we are taking 'primesperday' statistic as the most accurate estimate of performance.

You can then also pool mine for a while. Maybe a few days running each to reduce variance (your 'luck'). And compare your results.

If you are only going to mine on 1 or 2 CPU's and/or they are slow, pool mining might be better because it may otherwise take days to find a block mining solo. On the other hand some miners have many CPU's and usually find at least one block per day.

If you tell me what CPU's you have (model number: right click properties on Computer in most versions of windows, or, use CPU-Z) I could estimate your machines performance roughly.

[cabin]

With the fractional difficulty reaching a high level a useful optimization might be the "Sieve depth", represented as nBits in this line of code from prime.cpp

lpsieve = new CSieveOfEratosthenes(nSieveSize, nBits, mpzHash, mpzFixedMultiplier, pindexPrev);

Right now it it is searching for 9 chains, but increasingly these are going to be discarded because of the fraction test. It might be best to search for 10 chains now. I added a -h parameter to the pool miner as described below and it was quite effective at searching for the desired length of chain:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=257623.msg2820614#msg2820614

I propose -h 10 might be the best until the diff reaches 10.5 or so.

This chart also shows it being very difficult to find chains using the existing miners when the fractional part is high:
http://192.241.170.170/

[gigawatt]

With the fractional difficulty reaching a high level a useful optimization might be the "Sieve depth", represented as nBits in this line of code from prime.cpp

lpsieve = new CSieveOfEratosthenes(nSieveSize, nBits, mpzHash, mpzFixedMultiplier, pindexPrev);

Right now it it is searching for 9 chains, but increasingly these are going to be discarded because of the fraction test. It might be best to search for 10 chains now. I added a -h parameter to the pool miner as described below and it was quite effective at searching for the desired length of chain:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=257623.msg2820614#msg2820614

I propose -h 10 might be the best until the diff reaches 10.5 or so.

This chart also shows it being very difficult to find chains using the existing miners when the fractional part is high:
http://192.241.170.170/

I support this idea.  Although, to my knowledge all that will affect is the roundPrimorial which you can crank up by jacking with roundSievePercentage.

[Tamis]

I just rented two vps here : Inception Hosting

They got quickly shut down as abuse of their terms of service, I did not read anything regarding mining on their terms but whatever...

I told them I would warn you guys not to loose your time with them !

I'm supposed to be refunded so they aren't that bad either...

[Tamis]

With the fractional difficulty reaching a high level a useful optimization might be the "Sieve depth", represented as nBits in this line of code from prime.cpp

lpsieve = new CSieveOfEratosthenes(nSieveSize, nBits, mpzHash, mpzFixedMultiplier, pindexPrev);

Right now it it is searching for 9 chains, but increasingly these are going to be discarded because of the fraction test. It might be best to search for 10 chains now. I added a -h parameter to the pool miner as described below and it was quite effective at searching for the desired length of chain:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=257623.msg2820614#msg2820614

I propose -h 10 might be the best until the diff reaches 10.5 or so.

This chart also shows it being very difficult to find chains using the existing miners when the fractional part is high:
http://192.241.170.170/

I support this idea.  Although, to my knowledge all that will affect is the roundPrimorial which you can crank up by jacking with roundSievePercentage.

Interesting !

I'm at 80% already ? you guys ?

[Tamis]

So what are some good VPS hosts that everyone is using?

We're at a point where all "good" vps providers are too expensive !

At least all I know of, dif is still going up even if really slowly so some must have found better farming place than I did...