A Few Pearls of Wisdom for Beginners

[SpceGhst]

After my first 6 months of mining, I have come up with a few pearls of wisdom for beginners:

90% of all mining program errors are due to too much overclock/undervolt
The other 10% are caused by errors in configuration
If you’re sure the problem is not the riser, the problem is the riser
Never keep any wallets on a machine you use for mining
It’s hard to mine the most profitable coin because it’s always changing
If you have to sell your mined coins immediately to pay the electric bill, you probably don’t need to be mining (have some working capital)
The pool with the highest hash rate doesn’t make you the most coins over time
Always keep older versions of mining programs, you might need them one day
When a new GPU driver comes out, let somebody else be the guinea pig
Time is money in mining.  If your machine is down, you’re not making money
Fine tuning a rig can be time consuming; don’t let it consume all your time
If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.

Please feel free to add your own...

[CCRiggz]

Good stuff, I would to this

"If you’re sure the problem is not the riser, the problem is the riser"

with

"If you are really sure it's not the riser, then its the USB cable connecting it"

[gotminer]

And if you're not mining with Vega's, use Simple Mining OS.  Switched all of my Nvidia rigs to SMOS months ago.  Never have been happier. 

[huntingthesnark]

And if you're not mining with Vega's, use Simple Mining OS.  Switched all of my Nvidia rigs to SMOS months ago.  Never have been happier. 

Genuinely good tip that. Used to use win10, now only on Vega rigs. Smos is about 100% easier.

Another general one:

-- Never upgrade to the latest miner version when you're in a rush. It'll always take longer than it should/break something else/introduce a new 'intensity' setting that'll crash your rigs till you work it out...

[kineda]

here are a few i can add:
- write down things you do for initial setups so if you have to re-image you remember what you did. i finally got my 6th card working on a H170 Asus after 7 months, fuck if i know how but now im terrified when i need to rebuild it lol

- make sure you turn on auto boot, auto login and setup your mining apps to auto start. i moved over to awesome miner over custom scripts i was writing and now i don't have to worry about extended downtimes overnight or while at work

- if you're going to exchange coins yourself make sure you know the thresholds for exchange as well as the thresholds to remove from the exchange wallet. i've had about $12 worth of LTC sitting at cryptopia for months :/

- 65db is loud to have sitting next to you when you're at your main pc, if you can find a way to not have a ASIC in the inside of your house do it lol

[Agozyen]

After my first 6 months of mining, I have come up with a few pearls of wisdom for beginners:

90% of all mining program errors are due to too much overclock/undervolt
The other 10% are caused by errors in configuration
If you’re sure the problem is not the riser, the problem is the riser
Never keep any wallets on a machine you use for mining
It’s hard to mine the most profitable coin because it’s always changing
If you have to sell your mined coins immediately to pay the electric bill, you probably don’t need to be mining (have some working capital)
The pool with the highest hash rate doesn’t make you the most coins over time
Always keep older versions of mining programs, you might need them one day
When a new GPU driver comes out, let somebody else be the guinea pig
Time is money in mining.  If your machine is down, you’re not making money
Fine tuning a rig can be time consuming; don’t let it consume all your time
If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.

Please feel free to add your own...

Power supply testers are $10-$15.  I highly recommend getting one and use it for troubleshooting.  It's a lot easier than shuffling cards and cables around and it will save you time if you ever have to troubleshoot power problems.

[efudd]

- If you are thinking about starting mining, don't.
- If you think you should mine anyway, don't.

:-)

[gotminer]

here are a few i can add:
- write down things you do for initial setups so if you have to re-image you remember what you did. i finally got my 6th card working on a H170 Asus after 7 months, fuck if i know how but now im terrified when i need to rebuild it lol

When I was using Win10 for all of my rigs, I was using the free version Macrium Reflect to make images of each hard drive after all of the initial set up was complete.  It's extra work, but it came in handy when I had a ssd go bad.

[gotminer]

- If you are thinking about starting mining, don't.
- If you think you should mine anyway, don't.

:-)

That's pretty good advice for 99.9% of people.

[Rock and Paper]

Agree getting stable OC is 100% better than making it at MAX OC just to get 1mhs faster.

Also "DO NOT DOWNLOAD NEW/UNKNOWN MINERS" just too many scams out there.

[vuli1]

USE GOOGLE and READ some tutorials. 

[gotminer]

Agree getting stable OC is 100% better than making it at MAX OC just to get 1mhs faster.

Also "DO NOT DOWNLOAD NEW/UNKNOWN MINERS" just too many scams out there.

GITHUB

[carlfebz2]

Please feel free to add your own...

Power supply testers are $10-$15.  I highly recommend getting one and use it for troubleshooting.  It's a lot easier than shuffling cards and cables around and it will save you time if you ever have to troubleshoot power problems.

Correct, a tester would be the best thing for power troubleshooting rather than on shuffling things up because of your presumptions and guesses.

If you have to sell your mined coins immediately to pay the electric bill, you probably don’t need to be mining (have some working capital)

I do completely agree on this line where you should not rely on your mining earnings on paying up your bill because you might be fucked up when you do saw your outcome is too low to pay the expense.