Ethereum GPU mining?

[thilanliyan]

My 2x290 reference cards (custom watercooled) have been humming along since Nov/2013, mining continuously nearly 24/7 since that time. The AMD reference cards are seriously well engineered. I even recently did the flash to the 290X bios and they keep on chugging.

 

[DrMrLordX]

you ain't kiddin'. should have been running my 290 since i first saw this thread last feb. didn't want to burn out my one gaming card. ha!

It's a legit concern. Two of my used 290s were . . . not well-suited to mining, so they act goofy now. Another one just burned out completely due to some random cap falling off the card while I fixed the awful TIM application. I had to lower clocks + volts to keep the working ones in the game.

 

[Charlie22911]

I've got my old 5870 reference card sitting in an anti static bag in a drawer, I may frame that thing... it's easily minted many many many times it's value in BTC.

 

[[DHT]Osiris]

One thing that I did not anticipate is how much tweaking, fine tuning and troubleshooting this would take! I don't mind terribly since I work at home, and I'm used to troubleshooting. It's still kind of a pain sometimes when you just want everything to work without a hitch, so I can definitely see how it could be off-putting for some people.

There's definitely a lot of tweaking involved if you want the system dialed in. I finally got past my power issues (difficult feeding 5x 250w cards) and overclocking narrowed as high as it can go. Still get a hard crash about once a week but it hasn't posed an issue with autologon and autostarting the miner 😛

This is why there are so many miners now.

This may seem obvious to many but I'll mention this again as many people seem to forget about the difference the between break even point and reaching full ROI.

With mining rigs, you have two important metrics. You have the break-even point (the point in which you've mine enough Ether/Zec/LBRY etc and convert back to fiat) where if everything went to pot, you could sell (or repurpose) the hardware and not take a loss. I use a 50% metric for this. So if you spent 2K on mining gear, you only need to generate 1K in crypto to safely unload the rest of your gear and still break even.

The second metric is paying off the entire rig after accounting for power costs etc. Currently, this takes a lot longer but is still achievable if, or more likely when Ether/BTC climbs in value. This is the ideal goal (and anything after a full ROI turns your miner into a digital representation of a money tree provided your power costs are average) of many miners but you only need to hit the first metric (break even) to not take any loss (other than time invested which is variable and also beneficial as you'll learn a few things).

Happy mining all.

Agreed 100%, that's part of the reason I didn't even try for AMD cards, since I know that so many were going to hit the market. I knew when I bought them that the ti's wouldn't be as competitive on a $/MH or MH/watt, but a) density (I have one 20A circuit in my basement to work with, and it's a rental so I can't modify), b) resale value, much much higher ROI on the sale than people will get for 4x0's and 5x0's, and c) longevity, those ti's will be able to keep up longer than the AMD cards will, even if they're less efficient. I kinda see them as this gen's 290's/390's (which are still making money!)

 

[VeryCharBroiled]

I've got my old 5870 reference card sitting in an anti static bag in a drawer, I may frame that thing... it's easily minted many many many times it's value in BTC.

heh same here with my sapphire 5830. mined in a old P4 prescott rig back in the day. lotsa fond memories with that card. its earned it keep many times over so figure i owe it an easy life stored in its original box as opposed to it winding up as scrap.

might build an emulator box with that card some day. just to have it running again.

 

[IEC]

New Biostar B250 BTC Pro board per AT:
http://www.anandtech.com/show/11604/biostar-mining-tb250-btc-pro-motherboard-rx-470d-gpu

Mobo layout:

Spoiler

 

[Elfear]

New Biostar B250 BTC Pro board per AT:
http://www.anandtech.com/show/11604/biostar-mining-tb250-btc-pro-motherboard-rx-470d-gpu

Mobo layout:

Spoiler

Question is will it work with Windows 10 or require Linux to use 12 cards?

 

[ozzy702]

Question is will it work with Windows 10 or require Linux to use 12 cards?

Supposedly AsRock is working with NVIDIA and AMD to make their new mining mobo work in Windows 10 so I wouldn't be surprised if we see that happen within in the next month or two. All this seems a bit silly and late to the game though given how unprofitable mining will be. There is simply no ROI with how fast difficulty is increasing. We're a few months out from break even with the cost of electricity at current ETH prices.

 

[Charlie22911]

Supposedly AsRock is working with NVIDIA and AMD to make their new mining mobo work in Windows 10 so I wouldn't be surprised if we see that happen within in the next month or two. All this seems a bit silly and late to the game though given how unprofitable mining will be. There is simply no ROI with how fast difficulty is increasing. We're a few months out from break even with the cost of electricity at current ETH prices.

These are good questions, but another potential use case would be the small group of enthusiasts who build hashcat boxes.

 

[[DHT]Osiris]

New Biostar B250 BTC Pro board per AT:
http://www.anandtech.com/show/11604/biostar-mining-tb250-btc-pro-motherboard-rx-470d-gpu

Mobo layout:

Spoiler

Mmm, 12x 70%'d 1080ti's on a pair of 15A circuits, each with 1200w PSU's. Yes please!

 

[PhonakV30]

New Biostar B250 BTC Pro board per AT:
http://www.anandtech.com/show/11604/biostar-mining-tb250-btc-pro-motherboard-rx-470d-gpu

Mobo layout:

Spoiler

does Skylake's Mobo have problem with 6 GPU due to PCIe Express resource? My Mobo is Biostar Z270 GT6 which does have 7 PCIe slot.but i can't get more than 4 GPUs.6 GPUs work but 2 GPUs are disable.
I was able to manage 6 GPUs on MSI Z97 gaming and they work without any problem ( one on MB and 5 with riser )

 

[Jose Castillo]

does Skylake's Mobo have problem with 6 GPU due to PCIe Express resource? My Mobo is Biostar Z270 GT6 which does have 7 PCIe slot.but i can't get more than 4 GPUs.6 GPUs work but 2 GPUs are disable.
I was able to manage 6 GPUs on MSI Z97 gaming and they work without any problem ( one on MB and 5 with riser )

i got 2 rigs, 1 with a msi z170a gaming carbon with 7 rx 580, and 1 with a msi z170a gaming m5 with 7 gtx 1060 without problems

 

[Aikouka]

There's room physically but I have no idea thermally.

Thermals have been my biggest problem so far. Fortunately, I own and usually leave a few PCs running 24/7 anyway. So, tossing a GPU in those for mining isn't a big deal. That pretty much lets me spread out the heat to different machines, which is helpful.

Unfortunately, I own more cards than I have machines. Fortunately, the secondary cards are all slightly weaker: a 1080 and a 1060 6GB. Unfortunately, a card placed in the bottom PCI-E slot seems to do much, much worse heat-wise regardless of the top card. I stuck the EVGA 1080 ACX in a case with an EVGA 1080 Ti Hybrid, and it just jumped up to around 75C. My worry was that the card would get even hotter as the ambient temperature went up (my HVAC values adjust on a schedule during the day when I'm not around). I ended up purchasing a 1070/1080 Hybrid kit for the 1080, which ought to help quite a bit there.

Fortunately, the 1060 seems fine. I put it in the (FD Define R5) case with my 1080 Ti FE (+Hybrid kit). Of course, since it was on the bottom, the temperatures weren't great, so I just turned the fan up to 65%. At that static speed, I'm usually between 60-70C depending on ambient. To note, my 1060 is the single fan version, which probably doesn't help.

 

[DrMrLordX]

An article worth reading on Fortune:

http://fortune.com/2017/07/06/coinbase-irs-summons/

Interesting, people are trying to fight back . . . anonymously? Also look at the reporting data for 2015. 802 people?!? Even if people weren't paying tax on the initial mining of BTC, anything having to do with Coinbase should mostly be related to cap gains from appreciation of the asset. Cmon guys that's just basic common sense. Don't act like the IRS is blind.

 

[Feld]

Question is will it work with Windows 10 or require Linux to use 12 cards?

The product page on Amazon states that it works if you use 6 AMD and 6 Nvidia cards.

 

[DrMrLordX]

Oh also it looks like Serentiy is about 1.5 years out? Or longer? So PoW mining will continue for a bit. Gotta wonder if we're still gonna see that card dump like people are projecting.

 

[ozzy702]

Oh also it looks like Serentiy is about 1.5 years out? Or longer? So PoW mining will continue for a bit. Gotta wonder if we're still gonna see that card dump like people are projecting.

Even if they tweak difficulty, I don't see mining being very profitable for long and that doesn't just go for ETH. The market is flooded and only those with free power will be able to keep mining long term. We're already at the point where there is no ROI on new equipment and for those of us with hardware we're down to six months of profitability and that's before all the huge mining farms in China are spun up in the coming months. Once those Chinese farms come online it's game over for anyone paying for power.

 

[DrMrLordX]

We'll see. ETH was still profitable for me all the way down to $1.15 per MH/s and we haven't reached that point yet. Part of the value depression has been from the falling value of ETH. If ETH can get over its price funk and start going back up, then profits will be bolstered, at least for a time. And limited PoS should come online in September with Metropolis. I hope!

 

[Raduque]

Can Claymore run over Microsoft Remote Desktop?

I'm thinking of throwing that 960 into my server which runs headless.

And hope that it doesn't kill the system entirely like it does on my laptop.

 

[Jose Castillo]

wow, 237$ right now

 

[DrMrLordX]

Can Claymore run over Microsoft Remote Desktop?

I'm thinking of throwing that 960 into my server which runs headless.

And hope that it doesn't kill the system entirely like it does on my laptop.

Um well Claymore has a remote administration feature which you can read up on in the documentation. Defaults to port 3333 I think, in read-only mode. You can change that though.

wow, 237$ right now

$232 now.

I can't say I'm overly-pleased by this development. The ICOs and reports of network trouble are dragging down the price. It doesn't help that Poloniex froze ETH transfers for awhile, so people are having to sell ETH on the exchange to get their money. We need Metropolis and Lightning stat. It's also unfortunate that at least two ICOs handled on the ETH network are fundamentally designed to undermine and ultimately replace Ethereum itself.

 

[thilanliyan]

$232 now.

I can't say I'm overly-pleased by this development. The ICOs and reports of network trouble are dragging down the price. It doesn't help that Poloniex froze ETH transfers for awhile, so people are having to sell ETH on the exchange to get their money. We need Metropolis and Lightning stat. It's also unfortunate that at least two ICOs handled on the ETH network are fundamentally designed to undermine and ultimately replace Ethereum itself.

Is replacing eth with those icos realistic?

 

[ozzy702]

Um well Claymore has a remote administration feature which you can read up on in the documentation. Defaults to port 3333 I think, in read-only mode. You can change that though.



$232 now.

I can't say I'm overly-pleased by this development. The ICOs and reports of network trouble are dragging down the price. It doesn't help that Poloniex froze ETH transfers for awhile, so people are having to sell ETH on the exchange to get their money. We need Metropolis and Lightning stat. It's also unfortunate that at least two ICOs handled on the ETH network are fundamentally designed to undermine and ultimately replace Ethereum itself.

The ICOs are decimating the price of ETH. We'd be sitting at $350 or higher right now if it wasn't for all this ICO B.S.. The next few months could very well be quite rough. Long term outlook is still good but I was hoping to see $750 ETH by early 2018. With the way things are looking I'd be ecstatic with $500 ETH.

 

[DrMrLordX]

Is replacing eth with those icos realistic?

You'd have to read the technical papers behind them and then decide for yourself whether or not the ICOs have any merit. It's sort of like wondering whether Antshares have any value in the long-term. The only thing I see about Antshares that interests me is that they are PoS straight out of the gate. You want in? Buy the coins already. No PoW mining. I do not know how that is going to work out for them, but at the same time, Vitalik can watch their PoS model at work and improve upon it (if nothing else).

The ICOs are decimating the price of ETH. We'd be sitting at $350 or higher right now if it wasn't for all this ICO B.S.. The next few months could very well be quite rough. Long term outlook is still good but I was hoping to see $750 ETH by early 2018. With the way things are looking I'd be ecstatic with $500 ETH.

Eventually ETH hodlers are going to have to wise up and stop giving money to these ICOs. There's always the hope that the ICO tokens will go up so they can make some quick profits. In the meantime, the network gets bogged down since ETH tokens aren't ERC20 yet and since Lightning isn't ready to go. Once those two things happen, the ICOs shouldn't slow down the network so much.

What really happened, though - ICOs or no ICOs - is that Ethereum investment grew more quickly than anyone imagined, so it was inevitable that Homestead would run into scaling problems.

 

[Charlie22911]

I've been tinkering with the miners for the last couple of days and noticed something that may help you guys with crashes. I get the same symptoms mentioned in previous posts when I have PCIe speed set to Gen3. I assume that with risers the bus is more susceptible to noise, which is saturated when copying the DAG to frambuffer when starting the miner; this could be causing driver crashes.