Considering going back to the Crypto Mines

[Tech Tweaker]

Considering going back to the Crypto Mines again.

After some research online I keep seeing varying opinions on what is the best GPU-based hardware for mining with right now. A couple of sites said the best GPU in 2020 is a GTX 1070 (or GTX 1060 for a budget entry) for profitability to electricity usage ratio, which I find unlikely (even funnier was that one of those sites recommended a GTX 1050Ti and said it was the best card out there for mining, which has a really low mBTC mined/day). Also found a couple of sites that said the best right now for a "mid-range" performance/budget range is an RTX 2060 Super or RTX 2070 (non-super) (or RTX 2060 non-super). And I saw one or two sites that only recommended an RTX2080Ti for some reason.

What GPU's do any of you here that are into mining recommend (no AMD cards, I don't want to mess around with bios reprogramming)?

Learned some things the first time around.

1. Don't run GPU at 100% power target. It gains little or nothing on mining speed, uses more power, and creates more heat. Also wears the card out faster. I switched to 70% max somewhere around when I stopped mining 2 years ago.

2. GPU's run cooler in an open air mining case or test bench and at lower fan speeds than in a conventional computer case. I can run 55-60% fan speed in the open air and maintain 48-55°C, in a case I need more like 65-75% fan speed to keep temperatures between 60-65°C.

I've been kind of mining now and then for short periods over the last few days just to get an idea of what my hardware can do, and what the current mining landscape looks like. I'm estimating $0.95-1.30/day mined with a GTX 1070+GTX 1060 both at 70% power target, not counting spikes. Daggerhashimoto keeps randomly spiking the last few days for 2-15 mins at a time to $2-6/day estimated, which is interesting. I guess none of the Algo's I got used to being profitable 2+ years ago are all that profitable anymore, used to be Equihash, Lyra2REv2, with Decred, Blake2s and Cryptonight occasionally. Now its just something called KAWPOW and Daggerhashimoto on my hardware that are profitable, every other Algo doesn't seem to be nearly as profitable.

 

[habbajabba]

Have you the actual values of average daily watts required for mining? I understand it all depends on what eqpt. you have but am kind of curious. Are we talking a full fledged high end desktop setup or can you pair the gpu's with say a pi type pc?
Obviously I don't hardly know anything about mining but always considered a solar powered setup to be ideal, for a scheme requiring electricity, the more the merrier, to make money.
I don't see crypto as going full mainstream unless the fed's are relieved of their duties. Short time right now personal gains? Yes. But for it to be truly everyday personal and mainstream (competing with the current banks assets), the banking cartel would ultimately try to seize it, if not outright just take it, destroying it in the process.
As far as cards... I like the highend ati cards for 3d cad, not that I can afford one. Are those not worth the money in terms of mining abilities? It seems to me the industry only cares about gaming performance and so possibly cards optimized just for crypto should be made? I'm quite sure if you removed all the advertizing bling and just got right down to business, something ideal (like ati's top of the line offerings) could be had.

 

[Tech Tweaker]

Have you the actual values of average daily watts required for mining? I understand it all depends on what eqpt. you have but am kind of curious. Are we talking a full fledged high end desktop setup or can you pair the gpu's with say a pi type pc?
Obviously I don't hardly know anything about mining but always considered a solar powered setup to be ideal, for a scheme requiring electricity, the more the merrier, to make money.
I don't see crypto as going full mainstream unless the fed's are relieved of their duties. Short time right now personal gains? Yes. But for it to be truly everyday personal and mainstream (competing with the current banks assets), the banking cartel would ultimately try to seize it, if not outright just take it, destroying it in the process.
As far as cards... I like the highend ati cards for 3d cad, not that I can afford one. Are those not worth the money in terms of mining abilities? It seems to me the industry only cares about gaming performance and so possibly cards optimized just for crypto should be made? I'm quite sure if you removed all the advertizing bling and just got right down to business, something ideal (like ati's top of the line offerings) could be had.

For my GTX 1070 at my settings it's around 105W max while mining (I reduced the max power consumption/power target to 70% to lower heat output and electricity usage (and theoretically increase longevity), stock is 150W) (2520Wh, 2.52kWh, or about $0.25/day in electricity cost-though I've seen some websites estimate it at $.27/day).

For the GTX 1060 6GB it's 84W max while mining (I reduced the max power consumption/power target to 70% to lower heat output and electricity usage (and theoretically increase longevity), stock is 120W) (2016wH, 2.016kWh, or about $0.20/day in electricity cost-though I've seen some websites estimate it at $.22/day).

I don't really think you could mine cryptocurrency effectively with a Raspberry-Pi or something similar, I don't even know if you could connect up a graphics card to it (I've heard of some people mining with cell phones and tablets though, so maybe some people are mining on Pi-based electronic devices). Really one would need a standard form-factor motherboard of some type with PCI Express slots, most seem to go with ATX or E-ATX form factor motherboards for the additional graphics card slots (and beefier power-sections on the motherboards, as I've found a lot of mATX/M-ATX/ITX motherboards don't have that good of a power-section/voltage regulation). Some people use risers (preferably powered risers, from what I gather thus far, so as to not draw too much power from the PCI-E slot itself (that can melt/burn/kill the slot from overcurrent if it happens) to mount their graphics cards above the motherboard in a mining rig "case/frame" to add more of them and separate them further apart for better cooling, some mount their graphics cards/GPU's directly to the motherboard and only run two or three cards (due to space limits on the board, and/or limits on the number of cards they have on hand and/or can afford (or they may be Hobbyist Miners, or Gamers mining in their spare time to make back some of what they invested in their gaming PC)).

 

[NiHaoMike]

I don't really think you could mine cryptocurrency effectively with a Raspberry-Pi or something similar, I don't even know if you could connect up a graphics card to it (I've heard of some people mining with cell phones and tablets though, so maybe some people are mining on Pi-based electronic devices).

It is possible to profitably mine certain altcoins with cheap smartphones and tablets (been doing it for years), but it's nowhere as profitable as it used to be. I still have my Swagbucks miner running but the difficulty has really increased over the last few months.

I once ran an earnhoney miner on a Pi 3. It did make enough to pay for the electricity used but keeping it running took too much effort to be worth it. The Pi 4 could probably run several instances, but earnhoney is no longer worth mining.

What I would like to see is an altcoin that's "mined" using bandwidth, most likely by "seeding" a P2P system.

 

[SPL Tech]

There is absolutely no money in mining anymore. That GTX1070 will make you like $5 a month after electricity. There is zero point. You're just wasting electricity and contributing to global pollution for no benefit.

 

[Janus67]

It is possible to profitably mine certain altcoins with cheap smartphones and tablets (been doing it for years), but it's nowhere as profitable as it used to be. I still have my Swagbucks miner running but the difficulty has really increased over the last few months.

I once ran an earnhoney miner on a Pi 3. It did make enough to pay for the electricity used but keeping it running took too much effort to be worth it. The Pi 4 could probably run several instances, but earnhoney is no longer worth mining.

What I would like to see is an altcoin that's "mined" using bandwidth, most likely by "seeding" a P2P system.

That's a cool idea for the bandwidth idea. Although I wonder what the legality of it could be.

 

[NiHaoMike]

That's a cool idea for the bandwidth idea. Although I wonder what the legality of it could be.

Perfectly legal if the content license allows distribution in that manner. I'm thinking of a system as an alternative to Youtube, given the increasing push for such alternatives.

 

[Tech Tweaker]

There is absolutely no money in mining anymore. That GTX1070 will make you like $5 a month after electricity. There is zero point. You're just wasting electricity and contributing to global pollution for no benefit.

Actually it's around $11.5-13/month after electric, depending upon which mining calculator you believe and what the difficulty of the coin being mined is at the time and what the BTC price is at the time.

Really my total value of mBTC mined/day averages out to 3x the electric cost for all my cards combined currently, so it does make sense. It's not the $2-6 per card I was seeing three years ago, but it is still profitable and profitability seems to be going up lately. Especially when DaggerHashimoto randomly spikes to $3-6/day for random periods of time.

 

[Helenawe]

Money can be made, but no method guarantees profit.

The best option likely depends on individual circumstances.

But if you have a realistic idea of what mining will be like, and how much you can expect to earn, then by all means it’s worth it.

 

[Janus67]

Back in with my 3080. Getting cold here so a little extra heat in my office isn't an issue. Getting a few bucks a day equivalent in eth. May look into dual mining today to squeak out a little more profit

 

[stompah]

Whats your hashrate and watt usage?

 

[Ben333]

Would there by any point at all running on a 1650 or 1660? $0.50 a day...?

 

[Janus67]

Whats your hashrate and watt usage?

About 80MH/s and 200W. I haven't done much tweaking to lower power draw yet. I can keep the fan around 50% which keeps things at a steady mid50C on the core

 

[stompah]

About 80MH/s and 200W. I haven't done much tweaking to lower power draw yet. I can keep the fan around 50% which keeps things at a steady mid50C on the core

Not too bad. What are your mem temps?

 

[Janus67]

Not too bad. What are your mem temps?

Unsure will have to see if those get reported into MSI Afterburner as I'm on an FE. I think I've read that if the memory gets too hot it throttles, so that may be the cause of the hashrate dropping

 

[stompah]

HWMonitor reports GPU Memory temps for my 5700XT.

I have a feeling my 1700 will be a huge bottleneck and won't be using the 3080 to it's max. 5800X is on my horizon.

 

[Tech Tweaker]

Picked up another GTX 1660 Super to expand my small mining PC.

Realizing now that a card with Samsung memory gets a higher hashrate than a card with Micron memory chips when both are the same model, and also even when both cards are run at the same Core and VRAM clocks the card with Samsung memory for some reason draws less power.

My Samsung VRAM cards draw 67-72W, while Micron cards draw 74-77W typically with all at 56% power limit set in Precision X.

-300MHz Core, +600MHz VRAM , 55% Fan speed, GPU Core temps typically around 48-56°C. I'm pretty conservative with VRAM clocks, I've heard of some people getting +1100MHz to run stable, but I'm trying to make these cards last longer by not running them on the ragged edge/max clocks.

Samsung cards usually around 29.5-30MH/s on ETH/ETC, Micron cards around 29-29.5MH/s on ETH.

 

[stanlylopeas]

Considering going back to the Crypto Mines again.

After some research online I keep seeing varying opinions on what is the best GPU-based hardware for mining with right now. A couple of sites said the best GPU in 2020 is a GTX 1070 (or GTX 1060 for a budget entry) for profitability to electricity usage ratio, which I find unlikely (even funnier was that one of those sites recommended a GTX 1050Ti and said it was the best card out there for mining, which has a really low mBTC mined/day). Also found a couple of sites that said the best right now for a "mid-range" performance/budget range is an RTX 2060 Super or RTX 2070 (non-super) (or RTX 2060 non-super). And I saw one or two sites that only recommended an RTX2080Ti for some reason.

What GPU's do any of you here that are into mining recommend (no AMD cards, I don't want to mess around with bios reprogramming)?

Learned some things the first time around.

1. Don't run GPU at 100% power target. It gains little or nothing on mining speed, uses more power, and creates more heat. Also wears the card out faster. I switched to 70% max somewhere around when I stopped mining 2 years ago.

2. GPU's run cooler in an open air mining case or test bench and at lower fan speeds than in a conventional computer case. I can run 55-60% fan speed in the open air and maintain 48-55°C, in a case I need more like 65-75% fan speed to keep temperatures between 60-65°C.

I've been kind of mining now and then for short periods over the last few days just to get an idea of what my hardware can do, and what the current mining landscape looks like. I'm estimating $0.95-1.30/day mined with a GTX 1070+GTX 1060 both at 70% power target, not counting spikes. Daggerhashimoto keeps randomly spiking the last few days for 2-15 mins at a time to $2-6/day estimated, which is interesting. I guess none of the Algo's I got used to being profitable 2+ years ago are all that profitable anymore, used to be Equihash, Lyra2REv2, with Decred, Blake2s and Cryptonight occasionally. Now its just something called KAWPOW and Daggerhashimoto on my hardware that are profitable, every other Algo doesn't seem to be nearly as profitable.

Now you should try GTX 3070. Best for mining purpose.

 

[OC-NightHawk]

HWMonitor reports GPU Memory temps for my 5700XT.

I have a feeling my 1700 will be a huge bottleneck and won't be using the 3080 to it's max. 5800X is on my horizon.

I realize that this is a necro but just in case you're interested I'll add my two cents. Mining is not nearly as bottlenecked by the CPU as gaming. I have have several Core 2 Quad systems mining and the cards produce the same amount of Eth on them as they do when running on a i3-10100 or a i9-10900k. You would almost certainly be fine mining with the Ryzen 1700.

 

[stompah]

I realize that this is a necro but just in case you're interested I'll add my two cents. Mining is not nearly as bottlenecked by the CPU as gaming. I have have several Core 2 Quad systems mining and the cards produce the same amount of Eth on them as they do when running on a i3-10100 or a i9-10900k. You would almost certainly be fine mining with the Ryzen 1700.

Been a while since I made my post. I am pretty sure I was referencing gaming as I knew then that many mining rigs are run by Celerons. In fact one of my mining rigs is run by that very 1700.