Mining experiences so far from a newbie's perspective

[Tech Tweaker]

So, I encountered a website a while back called NiceHash. Didn't think much of it at the time, just figured it was kind of interesting that it had information on what some hardware could mine and what kind of returns per day/per month/per year one could potentially expect with the limited hardware selection they have.

Got bored over the weekend and thought I would see "how hard could it be" to set up some sort of computer to mine via this website's software just to see what I could get per day. Decided to set it up on my main PC first since it had the newest and fastest hardware I had on hand (and because it has the only card I have on hand that is compatible with their NiceHash Miner 2.0.0.1 Beta software (GTX 9XX or better (or 750 Ti)).

(CPU: Intel i7 4790K overclocked to 4.6GHz (1.23V), RAM: 2x8GB G.SKILL Trident X 2667MHz, Cooler: Corsair H105, PSU: Corsair RM650i)
My CPU (Intel Core i7 4790K @ 4.6GHz) seems to average an estimated $0.30-0.35/day running CryptoNight at 185-225 H/s usually, my GPU (EVGA GTX 980 Ti Superclocked+, overclocked to 1225MHz Base, 1389MHz max Boost speed) seems to average $1.3-1.6/day running Equihash most of the time at 400-430 H/s (with an estimated power cost of $0.78 for an estimated $0.13/KWH, this maybe isn't that profitable at a net gain of $0.55 per day on this card), though I have seen it also mine with Decred, Lyra2REv2 and Blake2s occasionally. Point of note: system seems to be much more strained when it is mining with Decred or Blake2s than when it is mining with Equihash, which I'm guessing means that Equihash is easier to mine with? It is nearly unusable when it's mining Decred or Blake2s.

For the heck of it I set up one of my benching rigs for this too, so that I could go through a few of the other cards I had on hand to see if any of them were remotely profitable (running NiceHash Miner Legacy v1.8.1.3, because they're all too old to be supported by their newer miner). (CPU: Intel i7 3770K overclocked to 4.6GHz (1.18V), RAM: 2x4GB G.SKILL Ripjaws X 1600MHz 7-8-7-24 1T @1800MHz 8-9-8-22 1T, Cooler: Noctua NH-D14, PSU: Corsair CX750M v1)
My CPU (Intel Core i7 3770K @ 4.6GHz) seems to average an estimated $0.35-0.40/day running CryptoNight at 240-290 H/s usually (not remotely profitable at an estimated energy cost of $0.62-0.7 per day, depending upon actual power draw (Estimated at 200-220W per CPU)), my GPU (EVGA GTX 780 Ti Superclocked, overclocked to 1156MHz Base (a +150MHz increase over stock, which is odd because when benchmarking 3D benches I can hit 1200MHz with just a +50MHz increase to the base, for some reason I had to add much more to get close to 1200MHz while mining), 1189MHz max Boost speed) seems to average $0.68-0.74/day (with an estimated power cost of $0.78 for an estimated $0.13/KWH, this definitely isn't profitable) running Blake2s basically constantly at 2.2-2.5 GH/s (it doesn't mine anything but Blake2s unless I force it to by disabling Blake2s on the list of algorithms in the benchmark section, which I discovered I could do purely by accident). I've reset the 780Ti to stock for now, as it keeps randomly crashing when it's highly overclocked to hit 1200MHz-ish.

The thing that really stumps me is that my 3770K from a generation back (two if you count Haswell and Haswell Refresh (Devil's Canyon) as being separate generations), at the same clock speed, is actually faster and/or more effecient at CryptoNight Algorithm mining than my newer 4790K.

Tested other cards as well:
Sapphire HD 6870 at Max OC (800MHz IIRC): $0.25-0.27/day displayed in the miner (website estimates $0.79/day, which is overly optimistic), with a $0.35/day electricity cost (estimated): not worth it
XFX HD 7850 Ultra OC edition (975MHz, stock for a 7850 is 860MHz (This card doesn't seem to officially exist as there's little to no information anywhere I could find online about this card, and absolutely nothing about it on the manufacturer's website anywhere, which would explain why when I got it I thought it had a modded and/or overclocked BIOS because it looks like the CORE Edition (but it isn't the CORE Edition card)): $0.17-0.20/day displayed in the miner with a $0.26/day power cost (website estimates $1.01/day based upon the benchmark scores, which is overly optimistic). This card is not remotely worth mining with, not only does the value of coin mined per day not exceed the power cost, but this thing heats up like a volcano when you mine on it. I had this thing mining for maybe five minutes, the core temp hit 91°C with the fan speed at 100% (not set by me, that was what the automatic fan profile did), and just kept heating up, I stopped the miner because I had no way to effectively cool this thing with the stock cooler.
EVGA GTX 580 Superclocked: $0.17-0.20/day (website estimates $1.01/day based upon the benchmark scores, which is overly optimistic), with a 0.39/day electricity cost: not worth it

It seems like for this to be overly profitable I would have to have multiple cards in multiple PC's with the effective mining performance of something like a GTX 970, GTX 980, GTX 1060, GTX 980 Ti, or GTX 1070 (or better) to make a reasonable return per day. Though I was admittedly surprised when it made $0.80 in something like 14-15 hours of mining on just the GTX 980 Ti (that was impressive to me, given that I'd never tried any form of mining before), and I think I was around $1.42 at 24 hours with the BTC value at 4300 at the time. Looks like a GTX 1070 is a better deal as far as mining goes than a GTX 980 Ti (at least power usage/electricity cost wise), the general consensus apparently varies as to which one is better for mining from a mBTC/day or dollar/day standpoint, some say the 1070 has higher hash rates, some say it has lower hash rates.

I may buy a GTX 1070 at some point and maybe sell my GTX 980 Ti, the only reason I bought a 980 Ti was because they were around $100-150 USD cheaper at the time than a new (or was it used? I forget.) 1070 at the time. Now though with the mining craze inflating the prices of cards on the used and new markets, the 980 Ti ($320-380) and 1070 ($275-400) (though I did find one at $200, and some above 450, but they were like collector's editions of cards and I consider them outliers and not the norm) are effectively the same price a lot of the time, and a new 1070 ($389.99-539.99) can be had for not much more than the resale value of a used 980 Ti ($320-380). I would not buy one of the $539.99 GTX 1070's probably, they seem overpriced (some of them are refurbished models, which in my mind should be less than the standard retail one's, since they've already had to be repaired once), I'd probably look for one around $390-450/460 if/when I'm looking to buy and if I decide to buy new.

 

[Blaylock]

Yeah, you're about a year or 2 too late unfortunately. The profitability has really dropped unless of course you get free electric. Then there is no associated cost and what ever you mine you profit from.

 

[Janus67]

Yeah, just to give you an idea my GTX1080 and 4770k if they are both mining on nicehash will estimate at about $2.00-$2.50/day (their miner app estimate). Barely covers the cost of electricity.

but long-term if you expect the value of the coin to go up it does cover it and then some. I stopped mining when it was no longer profitable for me in 2014 when BTC dropped down to the $450-$500 mark and sold a couple to pay for the miner hardware and the electric costs. Those coins that I sold off are now worth over $12K had I held onto them (of course hindsight being 20/20). I still have some left over that I planned to hold onto, but I wish I had not sold when I did.

 

[Tech Tweaker]

Yeah, just to give you an idea my GTX1080 and 4770k if they are both mining on nicehash will estimate at about $2.00-$2.50/day (their miner app estimate). Barely covers the cost of electricity.

but long-term if you expect the value of the coin to go up it does cover it and then some. I stopped mining when it was no longer profitable for me in 2014 when BTC dropped down to the $450-$500 mark and sold a couple to pay for the miner hardware and the electric costs. Those coins that I sold off are now worth over $12K had I held onto them (of course hindsight being 20/20). I still have some left over that I planned to hold onto, but I wish I had not sold when I did.

Well, your system is definitely capable of more than mine per day. Somehow I expected a system with a 1080 to do much better than my little 'ol 980 Ti though, maybe I'm expecting too much of a card I'm not that familiar with though.

In my case, doing the math with my current hardware if I mine on the 980 Ti and 780 Ti alone at any value greater than $1200 per BTC should be profitable (at an estimated cost of $0.30 per card, per day, considering my electricity cost is around $0.05-0.07/KWH IIRC and at $1200 per coin I'd be making $0.72 cents a day (but definitely not very profitable at that value per coin)) though it's admittedly slow going due to mining difficulty I'm guessing because of the recent mining craze that started 3-5 months ago so a bunch of people are mining now.

Not really certain what the power draw for an overclocked 3770K or 4790K is off-hand, 200 watts-ish maybe? I know the 980 Ti and 780 Ti are both 250W each, definitely not the most power-efficient cards, but probably the most powerful performance-wise for their time periods on the NVIDIA side.

Long-term, I don't expect it to go much above $5000 per coin, but then again I was also wrong when I thought it wouldn't go above $1500 per coin (and when I thought it wouldn't go above $2000 per coin).

Wish I'd bought all the bitcoins I could afford back when they were $200-300 per coin. I didn't even own any back 2-3 years ago, nor had I ever even attempted to mine any. My hindsight is working great.

 

[Janus67]

Where are you getting the price of $.05-$.07/kwh? Don't forget you have to take into consideration all of the charges that go along with delivery/etc. For example, I'm paying $0.0599/kwh, but after all of the rest of the charges it comes out to be ~ $0.125/kwh. It greatly changes the calculation in terms of power efficiency.

Now I guess if you are comparing leaving the computer on 24/7 anyway (or if you were already folding or something) it's closer to a smaller delta of power increase. But if it is comparing to having the machine asleep/off instead it adds up for sure.

 

[Tech Tweaker]

Where are you getting the price of $.05-$.07/kwh? Don't forget you have to take into consideration all of the charges that go along with delivery/etc. For example, I'm paying $0.0599/kwh, but after all of the rest of the charges it comes out to be ~ $0.125/kwh. It greatly changes the calculation in terms of power efficiency.

Now I guess if you are comparing leaving the computer on 24/7 anyway (or if you were already folding or something) it's closer to a smaller delta of power increase. But if it is comparing to having the machine asleep/off instead it adds up for sure.

It says it on the power bill the power company mails out, I don't recall the exact number (and I can't find any copies of recent bill's that have been sent (annoyingly), spent probably 20 mins looking for one but couldn't find any, which is kind of odd considering I could have sworn I just saw one on the kitchen table probably a week ago) but I'm pretty sure it varies between 5-7 cents per Kilowatt Hour around here. I know some places electricity costs are much worse and are up around $0.15-0.25/KWH.

I leave at least one PC on most of the time (usually only put it into sleep mode when I go to bed at night, or if I know I'll be leaving the house for an extended period), and potentially up to 3-4 PC's on sometimes and might be running two at 300-600 Watts each if I'm benching on multiple systems (or gaming on one while benching on others, which I do occasionally play games on one while I'm waiting for benchmarks to finish on another).

On the subject of power, my 1155 system sure did use a lot of it while mining on the GTX 780 Ti, GTX 580, and 3770K, that system must have hit 625-630W from the wall. Glad I swapped in my Corsair CX750M before testing it, as the CX600M definitely wouldn't have been able to handle it (and didn't have enough PCI-Express connectors from the power supply to even attempt to power them both.

Two systems running full-tilt mining from two graphics cards and two CPU's sure does make the room warm, was around 78-82°F pretty much all yesterday and today. If nothing else, this hobby would make a good way to heat a room in the winter time I suppose, though using the electric baseboard heater might be less wasteful of electricity.

 

[Janus67]

I'm at hour East of you in Hilliard, so I doubt our total values are that different. Next time look at your total cost of the bills and divide by the total unit usage. That's how you get your actual cost, as I said I'm paying 5.99c/kwh, but after everything it is closer to 12.5c

 

[Tech Tweaker]

Well, after locating and reviewing some old bills I found that the rate I'm being charged here was actually 11.635-13.914 (for June through August, some months are lower than others, August's rate was higher than June or July's) after all the other random charges (what the heck is a "Cost Recovery Charge?" or a "Bypassable Generation and Transmission Related Component?"), even though the bills state on them 6.31c-6.46c/KWH (swear I remember one month where the claimed rate was 5.5c/KWH, can't recall when that was though). That was quite a revelation.

The bill is roughly halved if you take out all the additional charges for Distribution and Transmission components. Don't know why they need charge for those every month, the house has had the same meter on it for over twenty years, and I don't think the transformer on the pole outside the house has been changed out or worked on in quite some time (So, it's not like they're having to be serviced all the time. At least I haven't seen anyone from the power company working on them. I see trucks from TWC/Spectrum out here more often than I see trucks from the power company, and yet the cable service is still barely passable most of the time with glitchy channels and recordings that don't happen even when you set them ahead of time.).

 

[Tech Tweaker]

Well, discovered a few things today.

1. CPU mining is not currently remotely profitable if you have an energy cost above $0.06-0.08/KWH. Around $0.11-0.14 the cost of the electricity to mine with the CPU is nearly double the return per day in BTC.

2. A GTX 780 Ti is not a good card to mine with at the current mining difficulty (which probably isn't likely to go down anytime soon) when it only returns around $0.16 per day after electricity costs at current BTC value.

3. Make sure you actually calculate your electricity cost correctly before trying this. It was actually costing more than double what I thought it was due to a miscalculation on my part. At least I wasn't mining for a month or something before I rechecked the numbers.

 

[Janus67]

Yep, for all intents and purposes mining with computer hardware at this point is entirely speculatory due to mining difficultly. So if you think value will go up in the future, mining now for a loss to gain in the future can work (but in that case, better off just buying x-coin and waiting for it to increase), or buying the latest and greatest ASIC miner in the first couple batches and mining to hope for ROI and more.

 

[Tech Tweaker]

I noticed that CryptoNight has become oddly profitable since sometime last night. On my 780 Ti rig it's usually around $0.55-0.70 per day (usually 0.00010500 BTC/day or less) for just the one 780 Ti GPU, since last night though it's shown anywhere from from 0.00028000 to nearly 0.00050000 BTC/day and was estimating over $3/day at some points. It's even profitable to mine on the CPU right now, which is usually quite unprofitable at $0.30-0.35/day with what I'm estimating to be somewhere around $0.30-0.40/day in electricity costs but right now it's showing $1.5-1.55/day and 0.00020000-0.00022000 BTC/day.

The 980 Ti is even more profitable, I've seen it show $3-4/day (or more at some points) and I've seen anywhere from 0.0004285000 to 0.0006000000 (or nearly that). That exceeds Equihash and Lyra2REv2 which usually top out around 0.0003-0.00035 BTC/day and are typically the most profitable on this card.

Not sure if demand for it went up, or if difficulty went down, or what's going on at this point.

 

[Janus67]

Well BTC just hit $7k, so I assume the valuation transfer makes it worth slightly more.

 

[Tech Tweaker]

Well BTC just hit $7k, so I assume the valuation transfer makes it worth slightly more.

It's more than just the value increase though, my level of BTC mined per day has gone up by 3.5-5X the normal amount on my 780 Ti. And it's normally at 0.00006-0.00007 BTC/day on my 3770K, now it's at 0.00015-0.0002 per day, tripling or even quadrupling the normal mining rate at its highest speed.

I don't mind it being more profitable than usual/normal, I just don't understand it.

At this rate I'll hit the payout minimum within 2.5 to 3 days, as opposed to the usual 4-5 days that I normally see.

 

[wagex]

yeah back in the day i was making a couple hundred bucks a month + on a single 280x it paid for itself p quick and i got a gpu upgrade from my hd 6950

 

[funsoul]

Great thread!

Been playing around, too. Per my other thread was running nicehash with 3x680's. Thanks to TT, found out that they were running at a significant loss and immediately stopped. Looking around the dungeon, decided to run with a gtx960 and gtx980. Even at $0.1556/KwH they're still running profitably. Will be setting up another miner from existing hardware (3930k/rivbe/4x watercooled 7970's) then will be adding a newer build (asrock h110 btc, g4400 and 4-6 1060 6GB...if the price on 1070's drops next week, may do 3-5 of those instead). Yeah...I'm kinda hooked :/

Also...been reading a lot and met up with a couple experienced miners who're helping me out.

So...here's some of what I've learned.
- mining is a long-haul game not a short term kill. Profitability estimates are only estimates and can swing pretty wildly.
- get a kill-a-watt as it's the only real way of knowing how efficiently you're running and how much your setup actually costs to mine
- cpus are rarely worth running. they only work, iirc, on 1 algorithm which limits potential. large core counts matter more than clocks generally (and within reason)...running with as low power is a must for cpu mining to be profitable, overclocks destroy you on electrical expenses. A lot of miners run cheap chips like g4400's. new amd's seem to do a lot better than similarly priced intels.
- for NV cards...need to install newest drivers and CUDA
- using msiab...set power limit to 75%, fans to 100%
- generally want to run open case as it's a lot cooler (my peak gpu temps hit 74C in a closed case, 57C open)
- it's better to mine 1 coin instead of jumping around all the time to whatever's 'most profitable' at a certain point. I don't understand it entirely but the more time you spend (and cards you run) on a single coin, the more shares you get, the higher the rewards (Not sure if this has anything to do with TT's improved results?)
- nicehash is awesome in how darn simple it is to get mining but, again, switching algos all the time is sub-optimal. Better to run specific apps and mine specific coins (zcash and eth are the ones ppl are talking about atm). If you use nicehash, just go to settings and select so that it only runs a single algo.
- as noted above, anything before 780ti (on the nv side) is generally not profitable. If you check card hashrates and power draw (along with your electricity cost), there are a couple good calculators (other than nicehash's ok one) to help estimate profitability AT THAT POINT IN TIME. Then calculate (cost of card)/(estimated monthly profit) to get card profitability in # of months to get your investment back. Atm...the best card price-performance wise is the gtx1050ti.
- Whatever you come up with as 'number of months to pay back my investment'...add at least 3 months.

So...off we go for mining adventure Shawn (and others)! Interested in hearing/learning more!

 

[Tech Tweaker]

Great thread!

Been playing around, too. Per my other thread was running nicehash with 3x680's. Thanks to TT, found out that they were running at a significant loss and immediately stopped. Looking around the dungeon, decided to run with a gtx960 and gtx980. Even at $0.1556/KwH they're still running profitably. Will be setting up another miner from existing hardware (3930k/rivbe/4x watercooled 7970's) then will be adding a newer build (asrock h110 btc, g4400 and 4-6 1060 6GB...if the price on 1070's drops next week, may do 3-5 of those instead). Yeah...I'm kinda hooked :/

Also...been reading a lot and met up with a couple experienced miners who're helping me out.

So...here's some of what I've learned.
- mining is a long-haul game not a short term kill. Profitability estimates are only estimates and can swing pretty wildly.
- cpus are rarely worth running. they only work, iirc, on 1 algorithm which limits potential. large core counts matter more than clocks generally (and within reason)...running with as low power is a must for cpu mining to be profitable, overclocks destroy you on electrical expenses. A lot of miners run cheap chips like g4400's. new amd's seem to do a lot better than similarly priced intels.
- for NV cards...need to install newest drivers and CUDA
- using msiab...set power limit to 75%, fans to 100%
- generally want to run open case as it's a lot cooler (my peak gpu temps hit 74C in a closed case, 57C open)
- it's better to mine 1 coin instead of jumping around all the time to whatever's 'most profitable' at a certain point. I don't understand it entirely but the more time you spend (and cards you run) on a single coin, the more shares you get, the higher the rewards (Not sure if this has anything to do with TT's improved results?)
- nicehash is awesome in how darn simple it is to get mining but, again, switching algos all the time is sub-optimal. Better to run specific apps and mine specific coins (zcash and eth are the ones ppl are talking about atm). If you use nicehash, just go to settings and select so that it only runs a single algo.

So...off we go for mining adventure Shawn (and others)! Interested in hearing/learning more!

Glad I could save you some losing some money there.

Yeah, profitability is highly variable, even if you're running only one card. I've seen my 980 Ti show anywhere between $1.30 to nearly $4 a day, mining whatever was most profitable at the time.

Yes, I've been mining off and on for a month now (18-20 days maybe), and only seen one two-day period where CPU mining was actually profitable (the day before yesterday, and the day before that). Yes, they can only use one algorithm (CryptoNight), which is linked to mining Monero and DigitalNote.

I'm running 385.41 currently, no idea how recent that is. I don't generally pay much attention to what driver is the newest, as I tend to run older drivers for the sake of compatibility with the games I play (and so that Futuremark doesn't complain when I'm benching with 3DMark).

I set mine to 80-85% as I found that to be most profitable with my cards (most profitable power draw to mining speed ratio may vary by card). And found going above 95% the mining speed didn't increase any by going from 95 to 100%. Generally use the stock fan speed, as my card's fans don't seem to have any trouble keeping it cool, do occasionally set them to 35-40% though if I'm setting the power limit to 70-75% (for those algorithm's that don't benefit from going higher). I set it to 70% for when it's mining CryptoNight though, as it doesn't seem to go above 60-65% power draw anyway.

I just let it randomly jump around to whatever's most profitable at the time usually, though I have noticed that it occasionally stays on the same coin for quite a while even if it is less profitable than something else. Either there is a delay of some kind before it checks to see if something else is more profitable, or perhaps it has to be less profitable by a certain amount before it switches to a different algorithm.

My 980 Ti generally mines with Equihash most of the time (so Z-Cash, or Zen Cash), randomly jumps to Lyra2REv2, or Blake2s, or recently CryptoNight as of late via the Legacy miner.

 

[Silver_Pharaoh]

At my best, I was making $8-10/day with a 280x and a 7850. Way back when though.
I miss those days, I used my BTC to buy the 280x.

Last I heard, Etherum was the best coin to mine.

 

[Tech Tweaker]

Just sat down to my computer and was going to stop the miner to play some Battlefield 1, when I noticed that the daily estimated earnings were way up in the miner.

Most of today I'd seen $1.40-2.20/day estimated earnings. When I sat down though and was about to stop mining to open up the game, I noticed it was at $4/day and it's just been going up ever since. It's estimating $7.45/day right now, and I've never seen it go this high for this one GPU (980 Ti). Edit: and while I was typing that the profitability came down some, now fluctuating between $6.65-6.92/day. And just hit $7.64 as I was typing that, it's all over the place. I think something or someone is confusing the market right now.

On this basis, I may shut the system down, swap out the card for a different one and let this thing mine away in a backup system while the profitability is 5x normal. Or just let it keep mining away in this computer.

Doesn't seem to be a glitch in the program on my computer either, as the last time I checked the nicehash website (5 mins ago maybe) the estimated daily payout for all miners overall was over 3x what it was this morning.

 

[Tech Tweaker]

Just sat down to my computer and was going to stop the miner to play some Battlefield 1, when I noticed that the daily estimated earnings were way up in the miner.

Most of today I'd seen $1.40-2.20/day estimated earnings. When I sat down though and was about to stop mining to open up the game, I noticed it was at $4/day and it's just been going up ever since. It's estimating $7.45/day right now, and I've never seen it go this high for this one GPU (980 Ti). Edit: and while I was typing that the profitability came down some, now fluctuating between $6.65-6.92/day. And just hit $7.64 as I was typing that, it's all over the place. I think something or someone is confusing the market right now.

On this basis, I may shut the system down, swap out the card for a different one and let this thing mine away in a backup system while the profitability is 5x normal. Or just let it keep mining away in this computer.

Doesn't seem to be a glitch in the program on my computer either, as the last time I checked the nicehash website (5 mins ago maybe) the estimated daily payout for all miners overall was over 3x what it was this morning.

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Well, that was interesting. It only lasted about an hour, but it topped out just over an estimated $9/day before dropping and continuing to fluctuate between $5.50-7.75 for the next 30-45 minutes. Was averaging something like $0.80/hr because it gained $.40 in about 30 mins, which is a lot more than the $0.07-0.105/hr which I would consider normal for a 980 Ti.

 

[funsoul]

Those are awesome results TTdude! Sweet!!!

I've been running maybe about 10 days total using a couple different builds and cards and generally trying to get stable. Got one of the asrock h110's and a 4400 but, until I get some risers, am only able to fit the 1080ti and gtx980. Nicehash has me mining the same stuff as you but you're getting much higher profitability! With the 2 cards plus the cpu, nicehash is estimating $4.75-$5.50/day...clearly I've still got tuning to do. :/

Hoping to get time to swap out the 3x, wc'd gtx680's for 4-5x, wc'd 7970's this weekend. That should bring my numbers up a bit.

Am also back to thinking about grabbing an antminer (the L3+) :/ About $1600 for this estimated: https://www.nicehash.com/profitability-calculator/bitmain-antminer-l3?e=0.16&currency=USD