Should I try mining?

[tRidiot]

So I have a nice big new machine here I'm really not using. If I do decide to keep it, I won't use it MUCH, certainly not for what it could be used for. It's hard for me to understand/believe I could actually make something out of it. I know, I know, people are doing it, I just don't... get it. I talked to my wife about it, she is ok with giving it a try. Not going to throw a lot into it, but if it turns out it might actually be worth it, I would consider buying a dedicated mining rig - once it's been proven, that is, in a personal sense.

So I kinda read through the primer sticky - there's a ton in there I don't understand - and got a very basic idea. I know I'd have to read read read a lot. I'm just curious about how many people here are actually DOING this and what they're actually MAKING doing it.

I know a lot of people don't like to talk about this on an open forum, and I get that. If you guys would feel more comfortable PMing me, and/or PMing a phone number or more anonymous email, I'd like to know more about it. I can text/WhatsApp, we can talk through email, etc.

I am not opposed to dropping some money into it if it is truly an investment that I can use to pay off, but I know for a fact without a doubt my electric bill is going to go up - how much is the question. And is it worth it for the profit is the next question, of course.

If any of ya'll are feeling charitable enough to talk real numbers with me to help someone out, I'd appreciate it. It's funny, I know there are real people and businesses out there that will take BTC as currency, I've even looked at a piece of property in my wife's home country where they were selling for cash or BTC - which is wild to me. But we're looking to invest in our future, trying to decentralize our portfolio some, as I'm concerned about some of the goings-on in the home markets, but honestly, I don't know that crypto is the answer. I mean, seriously if my 401ks devalue because the stock market crashed in the largest economy in the world, is crypto going to survive that? Would I be better investing in metals? Right now, my biggest investments are in my 401ks and in lead.

 

[EarthDog]

There's no reason to take this discussion behind closed doors IMO. It isn't taboo (you posted in a Section specifically for it) and everyone can benefit from seeing it.

Lots to read, including the sticky threads in this section... even if some are dated, it will still help the knowledge base.

That said, I'll leave it to the people in the know to help out with the details.

 

[tRidiot]

I agree, I know it's not taboo... just some people may not want to discuss issues of money directly on a public forum. I mean, it's one thing to say, "I mine x units a day," but to come out and say, "My electric bill went up by $93/month but I mine coins currently valued at $840/month and have for the last 3 years,"... well... I dunno, some people may not be comfortable discussing their finances in direct dollar amounts on a public forum like this.

So I thought I'd give the option if someone wanted to take it private.

 

[Janus67]

For the most part unless someone has a warehouse or enormous mining setup the calculators out there to estimate earnings and hashrate are out there. I have two 3080s mining at about 95-100mh/s each and a 5900x on monero at 14kh/s.

Earnings based on that info can be calculated using any crypto calculator, then taking into consideration power costs and such based on location.

One thing to keep in mind is if you plan to mine and hold or sell as you receive the coin(s) you are mining. Of course, difficulties change and estimated earnings per day/week/month fluctuate. Ultimately it is banking on value continuing to increase as time goes on. I sold coins years ago to cut the electric costs back then that would have been worth significantly more had I not sold them for that purpose, for example. Others are basically worthless, in a sense it is calculated gambling.

For your 3090 you should be able to get phoenix miner setup pretty quickly. Need to make an ethereum wallet, go to a pool site (I use ethermine.org) and follow their settings that they have for the pool (address and port) and point to your wallet address. It can take a few hours at first for your work to show up on their site (for example) before it starts reporting/updating. Beyond that is optimizing your card with msi afterburner (or similar) to maximize memory speed, while minimizing core speed and power draw without causing a drop in hash rate.

 

[EarthDog]

I agree, I know it's not taboo... just some people may not want to discuss issues of money directly on a public forum. I mean, it's one thing to say, "I mine x units a day," but to come out and say, "My electric bill went up by $93/month but I mine coins currently valued at $840/month and have for the last 3 years,"... well... I dunno, some people may not be comfortable discussing their finances in direct dollar amounts on a public forum like this.

So I thought I'd give the option if someone wanted to take it private.

LIke Don said, all the info is out there... hash rates for cards, and you know the cost for your electricity. Anyone's electric increase and money you make off these is, essentially, public knowledge if you do the math and reference something like this: https://www.electricchoice.com/electricity-prices-by-state/

Market fluctuations and difficulty increases make a difference (as Don said already), but this gives you a general idea of ROI.

 

[ZL1]

I agree, I know it's not taboo... just some people may not want to discuss issues of money directly on a public forum. I mean, it's one thing to say, "I mine x units a day," but to come out and say, "My electric bill went up by $93/month but I mine coins currently valued at $840/month and have for the last 3 years,"... well... I dunno, some people may not be comfortable discussing their finances in direct dollar amounts on a public forum like this.

So I thought I'd give the option if someone wanted to take it private.

hey, welcome welcome!
im sorry you found the getting started hard to understand I tried to make it easygoing

like EarthDog said, there is no reason to take this private, we are all very open around here, always have been, but the issue with numbers isnt that, its that they change every damn minute ) for example right now mining ETH is very profitable, any ol card that can mine it, should; but just half a year ago it wasnt that good, and a year ago it was nearly a break-even adventure

I dont have your card unfrotunately, generally cant get any ampere cards around here , but I can give you a write up of my 4x480s which add up to the same hashrate as your single 3090 )
so, my 4x480 rig hashes 120mhs on pure ETH on ethermine, it consumes 650W for the whole rig at the wall (measured with wattman), and even with these bad, prehistoric numbers (trust me they are bad), the rig is still hella profitable, it mines about .18 ETH a month, which at current price is about 300usd, but the 650W it eats each hour, for 730hours adds up to about 50usd (at my 0.10usd rate per kw)

Now, I can guestimate yours, with a single rig and single card, Id guess you wont chew more than 400W (300W card + 100W if PC is otherwise idle), say 500W absolute max if you are doin something else or didnt optimize too well, and thats your answer you should start right away

need help, just ask, we are here to help ! mining on nvidia is far easier than on amd, so you'll just need MSI afterburn or something like that, drop powerlimit, drop core, increase ram (panda did a great spreadsheet on it here:

)


CORRECTION: the rig of 4x480 consumes 570W not 650W, i forgot I pulled a card from it (used to have an additional 5500xt in there, but they didnt play well together on linux)
so the numbers are even better than mentioned

 

[tRidiot]

That's pretty good news, I am glad to hear all this. I ran a quick calc on nicehash.com and it suggests to me with BTC I could clear after electricity costs about $383.11 per month. If I ran my son's 2070 Super/3700x rig at the same time (again 24/7), it says I should run around $526.32 a month. While I find all this pretty hard to believe, that estimate is only an additional $40 or so per month in electric costs, so I think it is probably worth it to give it a shot, right?

I'll go back and get to reading more deeply on the primer again, I just kind of did a light readthrough - this time it will definitely take more time to look up terms and understand concepts, but it gives me something to do with this machine that is sitting here doing nothing. Those numbers are with BTC and I understand the rates and such change all the time.

I just feel like I've missed out on years' worth of potential mining as I just didn't believe in it. But I think it's time I gave it a try.

 

[ZL1]

That's pretty good news, I am glad to hear all this. I ran a quick calc on nicehash.com and it suggests to me with BTC I could clear after electricity costs about $383.11 per month. If I ran my son's 2070 Super/3700x rig at the same time (again 24/7), it says I should run around $526.32 a month. While I find all this pretty hard to believe, that estimate is only an additional $40 or so per month in electric costs, so I think it is probably worth it to give it a shot, right?

I'll go back and get to reading more deeply on the primer again, I just kind of did a light readthrough - this time it will definitely take more time to look up terms and understand concepts, but it gives me something to do with this machine that is sitting here doing nothing. Those numbers are with BTC and I understand the rates and such change all the time.

I just feel like I've missed out on years' worth of potential mining as I just didn't believe in it. But I think it's time I gave it a try.

well yes, numbers change every minute, because both prices and difficulty changes, in time it takes more and more work to get the same amount of ETH
btw you will be mining ETH on nicehash too, they just convert it for you and pay you in BTC, its up to you, but its better to mine clean ETH
nicehash also calculates just GPU power, without rig power, thats why their numbers are a bit higher, but since there is a rig and also a 10-15% loss at the wall (the calc I gave you), they will be a bit less, but still very , very good right now

I recommend a ETH wallet (exodus for example), ethermine as the pool, and phoenixminer as the miner (all of this is found in my getting started as well but if you'll need help, just ping any of us here

 

[stompah]

It won't make you a millionaire but will offset the cost of that video card in a little over half a year. Might alleviate some of the guilt you have of not gaming as much.

You can totally nerd out a bit by adjusting parameters of your card to get you the most hash for the least amount of electricity.

 

[Blaylock]

It won't make you a millionaire but will offset the cost of that video card in a little over half a year. Might alleviate some of the guilt you have of not gaming as much.

You can totally nerd out a bit by adjusting parameters of your card to get you the most hash for the least amount of electricity.

^ this has become my overclocking guilty pleasure for the last month. Tweaking a little here, a little there, finding the best settings to get the highest Mh/s per Watt.

 

[stompah]

My 5700xt was easy. Slide the per limit all the way down to 50% then bump the ram till stable. The 3080 not so much

 

[ZL1]

My 5700xt was easy. Slide the per limit all the way down to 50% then bump the ram till stable. The 3080 not so much

well... if you want a well optimized 5700 you have to:
- change timmings via a bios flash if you want true perf
- then you need to adjust VDD/VDDCI/MVDD if you want true power consumption
- also recommended to ajust SOC speed and voltage

while an nvidia card is just PL
granted its because nvidia locks us out of those settings, and technically it could perform even better if unlocked .. but such is life, so for now nvidia is still far easier to get to practical best vs amd

this is a fully worked up 5700 which does 56.2mhs@130W(at wall on gold psu), same as a 480 )

 

[tRidiot]

So I'm trying to DL Phoenixminer 5.5c from the official Github and it just keeps failing. Maybe I'll try again tomorrow.

 

[stompah]

Not sure why you are having issues with github. Strange.


https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=4432704.0

I use t-rex and follow the links posted in the above thread.



EDIT: Remember to edit the .bat file with your wallet information.

 

[tRidiot]

Not sure why you are having issues with github. Strange.


https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=4432704.0

I use t-rex and follow the links posted in the above thread.



EDIT: Remember to edit the .bat file with your wallet information.

Ok, so it seems my Avast is blocking the Phoenixminer download from Github - it says it is infected with Win64:Malware-gen.

So I tried to DL at work away from my Avast and Chrome is blocking it as malware, too.


Soo..... yeah.

<edit> Honestly after reading the last couple pages of posts on that topic in the FAQ where I got the Phoenixminer link, it seems there is a massive amount of fraud, malware, suspicious activity, etc., in the mining community to rip people off. This obviously makes me cautious, so I am not sure what to do now. And it seems when/if those things happen, there is no recourse.

 

[ZL1]

Ok, so it seems my Avast is blocking the Phoenixminer download from Github - it says it is infected with Win64:Malware-gen.

So I tried to DL at work away from my Avast and Chrome is blocking it as malware, too.


Soo..... yeah.

<edit> Honestly after reading the last couple pages of posts on that topic in the FAQ where I got the Phoenixminer link, it seems there is a massive amount of fraud, malware, suspicious activity, etc., in the mining community to rip people off. This obviously makes me cautious, so I am not sure what to do now. And it seems when/if those things happen, there is no recourse.

oh this will happen, any avir will block any miner, avir soft considers miners risky because so many were launched without the owners permission on corporate and university computers ...

what I recommend for this is to set a PC aside dedicated to mining, that way no risk, but of course that may be a bit extreme for the casual miner

 

[tRidiot]

Ok, so I need to disable my AV and then download. I'll see tonight if Chrome will do it.

Do I need to keep my mining PC offline, too? Like disable network access?

 

[ZL1]

Ok, so I need to disable my AV and then download. I'll see tonight if Chrome will do it.

Do I need to keep my mining PC offline, too? Like disable network access?

dont disable, just create an exception, it will keep deleting phoenix , but you dont want it disabled either .. in case of other things

you will need network, it must communicate with the pools

 

[tRidiot]

Well, I meant disable just for the DL... but I guess if I re-enabled it, then it would detect it running, too, so I don't want that. So I will look into how to make an exception.

Cool. Didn't have time to mess with it last night, went over to some friends' house and hung for a few hours, then came home and crashed.

 

[ZL1]

Well, I meant disable just for the DL... but I guess if I re-enabled it, then it would detect it running, too, so I don't want that. So I will look into how to make an exception.

Cool. Didn't have time to mess with it last night, went over to some friends' house and hung for a few hours, then came home and crashed.

gotta go back to the getting started and read on wallets, pools, etc