Cryptocurrency GPU mining

[Raja]

It is comments like this that make it all worthwhile. I should make a collage of these, they are really stacking upView attachment 40555

Would love to see that

 

[GPM]

aren't AMD cards like rx570, 580xt and Vega usually better than Nvidia?

Those cards are super old and so not very effecient. About 3 years ago the rx580 cards were cheap and plentiful and could easily be modded to run way better than Nvidia cards.

This latest go around the AMD cards are still probably more effecient and stable, but they are significantly more expensive for their given hashrate.

I hope Nvidia gets crushed when the newest series is released. Both AMD and Intel will have cards that are not nerfed for mining, and Nvidia is going to keep playing their stupid games. It will be funny if all the miners ignore Nvidia on the next card release.

 

[GPM]

I just built a 5900x CPU build and man nothing goes like it should.

I was recording this for youtube. Of course the BIOS flashing tool did not work because I selected the B550f Gaming bios and not the B550f Gaming wifi bios. Totally different bios... I guess some come without Wifi? Who knew. That took an hour to figure out! So because of that my gopro ran out of batteries, and when I swapped it I forgot to hit record so missed a ton of stuff that I was doing. And then for some reason when I tried to update my mining OS it locked up and needed a hard reset. Sometime through there my P4 ran out of batteries and stopped recording Audio... I have no idea what I do and don't have. It is past midnight, I am going to bed! I will edit this madness in the morning and see what I can salvage.

Miner is up and running diagnostics though so that is good. It should start mining to the pool in about 4 hours.

My Helium miner is also mining I think. The software is garbage with it, and the app barely loads, but when I check my miner on the explorer it says it has already synced and has earned like 0.1 HNT already. I can't wait for my proper antenna to show up.

 

[Antifragile]

You should really get this up another notch. Big warehouse, with 4 mega watts of power, back up generators etc. go commercial with the mining! Make it into a scalable business?

I was looking at a warehouse like that just yesterday, and thought about your home set up.

 

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[GPM]

You should really get this up another notch. Big warehouse, with 4 mega watts of power, back up generators etc. go commercial with the mining! Make it into a scalable business?

I was looking at a warehouse like that just yesterday, and thought about your home set up.

I do want to do this.

At the same time I don't really want to be in Canada anymore with these new government powers and their creation of two classes of citizens. I feel like it is going to get worse before it gets better.

 

[GPM]

40$ for ram? how much are you buying?

For a GPU miner you just need a single stick of 4gb ram. Whatever is cheapest.

I guess some CPU mining needs better ram, but I have not figured all this out yet

 

[GPM]

We may disagree on whether Canada is dystopian or not, but maybe you are trying to do you “exit” at the wrong time? What if you did build an 8 or 9 figure business that did not require you to be here? How would your options look like?

Food for thought… The warehouse I was looking at was in Edmonton. I am sure there are plenty in other areas. It’s a legit option with a lot of risk/capital/effort required.

You are right, and the biggest hurdle for this is capital and finding someone with an appetite to invest. It is out there, just look at HUT8 out of medicine hat.

 

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[Antifragile]

You are right, and the biggest hurdle for this is capital and finding someone with an appetite to invest. It is out there, just look at HUT8 out of medicine hat.

I would invest…

 

[GPM]

Yes raven is profitable. Every LHR card I get goes on Raven for now. The halving is in January as well, so as long as the crypto bubble doesn't pop before that time I expect great things.

 

[EVMaso]

I've been browsing the helium network subreddit in anticipation of my miner arriving later this month (possibly delayed because of the road situation here in BC) and I'm reading that there's a lot of "choppiness" in the network right now, for various reasons. They had a drop of miners last week and I assume those thousands of people are all coming online too, so that probably doesn't help things.

 

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[GPM]

My first helium miner has been synched for like 4-5 days now. The first day it made 0.1 HNT, and then literally 0 until this morning. I thought maybe it was broken or something, but this morning it started to do some transactions.

My second miner has been synched for maybe a day and a half and has already earned 0.7 HNT. That is mental. Even at scalped prices this thing is blowing my GPU miners out of the water. I hope this keeps up, and I am super excited for my 6db antenna's to show up.

Helium seems really fun so far, but it is FRUSTRATING! There is literally nothing I can do other than ignore it and hope it starts working if something is wrong. At least with GPU mining I can pull logs, and work on hardware, and actually diagnose the issues and solve them. These helium miners there is nothing I can do.

Even saying that I think I want some more of these. This is so early in the life of Helium, and the hardware is just ballooning in popularity. There is no doubt in my mind that eventually every bit of populated surface is going to be covered with their signal. If hardware were easier to get it would be interesting to work out deals with landlords of large buildings and commercial plazas and put one on every rooftop... A cool line of thought I should probably start to consider. Mexico would be an interesting place to do this, they have so few Helium miners compared to the rest of North America.

 

[GPM]

I love it

 

[pat9000]

Really nice work and excited for you. My first rig had a lot of hiccups and mistakes haha so much troubleshooting involved, which is good because "entry".

Solar would be amazing, but it's hard to get your hands on. Definitely trying to get my rigs on solar but a lot of paperwork etc., so still working on that.

 

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[EVMaso]

How's your Helium mining going?

My Bobcat arrived today! I'm pretty busy though until the weekend so I have to wait until then to start setting it up.

 

[EVMaso]

That sounds like a great idea, gotta hustle and find those loopholes! Would probably make great video content. Your YT channel is also coming along quite well. Maybe at some point you won't need the crypto anymore!

Anyways my miner has already been set up less than 24 hrs and has already mined $5.5 worth of HNT, in a suboptimal spot just inside my bedroom window (just wanted to test it out to see if it works). Tomorrow I'm making the world's crappiest antenna stand out of PVC pipe to put on my balcony. I might start my own crypto journey thread soon so I'll stop junking up your thread, but I will follow your progress eagerly!

 

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[GPM]

So I did a video analyzing that deal in the post above.

And today I just might put together a deal for cards at $14 USD/MH. This also includes motherboard and risers and everything needed to run! Unsure on PSU just yet. If I can figure out how to make this work this will be for roughly 840MH worth of cards, but ~150mh would need to go to someone helping me put this together. It is still pretty exciting, lets see what happens!

 

[ruzara5]

Got a tech friend he started in 2009 with BTC. He was in it in the early infancy. He operated his mining rigs in a old trailer. He did it for a few years. Then around 2013 he went into other crypto endeavors. Power, issues around hardware and software and the growth of mining caused many shifts. He likely took the Bitcoin and HODLed a little and upgraded his life alot more.

 

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[Ing]

I

I wanted to say this for everyone to read.

NOTE:
I built 2 rigs back in 2017-2018.
6x RX480s @ 4gb
4x 1070s @ 8gb

Used Nanopool to mine ETH, ETC, RVN, Haven, TUBE

I am going to tell you the negatives that no one else is talking about.

1. Power is not cheap. You will have to calculate the cost and usually is 50% of your expense. Depending on the crypto market, you might not even earn enough to pay for the power bill.

2. Noise. A rig is not quiet. Basically it's a space heater.

3. Power breaker. Countless times the rig in my attic would trip the breaker box. Now that is probably my fault but that is something nobody else seems to mention.

4. Hardware degrades overtime. Do you think my 1070s that I bought back in 2018 are the same in 2022? No way. The value of hardware depreciates overtime.

5. Opportunity cost. So my mining rig costed me $2000 and made me $50/ month. IF I just bought $2,000 worth of ETH @ $100 (back in 2017) instead of mining for ETH, I would have $60,000 ($2,000 x 3,000 per ETH ATLEAST). Would you really care about that $50/month anymore?

6. Your earnings are STILL reliant on the crypto market. Do you think I made that much when ETH was $100 vs $3000? No way. The value of mining comes from the total hashrate (from others mining) and the value of the coin I'm mining (ETH).

7. Software issues. I have to sit in my attic during freezing winters and steaming hot summers just to get the damn rig working. And sometimes, it takes days before you fix it.

8. Broken equipment. I had to replace my power supply and raising cables over the lifetime of mining. It's not just a one-time investment and you're good.

Closing Words:
IF you want to be invested in crypto, just buy the damn coin. Refer to number 5 (opportunity cost).

Mining crypto is just a parallel to investing in dividend stocks. You get monthly income but in the grand scheme of things, that investment is just not worth it.

If I had to do it all over again, I would've just bought $2,000 worth of ETH back in 2017. Far better returns than have a hunk of hardware up in the attic wasting countless hours troubleshooting.

I calculated, too.
It depends, when you buy and sell the coins and when the equipment.
Depends on taxes, too.

But in the end I came to the same conclusion.

 

[MoneyDoc]

Slight change of pace on this stuff.

I am still going to build out a massive mine, but in the mean time I want to try this out:

• Organize my older rigs into 6-8 card rigs, and put them up for sale
• Use the sale money to order brand new components, in matching rigs of 6-8 cards
  • 8x 1660 super or 8x 1660ti, in a server case (256-280 MH on Eth)
  • 6x RTX3090 build using 2400watt server PSU in an open air frame (720 MH on Eth)
  • 8x RTX 3060ti LHR in a server case (352 MH on Eth)
• Put the matching rigs up for sale and run them at the same time. I can use the time before they sell to dial each card in perfectly so that it is fully optimized. Sell the rigs as a fully up and running system with perfect settings on every card
• Use the sale proceeds to continue doing this and snowball into a larger sales AND mining operation using my own money

Just brainstorming here, but some ideas to flesh out are the following:

• Build a really big mine using creative power. Power such as gas generators next to oil and gas wells. Sea Cans with mining rigs using Oil and Gas co-generation plants. Sea Cans on Farms utilizing farm energy and pricing. Moving rigs into place that require generated and purchased heat for operations. They can use my waste head from computers, and I can use their power and space, come up with some sort of a win-win
• Sell mining rigs to people who are interested in mining but have no idea how to build rigs and just want them. I can either sell them as a complete unit (Here you go, enjoy!), or possibly host them as well. They buy the equipment, I set it up and manage it for them. They pay for power costs and a management fee (Could be a flat fee based on energy usage), I manage the rigs for them, 100% of the crypto goes to their own wallet address. If they ever want the equipment they no longer pay for electricity and management, and I just ship it to them
• I can sell custom equipment to people who know what they are doing, and just give them the parts
• I can sell pre-built units 100% ready to go that have been fully optimized and are ready to go, they just plug in their own wallet. I like this as it gives me the opportunity to mine to my own address for the weeks it takes me to dial it all in, free hardware for me essentially until it sells.

With these IT accounts I have set up I have access to hundreds and hundreds of graphics cards right now, just no capital. So once I start rotating some stuff out if I can sell it, I can keep snowballing into bigger and bigger operations.

I have no idea if this sells or not, but there is a guy in my city selling a custom 6 card 3090 rig, brand new, for $30,000 CAD (before taxes). I don't know if anyone would buy that or not. I can build the same exact rig for under $20,000. That is a pretty serious markup that I would be fine not even getting close to.

Curious, that 6 card 3090 rig, what sort of returns are you getting from it mining?

 

[MoneyDoc]

@GPM Curious, how will ETH 2.0 affect all this?

They're moving to PoS, no? Won't this make mining obsolete?

 

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[GPM]

I shut off pretty much all my rigs this morning as electricity just outpaced big time the coin rewards. I am going to leave a few on for heaters, and my most efficient rig will stay on as well.

NOW is the time to be out there buying up farms from guys selling their stuff. I bet there are going to be warehouses full of cards for sale soon where guys are spending 15+ cents on electricity. The name of the game right now is cheap hardware, and find that cheap power.

 

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[Ing]

Micro mining.
No GPU, but seem to work.

 

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[GPM]

So I was up late last night swapping some higher powered cards to a rig with a 2400watt server PSU, and I built a new wood frame case for that new rig.

I put a new 850 watt PSU in the new computer, and took some load off that 1300 watt one. All of the crashing issues I had seem to be gone, it was rock solid all night.

So my 2 rigs I was playing with are now doing 178 and 270 MH on Raven.

My next steps on the agenda are building 2 more identical wood frames (this is my 3rd design improvement so far), then redoing the thermal paste and pads on a junky MSI 3080. Moving that 3080 to an ethereum rig (it should do 99 hashes, currently does about 82), and moving a 1070, and two 1080ti cards over from ethereum to raven rigs. Moving the 1080ti cards will require figuring out how to get this motherboard to 8 cards, if possible.

I had a line on a 3080ti yesterday but that fell through. However, things are still lookin positive for a potential 5x 3060ti cards next week.

With possibly 3 junky power supplies that means I may have to get some more, or figure out how to juggle more stuff onto these server PSUs

 

[GPM]

Just made a contact that orders $30,000+ worth of mining accessories at a time from China. I guess he has been mining for a while and now does that and funds his hardware by selling "shovels" to miners. Works for me!

He went through the headache of finding good suppliers, and takes all the ordering risk. If this works out I might get him to be my ordering guy. For now I'm buying a few hundred dollars in power splitters, PSU breakout boards and risers to try out. If it's all good this could be my guy on the odds and ends I need to make rigs work.

I also just finished making 2 more wood cases. I made a mistake assembling the first one today (made the original yesterday) and the mistake actually made it a better case lol. So these two are superior to the one I did yesterday.

 

[GPM]

M.2 should split the lane, and drop the main PCIe from x16 to x8. Plenty left over for mining power.

So I found out yesterday that when I run my dryer the breaker in the house trips. So on laundry day I need to shut a few rigs down when it is time for the dryer. I really don't want to see my new energy bill, I bet it will increase 30-50% from the last one.

I have a phone call later today with a commercial mining operation to kind of see how things go. Get some advice on a few topics. They also sell some awesome hardware which I would love to utilize. I just ordered a 8 card motherboard with specialized case and fan system. This case allows 8 cards to be plugged in without the use of risers. If I like this style I could see myself ordering hundreds of them

 

[Raoul Duke]

[Motherboard] Troubleshooting - Cannot find the hard disk drive or SSD(M.2) after motherboard powers on | Official Support | ROG USA

rog.asus.com

https://www.reddit.com/r/EtherMining/comments/lfi4jz/_/h3afdzo View: https://www.reddit.com/r/EtherMining/comments/lfi4jz/mining_with_asus_rog_strix_b450f_2_and_bios_setup/h3afdzo/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=web2x&context=3

 

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[GPM]

@Raoul Duke here is one for you. I have a system that does not throw any errors that I can see on the mining OS, but it loses communication or something that can only be fixed with a hard reset.

When it stops working it still has full power, the graphics card fans are still spinning and all lights are on. However it won't respond to anything. Hooking a monitor up to anything just shows the last computing thing that it was doing prior to whatever it is doing now.

I have tried using new power supplies, splitting the cards among the power source, swapping out risers, removing overclocks, moving the OS from a thumb drive to an ssd... nothing works. This is a brand new motherboard and it is using a used CPU, and a ram stick from a different system that I had. Could it be an issue with the ethernet connection, or something more?

I have a few more motherboards on their way. One should arrive early next week. I can swap the cards onto that one and see if this solves the issue. I guess until then I am down about 218 on Ethereum

 

[GPM]

[Motherboard] Troubleshooting - Cannot find the hard disk drive or SSD(M.2) after motherboard powers on | Official Support | ROG USA

rog.asus.com

https://www.reddit.com/r/EtherMining/comments/lfi4jz/_/h3afdzo View: https://www.reddit.com/r/EtherMining/comments/lfi4jz/mining_with_asus_rog_strix_b450f_2_and_bios_setup/h3afdzo/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=web2x&context=3

I saw that thread before and ignored it because he said he uses it to replace the x16_2 slot as his will not work with an x1 riser. I don't have any issues with using 6 risers.

I just tried that info and bios settings to see how it worked. I could not get more than 6 cards to boot. Back to just using 6 on this board I guess.

I got a 1x4 PCIe splitter to try out as well. This also does not work on this board. It does not matter what slot I put it in. I tried it on another board and it let me use an extra card, so that board is up to 7 cards now, but I could not get cards 8 or 9 to boot.

**Well what the heck? This board REFUSES to recognize my 6th card, even going back to the original bios settings. Ugh. I guess I should leave well enough alone.

 

[GPM]

So my 3060ti cards never actually shipped, so these might come in next week. No idea. The distributor that I am getting these through is being pretty vague with my contact. Oh well, he is footing the bill on the order, and I pay him when they come in, so I suppose it does not really matter when they come.

I am getting at least 2 more 3080ti cards today, with potentially 2 more if everything goes well. These cards are pretty efficient on Raven, and I like the density that they provide compared to running a stack of smaller cards. The prices I pay has the 3080ti costing about 14% more per hash, but it runs 10% more efficient. I probably won't ever make up that difference in cost, but I really like the density factor. More powerful cards means that I need fewer motherboards, power supplies, ram, CPUs and cases.

Payout costs on these 3080ti cards are roughly 7.5-9 months at current prices.

Once again, I was getting my original gear with 18 month payout times and being happy with that. I am acquiring for the long haul, and see myself doing this for many, many years.

My cool new 8-card case/motherboard combo that I am trying out is scheduled to arrive on Tuesday!!!! I am pretty excited about this.

I also moved a 14 card rig over from Mining 525 MH on ethereum over to Raven. It is doing ~265 MH at the moment. An estimate on hashing is that Raven gives you 1/2 the hashes as ethereum, but it is not exact. Some cards overperform on Raven, and some underperform. By moving this over it also increased my wattage on this system from what I think was about 1,500 watts to 2,060. Raven uses a much more power intensive algorithm.

 

[Ing]

Fine, if your supplier has some GPUs left.....