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Mining For Beginners

  • 24-01-2018 8:16pm
    #1
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 217 ✭✭


    So I have been buying crypto for about a year or so now and looking to maybe get into mining with some of my profits I have made to try something different..

    Could someone point me in the right direction of a thread or person to learn for beginners... Also if it’s something I think I can manage who or where to buy and what to mine??

    Thanks


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Comments

  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 6,026 ✭✭✭grindle


    BTC mining requires very expensive ASICs, most mineable alts are mined with GPUs which are now hilariously expensive thanks to crypto-mining.

    Depending on currency/algorithm the preferred setup will be AMD or Nvidia or a mix of both to mine multiple currencies/algorithms.

    So you'll probably need a PC anyway - or do you have a gaming PC already? Good GPU?


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 217 ✭✭oo7tk


    grindle wrote: »
    BTC mining requires very expensive ASICs, most mineable alts are mined with GPUs which are now hilariously expensive thanks to crypto-mining.

    Depending on currency/algorithm the preferred setup will be AMD or Nvidia or a mix of both to mine multiple currencies/algorithms.

    So you'll probably need a PC anyway - or do you have a gaming PC already? Good GPU?



    Nope I would need the full setup starting from scratch, looking to invest circa €2k.. Well really wondering would it be a good investment out of my crypto profits..

    I have just gotten board with Crypto investing and looking for something different, if I could get something that would be set up and plug and play for that money I would be pretty happy..

    From the very small bit I do know it would not be Bitcoin mining more like Litecoin or ZCash..

    Can get VAT back on electricity which also helps..


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 36,169 ✭✭✭✭ED E


    Just stop now, itll be a terrific money sink.


    2K is basic gaming territory, a single effective mining rig is more like six, going smaller just eats your profits. Also, electricity is stupid expensive here which eats you too.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 217 ✭✭oo7tk


    ED E wrote: »
    Just stop now, itll be a terrific money sink.


    2K is basic gaming territory, a single effective mining rig is more like six, going smaller just eats your profits. Also, electricity is stupid expensive here which eats you too.


    Yea no problem was just a thought as I said have gotten board of investing is all... Yea €6k would be out if my range alright, just thought it could be another interesting way to earn crypto..

    It would be more than a hobby as the investing is so it’s obviously not that..

    Cheers


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 6,026 ✭✭✭grindle


    oo7tk wrote: »
    Nope I would need the full setup starting from scratch, looking to invest circa €2k.. Well really wondering would it be a good investment out of my crypto profits..
    Not really a good investment, especially if you're choosing fairly well-known and well-mined currencies.
    Most likely you'd do much much better splitting profits into undervalued projects currently being developed or into an ICO that really looks appealing and has huge room to grow with a great use-case.
    oo7tk wrote: »
    I have just gotten board with Crypto investing and looking for something different, if I could get something that would be set up and plug and play for that money I would be pretty happy..
    I wouldn't trust a rig that was already built and mining-ready right down to the mining software being set up - it wouldn't be hard for a slightly knowledgable miner to change the software so they get to skim a percentage of your take. You have to set that stuff up yourself or you're taking a risk.
    oo7tk wrote: »
    From the very small bit I do know it would not be Bitcoin mining more like Litecoin or ZCash..
    LTC requires ASICs too nowadays, GPUs too inefficient.
    The best money to be made in mining is if you find a good project relatively early on and it's being developed but their hashrate & difficulty are still low, but you expect the value to rise massively.
    oo7tk wrote: »
    Can get VAT back on electricity which also helps..
    Extremely helpful.

    As ED E says though, I wouldn't specifically spend 2k for a single or double GPU miner, waste of funds and too many other parts of that build reducing your ROI.


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  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 217 ✭✭oo7tk


    Guys that’s all I need to know thanks for all the fast comments, I prob don’t know computers well enough to get into mining just had a thought after seeing a few for sale for around that price and thought it was as easy as plug it in and away you go..

    ðŸ‘ðŸ¼


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 65,707 ✭✭✭✭unkel
    Chauffe, Marcel, chauffe!


    I disagree. For €2k you could build yourself a very well performing 6 card rig based on 6 * RX570 / RX 580 4GB @ GBP 200 each and now and then available. The rest of the money will easily cover the rest of the rig. A big mistake is to overpay on the GPUs

    At todays ETH rate, this will generate about €10 per day (after electricity costs), or a full pay back of well under a year, which is an amazing return on a low risk investment. Even if all crypto was worthless the day you started to mine, you could break up your system and sell on for a total loss of a few hundred EUR (worst case scenario)

    Don't kid yourself though. It's a steep learning curve and it takes up a lot more of your time than you'd have thought. Their is also quite a bit of downtime unless you carry loads of spare parts. The bigger your operation, the more profitable it is

    Why don't you just buy one GPU (GBP200), stick it into any old €50 PC from adverts (if you don't have one lying around) and give it a go?


  • Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 15,776 Mod ✭✭✭✭smacl


    Not sure any old cheap 2nd hand pc will do the job, crappy psu may not have connectors to suit card, bios can be problematic too. You also need a full size case. I tried a new 580 on two older Dell optiplexes last week with no joy and ended putting it in a newer self build with modular psu. Don't know what availability is like, but there are cheap enough motherboards for sale to suit 8 gpu rigs. I'd look for one of these, good psu, simple cpu, suitable rack, a couple of gpus and add extra gpus as money permits.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 65,707 ✭✭✭✭unkel
    Chauffe, Marcel, chauffe!


    smacl wrote: »
    Not sure any old cheap 2nd hand pc will do the job, crappy psu may not have connectors to suit card, bios can be problematic too

    Fair point on the PSU, but you can buy a £0.99 incl shipping double molex to 6+2 pci-e cable on eBay that will do the job even if your PSU is a crappy 300W one that came with your Dell / HP etc. An RX570 4GB will not use more than 160W stock (less if you tune it for mining) and the rest of the system maybe 50W.

    Also the BIOS will not be problematic if the crappy old PC is less than about 10 years old. I have a test rig based on a S775 Conroe mobo from early 2008 just sitting in bits on my desk. Literally under €300 can get you mining if you own nothing to start with. You can just use the GPU in the case, no need for any open air frames for just one card.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 65,707 ✭✭✭✭unkel
    Chauffe, Marcel, chauffe!


    And yeah, I bought an older Dell Precision myself a few weeks ago for €20. It was from 2004 and the BIOS was too old for pci-e mining. The thing was a wreck anyway. Took out the PSU and it turns out it's a server grade 650W platinum PSU. But Dell proprietary so no use as a main ATX PSU. But short the G&B and it's grand as a powerful and efficient additional PSU on a dual PSU mining rig. Have a few GBP8 200W Pico PSUs coming my way soon from China hopefully :D


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  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 217 ✭✭oo7tk


    I would love to have the knowledge to set one up myself but unfortunately don’t... I’ll have to study all the bits you sent me tomorrow at work and investigate it further now..

    Thanks


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 1,333 ✭✭✭Dr Bolouswki


    walkthrough in 4 parts

    Here is part one

    http://1stminingrig.com/tutorial-ethereum-mining-rig-part-1/

    after that, just follow the amazing tendrils of the interwebz. But basically, 6xRX570's gets you approx 6 ETH a year and would cost you maybe €2.5k to buy (even at **** prices). Electricity would be 1200W 24/365 so whatever that costs. If you have free or cheap electricity, its profitable. Its a great learning curve too - way simpler than it initially appears. As unkle says - get one graphics card and a bag of **** system - see if you like it - then once comfortable upgrade parts to allow for a larger deployment.


  • Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 15,776 Mod ✭✭✭✭smacl


    unkel wrote: »
    And yeah, I bought an older Dell Precision myself a few weeks ago for €20. It was from 2004 and the BIOS was too old for pci-e mining. The thing was a wreck anyway. Took out the PSU and it turns out it's a server grade 650W platinum PSU. But Dell proprietary so no use as a main ATX PSU. But short the G&B and it's grand as a powerful and efficient additional PSU on a dual PSU mining rig. Have a few GBP8 200W Pico PSUs coming my way soon from China hopefully :D

    Also have a couple of old precisions, one (670) still in use for some legacy apps, the other unused for years (620). The PSUs are big and sit under the main casing, but connectors seem standard. Wouldn't fit into any other case. My 670 already runs a bit hot, so don't really want anything else in the box, might try the GPU in the 620 but have a feeling the BIOS will say no.

    If I was starting from scratch, I'd look at a mining specific rig based on something like the new Asus B250 mobo and simple frame rack. This would easily let you start with a couple of GPUs and single PSU and add more later as funds became available. Could be delays in getting the parts but €2k is ample to get a build like this started with two or three GPUs. Probably not a big money spinner, but good fun from a hobby build point of view to get to know the technology. Looking at adverts of late, these rigs also seem to fetch way more than they're worth second hand.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 5,027 ✭✭✭opus


    unkel wrote: »
    Why don't you just buy one GPU (GBP200), stick it into any old €50 PC from adverts (if you don't have one lying around) and give it a go?

    Already have a PC with a reasonable CPU (i7-4770) but only the onboard video so tempted to try one GPU more for interest than trying to make cash out of it. Where can you get a suitable GPU for £200 as a bit of a search didn't find anything close to that?


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 2,210 ✭✭✭ZeroThreat


    Would mining something like groestlcoin or vertcoin with a normal rig yield better returns?


  • Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 15,776 Mod ✭✭✭✭smacl


    opus wrote: »
    Already have a PC with a reasonable CPU (i7-4770) but only the onboard video so tempted to try one GPU more for interest than trying to make cash out of it. Where can you get a suitable GPU for £200 as a bit of a search didn't find anything close to that?

    Prices are all over the place, but the GTX 1050ti gets a decent review for mining and can be got for £156 from Amazon.co.uk. I Picked up a SAPPHIRE Radeon RX270 Nitro 8GB for £217 ex VAT from Amazon a couple of weeks ago but none left at anywhere near that price.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 5,027 ✭✭✭opus


    smacl wrote: »
    Prices are all over the place, but the GTX 1050ti gets a decent review for mining and can be got for £156 from Amazon.co.uk. I Picked up a SAPPHIRE Radeon RX270 Nitro 8GB for £217 ex VAT from Amazon a couple of weeks ago but none left at anywhere near that price.

    Thanks, just ordered one using the £10 off voucher that's valid just for today, good timing on that :)


  • Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 15,776 Mod ✭✭✭✭smacl


    opus wrote: »
    Thanks, just ordered one using the £10 off voucher that's valid just for today, good timing on that :)

    Cool. Be interested to hear how you get on. Total noob to mining myself, but thinking of building a small rig at some point in the near future when work is a little less hectic. Thinking multi-GPU with a nVidia and AMD mix.


  • Registered Users Posts: 194 ✭✭dumb_parade


    Have a look at this website before you spend too much.

    http://whattomine.com

    Gives you an idea of profits based on different gpus and their hashrates


  • Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 15,776 Mod ✭✭✭✭smacl


    Have a look at this website before you spend too much.

    http://whattomine.com

    Gives you an idea of profits based on different gpus and their hashrates

    Great site, allowing 0.25$ / Kwh that has my single RX570 at ~ $2.30 profit per day mining Ethereum, and considerably less on Monero which is what Minergate has been suggesting. So as it stands my new card will take 142 days to pay for itself based on it sitting in an existing unused PC. I reckon I could get a suitable mobo, frame cheap CPU ,good PSU and 4x 1050, memory, SSD, cabling etc... for < €2k (or $2.5k), which if I also threw in my existing GPU would generate $7 per day profit or 357 days to pay off. Leaving my existing card out at starting from scratch makes about $5.50 per day or 454 days to pay off. Changing to 8 x 1050ti cards brings the price up to $3740, profit to about $11 per day, pay off to 340 days.

    Of course all of that is adrift in a sea of changing variables that make the predictions very rough, but still fun stuff.


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  • Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 25,558 Mod ✭✭✭✭Dades


    I'd love to get into but this my time is full already with much less interesting stuff. :o

    Just wondering... if you're mining a particular coin and it doubles in value - does it automatically become twice as lucrative to mine at that point? Or does it become harder to mine or have other factors affect it...

    Similarly if a coin drops through the floor I assume it becomes unviable...


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 1,333 ✭✭✭Dr Bolouswki


    Mining just boils down to math

    Capital cost: Your hardware (GFX, CPU, etc.)
    Operational cost: Electricity largely. Internet if you want to include it. Cashout fee's when converting crypto.

    Revenue: Fiat value of generated coins.

    Profitability = Revenue - (Capex + Opex)

    You can account for these in the manner easiest for you. Value at procurement (i.e. the value when you receive the coin) or value at sale. The former helps you differentiate between mined value and appreciated coin value. There is all sorts of opportunity costs that arise within value at sale etc - better an accountant or trader answers these. However, I prefer to look at Profitiablity = Revenue - Opex, as the Capex should show only about a 30% depreciation over 12 months - you still have it as an asset and can sell it.

    But basically, yes, if the value increases its more profitable to mine, and with most algorithms it gets more difficult over time/the more people mining it - but difficulty is not explicitly tied to value at all.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 1,333 ✭✭✭Dr Bolouswki


    If someone say had access to 35 computers is there any mining software that could be run on each and farm them all? - WIN7 i3 machines with a couple GB RAM each.

    The machines in question have no one operating them and have plenty of redundant CPU power as they currently just run an instance of RDP and that is it

    CPU only scripts aye.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 65,707 ✭✭✭✭unkel
    Chauffe, Marcel, chauffe!


    ^^ I wouldn't buy a 1050ti, they have a poor hash rate for the money. It's no wonder they're still available ;)
    Dades wrote: »
    Just wondering... if you're mining a particular coin and it doubles in value - does it automatically become twice as lucrative to mine at that point? Or does it become harder to mine or have other factors affect it...

    Good question. The higher the value of the coin, the more interesting it becomes mining it (this depends on the value of other minable coins too), so more people are going to mine it, the difficulty goes up and so the payout goes down. As it stands, the availability of decent graphic cards for reasonable money is poor, so the difficulty is not going up by much. All this can change of course!

    Some people change what coin they mine all the time, based on the highest profitability. There are even websites that tell you what to mine, based on your hash rates and your electricity costs :)


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 766 ✭✭✭wannabecraig


    Dades wrote: »
    I'd love to get into but this my time is full already with much less interesting stuff. :o

    Just wondering... if you're mining a particular coin and it doubles in value - does it automatically become twice as lucrative to mine at that point? Or does it become harder to mine or have other factors affect it...

    Similarly if a coin drops through the floor I assume it becomes unviable...

    Yes and yes. You're mining the current value of the coin.


  • Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 15,776 Mod ✭✭✭✭smacl


    unkel wrote: »
    ^^ I wouldn't buy a 1050ti, they have a poor hash rate for the money. It's no wonder they're still available ;)

    Problem is, you're caught between a rock and a hard place there. The cards with better rates are either grossly overpriced or unavailable, and the available reasonably priced cards have worse performance. Given I use electricity to heat my office during the winter, I was actually thinking of building a rig out of cheap cards to replace one of the rads ;)


  • Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 25,558 Mod ✭✭✭✭Dades


    Another question...

    Is there a minimum timeframe you should stick to before switching coins? Or is that just using wrongly the analogy or actual mining?

    For example, if you were like a new puppy day-trader and switched every few hours would you miss out on potential earnings by not sticking it out for a fixed period?


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 65,707 ✭✭✭✭unkel
    Chauffe, Marcel, chauffe!


    smacl wrote: »
    I was actually thinking of building a rig out of cheap cards to replace one of the rads ;)

    I'm heating the 3 largest rooms in the house with rigs. And most of my hot water is heated by the sun :)


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 65,707 ✭✭✭✭unkel
    Chauffe, Marcel, chauffe!


    Dades, you can switch coin every minute if you wanted. You just have bat files ready with scripts to start mining different coins (in Windows). Stop one bat file running and just click on the next one to start mining another coin

    The only thing is that you mine to a pool (mining on your own means it takes months or even years before you make some money and it is very risky) and the pool only pays when you have gathered up a certain amount of coin. In case of ETH this is usually minimum 0.05ETH. So if you mine 10 different coins and none has yet reached minimum payout, then you have got not a single payout of coin into any of your wallets

    If you switch regularly, it's probably clever to switch straight after a pool payout


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  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 952 ✭✭✭Prezatch


    ED E wrote: »
    Just stop now, itll be a terrific money sink.

    2K is basic gaming territory, a single effective mining rig is more like six, going smaller just eats your profits. Also, electricity is stupid expensive here which eats you too.

    This is absolute bull. I am actually shocked that someone with as many posts would make such an ill informed sweeping statement. For the record, I have built a rig - I'll post a comprehensive response tomorrow regarding how I did it, what it cost, revenue and operating costs. I found it quite straightforward but have built a pc before.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 65,707 ✭✭✭✭unkel
    Chauffe, Marcel, chauffe!


    And electricity in Ireland is relatively cheap. Provided of course you pick the best deal every year (most people seem to never do this :eek:)

    24h (day/night) meter is free of charge with free installation. Typical cheapest day rate is then 14c and night rate 7c. The night rate applies for 9 hours a day, so 14 * (15/24) + 7 * (9/24) = a bit over 11c incl VAT per kWh on average

    I'm interested in mining on solar energy myself :)


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 217 ✭✭oo7tk


    Prezatch wrote: »
    This is absolute bull. I am actually shocked that someone with as many posts would make such an ill informed sweeping statement. For the record, I have built a rig - I'll post a comprehensive response tomorrow regarding how I did it, what it cost, revenue and operating costs. I found it quite straightforward but have built a pc before.

    That would be great thanks, would have no problem paying you in a bit if BTC with a hand in setting something up :)

    Oh and it’s boards.ie there is always one to make a response like that..

    Thanks, looking forward to your post if you can let me know when it’s up


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 952 ✭✭✭Prezatch


    Following on from my post above:

    Rig build and cost:
    GBP EUR
    Intel Celeron G3900 35 41
    Kingston SSD 120GB 45 52
    Palit 1070ti x 2 840 979
    8GB DDR4 73 85
    Asus Z270A motherboard 115 131
    EVGA G2 850w 130 151
    Aero 1070ti x 3 1357 1593
    GPU risers 6 pack 21 24
    Voltage meter 5 5
    EVGA GQ 850w 111 130
    1 to 4 pci extender 23 26
    GPU risers 6 pack 26 30
    Additional PCI cables 21 24
    Motherboard standofffs 4 5
    Triple PSU cable 3 3
    Shipping 36
    Timber for frame 30
    3345


    The cost of the rig was split 3 ways between myself and two friends so 1,115 each. One of whom has a large house in the country with cold rooms, ideal for the rig. Another did woodwork for the leaving so was tasked with the frame. I provided the tech knowledge.

    The above rig contains 5 GPUs in total but I have all of the equipment needed to expand it up to 12 which is the maximum that this motherboard can take if I get the cards and a third power supply. Each power supply has 4 VGA ports so can support 4 cards and with the additional pci cables I have split each 8 pin to an 8+6 pin to so that the cards take the 8 pin and the riser takes the 6 pin. The risers come with PCI to sata cables but these are not recommended. Use a dual or triple psu cable to connect up all of the power supplies so that they turn on and off in sync with each other (or just use the paper clip trick on youtube which works fine). Everything was bought either on amazon.co.uk or ebay.co.uk using the parcel motel UK shipping address to get them to Ireland.

    I took initial inspiration from a guy on youtube called iMineblocks and his '13 gpu rig' (he ends up just using 12). I used the same frame design as him (each frame supports 6 and they can be placed beside each other). He gives out the exact measurements in one of his videos. I also used another video from Cryptomined 'Asus z270-A 12 GPU rig' which shows how this motherboard can be used for 12 cards. And one other video that explains how best to set up the bios for this motherboard.

    We chose Nvidia 1070ti cards as they are new and efficient and will have better resale value over AMD. They were also reasonably priced at the time but have since release increased dramatically from 420 GBP to circa 530 GBP. Advice would be to get the cheapest version of whatever card you get, which is usually the blower style. Minimal performance difference between different versions.

    Software and coins mined:
    The rig runs on Windows 7 and the gpu drivers are just downloaded from Nvidia. I use teamviewer to remotely access the rig, awesome miner to control the miner and send me email notifications if something is wrong and the actual miner I use is EWBF's Cuda miner. Different cards are more efficient at mining different coins, AMD generally good for Ethereum, Nvidia generally good for coins on the Equihash algorithm such as Zcash or Zclassic (ZCL). Use whattomine.com to see. MSI Afterburner allows me to under volt the cards to save electricity and overclock the cards. The cards are undervolted to 135w from 180w. Sounds complicated but is actually very easy. If you push it too hard, the screen will start to show artifacts or just crash the miner and/or system. Reddit/bitcointalk.org generally is good for getting other users' undervolt/overclock numbers.

    Revenue and operating costs:
    This can be quite dependent on fluctuating prices and fluctuating mining difficulty which can go both up and down. But in total, this 5 card rig produces around 2580 sol/s when mining ZCL. I'm still waiting on the voltage meter to arrive so am not sure exactly what it is pulling at the wall in terms of electricity but I predict around 900w (135w * 5) + 150w for motherboard/hd + 15w for each riser. The pool mining fee is 1% on suprnova. Electricity is 16.2c per kw. 900w for 30 days = 648kw * 16.2c = €105 monthly cost.

    Coinwarz calculator shows income currently at 2580 sol/s = $618 = €495. So net income each is €132 a month on an investment of €1,115 = 8.4 months return on capital. However ZCL is currently trading at 131 dollars and peaked at 231 dollars earlier this month. This can greatly affect the return. We are holding the currency in a wallet and obviously hoping for price increases. I am a converted believer in crypto and I think most of the main coins will continue to rise in 2018. So in my mind it will make the money back much faster and even if it doesn't 8.4 months is bloody awesome for making a 100% return by anyone's standards. Added to that is the fact that hardware is currently appreciating not depreciating in value. Added again to this is the fact that we have already invested in a second PSU which is only 25% utilised at the moment and the motherboard is only 42% utilised. So scaling up will increase profit. But for now, Nvidia cards are a little pricey.

    image1.JPG
    IMG_8573.JPG

    One of the LEDs on the aero cards never worked as you can see but card functions fine. This picture was taken before I got the additional PCI cables.


  • Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 15,776 Mod ✭✭✭✭smacl


    Great post Prezatch. Have you measured the bandwidth used for the above and factored that in to the running cost, or is it significant?


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 952 ✭✭✭Prezatch


    smacl wrote: »
    Great post Prezatch. Have you measured the bandwidth used for the above and factored that in to the running cost, or is it significant?

    Bandwidth is minimal, my friend lives out in the sticks and can only get wireless broadband which is about 5-7mb. Ping is around 70-100 on speedtest.net and this works fine. The software only needs to send and receive small signals and responses not huge chunks of constant data. We used some spare AV500 homeplugs to get internet into the storage room where the rig is.


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  • Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 25,558 Mod ✭✭✭✭Dades


    Thanks for posting. Really interesting.

    I'm guessing the radiator in the last pic isn't turned on much!


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 952 ✭✭✭Prezatch


    Dades wrote: »
    Thanks for posting. Really interesting.

    I'm guessing the radiator in the last pic isn't turned on much!

    The house was originally built before electricity was invented so some of the unused rooms in it get pretty damn cold :pac:


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 1,466 ✭✭✭Tinder Surprise


    I am gonna start CPU mining Electroneum as a bit of a hobby but I'm looking for a bit of help with writing a script file for CPU mining.

    I want to run the script on a number of machines stealthy, as don't want to install a GUI or have anything visually running on screen.

    So far I have signed up for a Mining Pool account and also have a ETN wallet setup.

    So looking for advice on how to create a script file for the above, plus which mining software to use to run it on (keeping in mind the above preferences)
    Totally appreciate it wont make much money but a couple of ETN coins a day from each machine would be a good start into the world of mining, and learn the ropes a bit.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 217 ✭✭oo7tk


    Have got a couple mates interested in this idea also so could have up to €5-6k to spend on a rig now.. Now just to read and gather as much knowledge as possible..

    We are all in crypto for the past year or so but pretty new to mining..

    We can claim VAT back on the hardware and electricity so will hopefully work out good..

    Where is best to buy the hardware??


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 36,169 ✭✭✭✭ED E


    Note: I mined LTC and BTC for fun in 2012 and 13.
    unkel wrote: »
    I disagree. For €2k you could build yourself a very well performing 6 card rig based on 6 * RX570 / RX 580 4GB @ GBP 200 each and now and then available. The rest of the money will easily cover the rest of the rig. A big mistake is to overpay on the GPUs

    At todays ETH rate, this will generate about €10 per day (after electricity costs), or a full pay back of well under a year, which is an amazing return on a low risk investment. Even if all crypto was worthless the day you started to mine, you could break up your system and sell on for a total loss of a few hundred EUR (worst case scenario)

    Don't kid yourself though. It's a steep learning curve and it takes up a lot more of your time than you'd have thought. Their is also quite a bit of downtime unless you carry loads of spare parts. The bigger your operation, the more profitable it is

    Why don't you just buy one GPU (GBP200), stick it into any old €50 PC from adverts (if you don't have one lying around) and give it a go?

    December 12: 1556
    December 26: 1865

    Thats 19% every two weeks. Lets round off and say 2.5m per doubling.

    €10 now
    €5 in 2.5m
    €2.50 in 5m
    €1.25 in 7.5m

    Your time to ROI starts getting a lot closer to never than 1yr unless ETH prices rocket up month over month. But then you're gambling on a rise in ETH, may as well buy it now and sell in a year. Profit margins are way higher.

    Adaptively mining adds a little more light to the picture but its still a much more dubious proposition than people like to make out.


    The chinese are paying 4-5c US per KWH. You're paying 23+ even if you shop around annually. Yes you can offset some against home heating if you like, but its not a straight right down.


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  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 5,027 ✭✭✭opus


    unkel wrote: »
    ^^ I wouldn't buy a 1050ti, they have a poor hash rate for the money. It's no wonder they're still available ;)



    Good question. The higher the value of the coin, the more interesting it becomes mining it (this depends on the value of other minable coins too), so more people are going to mine it, the difficulty goes up and so the payout goes down. As it stands, the availability of decent graphic cards for reasonable money is poor, so the difficulty is not going up by much. All this can change of course!

    Some people change what coin they mine all the time, based on the highest profitability. There are even websites that tell you what to mine, based on your hash rates and your electricity costs :)

    I'm really just doing this out of interest in the topic, don't expect it to do much more than maybe pay back the cost of the card as the power is free as in somebody else is paying for it ;)


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 65,707 ✭✭✭✭unkel
    Chauffe, Marcel, chauffe!


    ED E wrote: »
    you're gambling on a rise in ETH

    No I'm not. Have you read any of my other posts in this forum about my mining? I went into mining as a very low risk investment strategy. Mine and sell. Worst case scenario is if all coins become worthless overnight, my maximum loss is the depreciation on my hardware
    ED E wrote: »
    The chinese are paying 4-5c US per KWH. You're paying 23+ even if you shop around annually.

    Where do you get all this from? How could you get this so wrong? :confused: I've seen you posting on boards tech forums for numerous years and I nearly always agree with your posts, but you are very off the mark here.

    For starters, I'm paying 0c per kWh used for mining. I'm on a fixed price contract with Just Energy. The second best deal at the moment is with Energia who offer something like 13c day and 6.5c night, so average 11c. I don't know where you get your 23c from???


  • Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 15,776 Mod ✭✭✭✭smacl


    ED E wrote: »
    Your time to ROI starts getting a lot closer to never than 1yr unless ETH prices rocket up month over month. But then you're gambling on a rise in ETH, may as well buy it now and sell in a year. Profit margins are way higher.

    Ok, very new to this, but surely the risk isn't that the cost of mining a given coin such as ETH rises so much as the cost of mining and the value of the coin diverge. I had thought the cost of mining tends to track the value of the coin to large degree, so your ROI isn't going to be affected to the degree you suggest above.


  • Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 15,776 Mod ✭✭✭✭smacl


    opus wrote: »
    I'm really just doing this out of interest in the topic, don't expect it to do much more than maybe pay back the cost of the card as the power is free as in somebody else is paying for it ;)

    Also doing this on a tiny scale at the moment. FWIW, over 24 hours yesterday, the RX570 generated 0.0076 ZEC on Minergate which according to coinmarketcap is $3.51 or €2.83. The PC the card is connected to is a server that would be on any way, and I'm guesstimating it is taking no more than 200w extra for the GPU. Checking my last bill, I'm paying 18c per Kw/H which comes to 86c for electricity, so the card is netting €1.97 per day. The card cost €249 shipped, so at that rate it should pay for itself in 126 days or just over 4 months. I'm flat out at work at the moment, so won't be doing much more than this for the next few weeks, but would hope to put together a larger rig after that.

    I was planning on mining ETH, but the RX570 is only generated 11 MH/s where I was expecting about 23-24. Reading up I'm guessing this is because I left the old GPU in situ. Also interesting, the rate at which ZEC is generated doesn't seem to be affected by the GPU intensity I set within Minergate. While it is a very quick and easy way of getting into mining, it seems limited in terms of performance tweaking, so I'll be looking at other software is also on the cards.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 36,169 ✭✭✭✭ED E


    unkel wrote: »
    No I'm not. Have you read any of my other posts in this forum about my mining? I went into mining as a very low risk investment strategy. Mine and sell. Worst case scenario is if all coins become worthless overnight, my maximum loss is the depreciation on my hardware



    Where do you get all this from? How could you get this so wrong? :confused: I've seen you posting on boards tech forums for numerous years and I nearly always agree with your posts, but you are very off the mark here.

    For starters, I'm paying 0c per kWh used for mining. I'm on a fixed price contract with Just Energy. The second best deal at the moment is with Energia who offer something like 13c day and 6.5c night, so average 11c. I don't know where you get your 23c from???

    I was unclear, using USD as the common currency, 23c US being about 19c. As an BEV driver IIRC maybe you're way more up to date on energy pricing. Seems like 17c is more typical. Is your fixed price one of the plans that's only good for year 1 until the "recalculation"?
    smacl wrote: »
    Ok, very new to this, but surely the risk isn't that the cost of mining a given coin such as ETH rises so much as the cost of mining and the value of the coin diverge. I had thought the cost of mining tends to track the value of the coin to large degree, so your ROI isn't going to be affected to the degree you suggest above.

    Your direct costs stay the same, but your output decreases.
    Say 500 kHashes produces 1 COINX per day
    You pay €1/day to run that rig
    Difficulty doubles over 3 months
    You still have 500kH, pay €1/day to run, but you get 0.5 COINX for that same cost base and initial CAPEX.

    So they only way to flatline that is for COINX to double in value in 3 months.


    In my example of ETH that held roughly true but thats not a given. As circulating supply increases over time the artificial scarcity could lose weight.



    @Unkel: Liquidating the hardware does protect you - unless there's a firesale/flood. 1000s of 1070s being suddenly sold off could tank prices.


  • Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 15,776 Mod ✭✭✭✭smacl


    ED E wrote: »
    Your direct costs stay the same, but your output decreases.
    Say 500 kHashes produces 1 COINX per day
    You pay €1/day to run that rig
    Difficulty doubles over 3 months
    You still have 500kH, pay €1/day to run, but you get 0.5 COINX for that same cost base and initial CAPEX.

    So they only way to flatline that is for COINX to double in value in 3 months.

    In my example of ETH that held roughly true but thats not a given. As circulating supply increases over time the artificial scarcity could lose weight.

    Fair enough. While I'm guessing mining costs are likely to track coin value to some extent, as I say I'm very new to this so the easiest (albeit not very quick) way to check this is by experiment. On my current tiny setup I've spent €249 and have running costs of 89c per day. Were current mining conditions and market value to hold, I'd have paid off my up-front costs in over 4 months and be in profit thereafter. From what you're saying, I'm not likely to actually every reach this point. You could well be right, so what I'll do is keep a log and post back every now and again.

    My feeling is that the adaptive nature of GPU based versus ASIC mining is such that existing GPU miners are likely to be profitable until such time as the manufacturers mass produce more cards with a higher price performance ratio. Time will tell.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 65,707 ✭✭✭✭unkel
    Chauffe, Marcel, chauffe!


    ED E wrote: »
    Seems like 17c is more typical.

    More like 11-12c. Have a look for yourself on bonkers.ie. Changing to a night rate meter is free
    ED E wrote: »
    Is your fixed price one of the plans that's only good for year 1 until the "recalculation"?

    Only 1 year. Then I'll switch to Energia and I will pay 11-12c. I'm also considering getting solar PV installed on my roof. Something I wanted to do for a long time, but if you don't always use the full production, it makes no financial sense. If you mine, it makes a lot more sense!
    ED E wrote: »
    @Unkel: Liquidating the hardware does protect you - unless there's a firesale/flood.

    Indeed. I did not overpay for any of my cards though. If I sold them all today, I'd make a profit. In fact I sold 2 cards a few days ago that I bought for €220 and €200 second hand a few months ago. The both sold for €265 (after making me about €100 each in coin). They were inefficient old R9 390s - solid cards for mining though!

    I'll most likely sell more cards when it will get warmer this summer. And probably end up with one large rig once I have to start paying for electricity again next September. By that time I expect to be well past full ROI

    There is no other low risk investment strategy out there with returns anywhere near cryptomining, provided you invest carefully. I'm also saving about €300 on my heating bills this winter. An added bonus :)


  • Registered Users Posts: 20 MaxWick


    Would anyone be interested in setting up a "Crypto Mining Facility" in Dublin?

    I'm currently looking to rent out a place with a three-phase power supply so that I can setup all my miners there but it would be a waste to only have my few miners running and wasting the remaining space. I would love to share the space with other people if they could help out with rent or for a percentage of their mining profits. There is a place in Limerick that rents out space for your miners but that's too far for me in case I want to check up on my miners myself etc but at the same time I don't have enough space/AMP at home to run all my miners.

    I'd love to hear your opinions on this. Send me a PM if your interested or you can join the mining group on Telegram https://t.me/joinchat/Fst09g9AvWQZw6worEG0sg


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 65,707 ✭✭✭✭unkel
    Chauffe, Marcel, chauffe!


    smacl wrote: »
    I've spent €249 and have running costs of 89c per day. Were current mining conditions and market value to hold, I'd have paid off my up-front costs in over 4 months and be in profit thereafter.

    And don't forget, you will then own the fully paid off €249 GPU. Even if it will be worth only half what you paid for it (firesale situation / all coin worthless), it means you have made a 50% return on investment in only 4 months)

    Which is an exceptionally good ROI for a low risk investment


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 1,333 ✭✭✭Dr Bolouswki


    I'm the one who bought the 390's from Unkle - and with a bit of bios editing and underclocking they are pretty power efficient. I don't mind him making a profit - that's business!

    Regardless, as I am on flat rate power AND that mining Eth will become uneconomical within about 9 months, now is a good time to do it, and then switch to other mining options as the ETH difficulty levels rise. The machines will have already ROI'ed by that point (indeed current ROI for a 6x GPU 170MH/s rig for me is 4 months). so I will be mining whatever I mine for free.

    The assertion that you are better off buying and holding does not seem to be accurate to me at all.

    A machine costs me €2k to build and delivers 170 MH/s. Ethereum today costs me €1k to buy. In 9 months time, with no change it ETH value, I would have 2.3 ETH if I bought the machine, 2 ETH if I bought ETH.

    Oh yeah, and if I bought the machine, I would still have in my hands, that machine available to mine whatever I want, whereas if I just bought ETH, all I would have in my hands would be my own ass as I tried to pull my head out of it.

    In either scenario, if the price of ETH rises, both clever man and head up ass man are in the money. If the value of ETH falls, well both can potentially lose, but clever man has a 15% buffer before it hurts him AND still has the expensive mining machine which he can mine other coins, sell to gamers, heat his house... while head in ass man has... his head in his ass.


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