Hardware to start mining

[fastamdman]

Memory and mobo not too sure. But something on the cheap side. Or I should say cheaper. My buddy decided on a PSU that is 1200 watts. But I'm not sure what brand.


Sent from my ZTE A2017U using Tapatalk

I would suggest using 4gb of memory, hopefully he got a reliable power supply, and the cheapest motherboard / cpu that will run 8 cards that you can find. The motherboard and cpu are fairly meaningless when it comes to profits. The cheaper the better, as long as it can support 8 gpu's.

 

[tvfreak]

I would suggest using 4gb of memory, hopefully he got a reliable power supply, and the cheapest motherboard / cpu that will run 8 cards that you can find. The motherboard and cpu are fairly meaningless when it comes to profits. The cheaper the better, as long as it can support 8 gpu's.

As I mentioned, we went with the 580, 8gb GPU.
Now is there a big difference between the 4gb Vs 8gb when it comes to mining?

 

[tvfreak]

Some tips:

-Don't cheap out on the power supply. There are things worse than high ROI time. That's called a Fire Hazard.
-For PSU longevity I aim for 50-60% load on the power supply. For example, with ~550W power consumption I use 750W minimum, 850W preferrably. 550W power consumption @ 90% efficiency equals 500W load on the power supply.
-Back on the fire hazard thing, I use one 6/8 pin power cable per card, and another peripheral power cable per pcie riser.
-RX 570/580 cards are fine. In fact, they are more stable to setup than RX470/480 series. I have both. You can't really get the 4xx generation so it doesn't matter but the 5xx generation tends to have better design as well

I asked fasamdman, and I'll guess I'll ask u to.
When it comes to GPU memory does it make a big difference in mining? When it comes to 580 8gb memory Vs the 4?

Sent from my ZTE A2017U using Tapatalk

 

[fastamdman]

As I mentioned, we went with the 580, 8gb GPU.
Now is there a big difference between the 4gb Vs 8gb when it comes to mining?

I was referring to ram for the system, not for the video card. Mining doesn't require more than 4gb of ram for a system. I was just letting you know it's pointless to go with 32gb of system ram or 16gb's etc. The cheaper the better as it doesn't change your mining profits. It doesn't matter if you went with 8gb 580s or not, but they do perform better.

 

[tvfreak]

I was referring to ram for the system, not for the video card. Mining doesn't require more than 4gb of ram for a system. I was just letting you know it's pointless to go with 32gb of system ram or 16gb's etc. The cheaper the better as it doesn't change your mining profits. It doesn't matter if you went with 8gb 580s or not, but they do perform better.

I should of been more clear. I meant 4gb 580 Vs the 8gb 580.
Do u know by how much it would perform better?
I'm asking, cause my buddy is thinking of going with the 4. But I assume and as u stated it wouldn't mine as good as a 8gb

 

[fastamdman]

I'm not sure why my favorite thread got temporarily locked, but I am glad it's unlocked From what I can see on the nicehash calculator, the 8gb versions earn about 73 a month where as the 4gb versions earn 66 a month (after .1 usd electricity costs). So personally, I would go with the 8gb if you have to get 580s. But if you haven't purchased them yet, I would still go with the gtx 1070 or the 1080ti's as they can mine more algorithms and they are more profitable.

@tvfreak Just to give you an idea, using nicehash's statistics the rx580 8gb versions make as I said around 73 a month, the gtx 1070 makes 134 a month. The rx580 costs 310 dollars and the gtx 1070 is...apparently out of stock at a lot of places. So looking at the gtx 1060 then. The 1060 makes 87 dollars a month and can be had for around 250 depending on which card you go with. The ROI on the 1060s are absolutely insane. If you haven't purchased yet, I really recommend going with an nvidia card. However since the prices are screwed up on the 1070s currently, the 1080s aren't a bad option either. However they are more expensive, but they are producing 158 dollars a month each. The gtx 1080s are currently around 550 dollars a month (with a free copy of destiny 2 which can be sold to recoup some costs).

 

[fastamdman]

@tvfreak Since I am getting ready to purchase a bunch of cards as well, I will break things down with you. I will do it with and without electricity costs.

GTX 1080 - Price 530 dollars - Mining monthly makes 158 with electricity and 178 without electricity. ROI is 90 days without electricity, 100 days with electricity factored in.
GTX 1060 6GB - Price 250 dollars - Mining monthly makes 89 with electricity and 100 without electricity. ROI is 74 days without electricity, 83 days with electricity factored in.
RX 580 - Price roughly 500 dollars - Mining monthly makes 72 with electricity and 85 without electricity. ROI is 178 days without electricity, 208 days with electricity factored in.

Out of those 3 cards, the gtx 1060 has the best ROI, aka return on investment. Meaning the gtx 1060 will pay you back everything you spent in less than 3 months. Where as the other cards will take longer. However, the card that will pay the best AFTER you make your money back, with my statistics, is the gtx 1080. The best option would still be the 1060s or 1070s if you can find a good deal on them, but considering the 1070 is way over priced, the 1080 is currently a better deal. If prices fall on the 1070s, I personally would go for them. But until then, I will be sticking with the 1080s.

Last one I will do is the gtx 1080TI, as I feel that is a really good option as well.

GTX 1080TI - Price 750 dollars - Mining monthly makes 209 with electricity and 230 dollars without electricity. ROI is 97 days without electricity, 107 days with electricity factored in.

As you can see the best earning card over all is obviously the 1080 TI, although they are very expensive. The card that will pay itself off the quickest is the GTX 1060. The worst card out of these to buy is clearly the RX 580s as they take WAY to long to pay off. You are looking at 208 days to pay off a single rx 580, that is almost 7 months. You can pay off a gtx 1060 in less than 3 months, a gtx 1080 in 3 months or slightly more and the gtx 1080 is roughly 3 1/2 months. ALL of which will make you more profit in the long run AND can mine more algorithms than the AMD cards can.

Just to be clear, I am not an Nvidia fan boy by any meas. I use the hardware that performs the best for the task at hand. I have no allegiance to any company, although I personally really do like nzxt and corsair as they have both done wonderful things for me in the past

Edit: Forgot one, the 1070TI.

GTX 1070TI - Price is 520 dollars (which is in stock) otherwise price is roughly 480 when they come back in stock. Monthly it makes 133 a month with electricity factored in and 147 without electricity factored in. The ROI for this card at a 520 dollar price point is 116 days with electricity factored in and 106 days without. At 480 dollars the ROI is at 108 days with electricity factored in and 97 days without electricity factored in.

 

[IntelUser2000]

$500 for RX 580? I think you are mistaken. You said $310 earlier. That's more realistic. If you pay attention $250 is easy. On a good sale, you can do it for $200. But it seems prices are rising again.

You don't need the 8GB versions. They run slightly better in some algorithms, for example CryptoNight, but they don't seem worth it for the price. I guess they are, if you are looking for profits after ROI, but for me short ROI is paramount. Profits after ROI would be better with higher end cards like GTX 1070, or heck 1080 Ti. You can even consider ASICs like Antminer S9 that directly mine Bitcoin.

For the RX cards, if you go with separate crypto mining rather than Nicehash you can do a bit better generally. The Nvidia cards are better for people who want more of a turnkey solution, as they don't have to know about modding BIOS and such.

 

[tvfreak]

$500 for RX 580? I think you are mistaken. You said $310 earlier. That's more realistic. If you pay attention $250 is easy. On a good sale, you can do it for $200. But it seems prices are rising again.

You don't need the 8GB versions. They run slightly better in some algorithms, for example CryptoNight, but they don't seem worth it for the price. I guess they are, if you are looking for profits after ROI, but for me short ROI is paramount. Profits after ROI would be better with higher end cards like GTX 1070, or heck 1080 Ti. You can even consider ASICs like Antminer S9 that directly mine Bitcoin.

For the RX cards, if you go with separate crypto mining rather than Nicehash you can do a bit better generally. The Nvidia cards are better for people who want more of a turnkey solution, as they don't have to know about modding BIOS and such.

Rx580 8gb for sub 300? Where can I find a price that cheap?
The cheapest 580 8gb I was able to get was 399

 

[fastamdman]

@tvfreak @IntelUser2000 I was basing my prices off what was in stock currently at newegg and amazon. I didn't see anything close to 400 dollars, let alone cheaper. Doing the ROI at $400 dollars though it would still take 163.93 days to pay off the card, making 2.44 per day after electricity costs. Without electricity costs you are at 138.88 days to pay it off. I just don't think they are worth it versus a 1060 or 1080 currently. If the 1070s would go back to msrp and be in stock I would recommend those. But with the way things sit currently, if you want a quick turn around for your investment, the 1060 is one of the best cards to buy in my opinion. @tvfreak Where did you get the 580 8gb for 399 at out of curiosity? I looked at several different places and didn't see any at that price point. Was it used? I always fear buying video cards used nowadays as I know how hard mining can be on them. A lot of people run cards 24/7 straight overclocked and at full load for mining and then sell them after they have made back the ROI and 100% profit. That's the only thing that worries me about used cards, you just never know how used they really are lol.

Doing some quick math, you can see that 8 of the 580 8gb video cards at 400 dollars would be 3200 dollars. The cards make roughly 2.45 per day each, so that is 19.60 for the entire system. That means it will take 163 days to pay that off the 3200 dollars if pricing stays exactly the way it is currently. Looking at it from nvidia's side, if you went with 8 gtx 1080s for example, it would cost 4,240 dollars. However each card makes 5.50 roughly, which is 44 dollars per day. This in return means you would only have to wait 96 days for your investment to be paid off. After that, you would be earning 1,320 dollars a month in extra income. The 580s will only make 588 dollars a month. Looking at it longer term, IE more than just a month or two, it makes so much more sense to go with different cards.

If you've already bought the rx580 I would highly suggest just tossing it into your current machine and start mining with it to pay it off as quickly as possible. But for mining long term, I really suggest looking into Nvidias cards. Virtually all of them from the 1060 on up are a much better value in both the short run and the long run.

 

[Red Squirrel]

GTX 1080 looks attractive, might pick up two as a start and just put them in my gaming machine for now and mine from there. Eventually do want to build a dedicated machine and run Linux though. Think what I'll do is gage how much money I make with these and then see if it's worth going bigger. If not then I have a kick ass SLI setup for gaming.

 

[fastamdman]

GTX 1080 looks attractive, might pick up two as a start and just put them in my gaming machine for now and mine from there. Eventually do want to build a dedicated machine and run Linux though. Think what I'll do is gage how much money I make with these and then see if it's worth going bigger. If not then I have a kick ass SLI setup for gaming.

That is the exact same thing I am doing. I already have one gtx 1080 in my gaming machine, adding a second so when I am gaming I can have one 1080 mining and one 1080 playing games. That way I never have ANY down time. Doing the same thing with the wifes rig. Grabbing a 1080 for her so she can have a 980 and a 1080 and then sell the 980 and buy another 1080. After we have 4 1080s we will see how the market is and go from there. Dunno if I am gonna go with 1080ti's, 1080s, 1070s or 1060s. I never realized just how quickly you could pay off the 1060s and how energy efficient they were until I was looking into them for the OP. If the 1070s fall into line I might grab 8 of those. Regardless, the profits are gonna be sweet. Once we have 4 1080s in here, which won't take long, we will be making an extra 660 a month which will be great. If prices stay the same, that means I will be able to get a 1080 every single month. Actually it would be quicker, because 5 1080s would be make 825 a month. So I would be able to buy 2 within the first 2 months and have an extra 425 dollars lol. Just think....with 8 gtx 1080s running you are making an extra 16k a year. The goal is by the end of 2018 to have as big of a mining operation as I can I will upload plenty of pics along the way for sure.

 

[vailr]

From what I heard, the gddr5 is better than the gddr5x.
So, is the 1070ti would be a better card to use to mine Vs the 1080?

Yes, that's an important hardware distinction to understand. The 1080 and 1080Ti both use GDDR5x, which is not as efficient for crypto-mining as the lower cost GDDR5(non-x) cards. The most powerful example being the 1070Ti.
And it's still available for $478.75 + $7.95 shipping.
http://www.provantage.com/evga-08g-p4-5671-kr~7EVGA161.htm
Comparing the GTX 1070 vs. GTX 1070Ti: the pricing is fairly close between the two, but the increased capability makes the 1070Ti the much preferred card for crypto-mining.

 

[IntelUser2000]

@IntelUser2000 I was basing my prices off what was in stock currently at newegg and amazon. I didn't see anything close to 400 dollars, let alone cheaper.

Perhaps its different because I am in Canada. Plus I was looking at prices starting from about 2 months ago.

Right now at Newegg.ca I see cards in the $330 range for RX 570 4GB. For 8GB its close to $500. For the RX 580's the 4GB versions are at $400, while 8GB is almost $500 again. Do note conversion to US dollars you'd want to divide them by 1.25.

There is a minor difference between RX 570 and 580. Plus you don't need 8GB cards. It was cheaper about 2 weeks ago though. Average lowest price about $30 less. Although if you look for Black Friday and Boxing Day deals they were even better.

1080 and 1080Ti both use GDDR5x

The Ti does quite well actually, they outperform both 1070 and 1080. It isn't necessarily due to GDDR5x being bad, its just that the 1080 probably has a crappier memory controller. It's like why Nvidia does extremely well with HBM2 cards and AMD much poorly with theirs.

Was it used? I always fear buying video cards used nowadays as I know how hard mining can be on them.

Used is fine as long as the discount is decent and the person hasn't pushed it to ridiculous levels like maximum overclock with dual mining. Well, you can't guarantee that, but if they are like 2-3 months old they are ok.

 

[DrMrLordX]

Good point.
What are your thoughts about those other alt coins I mentioned

Not worth holding. As I said, if you can mine & sell for a profit then try it, but anything that trades sub-$1 without a great whitepaper and dev team is pretty risky. They call em "sh*tcoins" for a reason.

Most small projects with their own blockchain are being swept aside by ERC20 tokens on the Ethereum blockchain. There are obvious exceptions like NEO (and I don't know that I would call NEO a small project at this point). Electroneum might pan out, but it's worth what it is for a reason.

As I mentioned, we went with the 580, 8gb GPU.
Now is there a big difference between the 4gb Vs 8gb when it comes to mining?

There is a difference, but it isn't that big. Only reason to go with 8GB now, in my opinion, is to keep mining ETH if/when the DAG gets too big for 4 GB cards. Dunno if that will happen before ETH mining stops though. Extra RAM also helps with Cryptonight coins.

I was referring to ram for the system, not for the video card. Mining doesn't require more than 4gb of ram for a system.

I went with 8 GB on my mining rigs anyway. But I was buying older AM2+/AM3 hardware that required DDR2, so prices/availability were different for that old crap;.

 

[tvfreak]

Not worth holding. As I said, if you can mine & sell for a profit then try it, but anything that trades sub-$1 without a great whitepaper and dev team is pretty risky. They call em "sh*tcoins" for a reason.

Most small projects with their own blockchain are being swept aside by ERC20 tokens on the Ethereum blockchain. There are obvious exceptions like NEO (and I don't know that I would call NEO a small project at this point). Electroneum might pan out, but it's worth what it is for a reason.



There is a difference, but it isn't that big. Only reason to go with 8GB now, in my opinion, is to keep mining ETH if/when the DAG gets too big for 4 GB cards. Dunno if that will happen before ETH mining stops though. Extra RAM also helps with Cryptonight coins.



I went with 8 GB on my mining rigs anyway. But I was buying older AM2+/AM3 hardware that required DDR2, so prices/availability were different for that old crap;.

But the hope is, those those redacted will turn into gold pressed latn.um.
There are a lot of coins that start out as sub 1 and turns out to great.
It's a risk for sure.




Profanity is noit allowed in the tech forums.


esquared
Anandtech Forum Director

 

[DrMrLordX]

Most altcoins will fail. They are pump/dump scams waiting to happen. You can make a profit off them if you buy in before they pump and sell before they dump, but at that point you are playing whale games. Very risky.

For a miner, it depends on whether you will hold the coins for any significant amount of time before selling. It's actually a bad idea to rely too-heavily on a coin that most miners sell immediately after payout, because then you have steadily increasing supply on the seller side of the equation. Without a lot of buy pressure, that leads to declining prices and profits. Mining "the big boys" like ETH, XMR, and ZEC can be more profitable thanks to the constant buy pressure on those coins. The downside with those coins is the steadily increasing total hashpower committed to mining. The more miners come online, the lower your profits. But you can make bank on those coins if you hold awhile before selling, or if you just happen to be mining during an upward trend.

 

[VirtualLarry]

I'm looking for another card to mine with, probably using NiceHash, prefer AMD cards (plus, they're cheaper).

Suggestions? Seems like there's slim pickings lately.

Also, @fastamdman, this one's for you: I've already mined 2+ mBTC over the last two days, something like $32 worth. I didn't realize when I started mining again with NiceHash, that they only pay out to external wallets, once you hit 0.1 BTC. They used to pay out at 0.01 BTC or more, on a weekly basis.

So, I'm basically either committed to mining for 3+ months straight (~100 days), to even have a hope of getting a payout, or forgo my two days of mining, and forgo my Bitcoin privacy, and get a NiceHash online wallet account.

 

[fastamdman]

I'm looking for another card to mine with, probably using NiceHash, prefer AMD cards (plus, they're cheaper).

Suggestions? Seems like there's slim pickings lately.

Also, @fastamdman, this one's for you: I've already mined 2+ mBTC over the last two days, something like $32 worth. I didn't realize when I started mining again with NiceHash, that they only pay out to external wallets, once you hit 0.1 BTC. They used to pay out at 0.01 BTC or more, on a weekly basis.

So, I'm basically either committed to mining for 3+ months straight (~100 days), to even have a hope of getting a payout, or forgo my two days of mining, and forgo my Bitcoin privacy, and get a NiceHash online wallet account.

They actually just updated the website regarding this. Here is the post. https://www.nicehash.com/news/229 My suggestion is to simply use the nicehash wallet and then transfer it to coinbase. You aren't losing any privacy by using the internal nicehash wallet. You get paid out so quickly that you can send it over to coinbase (free of charge) without any fear of it ever being with held. Out of curiosity what gpu's are you using for mining currently? You are making slightly more than I am lol =P. I'm at about 22 dollars every 2 days.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Out of curiosity what gpu's are you using for mining currently? You are making slightly more than I am lol =P. I'm at about 22 dollars every 2 days.

I've got three Polaris cards (460, 470, and 570), a GTX1060 3GB, and two 270Xs. Looking into expanding my fleet.

 

[tvfreak]

Still waiting on my 580s

 

[Red Squirrel]

I ended up getting a GTX 1070. Waiting for some fans to come in then I can put it in my gaming machine temporarily to mine in. Intake fans on my gaming machine died lol, only realized recently. I do want to build a dedicated rig with more cards but issue is dealing with supply chain. Very hard to get cards now as there is a global shortage and when more come in stock they probably won't last very long.

 

[tvfreak]

I ended up getting a GTX 1070. Waiting for some fans to come in then I can put it in my gaming machine temporarily to mine in. Intake fans on my gaming machine died lol, only realized recently. I do want to build a dedicated rig with more cards but issue is dealing with supply chain. Very hard to get cards now as there is a global shortage and when more come in stock they probably won't last very long.

It sucks there is a global shortage.
Getting in the mining game late sucks.
I wanted to start mining with my older 270x. But I'm having issues to start mining.

 

[DrMrLordX]

It's kind of hard to mine with 270s/270xs now. If you have one with 4 Gb of RAM you can sort of still mine ETH with it. I have an old 270 around here somewhere with only 2 GB of RAM that is useless for mining ETH (and pretty much anything else).

You can probably still make money with it, but the profit/watt was pathetic on it even compared to my tuned Hawaii cards back when I could still run it. What a waste of a PCIe slot.

I felt bad putting it into retirement though. It was my first miner card, and it did pay for itself.

 

[tvfreak]

It's kind of hard to mine with 270s/270xs now. If you have one with 4 Gb of RAM you can sort of still mine ETH with it. I have an old 270 around here somewhere with only 2 GB of RAM that is useless for mining ETH (and pretty much anything else).

You can probably still make money with it, but the profit/watt was pathetic on it even compared to my tuned Hawaii cards back when I could still run it. What a waste of a PCIe slot.

I felt bad putting it into retirement though. It was my first miner card, and it did pay for itself.

I don't plan on mining ETH. But another alt coin that would be easier to mine