ZCash/ZEC GPU mining

[DrMrLordX]

This post is a placeholder until I get the chance to link all available resources to support Zcash mining. See the Ethereum thread for some information for now.

Current info:

Zcash is a new cryptocurrency based on payment confidentiality. It currently uses a PoW model based on zk-SNARK.

Most of what you want to know can be found by puttering around on the above site and its forum. However, here are a few links worth having:

Claymore miner thread
Optiminer Zcash miner thread
Genoil's Zcash miner thread
Nichhash/nhegminer thread
SilentArmy miner thread
EWBF's CUDA miner thread

Or for those wanting to go straight to the source:

Claymore Google/Claymore Megadrive
Genoil's Zcash GitHub
nhegminer GitHub
SilentArmy GitHub
EWBF Win64 Google/EWBF Win64 Megadrive
EWBF Linux64 Google/EWBF Linux64 Megadrive

Zogminer info pulled until evidence exists of a suitable update; that miner is not currently relevant otherwise.

At this time, Claymore's miner is the fastest for Windows and Linux under GCN. EWBF's CUDA miner is recommended under Windows and Linux for Pascal, and possibly older Nvidia cards.

At a minimum, you can mine ZEC at the following pools:

http://zcash.flypool.org/

https://zec.nanopool.org/

https://zcash.miningpoolhub.com/

https://zcash.nicehash.com/

https://zec.suprnova.cc/

https://www2.coinmine.pl/zec/

https://zmine.io/


As far as wallets go, there is ZCash Wallet for Linux:

https://github.com/zcash/zcash

You can use Jaxx under Windows:

https://jaxx.io/

Beyond that, you can just get a deposit address from an exchange like Poloniex and use that as a t-address for a mining target.

Quick n' Dirty Linux Automation Instructions

Check here for instructions on a basic automation setup for a headless mining rig using Ubuntu 14.04-15.10 on GCN 1.0/1.1 cards. You will have to change some steps for Polaris/Ubuntu 16.04 or 16.10, and these instructions are squarely aimed at using Claymore's miner (version 9.2 or later).

 

[IntelUser2000]

Between Genoil Miner crashing every 30 mins to 2 hours, the slow start, and significant value drops from the beginning, ZCash ATM does not seem worth it to mine. Right now it is, but for Windows its pretty much up to Genoil Miner. If the value of 1 ZCash is kept above 2 BTC, I think it'll be profitable.

What happens when block rewards go from 0.2 today to 12.5 in a month or so? What happens when all miners move to ZCash? The impact of that on pricing is extremely unpredictable. I'll stick to Ethereum + Claymore until the software at least stabilizes.

 

[thilanliyan]

DO NOT USE THE WINDOWS ZCASH WALLET!! Apparently it's a trojan and can empty wallets.

 

[DrMrLordX]

I haven't used any of the Windows wallets. In fact I just mine to a Poloniex t-address . . . when I can get the software working.

Currently I can't get Zogminer or nheqminer working under Linux, and I can only sporadically get nheqminer working under Windows (no luck with Genoil's miner). So meh.

 

[thilanliyan]

Try the new update to Genoil. Apparently it has removed some of the CPU requirements (even to GPU mine).

 

[DrMrLordX]

Well I had an AVX-compliant CPU (still do) but .4 of Genoil's is working under Windows 10. Still nothing on the Linux front, which is unfortunate. Maybe I'll run Genoil's under Wine . . .

edit: is there any way to mine with the CPU ala nheqminer while using Genoil .4? It can do any number of CPU cores and any number of GPUs . . . it's just unreliable and slow. Anyway I can't see a way to get genoil's zcash miner to do it.

edit edit: well genoil .4 worked once. Now it's back to 0 Sols/s all the time. Ugh. It's like it wants to work maybe 1/3rd of the time.

 

[thilanliyan]

I am using nheqminer for CPU and genoil for GPU. Just set the correct flags in NHQeminer to not use GPUs.

 

[Hitman928]

LordX, are you using a pool? genoil goes to 0 sometimes for me but it's because it's not getting work from the pool.

 

[DrMrLordX]

Yeah I'm using nanopool. It might be them but for whatever reason, it's like . . . I start the miner and I get nothing no matter how long I run it. Then if I kill the miner and restart it 2-3 times, I finally get something, and I can let it ride as long as I want, it just keeps working. It's inconsistent.

I also did some figuring and it looks like ZEC mining isn't all that hot afterall. According to nanopool, I can mine out .000064 ZEC per Sol/s per day, totaling $.005 per day at current ZEC rates.

Mining Ethereum through nanopool (with their usual 1% commission), I can get .005 ETH per MH/s per day, totalling $.00059 per day at current ETH rates.

So there's relative parity at this moment in time between MH/s and Sols/s. The only advantage I have right now is that with Ethereum, I can get maybe 45 MH/s on this particular machine (downclocked 290 + downclocked 390), whereas with ZEC I can do maybe 60 Sols/s using the latest Genoil ZECminer. Considering how wildly overvalued ZEC is right now, I expect things to wing back in ETH's favor in a few days.

It's interesting for now, but for how long?

edit: not much longer, ZEC is already down to $504 according to nanopool and less than that elsewhere, so this hypetrain is about to derail. Enjoy it while it lasts.

 

[Madpacket]

Okay I split my GPU hashes in half (ZEC to ETH) along with about 90 SOL being generated by CPU's. Not sure how this will pan out but hopefully it won't take too long to earn a coin before the price plummets. Even after the 4.1 update I still can't mine on my 1150 Celeron systems but the older Sempron 145's work fine. Go figure. I can't believe some sucker paid like 20 BTC for the first ZEC. Wow...

Oh and I even have my 1st gen Alienware Alpha mining away at around 26 SOL which is pretty cool considering the entire unit runs around 90W. My 4790K is only getting 25 or 26 SOL and my 5930K is like 28 SOL all at default clocks. My 7870 CPU (no APU enabled) is running around 11 SOL. I have an 8350 and 8320e to try out yet but it's nice to get some decent speeds out of the processors for a change.

 

[DrMrLordX]

Which miner are you using for ZEC, and under which OS? I can't get anything working under Linux for various absurd reasons. I also am not sure if Genoil's .4 miner will utilize the CPU at all.

When I try to use zogminer it . . . behaves strangely when I try to input the pool address. According to the instructions you are supposed to run it with a weird address format once to let it "compile" (?!?) and then afterwards you can "point it directly at the pool". You need to format it like:

./src/zcash-miner -G -stratum="stratum+tcp://<address>:<port>" -user=<user> -password=<pass>

Which is not working for me on nanopool. Maybe I'm using the wrong port? I dunno. Anyway it looks like Genoil .4 blows away nheqminer in performance and stability so I am hesitant to commit too much time to mine ZEC under Linux until Genoil at least releases a binary blob for *NIX.

 

[EightySix Four]

I know it's anecdotal and probably doesn't matter that much in the long run, but after switching my 3x 480 mining rig to ZEC for the weekend I came back to find a dead card. It had been ETH mining without even a reboot for ~2 months so it was a little odd.

Edit: So, interestingly enough, moving that card to another box brought it back to life. No idea why it won't work in the original one.

 

[Madpacket]

Which miner are you using for ZEC, and under which OS? I can't get anything working under Linux for various absurd reasons. I also am not sure if Genoil's .4 miner will utilize the CPU at all.

When I try to use zogminer it . . . behaves strangely when I try to input the pool address. According to the instructions you are supposed to run it with a weird address format once to let it "compile" (?!?) and then afterwards you can "point it directly at the pool". You need to format it like:

./src/zcash-miner -G -stratum="stratum+tcp://<address>:<port>" -user=<user> -password=<pass>

Which is not working for me on nanopool. Maybe I'm using the wrong port? I dunno. Anyway it looks like Genoil .4 blows away nheqminer in performance and stability so I am hesitant to commit too much time to mine ZEC under Linux until Genoil at least releases a binary blob for *NIX.

I'm using Genoil 4.1 (I see a new release since then for GCN 1.0) on Windows 10 for my GPU's. Genoil AFAIK does not support CPU mining so for that I'm using ZCash's miner and mining ZEC. "nheqminer_v0.3a". It works in conjunction with Genoil 0.41 provided you don't run 100% CPU usage (except on 835/20's I can run with 8 threads and there's little or no penalty to Genoil GPU miner, albeit only like at 14 SOL).

Originally I setup a T address on Ubuntu following those instructions from my first post on ZEC but I managed to somehow botch the installation. I gave up on that and I'm simply mining to the receive address Poloniex provides you. ZEC is showing up just fine on the exchange and I've already sold around $40 CAD worth.

Sorry I'm not familiar with Zogminer.

 

[Madpacket]

Anyone else CPU mining with ZCash's miner? If so please share your results here.

 

[DrMrLordX]

Genoil AFAIK does not support CPU mining so for that I'm using ZCash's miner and mining ZEC. "nheqminer_v0.3a"..

Are you using it under Linux at all? I've had quite a bit of difficulty getting it to work under teh Lunix. Running Ubuntu 15.10 + Catalyst 15.12 drivers on 290s.

 

[Kozlow]

Anyone else CPU mining with ZCash's miner? If so please share your results here.

Yeah, I'm mining with nheqminer v0.2, where did you find v0.3a?
But anyway I have it running on two miners.

1st miner is running an i5 4670k @3900 Mhz, with one 480 running with Genoil 0.5
cpu = 17.8-17.9 S/s, 480 = 32-35 S/s

I have just nheqminer v0.2 running on 6 cores of I7-3770k @4400 Mhz,
cpu = 23.3 S/s

 

[DrMrLordX]

Genoil .5 crashes instantly for me. Are you using the -k option in Genoil .5 to CPU mine?

edit: nheqminer .3a is here:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B4eYSzT91v_9UGVzZVdtUC14VW8/view

Well that's for Windows anyway.

edit edit: I finally got zogminer working under Linux. I'll update the OP to reflect this fact.

Basically follow the nanopool directions I have linked above, only you have to structure the pool address strangely.

For example, instead of zec-eu1.nanopool.org:6666 you put in stratum+tcp://zec-eu1.nanopool.org:6666

Then you wait a bit for it to fire up, and it works.

It does not support multigpu at the moment, and it's poorly-optimized, so you have to run two instances of zogminer per GPU to get it to work. I also can't get it to work with my 270 at all, so I may swap it out for an idle 290 to see if I can get that stable on that rig (I couldn't using any etherem miners).

 

[thilanliyan]

I went back to Genoil 0.4. since 0.4.1 and 0.5 have connection errors for me after a while.

 

[wege12]

Worth mining this with a i7-5820k oc'd to 4.5 GHz?

 

[Kozlow]

Genoil .5 crashes instantly for me. Are you using the -k option in Genoil .5 to CPU

).

No, not using -k.
I'm at work right now so I can't copy my.bat file, but if I remember right it goes something like this:
nheqminer.exe -l us1-cash -u (address.rig1) -t 6

 

[thilanliyan]

I have noticed that I have to run two instances of Genoil to keep the GPU usage pegged. Otherwise GPU usage spikes up and and down constantly, which I'm assuming means that there are some wasted GPU cycles.

 

[Madpacket]

I have noticed that I have to run two instances of Genoil to keep the GPU usage pegged. Otherwise GPU usage spikes up and and down constantly, which I'm assuming means that there are some wasted GPU cycles.

I did notice that. Claymore should be releasing his stand alone ZEC miner soon (2 days or so). Rumor is he's getting around 90 SOL on one Radeon 390! I'm sure we'll see 100% utilization if he's getting anywhere near those hash rates. I'm skeptical of these claims but I guess we'll know soon enough.

 

[Madpacket]

FYI I managed to get Genoil working on all my miners now. I was having problems with GPU enumeration and found the "-P 1" switch overrides the iGPU and then the Radeon cards fire up properly. So if anyone ran into this problem with Celeron's this should get you going.

 

[Kozlow]

I have noticed that I have to run two instances of Genoil to keep the GPU usage pegged. Otherwise GPU usage spikes up and and down constantly, which I'm assuming means that there are some wasted GPU cycles.

I haven't tried it with v.5, but I tried with an earlier version. While it brought the GPU Usage up to 100 percent, the sum of S/s of the two instances didn't add up to just the one running.

Is the total S/s of two Genoil v.5 > just one for you?

 

[Madpacket]

I just experimented with the -k option on my dual 480 rig with an 8350. Simply adding four zec's so "-k zec zec zec zec" increased my hashrate another 5 - 10 hashes where I'm closer to 40 Sol per 480 now and GPU utilization seems better according to GPU-Z. This is in addition to the 14 Sol/s running with nheqminer with a -T 7 set. So altogether with about 90 Sol off this one box. I'll have to experiment with other boxes with single or dual core CPU's (not sure if the -k can be used) but this is a pretty significant boost.