That’s not what the 2watt rule of thumb refers to, that’s 2watts to cool
the GPU die back down.
The air still has to come from a cooler source to do that.
@hon1nbo @Raymond @Nick Would ya;; be willing to share your equipment, system and configuration details with me? Whether in the forum, or privately?
I don’t waste energy on that. I waste it running VMs for work so I can duplicate customer requests and issues.
As much as it pains me to say it, run windows; the drivers get borked too often on the linux side for mining software.
I used HP SL250 blade chassis when I ran a mining and GPU compute hosting solutions; I actually donated my old personal blades to the makerspace.
We removed the shrouds on the Reference version nvidia cards so we could force air across the fins through the chassis properly. Most GPUs assume a flow from the intake of the onboard squirrel cage fan and out the back. Reference edition cards are great for this because the heatsink is oriented along the horizontal axis rather than the vertical.
NiceHas was run as-is with the full benchmarks done. Run as-is.
For Ethereum, we used NanoPool or similar with Ethermine, and setup a Telegraf+Grafana dashboard to calculate statistics and track progress. However, for a single unit just run the mining software directly as it won’t be worth the time investment.
IMHO, this isn’t worth getting into unless you just want a say in the network as a learning thing, it’s not going to be a profitable endeavour on that scale operating at a home.
When we had desktop / open air builds (which we stopped because they aren’t really that profitable for what you invest in it), we used the higher-end Celeron processors since they had enough PCIe bus lanes on the die, but didn’t draw much power compute wise.
Playing with MagiCoin.
Miner: CPU Miner - Coin Magi GUI
Pool: m-hash
Wallet: Coin Magi
When I input my API key from m-hash, CPU Miner - Coin Magi GUI tells me “Couldn’t update mining pool data”. How do I enter the correct API to allow for updates? Do I need to allow different settings?
Thanks for your help.
Could someone please explain, in a couple of simple sentences, what exactly happens in the ‘mining’ process? What computations are the machines doing, and is it all set up and computed automatically? Thanks.
The simplest I could phrase it is that your computer is doing difficult math problems involving prime numbers.
And yes, it’s all done automatically.
1 Like
I started to buy $100 to gamble with in the BitCoin stock market, but the broker wants my Social and DOB…don’t really want to give that up. Is there a way to do this without having identity theft?
I have the RX580 and love it. It performs great for my VR setup and makes me a few bones a week when I’m not playing.
Currently, im mining Vertcoin because I like the community and want to support the network. I turn about 3-10 VTC a week depending on P2P pool’s luck.
It sounds like you just want to make a few dollars and hold some coin. Bitcoin would be the best to hold/sell as it’s the OG and most stable. If i were you, i’d look into Honeyminer. It mines the most profitable crypto for your computer and automatically converts it to BTC and sends to whatever address you want.
Monero has been pretty profitable for me as well, but you have to convert to btc anyway to sell.
Honeyminer mines Monero and Vertcoin, among others, in its coin selection.
Hit me up if you have any questions. I’ve run through the cryto mining rig setup a few times now.
Thanks @Corbimos. For the moment I’m stuck with CPU mining (currently 2 RPi2; 2 RPi3, 1 RPiZW, two old laptops and my Kaby Lake, netting about 95 - 125 kH/s pooled.
None of it is doing much for me, but none of my graphics cards are new enough. I’m playing with CoinMagi for a few weeks until I decide to pull the trigger on a ASIC miner or a RX580.
But you are correct. I’m really just playing around so I’m a little more knowledgeable before the next major bubble comes along. No need to make money now if just participating will net me a reward in long term holding…and even if it doesn’t it’s still fun to learn about I’ll definitely keep you in mind…thanks for reaching out. Feel free to private message me anything your willing to share.
I used to be in the banking industry and we had to have all that info. The SSN was for tax reporting and the DOB was for identity verification purposes when you called in. Did they also ask for your full legal name and address? that all sounds legit if its a reputable broker. Definitely do the research on the broker first.
3 Likes
Thanks. Seems sort of pointless though if the math done doesn’t accomplish something new and unique.
The point of doing the math is so that there is a cost associated with mining. If there was no cost there would be no value to the end product (cryptocurrency)
It takes a lot of computing power which means that you have to spend money on computers and electricity, otherwise everyone would do it.
1 Like
To clarify, it’s not to create a barrier to entry, but to ensure you can’t get something from nothing. This shows that users are actually active in the network to unlock the next round of coins, and the math processes the next round of transactions into the subsequent block.
Thanks. Inducing people to spend exponentially greater resources and effort to create value based on redoing math problems over and over that don’t add any more to knowledge seems meaningless. At least with mining gold you end up with gold. Why not create value by solving something like a real protein folding problem or an equivalent task? It seems to me the only real thing of value now is using Blockchain technology to do meaningful record keeping for the real world.
1 Like
This has meaning for some folks.
I’m not a programmer, but I would assume that it’s because that would be a lot more complex to implement.
Pretty much this. Also Lambos.
To be fair, it’s still a relatively new concept, maybe one day they will figure out how to put that compute power towards something more “meaningful” than filling one’s pockets, but blockchain tech is so closely associated with currency that it will take some time before the cartoon dollar signs fade from people’s eyes.
2 Likes
Thanks. I’ve already started to note discussion on the implementation of Blockchain technology for many things such as complex energy related or financial transactions quite apart from any crypto currency considerations. So it seems to me the real gold here ultimately is the Blockchain concept as a transaction ledger.
2 Likes
Here is an example;
I’ll take a crack at it. Someone with actual experience feel free to chip in or make clarifications.
The cryptocurrency mining process is essentially validating transactions on the bitcoin network. Transactions use encryption keys as proof of authenticity; the mining network uses a big public file called the ledger to validate that a transaction inserted into it was from whoever claims to have sent it. This can be done without the originator disclosing their entire encryption key due to the nature of public key encryption. Miners are incentivized to contribute to the network because periodically a number of coins are spontaneously created by the network as part of the protocol and distributed via a lottery-like system with odds of receiving a coin proportional to the amount of work your mining pool has contributed during that period. In many currencies there is a difficulty curve baked into the protocol that effectively reduces the net reward per unit of work, which is why bitcoin went from CPUs to GPUs to ASICs for mining.
I’m pretty skeptical that the cryptocurrencies presently in existence are going to have legs for much longer. Bitcoin is famously inefficient. While the energy cost of producing a single coin might not be figures north of 200kWH as news sources were quoting late last year, it is hilariously inefficient relative to any other payment-processing system. All the features that make it a techno-libertarian fantasy (no regulation! no controlling authority! anonymity! works outside of conventional finance! John Galt!) make it a nightmare for most payment-settling uses. It’s notable that cryptocurrencies are used quite rarely for payments (I’m only personally aware of one online retailer that takes it) and are pretty much speculation-driven.
3 Likes