Cryptocurrency and Mining

[Melbosa]

Looks like the RX 560 might be the best over all card for what I am looking for..

A bit cheaper and a bit better hash rates. Very common..

Hehe yeah better at mining... not as much at gaming as the 1050 Ti but you want dual purpose.

I too am starting down the mining road, with a 1050 Ti, 960, 760, and 660 Ti.  I also have a 295 I can throw into the mix, but not sure my 1000 Watt PSU can handle all that.  I know you were looking for used cards, and it looks like I have a lot, but I already bought everything I need to do the mining thing so they were spoken for... and I don't think you wanted a GTX 295 for your kids

[Lazybones]

Looks like the RX 560 might be the best over all card for what I am looking for..

A bit cheaper and a bit better hash rates. Very common..

Hehe yeah better at mining... not as much at gaming as the 1050 Ti but you want dual purpose.

I too am starting down the mining road, with a 1050 Ti, 960, 760, and 660 Ti.  I also have a 295 I can throw into the mix, but not sure my 1000 Watt PSU can handle all that.

What are you planning on mining? Most of the big ones are not all the efficent to mine but some of the lesser ones are profitable or you can be lazy and use nicehash to sell your compute time. Purchasing tends to be more efficient than mining for the most part unless you have cheap power and most of the parts already.


Sure beats tossing money and power at a space header in the winter.

[Melbosa]

...you can be lazy and use nicehash to sell your compute time. Purchasing tends to be more efficient than mining for the most part unless you have cheap power and most of the parts already.

^ This

I've only bought some PCIe 1x to USB PCIe 16x slots adapters... rest I already had on hand, including PSU, Mobo, Case, and Vids.  Cova and I are testing some 3D printer mounts for them this week, and I should be off to the races... for as long as them cards will last.  Hoping to get a year or more out of the setup, and then we'll see about purchasing some actual mining cards.

[Lazybones]

...you can be lazy and use nicehash to sell your compute time. Purchasing tends to be more efficient than mining for the most part unless you have cheap power and most of the parts already.

^ This

Sort of the same boat, however I am pooling all of my PCs so I sort of just picked one currency to mine, currently that is Monero (XMR) You can combine CPU and CPU mining on one machine with it, I am also interested in collecting some of it because it has some decent value or could be traded on an exchange for another currency if desired. I run xmr-stake or xmr-stake-cpu in the background of all the home PCs or when idle.

Nice hash sort of requires a dedicated machine to mine with as it sits in the foreground and swaps out mineing tools / time but that sounds like the path you are going for anyway.

[Melbosa]

...you can be lazy and use nicehash to sell your compute time. Purchasing tends to be more efficient than mining for the most part unless you have cheap power and most of the parts already.

^ This

Sort of the same boat, however I am pooling all of my PCs so I sort of just picked one currency to mine, currently that is Monero (XMR) You can combine CPU and CPU mining on one machine with it, I am also interested in collecting some of it because it has some decent value or could be traded on an exchange for another currency if desired. I run xmr-stake or xmr-stake-cpu in the background of all the home PCs or when idle.

Nice hash sort of requires a dedicated machine to mine with as it sits in the foreground and swaps out mineing tools / time but that sounds like the path you are going for anyway.

Yeah.  I had all this hardware lying around and have tried to sell each separately at different times, but nothing would go.  Then Cova showed me what he was doing with nicehash, and well we got talking.  Turns out I was just 4 adapters shy of turning an old Q6600 P5K Deluxe 8GB Ram 256GB HD 1000 Watt PSU into a dedicated mining machine.  So that's where i am at.

And as you said, I have a space heater in the basement at my desk that I use when I do work/game on my PC that I probably will not need to use anymore... so win/win lol

[Lazybones]

And as you said, I have a space heater in the basement at my desk that I use when I do work/game on my PC that I probably will not need to use anymore... so win/win lol

Ya I probably would be less interest if it wasn't using the power for space heating in the winter. In the summer it is very inefficient and possibly challenging to keep things from overheating.

[Tom]

Speaking of mining, someone "broke in to" my web server last night. They tried hard to use sudo as that user they "cracked" to do some nasty stuff, but it didn't work. thankfully.

they likely used nohup on me, which made it confusing when kill didn't work. ended up using htop and sigkill. I could probably have just added -KILL to kill but meh, didn't think about it at the time.

I am now seriously worried that the entire box is compromised, but I see no direct evidence.

[Mr. Analog]

I thought at this point in the game mining from home wasn't worth it anymore

@Tom sorry to hear about your intrusion man!

[Tom]

I thought at this point in the game mining from home wasn't worth it anymore

I think BTC going up to 10k makes it more worthwhile.

[Mr. Analog]

I thought at this point in the game mining from home wasn't worth it anymore

I think BTC going up to 10k makes it more worthwhile.

I've read a lot of comments that say after factoring power costs and hardware upkeep it's not really worth it. I've never done the math myself.

Even this is a mixed bag... with not many facts behind it
https://www.quora.com/Is-it-still-worth-it-to-mine-Bitcoin-in-2017

I know at least with value surges it tends to be more profitable but I just don't know...

[Lazybones]

I thought at this point in the game mining from home wasn't worth it anymore

I think BTC going up to 10k makes it more worthwhile.

You can still purchased dedicated ASIC based systems that do nothing but mine.. If your power cost is low enough and heat isn't a problem it is a money making space heater.... Unless Bitcoin crashes.. Which everyone seems to think is a high possibility.

As for home mining, most other crypto currencies can be mined, in fact many have been designed to NOT work on dedicated ASIC hardware to help prevent the centralization of large mining companies which hold bitcoin in check currently.

If you don't want to get into the details you can use a program / service called Nice Hash which basically checks your GPU/CPU and then mines the most efficient option. It sells your CPU time to the highest bidder and pays you in bitcoin.

To mine many of the coins you still need to have fairly decent hardware... One GPU in a gaming computer isn't going to pay out much in a month (if at all), however if you can triple that power or better (common to have 6-10 GPUs in a dedicated system) you can get paid out weekly (maybe even daily).. MINUS your costs IE Power and Cooling (summer).

That is why I mention just purchasing coins directly via an exchange and treating them as a volatile / insecure stock.. You can do a lot there, however if you have the hardware or micromanage your mining hardware costs (selling off hardware and replacing with the most efficient stuff) you can profit from mining still. Its just hot and noisy.

My goal is to a little of both.. I have enough systems kicking around to passively mine, and if I mine an up and coming coin with good growth potential I can ether trade it for another or hold what ever I mine to profit later in theory.

Long and short however is that this is all highly risky.. Things could be worthless the next day and you REALLY need to ensure you protect your private keys / wallet as malware is all over that steals coins and online exchanges come and go without much regulation.

[Mr. Analog]

Great summary Lazy, thanks!

[Lazybones]

Great summary Lazy, thanks!

Wallet / private key security is a whole nother issue. Most people don't seem to understand what a wallet is or how it works with a blockchain.

Wallets basicly provide two functions. 1) they hold your private keys that identify you and your ability to move funds, they let you control your address or addresses on a blockchain. 2) they provide an interface to the blockchain to actually take actions, IE they directly connect to the block chain or a host on the block chain.

If you use an online wallet or leave money in an exchange wallet, you have left all of the control in a 3rd parties hands.

If you use a soft wallet on a PC or Smartphone, you have control of your keys, but also are responsible for loss and security of those keys.. These wallets are still considered HOT and not the best place to hold large amounts. IE don't go walking around with your life savings in your back pocket every day.

Hardware / Offline / cold wallets are trickier to deal with but provide security against online attack. If you are going hold on to substantial amounts of crypto you should look into these options and maybe split up what you (work with) with what you hold.

[Melbosa]

I have gone down the NiceHash route myself.  If you have hardware that you can let run and don't need to think about this is the "Easy Button" method.  NiceHash, as Lazy pointed out, is a Broker for people looking to buy Hash computing and for people looking to sell CPU/GPU cycles.  So when a company wants to hash out some type of crypto currency they can go to NiceHash and buy so many cycles in hash, and then NiceHash will post up the required hash through its network of clients and those CPU/GPUs out there that can efficiently hash that request will change as required to that algorithm.  In tern, those doing the hashing will get paid in fraction of bitcoin for their CPU/GPU cycles.

So now that I have this running at home I can tell you some things I notice (and I'm not fully ramped up to 4 vids yet, just my two best ones):

• The cards are quiet - currently running Gigabyte GTX 1050 Ti and Asus GTX 960 - DB levels are not remotely noticeable even with them outside the computer case
• The heat generation - this is something I will monitor over the next week to let you know
• Power Consumption - if you can tell from your powerbill your CAD/kWh, you can use the NiceHash tools to estimate what your profit will be from your hashing - the thing is that minute to minute the hashing payout can very by 50c or more/hour from what I have observed
• Payout Estimate - currently NiceHash is telling me, after power consumption based on what my bill says CAD/kWh is, I should be doing $2-$2.5 USD/Day in profit with these two vids.

Currently I have invested in this endeavour with new hardware at the cost of:

• $30 - 4x PCIe 1x to PCIe 16x USB adapters
• $20 - Kill-a-watt monitor to see what my PSU is using, to know if I can support 4 vids on it at once
• $10 - 2x SATA 8 PIN to PCIe Power adapters to support more than two cards in the computer
• $20 estimated (don't know the actual yet until we have solidified a design and material that will work with heat generated) - 3D Printed Mounts for Video Card - Cova and I are beta testing some plastics and designs to mount the cards externally and safely from the computer case

Total: $80 to try it out.  I've already made $3 USD since setting this up yesterday, so first month hopefully pays for the extra parts.  Everything else I have in house with hardware just lying around that was used over the years for other purposes, so not counting that cost at all as they are paid for for other reasons.  I even have a spare PSU should the existing one not run the Vids, and will use a PSU power clip to power it should I need to.

My hope is to get to about $100/month CAD on average for my first year with the aged hardware I have.  Hopefully it will last the year and then can look at either cycling the hardware as Lazy suggested in the peaks and valleys of mining or at least upgrade the older vids to newer version and maybe buy me something fun at the same time.

Either way, trying this out if/before the bubble bursts.

[Lazybones]

It should be noted that most blockchains (not all of them are about currency) work on a proof of work model like bitcoin which is highly inefficient computation wise and resource wise.

The market may shift substantially when other popular blockchains shift to a proof of stake model that is more computationally efficient and puts less focus on mining/creation and more on holding/processing.

bitcoin is already confuses as to what it wants to be, it was once intended at a replacment for money but has become a store of value more like gold now.. Transactions take 30min or hours to confirm when busy and are very costly. It is really hard to predict what will happen in the next year or few months.

There is also a whole separate topic on forks which is more important if you trade, or hold substantial coin in a blockchain that has had a fork while you hold some.