Adventures in Mining | Volume 1
As I dive into mining cryptocurrency, I'm starting a series documenting my progress! I'd love your feedback and for you to point out what I could be doing better! But first, some history...
Twice now, I've missed out on the cryptocurrency movement...
Early 2011 I mined a few coins, was fascinated by whole concept, and sadly forgot about it as quickly as I learned about it
In 2012, I moved across the country, and something sparked my interest again, likely Litecoin. I mined quite a few, acquired several Bitcoin, and then... Promptly forgot about it all over again! :( I'm sure some of you share my experiences...
Fast forward to the present, and I'm not missing out on this again!
With the rise of altcoins, I feel the ability for the small miner to hack out a decent amount of coins and turn a profit is here unlike anytime except very early in the history of cryptocurrency!
So I started a few weeks ago with what I had.
A decent PC I do video editing on:
Intel Core i7 4770k overclocked and water cooled
16 GB Ram
MSI GTX 960 2GB
I played around with a few pieces of software, and ran the Minergate client for a week. Bleh. Pathetic amounts of coins. Time to move on to command line miners!
I also realized I would need a more powerful GPU. To my surprise, every recent AMD card was sold out. Everywhere. I couldn't believe it! So after some sifting through Craigslist, I identified a XFX Radeon RX480 for sale. It was clear when he listed it, he didn't know the gold he was holding in his hand based on the price! By the time I texted him however, he had become aware!
A little negotiating and $300 later, I was the proud owner of my first new piece of hardware in my mining empire!
Now to only get an Nvidia card and an AMD card to play nicely in the same system... An hour of tweaking later, and it was done:
Now the miners were up and running, here's what that looks like:
I've decided to mine Monero to start, and started using monerohash.com as my pool. I don't believe I'll stay with the pool long term, likely just long enough to get a payout, then I'll move on to a better pool.
Currently, my rig is producing about 1.4 KH/s:
This translates into about .10 Monero a day, or about $160/mo at current prices. Not bad to recoup my initial investment in my opinion!
My plan is to expand to a dedicated AMD mining rig as I come across components. What do you think? Anything I could do more efficiently? I look forward to your comments and shared experiences in trying to capitalize on this new frontier!
I'm massively jealous of your rig! Thanks for sharing the details of your adventure. Smart move getting away from Minergate. I'll be interested to learn which pool you end up liking best.
Inspires me to set up my 1GB Radeon for XMR mining and seeing what it can do!
I wouldn't be too jealous, it's just a start!
I'm looking at XMRpool.net and dwarfpool.com at the moment!
Set it up! It won't be much, but it's fun and if you're like me, it'll inspire you to grow it!
I literally just set it up now, using Claymore's miner pointing to moneropool.com. Amazingly it just worked after I spent 5 minutes reading the Readme and writing a small batch script (using low intensity settings for starters). Submitted my first share with my video card - feels good man! Thanks for kickstarting me :)
That's awesome man!! Very cool! Hope it doesn't get too addicting :)
https://www.facebook.com/steemitbc
https://twitter.com/steemitbc
I love your communities, I liked and followed them! Thanks for the Resteem!
Glad you liked them, its a work in progress but I plan to keep at it. You need anything let me know, here to help anytime
I will be following you
I am interested in joining the ranks of the miners ... this should be very helpful looking forward to your posts.. Thanks
More like re-joining unfortunately haha! Ready to stick with it this time and grow the collection and electricity bill! Maybe even make some money!!
Thanks for the follow
loved this post!
It's funny you bring that up, but I have a very similar story except with investing in bitcoin, not mining. Bout a few, sold them. Finally got peaked with interest in Ethereum last fall and have stuck with investing reularly, wich was the best investment of my life so far. However, it would have been better if I would have started mining. I had a rig that I was going to build in the fall of 2016 all set up and ready to purchase, then I found out of POS and decided not to pull the trigger. Sadly, a huge mistake, but am now looking to get back in and try my hand. For a non-technical guy it seems like a daunting task, but I so badly desire to be a part of the system that I truly believe in. To run data and help out the system while making some money too, I find nothing cooler! Thanks for the post. Looking forward to more!
Here is your next step!!! Forget NVidia. With the 6.3 TerraHashing power of this beast for 1k startup you could be earning a few million a month. Welcome to the big boys club and if you upvote I will ship it to you free! https://digital-by-design.myshopify.com/products/ebang-ebit-e9
Here is a calculator to figure out what to mine with it.
https://www.cryptocompare.com/mining/calculator/ltc?HashingPower=6.3&HashingUnit=TH%2Fs&PowerConsumption=700&CostPerkWh=0.15
Tell me more.
Is this an ASIC? What currency is best mined with this? A million a month of what? Does this need a separate power supply?
Yes it's ASIC, minus the Antbleed malware, it's new, highly tested, fairly unkown. Everyone is looking for the video cards not realizing these machines are out there. I believe this one comes with the power supply. If not I can work out a deal. The first batch of these just went out in Dec. I found them when I was literally calling around China looking for an X11 Miner in February to no avail. So it happens often enough to keep people from buying their own equipment and they end up clouding with genesis I think. However we are trying to start a mining arms race with this sucker
Also go to the link I sent for the calculator. They have about ten different coins to calculate hash power with. Then you can figure out what you want to mine and when.
How does this compare to say, an AntMiner? Any independent reviews of the hardware available?
I needed this! i want to start mining.
Thanks! It's fun and if there's a potential for profit all the better!
but nowadays the altcoin is about to change to POS, so those mining mechine may be useless...
What does this mean?
Than means the method you get the coin is not based on how much power you devoted into it(Proof of Work), but based on how much coins u obtain and then generate the new coin based on how much coins u store(Proof of Stakes). As a result, those mining machine is useless. And ETH is about to change from POW to POS...
Have a look at this https://steemit.com/mining/@manishmike10/the-high-end-graphic-cards-gpus-are-going-out-of-stock-amd-and-nvidia-has-announced-this
I've read about this! Seems like an easy way for them to cash in on the popularity of crypto... Have you seen any solid sources on this? All I've seen is rumors...
AMD's Twitter Handel spoke about releasing Rx 560…575…580 newer Verizon..
My country is paradise for mining it hurts that I do not have the resource