News How to Mine Ethereum: NiceHash, Mining Pools, Optimal Settings

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VforV

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The mining madness needs to end soon...
Power outages all over the world cause of some idiots trying to get easy money, probably never had a real job in their life, wasting energy while warming the planet.
This has to stop.
I want it to stop too, but that doesn't mean it will happen soon... It could crash tomorrow theoretically, but looking at the way things are now I'm more pessimistic and I think it can easily take 1 year before the craze ends... 😕
 

gg83

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Thank you so much for this article! its really informative and exactly what I wanted to know about mining. I knew it was ridiculous but I didn't know it was that bad. think of all the clean water you could make with that much power! You could pull a ton of people out of poverty permanently with the money spent on mining! Making small loans to entrepreneurs would generate more profits I'm sure. Think of all the "startups" that could sell out and make a huge profit.
 

mrv_co

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I wonder how many people have a mining PC sitting under their desk at work connected to guest WiFi w/ their employer unknowingly paying the electric bill.
 

Findecanor

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Many economists have likened the major "mined" cryptocurrencies to pyramid schemes. You make the most money based on people who enter after you.
Therefore, whenever you see someone post information on how to get into cryptocurrency, be wary that they may not have your best interest at heart.

Etherium is in a transition from "proof-of-work" (i.e. mining) to "proof-of-stake" (who owns most) for validating transactions. This will make it even less profitable to mine it (and maybe mining will stop completely) but will still benefit those who are already higher up in the pyramid.
 
Feb 19, 2021
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nice overview article
one point not brought up is that the wattage consumed is turned into HEAT and at the numbers talked about for the FARMS that is a LOT OF HEAT to deal with
an employer I used to work at has a 15000 square foot workshop and running ASIC miners in ONE corner HEATED the shop to over 30C in a Canadian WINTER / the doors were left partly open to control the heat
I will say mining on "home sized" rigs during the HEATING season should be LOW COST as far as energy is concerned as the POWER being turned into HEAT is heating domestic space and displacing other heating sources
 
Jan 9, 2021
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Hi

Why is it better to pay out to a wallet than to pay out to an exchange wallet? It is mentioned in this article but it isn't explained
 

JarredWaltonGPU

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Hi

Why is it better to pay out to a wallet than to pay out to an exchange wallet? It is mentioned in this article but it isn't explained
If it's your own wallet, there's potentially less risk of compromise. And yes, using an online wallet service theoretically involves risk as well (but I'm not going to download the blockchain and run my own wallet, sorry). NiceHash has been hacked, many exchanges have been hacked, etc. I don't know that coinbase has ever been hacked, but it's certainly a big, fat target for anyone wanting to try and steal Bitcoin, Ethereum, etc.
 

Stevemeister

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I wonder how many people have a mining PC sitting under their desk at work connected to guest WiFi w/ their employer unknowingly paying the electric bill.
Probably not that many if the employer as a decent net work and being caught doing this would be a fireable offence - who would risk losing their job for the sake of making $7/day (best case) crypto-currency mining.
 

Stevemeister

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nice overview article
one point not brought up is that the wattage consumed is turned into HEAT and at the numbers talked about for the FARMS that is a LOT OF HEAT to deal with
an employer I used to work at has a 15000 square foot workshop and running ASIC miners in ONE corner HEATED the shop to over 30C in a Canadian WINTER / the doors were left partly open to control the heat
I will say mining on "home sized" rigs during the HEATING season should be LOW COST as far as energy is concerned as the POWER being turned into HEAT is heating domestic space and displacing other heating sources
Y - but in summer even in Canada it gets hot and humid (depending on where you are) so you're going to be paying twice with a/c to keep everything cool. My Plasma TV does the same thing in my house . . . .excess heat just helps keep the house warm . . at least in winter - although not as cheap as using natural gas.
 
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Jo_Hardy

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JarredWaltonGPU

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Hi, I have a rather simple question, I'd like to know how to set the graphics card to run at a lower than 100% load (mine is a gtx 1060 6 GB)?

I'd like to try mining out but I don't want to run it at 100%, would like to keep the card around 50-75% load, if it is possible.

Thanks in advance :)
It varies by mining software. For NiceHash, if you run the app as an administrator, the NiceHash web UI allows setting different levels (High, Medium, Low) of intensity I think. I haven't researched this, but it might be what you're after. If you're using something other than NiceHash, it will be miner specific. I know one of the miners has an intensity option, which defaults to 22. If you set that to 11, you might get 50-70% load (and lower hash rates, obviously).
 
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Jo_Hardy

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It varies by mining software. For NiceHash, if you run the app as an administrator, the NiceHash web UI allows setting different levels (High, Medium, Low) of intensity I think. I haven't researched this, but it might be what you're after. If you're using something other than NiceHash, it will be miner specific. I know one of the miners has an intensity option, which defaults to 22. If you set that to 11, you might get 50-70% load (and lower hash rates, obviously).

Thank you :) I tried NiceHash QuickMiner. Which didn't have that option (unlike NiceHash Miner). But then I found a pretty good workaround - I set the "Power Limit" in MSI AfterBurner to 50% :D

The card is at 60 C and the fan is around 23% so that's probably less stress than when gaming!

Hash rate is more than 50% of what it achieved at full load so that's also pretty encouraging ^_^
 
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pocketdrummer

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Once there was a gold standard, now it's a coal standard.

Frankly, miners can go to hell. We're trying to reduce the carbon footprint of the world, and now there's a Venezuela-sized plume of greenhouse gasses spewing from these idiots. The more this catches on, the harder it gets.
 

waltc3

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The problem from our viewpoint isn't mining of any kind, imo. The problem atm is nVidia and AMD. Both companies could block the miners by selling direct to their customers @ MSRP--one per customer per month (among other restrictions), until the mining boom busts, as it is certain to do again. We've been through this once, albeit on a much smaller scale, because in those days there was no problem buying the GPU you wanted as long as you were willing to pay one to two hundred dollars over MSRP. I put off buying an RX-480 until I could get one very close to MSRP, which I finally did. The current situation is entirely different--the only GPUs "available" cost thousands over MSRP and even then they are not actually available at all--as after you pay for it, you must wait 2-3 weeks (!) for delivery. This tells me that not even the scalpers have the GPUs on hand--but hope they can get one to send you before the 2-3 weeks-off delivery date passes. This is a much different situation today!

Both AMD and nVidia know exactly who is supposedly buying up all their GPUs--they know exactly who it is. They have it within their power to stop it cold. But they refuse to even try. nVidia turned its FE business over to Best Buy, nVidia said, and Best Buy has 0 FE GPUs on hand--apparently nVidia isn't making anymore. AMD is supposed sell its RX-6k GPUs through the AMD store @ their original MSRP, but I've been checking daily for months--3-6 times a day--and have yet to see a single 6800XT I could put into my cart--I'm not going to buy a 6800, but I haven't seen one of those, either, or a 6900XT, for that matter! Not a single one. No question about it, but the market for $600-$1500 GPUs is simply not that big.

Neither AMD or nVidia appears to be making any kind of effort to stock and sell their own reference GPUs! Never seen this before since I started buying 3d cards in the latter '90's. I believe because of these things that the real culprit is a severe manufacturing shortage and that both companies are hiding behind the mining craze as a plausible excuse. It really is remarkable to see these companies trying to pass off the illusion that they cannot figure out a way to control the sales of their own GPUs--that is a ridiculous assumption. They are controlling them perfectly to us--they aren't selling us anything.

If this goes on another few months it will be easy to believe that both companies are actually working very hard on major GPU architectural changes in order to vastly increase their current yields on RTX-3k and RX-6K GPUs. Nothing else really makes any sense, imo.
 

itzmec

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Once there was a gold standard, now it's a coal standard.

Frankly, miners can go to hell. We're trying to reduce the carbon footprint of the world, and now there's a Venezuela-sized plume of greenhouse gasses spewing from these idiots. The more this catches on, the harder it gets.
well luckily Ethereum 2.0 will eliminate a lot of this when it switches over to POS.
 

Matrix1776

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What people aren't factoring, is that millions of people in the U.S. potentially have a way around cost barriers. For example, in the military, barracks cost is zero. Simply pop a 24 GPU 3080 farm in the closet, you've eliminated all electricity costs.

The same strategy applies to any apartment or home in the civilian world, with those that don't meter costs individually.

I had an apartment where the rented, $70 double garage, had outlets not part of my electricity. I was traveling 2 hours for work, so leasing a plug-in vehicle paid for the garage, vehicle, and still had a positive net return.

Alienware (Dell) offers $15/month unlimited coverage. You can buy 3090 rigs, and simply run them to the ground. As they fail, allow Dell to pop in a replacement or the latest card. Zero equipment costs, and with the above, zero energy costs.

Personally I'm now out of the mining game, I've made my money.
 
What people aren't factoring, is that millions of people in the U.S. potentially have a way around cost barriers. For example, in the military, barracks cost is zero. Simply pop a 24 GPU 3080 farm in the closet, you've eliminated all electricity costs.

The same strategy applies to any apartment or home in the civilian world, with those that don't meter costs individually.

I had an apartment where the rented, $70 double garage, had outlets not part of my electricity. I was traveling 2 hours for work, so leasing a plug-in vehicle paid for the garage, vehicle, and still had a positive net return.

Alienware (Dell) offers $15/month unlimited coverage. You can buy 3090 rigs, and simply run them to the ground. As they fail, allow Dell to pop in a replacement or the latest card. Zero equipment costs, and with the above, zero energy costs.

Personally I'm now out of the mining game, I've made my money.

Nice examples how to cheat the system. And how to lose your freedom or even head literally too if someone will find out.
 

Matrix1776

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Apr 11, 2021
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Hey didn't say it was ethical! It's perfectly legal if not forbidden by the lease. No different than me hosting a LAN 24/7 gaming sleepover event with some friends.

Hate to be the person caught. I assume they just wouldn't renew the lease.

At t he price of 3090's though, I'm probably going to sell my machine to a miner. The FE's have been $3K+ alone. I just use it for the casual games, but with the PS5 & Series X, life is good.
 
Jul 28, 2021
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Thank you so much for this article! its really informative and exactly what I wanted to know about mining. I knew it was ridiculous but I didn't know it was that bad. think of all the clean water you could make with that much power! You could pull a ton of people out of poverty permanently with the money spent on mining! Making small loans to entrepreneurs would generate more profits I'm sure. Think of all the "startups" that could sell out and make a huge profit.

What I don't get is why crypto mining gets such a bad wrap....
Globally between Big Tech and several major world governments, there are about 540 what are considered "Hyper scale data centers". ..While they are designed to be green and report lower power costs such as only 500MWs - 2.3GWs a day they truth is they technically only report average server use power only. The estimated total power usage such as cooling and full operations load is around 450-750TWh in a year. The real kicker is at the low end the daily water usage is 400,000 Gallons of water a day and the bigger one's use 1.5 million gallons of water a day on average.
 
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