How To Mine Ethereum Now

[Guest]

The Ethereum bubble may have burst for large-scale investment farms. But can it still be profitable for small hobbyists with minimal start-up costs?

How To Mine Ethereum Now : Read more

 

[rush21hit]

Us mere mortals wouldn't have an R9 290X level of card lying idle. Heck, suppose we do have unused GPU it would be something from 2 gen before it and a mainstream oran entry level card of its time at that, at the very least.

That said, I do have HD7750 and HD6670 on a closet somewhere, only its from HIS with a common HIS problems; the fan.

So suppose anyone does have some mainstream or high level card at least the level of HD5850, as an example, they'd still faced with power bill issue, which in some case outweigh the profit. As we all know how much of a sucker old gens are compared to what we have now. That is assuming they are somehow emotionally attached to it and not decided to sell it, even after buying later gen.

This article still has a point. But a very unlikely one.

 

[Neuspeed]

This article didn't address the mining difficulty of Ethereum. At this point, is not a good idea to mine ethereum unless people have hash rates in the GH/s or at least MH/s. It's better to mine other alt coins such as: XMR, LTC, and many others. Overstock.com will now accept 40+ different Altcoins as form of payment. Won't be long before other companies do as well.

 

[why_wolf]

As with every gold rush. The real profit lies in selling shovels.

 

[RedJaron]

Us mere mortals wouldn't have an R9 290X level of card lying idle. Heck, suppose we do have unused GPU it would be something from 2 gen before it and a mainstream oran entry level card of its time at that, at the very least.

I think you read this wrong. I didn't write this saying "These are the exact steps and parts list you need." It's simply saying, "Here's a basic idea you can possibly adapt to your own circumstances." No, not everyone has a 290X in storage. But a lot of people do. My current "leftover" GPU is an R9 280. That's plenty strong for some hobbyist mining.

So suppose anyone does have some mainstream or high level card at least the level of HD5850, as an example, they'd still faced with power bill issue, which in some case outweigh the profit.

All of which I cover fairly extensively in the last page, or did you not bother reading the whole thing?

As we all know how much of a sucker old gens are compared to what we have now. That is assuming they are somehow emotionally attached to it and not decided to sell it, even after buying later gen.

You're attributing much too broad a brush to people. There are plenty of reasons to keep around leftover computer parts, other than sentimentality. You might want a backup incase your new hardware gets damages, is a lemon, etc. You might hang on to some stuff because you've got friends or family that might want it when they finally decide to ditch their current dinosaurs.

This article still has a point. But a very unlikely one.

Never said it didn't have a few restrictions, was only saying it is possible.

This article didn't address the mining difficulty of Ethereum.

Actually, I did talk quite a bit about the rising hash difficulty. Did you not read the last page? Did you not see on the front page where I talked about the ballooning DAG files making it harder to use older mainstream GPUs ( since most of them are 2GB VRAM or less )?

At this point, is not a good idea to mine ethereum unless people have hash rates in the GH/s or at least MH/s.

You don't need a GH/s rig to do it, as I've already demonstrated. It may not be hugely profitable, but you can make a little at it even using something as lowly as a 4GB 1050 Ti.

As with every gold rush. The real profit lies in selling shovels.

Too true. Just ask Sylvester McMonkey McBean.

 

[g-unit1111]

As with every gold rush. The real profit lies in selling shovels.

Yup those that got rich are the ones selling the mining equipment! :lol:

 

[10tacle]

As much as I despise miners and the very idea of cryptocurrency, I found this article interesting and a little enlightening why people are getting into it late in the game. Even if ETH crashes and burns tomorrow, eventually there will be another to take its place. I don't see this cycle changing anytime soon either unless governments get involved and start banning mining in their nations.

 

[10tacle]

Oh and one more thing: not all is bad for we PC gamers. Those of us who have previous generation GPUs have enjoyed watching the values of said cards go up. A friend of mine sold his 8GB RX 470 for $320 on eBay last month, or nearly $100 more than he paid for it. I sold my SLI pair of GTX 970s for $420 or about $120 more than they were worth combined a few months ago. We both upgraded to a GTX 1080Ti with the spoils.

 

[derekullo]

What about integrated graphics cards?

From what I'm reading the Intel HD Graphics 630 can address up to 64 gigabytes of ram allowing you technically keep mining even after the Geforce 1070 is forced out when the DAG finally exceeds 8 gigabytes.

Or is there hash rate efficiency not high enough to offset the electricity used for the Intel HD Graphics 630?

My reason for asking is I have a lot of computers not being used but without graphics cards.

 

[Math Geek]

thanks for the article. i'll be pointing the 100 users a day in the forum asking about getting into mining toward this article. good basic info that can be easily adapted to individual users.

 

[LalitMUFC]

Very nice article. Can you provide guide for part-time mining on my gaming rig?

 

[RedJaron]

What about integrated graphics cards?

From what I'm reading the Intel HD Graphics 630 can address up to 64 gigabytes of ram allowing you technically keep mining even after the Geforce 1070 is forced out when the DAG finally exceeds 8 gigabytes.

Or is there hash rate efficiency not high enough to offset the electricity used for the Intel HD Graphics 630?

My reason for asking is I have a lot of computers not being used but without graphics cards.

An interesting notion, but my gut says overall performance will be poor for two reasons. First, memory bandwidth. Even premium dual-channel boards top out around 30 GB/s, yet the lowly 1050 Ti can do better than 100 GB/s. Second, even if you had the bandwidth, low shader count wouldn't let you work with it fast enough. Also, you 'd need iGPUs with OpenCL support, which I believe requires Haswell and later ( I know my Sandy Bridge HD 3000 doesn't do OpenCL ). If you had a bunch of AMD APUs, that's a different story, of course.

It would be very power inefficient since you're multiplying the power requirement overhead to run the rest of the system. But I love experiments. Try running it and see how it does. Linux will report all OpenCL compatible devices ( can't remember the exact command line for it right now ) so if you explicitly call Claymore and tell it to work with a given device, it should try.

Very nice article. Can you provide guide for part-time mining on my gaming rig?

I assume your gaming rig is Windows based? If so, Claymore runs on Windows as well. Setup is basically the same, and you've already go the drivers. Just grab Claymore and execute it from the command prompt.

 

[Ncogneto]

Great Read!

I myself was very curious about this type of thing and hope to see more articles of it's kind (to me more Hardware related than the numerous game reviews). One thing you did not mention however, is you could theoretically mine at break even, and if the Eth value explodes, discover your profit at that juncture. I guess that would make you more a speculator than a miner though?

One thing, what you have done to my favorite case of all time is blasphemy!

 

[Math Geek]

One thing, what you have done to my favorite case of all time is blasphemy!

i love this case as well. have one on my desk and love all the room and everything else about it. never had one i liked more, maybe my old Antec 900 would be a close second but not too close

 

[RedJaron]

One thing you did not mention however, is you could theoretically mine at break even, and if the Eth value explodes, discover your profit at that juncture. I guess that would make you more a speculator than a miner though?

Too many possibilities for me to list them all. It's also possible to make a lot of Ether, sit on them too long, and then have the price implode and be left with very little.

One thing, what you have done to my favorite case of all time is blasphemy!

It's a test bed. The loop isn't supposed to look nice and be tidy. It's supposed to let me get mboards and CPUs in and out easily.

 

[AnimeMania]

Stupid question: The calculations done by the GPUs, do they serve any purpose, or were they just created to be difficult to do. Could the mining crazes be tied to humanitarian causes like distributed computing projects (folding@home, etc.) so that this benefits society in some way, not just a waste of energy.

 

[CaptainTom]

To answer a few people's questions: Yes mining has a very real purpose.

Mining runs the transaction and ledger network these coins run on. Thus miners are being paid to help run a financial network with their spare processing power. Anyone watch the show "Silicon Valley"? This is the future of computing - Mass Decentralized networks.

 

[Crashman]

Stupid question: The calculations done by the GPUs, do they serve any purpose, or were they just created to be difficult to do. Could the mining crazes be tied to humanitarian causes like distributed computing projects (folding@home, etc.) so that this benefits society in some way, not just a waste of energy.

A couple years ago I swapped out my space heater for a mining rig, so I was going to be "wasting" that energy anyway

 

[benedict78]

It's all good if you have a decent old GPU lying around. All I have is a 6850 with 1GB VRAM. Is there anything I could efficiently mine with it?

 

[BulkZerker]

As much as I despise miners and the very idea of cryptocurrency, I found this article interesting and a little enlightening why people are getting into it late in the game. Even if ETH crashes and burns tomorrow, eventually there will be another to take its place. I don't see this cycle changing anytime soon either unless governments get involved and start banning mining in their nations.

Good luck in enforcing a mining ban. How are they going to differentiate between someone mining vs doing folding or running various other tasks that loads a computer? Especially when so many run a VPN.

 

[vmarinx]

I really liked this article, wish you guys posted it before

 

[10tacle]

Good luck in enforcing a mining ban. How are they going to differentiate between someone mining vs doing folding or running various other tasks that loads a computer? Especially when so many run a VPN.

True - they'd have better luck banning pot and we all know how well that has worked out. If they try and shut down wallet websites, others will pop up. However, they can force companies to stop accepting cryptocurrency as a valid form of payment.

And VPNs and false IPs aren't going to stop the IRS from auditing tax returns. The previous administration hired and diverted IRS staffers specifically to help agents enforce tax compliance with the Affordable Care Act, so they have plenty of busybodies to investigate other things as well. Don't ever underestimate the long arm of government, especially in the US:

https://www.reddit.com/r/btc/comments/5djq0h/irs_is_targeting_transaction_records_of_coinbase/da5hffy/
https://news.bitcoin.com/irs-demands-coinbase-records-probe/

 

[Kennyy Evony]

Some don't realize some people still cant afford a video card and i would love to get my hands on an old one for gaming. still use AGP card need i say more?

 

[TJ Hooker]

Great Read!

I myself was very curious about this type of thing and hope to see more articles of it's kind (to me more Hardware related than the numerous game reviews). One thing you did not mention however, is you could theoretically mine at break even, and if the Eth value explodes, discover your profit at that juncture. I guess that would make you more a speculator than a miner though?

One thing, what you have done to my favorite case of all time is blasphemy!

If you're hoping/counting on ETH's value taking off to make your mining investment profitable, you may be better off just buying some ETH and sitting on it. Given cryptocurrency's volatility, that kind of borders on gambling, but so would sinking a bunch of money into a mining rig.

 

[Nintendork]

Proof of stake come in months or less than a year, no one building the most efficient payed rig will a ROI.

Basic Pentium / Athlon dual core
4x470 4GB undervolted
Platinum 800w PSU (high efficiency for 24/7)
4x140mm fan