News How to Optimize Your GPU for Ethereum Mining

[thepersonwithaface45]

Wait, people don't like ethereum here on the forum?
interesting

 

[Brillis Wuce]

Jarred:
Your power consumption is way too high, and your hashrate way too low. Wondering what kind of setup you are using? Open air, or enclosed case?
I have 3080's and 3090's running at 65% power, +800 to +1500 on the memory. The 3080's get me 95-100mh, and the 3090 is getting 125mh.
Power consumption of the 3080's are ~220 watts each at 49 C, and the 3090 is at 250 watts and 54 C. Open test bench-like setup.

 

[JarredWaltonGPU]

Jarred:
Your power consumption is way too high, and your hashrate way too low. Wondering what kind of setup you are using? Open air, or enclosed case?
I have 3080's and 3090's running at 65% power, +800 to +1500 on the memory. The 3080's get me 95-100mh, and the 3090 is getting 125mh.
Power consumption of the 3080's are ~220 watts each at 49 C, and the 3090 is at 250 watts and 54 C. Open test bench-like setup.

You could always try reading the article. Test PC is listed. Settings are listed. I mentioned that the 3080 and 3090 FE get very hot on memory, which impacts performance. I specifically stated the 3070 and 3060 Ti were the first cards I tested and that my methodology was perhaps flawed, and I will revisit them in the coming days. (Sorry, I didn't work over the weekend to get additional numbers, because I'm not paid to do that.)

NiceHash recommends slightly different settings on the clocks and power, but the main difference is that NiceHash also recommends running the fans at 90-100% and potentially doing hardware mods to improve your memory cooling -- both of which will generally void your warranty. The fans piece in particular is very worrying to me. $1500 GPU with fans at 100% would burn out the fans in probably six months or less -- definitely not going to last a year. You'd be better off adding a large box fan blowing at your mining rig(s) to keep them cooler, as the box fans usually only cost $20 are are easy to replace if/when they burn out. But then you're adding another 50W or so of power use for cooling purposes, which eats into profits.

Fundamentally, I strongly believe most of these 3080/3090 GPUs being used for mining at settings that give 100-125 MH/s are going to have issues within the next year, very likely sooner. You're welcome to have different beliefs, but I've actually done 24/7 mining in the past and I've actually burned out fans on nearly every GPU I used, plus had several models (290/290X) where VRMs or something else failed causing permanent failure of the card. I also believe the mining profitabilaty for Ethereum is going to plumment within the next 2-3 months, so instead of $5-$10 per day per GPU, it will trend down toward $2-$3 per day.

That means as an example:
$1000+ for a 3080 (possibly more)
Earns on average $7 per day now but will trend down toward $3 per day
I'll be generous and give it three months at ~$7 per day, which means about $630.
Then $3 per day for six months would be $270.
Total = $900.

In nine months, you'd almost break even ... but is the GPU still functional at that point? More realistically, it could go like this:
1 month at ~$7 per day = $210
1 month at $6 per day = $180
1 month at $5 per day = $150
2 months at $4 per day = $240
4 months at $3 per day = $270
Total = $1050. That's $50 profit!

But of course, that's mostly assuming a static price and increasing difficulty, which is a crap assumption. Things could go very differently, and ultimately it comes down to a faith or lack of faith in Ethereum / cryptocurrency. If you hold all the Ethereum (or BTC) that you get and the price continues to go up, you win big; if it drops to $800, the theoretical profits just got cut in half. Which is why in the article I suggest selling off enough as you go to at least cover power costs. And if you would have bought the GPU anyway, then any profit at all is sort of just icing on the cake -- "I got to play games on a 3080 and I ended up recovering a bit of extra money from mining." But given the difficulty of buying GPUs right now, leading to higher prices, plus the expectation that will continue throughout 2021, that makes burning out an otherwise great GPU even more of a crime against graphics cards.

 

[Brillis Wuce]

I was reading on my mobile. I thought I went through every page, but obviously not. Apologies for that.

Interesting take. It's true that I never set fans to 100%. My current ones are running on a curve up to 80%.
Funny enough. I have a wire shelf holding all of the 4U cases that contain my cards. The sides are walled up, and the heat is funneled up into a vent that circulates the heat to the rest of my house.
And what sits at the bottom? A box fan...pushing the air up.
I realize that I'm both lucky to have the basement and duct setup, though, and this isn't achievable by everyone.

It's crude, but efficient. I've had 1 card fail (out of 18) on me in the last 4 years, and they never pass 60 C. Oddly enough, the single failure was an RX 470 mining card.

I agree that the profitibility will decrease here shortly, but I don't think it'll drop the amount it did last time. We're going through a whole new ride this time around.
Aprpeciate your time and research.

 

[saunupe1911]

It is a scam, keep away!

That's what I keep hearing as well. Tom's can you please confirm this.

 

[saunupe1911]

You could always try reading the article. Test PC is listed. Settings are listed. I mentioned that the 3080 and 3090 FE get very hot on memory, which impacts performance. I specifically stated the 3070 and 3060 Ti were the first cards I tested and that my methodology was perhaps flawed, and I will revisit them in the coming days. (Sorry, I didn't work over the weekend to get additional numbers, because I'm not paid to do that.)

NiceHash recommends slightly different settings on the clocks and power, but the main difference is that NiceHash also recommends running the fans at 90-100% and potentially doing hardware mods to improve your memory cooling -- both of which will generally void your warranty. The fans piece in particular is very worrying to me. $1500 GPU with fans at 100% would burn out the fans in probably six months or less -- definitely not going to last a year. You'd be better off adding a large box fan blowing at your mining rig(s) to keep them cooler, as the box fans usually only cost $20 are are easy to replace if/when they burn out. But then you're adding another 50W or so of power use for cooling purposes, which eats into profits.

Fundamentally, I strongly believe most of these 3080/3090 GPUs being used for mining at settings that give 100-125 MH/s are going to have issues within the next year, very likely sooner. You're welcome to have different beliefs, but I've actually done 24/7 mining in the past and I've actually burned out fans on nearly every GPU I used, plus had several models (290/290X) where VRMs or something else failed causing permanent failure of the card. I also believe the mining profitabilaty for Ethereum is going to plumment within the next 2-3 months, so instead of $5-$10 per day per GPU, it will trend down toward $2-$3 per day.

That means as an example:
$1000+ for a 3080 (possibly more)
Earns on average $7 per day now but will trend down toward $3 per day
I'll be generous and give it three months at ~$7 per day, which means about $630.
Then $3 per day for six months would be $270.
Total = $900.

In nine months, you'd almost break even ... but is the GPU still functional at that point? More realistically, it could go like this:
1 month at ~$7 per day = $210
1 month at $6 per day = $180
1 month at $5 per day = $150
2 months at $4 per day = $240
4 months at $3 per day = $270
Total = $1050. That's $50 profit!

But of course, that's mostly assuming a static price and increasing difficulty, which is a crap assumption. Things could go very differently, and ultimately it comes down to a faith or lack of faith in Ethereum / cryptocurrency. If you hold all the Ethereum (or BTC) that you get and the price continues to go up, you win big; if it drops to $800, the theoretical profits just got cut in half. Which is why in the article I suggest selling off enough as you go to at least cover power costs. And if you would have bought the GPU anyway, then any profit at all is sort of just icing on the cake -- "I got to play games on a 3080 and I ended up recovering a bit of extra money from mining." But given the difficulty of buying GPUs right now, leading to higher prices, plus the expectation that will continue throughout 2021, that makes burning out an otherwise great GPU even more of a crime against graphics cards.

But can you confirm if NiceHash is safe? Is it indeed malware???? Are you personally using it?

 

[Brillis Wuce]

But can you confirm if NiceHash is safe? Is it indeed malware???? Are you personally using it?

Nice Hash is not a scam, nor is it Malware. It just uses scripts and batch files that resembles it.
I've personally used it, but there are better options. Just my two cents.
If someone is claiming it's a scam, they most likely screwed up and are trying to place blame on NiceHash.

 

[JarredWaltonGPU]

That's what I keep hearing as well. Tom's can you please confirm this.

Scam in what sense? I lost money with the NiceHash hack way back when. NiceHash actually just finished paying back everything in December I think it was? Anyway, I also lost a lot of BTC in various other true scams back in the 2011-2014 time frame. Of those, NiceHash was the only one that ever paid back anything.

Is NiceHash getting people to mine while taking 3% or whatever of profits a scam? That's a different matter. Fundamentally, NiceHash doesn't have to invest in GPUs used for mining, or the power to run the GPUs (or ASICs). It doesn't need to deal with RMAs or dead hardware. It just has to run the website and then takes a percentage cut. I don't consider that a scam, but NiceHash clearly makes a ton of money off of people using its service.

Is it malware? Not if you install it and know what it does. Many viruses have been released during the past decade that will basically mine using your PC's hardware resources, paying out BTC or whatever to some anonymous address. Because of that, many mining tools have been classified as malware. I can't guarantee that no bad code will ever slip into one of the mining tools, but it's less likely to get one via NiceHash than if you're out browsing forums looking for the best mining software and downloading EXEs from unknown sources.

 

[saunupe1911]

Nice Hash is not a scam, nor is it Malware. It just uses scripts and batch files that resembles it.
I've personally used it, but there are better options. Just my two cents.
If someone is claiming it's a scam, they most likely screwed up and are trying to place blame on NiceHash.

In your opinion what's the best software to use? I attempted mining with my 2080 super and NiceHash a few years ago and it would drive BitDefender nuts!

 

[saunupe1911]

Scam in what sense? I lost money with the NiceHash hack way back when. NiceHash actually just finished paying back everything in December I think it was? Anyway, I also lost a lot of BTC in various other true scams back in the 2011-2014 time frame. Of those, NiceHash was the only one that ever paid back anything.

Is NiceHash getting people to mine while taking 3% or whatever of profits a scam? That's a different matter. Fundamentally, NiceHash doesn't have to invest in GPUs used for mining, or the power to run the GPUs (or ASICs). It doesn't need to deal with RMAs or dead hardware. It just has to run the website and then takes a percentage cut. I don't consider that a scam, but NiceHash clearly makes a ton of money off of people using its service.

Is it malware? Not if you install it and know what it does. Many viruses have been released during the past decade that will basically mine using your PC's hardware resources, paying out BTC or whatever to some anonymous address. Because of that, many mining tools have been classified as malware. I can't guarantee that no bad code will ever slip into one of the mining tools, but it's less likely to get one via NiceHash than if you're out browsing forums looking for the best mining software and downloading EXEs from unknown sources.

Thank you appreciate the info! I'm a gamer first but definitely would love to mine and make a few coins. GPUs aren't cheap I would definitely like to offset some funds lmao.

 

[chibimike]

So much fighting. It sucks that availability is low, but this article isn't for hardcore miners with 50 cards. It's so gamers like me can make the card pay for itself in 3 or 4 months.

So I just went through tuning on the 3070 and it was very counterintuitive.

Steps:
Up the memory about 1300-1400.
Downclock the gpu by 300-500, this reduces heat production.
Cut the power target by 55% to lower wattage used.
Fans I leave on auto, but they are running rather quietly.

I'm getting about 58MH/s at 125W on the card. 60 degrees. The Eff/W runs close to 450.
This is of course when nicehash isn't broken like it is now.

 

[chibimike]

Hmmm, nice hash is only utilizing 50% of my gpu as nicehash rig control is broken.

I played with some more optimizing.
I pushed the power target down to -60 and am now getting 27MH/s being half utilized by NH at 101W. So Eff/W is at almost 270.
If this will work with full utilization to get to 540, I'll be rather happy.

 

[logainofhades]

Pandering to the enemy.

We are not pleased.

Could not agree more. Miners are grabbing GPU's like mad, and now have turned their sites on gaming notebooks. It's a bubble that hopefully blows up in their faces.

 

[JarredWaltonGPU]

Could not agree more. Miners are grabbing GPU's like mad, and now have turned their sites on gaming notebooks. It's a bubble that hopefully blows up in their faces.

You know what will help this blow up in miners' faces? All the gamers going out and mining in their spare time, and then immediately selling the coins at market prices.

We're not "pandering to the enemy." The so-called enemy is already damn well informed on this stuff and is already going out and buying as many GPUs as it can. Then they horde the Ethereum (or BTC) and hope prices go up -- only sell what's needed to cover costs. That has the effect of generally driving price up, because the limited supply is being held. So if people that don't mine 'professionally' go online in bulk, hundreds of thousands of rigs come online, the algorithm that adjusts the difficulty of mining increases the difficulty, and the miners get less coins. Then the price goes down because the non-pro miners keep cashing out, and potentially the market for Ethereum drops back to 'normal' levels of around $500.

It's like the scalper stuff. Sometimes the best way to fight fire is with fire.

 

[HC1Gunner]

Tuning your card for the best performance and efficiency is important

How to Optimize Your GPU for Ethereum Mining : Read more

Really ? ? ?

Why the heck would you write an article helping out the miners (enemy to gamers). Nice job Tom's, NOT!

 

[fevanson]

With what hardware?

Probably a 3090 and an rtx 3070 with that hashrate. Also do you have Klayman as your profile pic? The Neverhood was my favorite game when I was younger.

 

[GenericUser]

I think people are blowing this out of proportion. As it's been said before, the people who are the actual "threat" are probably already well aware of everything in this article. Anything new it would present for them would likely be marginal. And if someone who bought a 3000 series card for gaming wants to use information in this article to do some mining on the side, I wouldn't really consider them the "enemy", considering they aren't running racks of these things and actually bought it to do some gaming, like the rest of us are trying to get a hold of one for.

Don't get me wrong, I despise the people hoarding these things like crazy so that people who want one for "legitimate" purposes can't get one, but this article is hardly contributing anything to that whole fiasco.

In any case, I don't care to ever do any mining myself, but from an informational and technological standpoint, the article was an interesting read.

 

[scottsoapbox]

What all the angry gamers seem to be missing is that if they started mining when not gaming it would make mining less profitable which would drive the prices of GPUs back down.

Simple supply and demand.

 

[Phaaze88]

What all the angry gamers seem to be missing is that if they started mining when not gaming it would make mining less profitable which would drive the prices of GPUs back down.

Simple supply and demand.

Kinda like the GME stock drama the other week.
Wall ST and the already filthy rich: The poor should invest.
The poor: *actually does it, but with some help from 'well off' individuals
Wall ST, etc: Wait, that's illegal.


If I had a spare card, I'd probably give it a try, ~but I don't, so I'll pass.
But what you said will likely happen anyway, given enough time, as more and more people take notice of this.

 

[TheBeastInside]

Wow, very thoroughly annoying of you to cover this.
Mining should be stopped just on the basis of its resource consumption vs actual value. You want to print money? Join the stock market or wall street bets...

 

[Matoran]

The majority of amd Vega cards run at 45-50(hynix memory) 50-54(Samsung memory)MH/s with teamredminer and good optimizations.

 

[Brillis Wuce]

In your opinion what's the best software to use? I attempted mining with my 2080 super and NiceHash a few years ago and it would drive BitDefender nuts!

In your scenario, I would just add an Exception in BitDefender. If that still doesn't work, then switch to another antivirus. I've just been going off of Windows Defender for a few years now. It's gotten to the point where it's more than sufficient.
I know, I can't believe it either.

If you are unable to do that, then just a straight batch file will be your best bet. It looks complicated, but is really simple. A 5 minute Youtube video will show you everything you need to know.

 

[cny_ap]

Where I live (Syracuse, NY) we heat our homes 6 months a year and use A/C sporadically during summer. So the computer heat reduces our heating costs and one could simply not mine when using A/C. Basement is 50-60 degrees in winter and I guess 65 or so in summer. Garage can get below freezing in winter (now THAT is free cooling, LOL). I don’t mine, my PC is a AMD Phenom II 2.8Ghz quad core (10 years old?). Dell has a I7 desktop with 3060 TI for $1300 that temps me (just coincidence I stumbled onto this article, wasn’t looking to bitmine). If I bitmined, I’d want the fans to run slow, or not at all if that’s possible. If fans must run, I’d be tempted to add a quiet (large and slow) case fan blowing onto the GPU. As the wiser posts have pointed out, if we all bit mined, the value of the currency should go down and make it not profitable for the mining farms. But if demand is high enough, perhaps the added supply will still not suffice to drive down the value. The whole thing is a bit crazy and confusing (and I graduated MSEE with honors, and was tops in economics too, hardly an average Joe).

 

[trance77]

Appreciate this article, I have a 3060 Ti FE and getting around 60 MH/s with the settings detailed. Bought it for gaming but decided I may as well mine with it in between, money can go towards upgrading the motherboard and CPU

 

[ddcservices]

The funny thing about all the people complaining about this article is that it is aimed at typical computer owners/gamers who might want to try mining in the first place. Now, if you managed to get a video card even in the past five years or so, anything from a GTX 1080, or AMD Vega and newer, you can generally just mine while you are away from home(at school, at work, or whatever), and end up with a big of a profit once you take electric into account.

Those who are professional miners and buying video cards JUST to mine are the problem, not your typical user who might want to bring in some extra money after spending $500+ for a video card. If you can get enough money after 4-8 months of mining with your single video card to get back the money from the video card, you will be happy, and you didn't even deprive others, because you bought the card to play games, and you only bought ONE card. By the time you get your money back from mining to cover the cost of your video card, you will then have the option to buy another card(which means that the supply issues should be over already), or you will be eyeing the next generation from AMD or NVIDIA. $1000 these days for a RTX 3070 or Radeon 6800(with the crazy tariffs driving up prices), you get your money back within eight months(light mining, unless you are spending most of your time at home), and then, RTX 4000 or Radeon 7000 series may be in sight, or you go to a 6800XT or 6900XT, or RTX 3080Ti.