Now, when the crypto currency is so popular that it is said everywhere: on the Internet, on TV and in other media, new information sites and Youtube channels, various analytical resources and services are constantly appearing, the number of online crypto-exchange exchanges is growing by leaps and bounds. Even governments of different countries are constantly discussing the phenomenon of crypto-currencies and block-technologies, trying to legalize the crypto currency and bring it under the legislative framework, or vice versa, considering Bitcoin a direct threat to the established banking financial system. Today the issue of mining of crypto-currencies (mining) is discussed rather widely, as one of the most interesting topics for ordinary users. Many have probably heard that Bitcoin, as well as another crypto currency, can be extracted as such, but the technical subtleties and how to start doing the crypto currency mining, what this might require and how to do it all do not know. In this material, we will try to explain in as much detail and simple as possible how the average user starts to earn crypto currency from scratch, what kind of crypto currency and on what devices it is profitable to mine in 2018, how to collect a simple mining of the farm, what equipment is best suited for this at the moment, what programs Use for extraction, where to store and how to withdraw the extracted coins.
What is the GPU mining?
Mining with the use of video cards is the mining of crypto currency using the GPU (graphics processors). For GPU-mining, you can use a home computer with a powerful video game card installed, or a specially assembled so-called mining farm (or, more precisely, a mining-rig, since a mining farm is still called a set of mining rigs installed in one place, for example, a garage with several mining-rigs can be called a small mining farm), which uses several video cards. Typically, in one mining rig is installed from 3-4 and up to 12 video cards, but the most popular installations for mining using 4 to 6 video cards.
We would also recommend using 4 to 6 video cards, when assembling the minigaming rig, since from our point of view this is the optimal number. The more video cards the mining rig contains, the more difficult it is to configure it for optimal performance, as the more video cards the lower the stability of the system. For example, sometimes there are situations that because of the unstable operation of one video card, the whole rig hangs in the system.
If you are wondering why it is the GPU for the extraction of most crypto currency in non-industrial conditions - this is the ideal solution, then the answer is simple. The thing is that GPUs were designed as specialized processors, designed to handle a large number of similar operations that can be well paralleled. In any modern powerful GPU, there are up to several thousand fairly simple computational units that know how to use a limited set of instructions, it is this architecture that is best suited for graphics in games, work with video, and calculations. Working with calculations is exactly what a video card uses to produce crypto currency, because the process of hashing is one-type and very well parallelized.
Basic concepts you need to know
Before further reading this article, it is recommended that you familiarize yourself with the main terms and concepts used in the crypto currency mining:
- Crypto currency is digital money created by certain algorithms using cryptography (encryption).
- Bitcoin, BTC - is the first cryptocurrency.
- Satoshi - the smallest indivisible unit of bitcoin. 1 satoshi = 0.00000001 BTC. Named after the creator of Bitcoin, Satoshi Nakamoto.
- Altcoin - alternative crypto currency. So it is possible to name any crypto currency left after bitcoin.
- Fork - cryptocurrency, which partially or almost completely uses the source code of another coin.
- Faucet - a site that provides an opportunity to earn a tiny amount of crypts (usually for captcha inputs).
- Cryptocurrency address - a unique combination of uppercase and lowercase Latin letters and numbers up to 34 characters or less. The crypto-currency address is used for coin transactions within the network.
- Mining - necessary important process of the crypto-currency network, as a result of which a new transaction block is added to the lock-up and coins are issued. Two main tasks are solved as a result of the mining: first, the node of the network is determined, which temporarily acquires the right to write the next block to the block system, thus a consensus is achieved in the peer-to-peer network, and secondly, additional coins are issued, receives a miner who has recorded a new block.
- Proof of Work (PoW) - algorithm by means of which the network of crypto currency mining comes to a consensus, determining which of its nodes will record the formed block into the block. PoW boils down to two main points: the need to perform a certain fairly complex and time-consuming computational task (for example, selecting a hash code that meets the specified criteria) and the ability to quickly and easily check the result.
- Proof of Stake (PoS) - this is an alternative algorithm for achieving consensus when writing a block to a block, in which the probability of recording a new block in a block and receiving an appropriate reward is proportional to the user's share of the system. A separately taken shareholder in % of the total number of coins issued creates a block with the same probability in %.
- Coins per Block, Block Reward - this is the reward paid to the miner for the successful solution of the cryptographic task and the joining of the block to the blockade. For example, for bitcoin, initially the reward for the block was 50 BTC, but every 210,000 units this amount is halved (which occurs approximately every 4 years). Currently, the reward for the block in the Bitcoin network is 12.5 BTC, and the next halving to 6.25 BTC is expected in 2020.
- HashRate - computing performance of computer equipment for mining crypt. It is measured in hashes per second (h / s) or solutions per second (sol / s), which is the same. The main units used are: kh / s (kilohash / s) = 1,000 hash / s, Mh / s (Megahash / s) = 1,000,000 hash / s, Gh / s = 1,000,000,000 hash / sec, Th / s (Terahash / sec) = 1 000 000 000 000 hash / sec, Ph / s (Petahash / sec) = 1 000 000 000 000 000 000 hash / sec.
- Electricity Rate - usually measured at a cost of 1 kW / h (1 kilowatt per hour in USD).
- Power consumption - The electrical power consumed by the equipment for mining, which is usually measured in Watts.
- Pool Fee - percent of the booty that takes the pool. Usually from 0 to 3%.
- Share - part of the task of finding a block in the network of blockers. A ball is a fraction of the overall task that the mining-ply gives to the miners. Since a huge amount of computing power is required to find the block, the pool shares this "big work" with small subtasks and sends them to the miners for the solution.
- Accept Share - confirmation by the mining-pool of the fact that the client finds the correct crypto-solution of the subtask.
- Reject Shate - The rejected for some reason, the subtask.
- ASIC - Application-Specific Integrated Circuit - A special purpose chip. These are specially designed microcircuits for a certain application, which do not know how to do anything else. In this connection, they can do their work most effectively. Since there is nothing superfluous in their composition, their cost and energy consumption are the lowest. At the same time, it takes quite a lot of money to develop and introduce such microcircuits into production. Especially for Bitcoin extraction algorithms, then Litecoin, and then many other coins, ASIC chips were developed, on the basis of which monstrous miners with incredible power and energy efficiency were already assembled. Such miners are called ASIC-miners.
- Cryptourrency exchange - a web service that provides crypto currency exchange services to each other and to ordinary currency units (such as the US dollar - USD, EUR - EUR and others).
- Mining software - a software tool that allows you to start the mining process on the mining equipment.
- Mining pool - the Internet service providing the possibility of joint production of crypto-currencies. The process of selecting a block, otherwise called minining, has a large computational complexity. While the complexity is not high, there is a so-called method of solo mining-that is, every miner tries to unravel the next block separately, with increasing complexity, finding a single block requires much more performance than a single miner can provide. In this case, the mining pool helps users to unravel the block together, and when the block is found, the award is divided among all users who took part in its finding in proportion to their capacity (or rather the number of shares that the pool received from them). That is, the more the hashreiter has, the greater the share of the award for the extracted block, he will receive.
- Rizer - extension cable to connect the video card to the motherboard.
Can I earn a crypto currency on my laptop or a built-in graphics card?
I would like to note that for mining use only high-grade discrete video accelerators, low-power laptop video cards and built-in GPU processor for this do not fit. Theoretically, in some of them, the process of mining can still be launched, but firstly, many software-miners do not support such video cards, and secondly their performance is very small and they usually have quite low energy efficiency. Ultimately, you will pay more for electricity than you earn crypto-currencies. In addition, in the process of mining the crypto currency, the laptop will get very hot and over time the video card or the processor can burn out, since the laptop's case is not designed to work under 100% load in 24/7 mode. When assembling the minigaming rigs, an open design is usually used, in which powerful discrete video cards can cool well, in addition, in this case, the video cards are not installed directly on the motherboard, but are distributed over the open case using daisy chain or USB risers, special extensions for the PCI-E.
Of course, if you have a powerful gaming nocturnal, you can set it up for crypto currency, but from our point of view it's a very bad idea. Typically, these laptops are much more expensive than a desktop PC with similar characteristics and their cooling is not designed to work in a non-stop mode. Most likely you will ruin your "expensive gaming laptop" much faster than pay for it with the help of mining.
Can I use my smartphone for cryptomining?
Indeed, there are special programs for mining crypto currency on smartphones. However, this is absolutely unprofitable process, since smartphones usually have low-power processors with RISC architecture, which are also not designed for 24/7 operation. If you get it with your smartphone, you'll probably work out your battery life in a few months, because the phone will be constantly on charge. In addition, the phones do not have an active cooling system and when the processor is overheated, the smartphone processor will throttle and lower the frequencies, thereby lowering its low productivity. And the most important thing is that mining with the use of central processing units (CPUs) is in principle unprofitable, since in doing so you will most likely not even be able to recoup electricity. Even mining on powerful modern processors now does not pay for electricity costs, let alone the low-power CPUs that are used in smartphones. Based on the above, we can say that you will earn about 1-10 USD for 3 months of mining on the phone, guaranteed to kill the battery and possibly burn the processor. Do you need this?
And what about extraction using CPU (CPU), is it really so bad?
In general, yes, for several years now it's not profitable to get the CTC from the CPU. Although there are exceptions. sometimes there are new algorithms that are optimized for extraction on the CPU (CPU algorithms) and coins on them (of course, in time, programs for mining with the help of a GPU for such algorithms go out, but usually video cards do not usually exceed the powerful modern CPUs in such algorithms, in similar algorithms), modern powerful CPUs are level with powerful GPUs. One of the most popular CPU-algorithms is CryptoNight, and its recent branchings are CryptoNightHeavy and CryptoNightV7. Perhaps at certain times and under certain conditions, it makes sense to extract coins on such algorithms using powerful and not the most expensive CPUs. Mining CryptoCurrency CPU VS GPU.
Why GPU, I heard that ASIC-miners are better and more powerful?
There are more and more ASIC-miners for different algorithms, as a rule such ASIC-devices outperform the usual video cards by a few orders of magnitude, but here it's not so simple and there's no need to immediately run and buy ASIC. First, ASIC-miners are generally not designed for accommodation in living quarters, they are very noisy, so for their installation requires a specially prepared room with converted wiring, conditioning or stretching. Secondly, fresh ASIC-miners, which can some time bring a good profit, are usually very expensive, and intermediaries who sell and deliver such devices from China, can often increase the price by 2-3 times relative to the manufacturer's price. In the third, such devices very quickly become obsolete and cease to make a profit, usually one should not expect that the ASIC-miner will be profitable for more than one year, manufacturers rivet and sell such devices in huge lots, which increases the complexity of crypto-currency networks that can be produced on ASIC to the skies and makes the process of mining with the same hasht and power consumption as before less profitable every day. There are examples of ASIC-miners, the profitability of which has fallen tens of thousands of times in half a year !!! For example, in the first days after the release of such a device brought its owner $ 500 per day and after 5 months already $ 0.03 that does not even pay for electricity. An example of such ASICs is ASIC for the Blake2b algorithm (Sia coin extraction), when ASIС was released for this algorithm, which is much more powerful than GPU and the complexity of Sia coin extraction increased by hundreds of times in a matter of weeks. Fourthly, ASIC device, unlike video cards, is able to extract only one algorithm. When as if you have mining-rigs on video cards you can always change the algorithm or coin. If suddenly there is an ASIC for the algorithm on which you are currently mining, you just quickly reset your equipment to another profitable algorithm and continue to quietly mine. In addition, many coins position themselves as ASIC-protected and when they go on sale ASICA under their production algorithm simply change their production algorithm, and people or companies that have purchased such ASIC devices can remain with nothing, and will have to switch to the production of small "shitcoins", which are based on the same production algorithm, but the trading volume and capitalization of which is minimal.
Now let's summarize why it's worth choosing GPU-mining, not ASIC. Mining of crypto currency on ASIC is more suitable for large companies with their data centers, and personnel who will monitor the mining process. Such companies should have a direct access to manufacturers of ASIC equipment in order to purchase devices in large batches at a fair price and with fast delivery, as in this area every day delaying delivery is a huge loss and devices that can seem super profitable in a few months can turn into a heap of scrap metal. Such companies should have more finance, since ASIC devices are not cheap and they should have cheap electricity to be competitive in this market.
As for ordinary users, then there is clearly a good choice is GPU-mining. Video cards are not so obsolete, they are more universal, there is always an opportunity to sell video cards in the secondary market, after they pay off. Mining on video cards is much more stable due to the fact that you have the opportunity to "jump" between algorithms and coins and often there are new algorithms and profitable coins. It should be noted that mining on the GPU 2 years ago and mining now brings about the same amount of revenue. Of course, there are very lucrative moments, as in the beginning of 2018, and those times when the payment for electricity takes half the revenue from extraction, as for example now. At the same time, the old video cards that came out 5 years ago produce less than consume electricity.
Which video cards are best for mining?
If we talk about the choice of video cards for mining, then the latest generation GPU from AMD or NVIDIA will work. In the current reality, video cards will be a good choice:
- AMD Radeon RX580,
- AMD Radeon RX570,
- AMD Radeon RX480,
- AMD Radeon RX470,
- NVIDIA GTX 1050Ti,
- NVIDIA GTX 1060,
- NVIDIA GTX 1070,
- NVIDIA GTX 1070Ti,
- NVIDIA GTX 1080,
- NVIDIA GTX 1080Ti.
If we talk about the amount of video memory, it is recommended to take video cards with 4GB or more video memory. Video cards with 2-3 GB of video memory already now can not get one of the most popular and profitable at the moment coins Ethereum (ETH). The fact is that the Dagger-Hashimoto algorithm used for Ethereum mining, works very intensively with video memory, and every few weeks the amount of video memory required for Ethereum production increases. If only recently video cards with 3GB of memory could still produce Ether, now it is already impossible. Although there is still a certain way to get 3gb video card to get the airwaves, it will require using Linux and special options in the miner, but in any case even this method will become invalid in October 2018. So, the more video memory on board your video cards, the longer you can get Ethereum.
There is also some sense in using old graphics cards for mining, for example:
- AMD Radeon R9 270(x),
- AMD Radeon 280(x),
- AMD Radeon 290(x),
- AMD Radeon 380(x),
- AMD Radeon 390(x),
- AMD Fury(x).
However, this is only worth doing if you have free electricity and you already have such video cards. You should not buy such video cards now, their energy efficiency by modern standards is very bad and already now they do not pay off electricity in the mining. However, if you have a "free rosette" or the profitability of mining with the growth rate of bitcoin and other crypto currency will increase, then it is a justified decision on such video cards. Another drawback of older video cards is the fact that not all modern mining soft still support them. As a rule, such miners come out optimized only for modern video cards.
This GPUs:
- Geforce GTX 460,
- Geforce GTX 450,
- Geforce GTX 550 Ti.
and other weak or very old video cards are absolutely not suitable for mining crypto-currency. Do not also consider buying professional versions of video cards NVIDIA QUADRO and TESLA, as well as AMD Radeon Pro and FirePro. The performance of such cards in mining is comparable to their game counterparts (sometimes even lower), but they cost several times more.
For very newcomers, we would recommend stopping on NVIDIA graphics cards, since such video cards usually show their maximum performance out of the box. The owners of such graphics cards only need to slightly overclock the chip and memory frequencies in a program similar to MSI Afterburner and run the mining process. For maximum performance on AMD cards, sometimes changes in the memory timings and firmware BIOS of the video card are required, beginners do not always want to do such things, the more that this process can entail the problem of installing unmodified drivers and losing the warranty. However, if you overclock and reflash the RX470-570-480-580, then you can get from these video cards an excellent combination of price and performance in the production of Ethereum. In the end, the choice is always yours, or buy a modern NVIDIA graphics card and immediately begin to mine, or buy a video card from AMD, read the Internet on the appropriate guides, watch a video on Youtube, study the topic and get a slightly more profitable Ethereum video card.
Do not immediately overclock your video card to the maximum, start with a small overclocking, and gradually raise the frequency, conducting tests of speed and stability. Stop at the last stable values and reduce them a little. You can find the optimum core and memory frequencies for your video card models in profile forums, such as BitcoinTalk и MiningClub. Also, if you do not have a "free outlet" it is recommended to make underworld, thereby reducing the consumption of your video cards in the mining and increasing the net profit, as well as reducing the temperatures of video cards.
As for the AMD VEGA graphics cards and the recently announced NVIDIA Geforce 2070-2080TI, they have a mediocre combination of price and performance and are not recommended for purchase. However, if they already exist, you can certainly get on them.
What are the most popular video cards for mining in 2018?
Above we already cited a list of popular video cards for the production of crypto currency in 2018. Write about algorithms that already have ASIC devices, such as SHA-256 (Bitcoin), Scrypt (Litecoin), X11 (DASH), Blake14r (Decred), Blake2b (Sia Coin) does not make any sense, coins on video cards are absolutely not profitable. Just below you can see a table with approximate hashes (the speed of mining) of popular video cards in popular GPU production algorithms and their maximum power consumption as well as their approximate price in US dollars:
| GPU | Ethash (Ethereum) | Equihash (Zcash) | CryptoNightV7() | Energy consumption | Cost |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| AMD Radeon R9 280X 3gb | 11 Mh/s (linux) | 290 h/s | 490 h/s | to 230W | 100$ |
| AMD Radeon RX 470 | 22 Mh/s (28 - Bios Mod) | 260 h/s | 660 h/s | to 120W | 150-200$ |
| AMD Radeon RX 480 | 24 Mh/s (30 - Bios Mod) | 290 h/s | 730 h/s | to 135W | 150-200$ |
| AMD Radeon RX 570 | 23 Mh/s (29 - Bios Mod) | 260 h/s | 700 h/s | to 120W | 300$ |
| AMD Radeon RX 580 | 25 MH/s (31 - Bios Mod) | 290 h/s | 690 h/s | to 135W | 350$ |
| Nvidia Geforce GTX 750Ti | - | 75 h/s | 250 h/s | to 55W | 50-70$ |
| Nvidia Geforce GTX 1050Ti | 13 Mh/s | 180 h/s | 300 h/s | to 75W | 250$ |
| Nvidia Geforce GTX 1060 | 22.5 Mh/s | 270 h/s | 430 h/s | to 90W | 400$ |
| Nvidia Geforce GTX 1070 | 30 Mh/s | 430 h/s | 630 h/s | to120W | 500$ |
| Nvidia Geforce GTX 1070Ti | 30.5 Mh/s | 470 h/s | 630 h/s | to 135W | 550$ |
| Nvidia Geforce GTX 1080 | 23.3 Mh/s (35 - Pill) | 550 h/s | 580 h/s | to 140W | 600$ |
| Nvidia Geforce GTX 1080Ti | 35 Mh/s (50 - Pill) | 685 h/s | 830 h/s | to 190W | 800$ |
Is it possible to obtain a crypto currency on one video card?
If you do not have the desire or the means to collect a mining rig, you can very well try mining on an ordinary home computer, using the video card that is installed in it. By and large, there are no technical differences between mining on the home computer and the rig, the difference consists only in the number of GPU devices and the size of the profit. In fact, the mining rig is a regular PC assembled in an open case and with a large number of video cards installed in it. Moreover, you can even obtain crypto currency simultaneously on two installed video cards from different manufacturers AMD and NVIDIA. In this case, you just need to install both drivers, both from AMD and NVIDIA and run simultaneously two programs-miners, each under its own GPU manufacturer. There are even programs-miners (for example Claymore's Dual Ethereum AMD+NVIDIA GPU Miner) which can simultaneously work with both AMD and NVIDIA graphics cards. Let's remind once again, that you will not be able to extract on the integrated video card.
What crypto currency can be mined on video cards?
It is technically possible to mine on a video card the crypto currency, for the extraction algorithm of which there is a program-miner, that is, almost any. However, it should be understood that performance on different algorithms will differ on the same card. More "old" algorithms will be poorly suited for mining on the GPU and do not bring any profit. This is due to the appearance on the market of such devices as ASIC-miners. They are much more productive than video cards (sometimes several orders of magnitude) and greatly increase the complexity of the network, besides their price is very high and reaches several thousand and sometimes even tens of thousands of dollars and a certain ASIC device is strictly tied to a certain extraction algorithm.
Proceeding from the above, it's a bad idea to get Bitcoin (SHA-256), Litecoin and Dogecoin (Scrypt) at home. In addition to LTC and DOGE, ASICI made impossible the profitable extraction of Bitcoin (BTC), DASH and many other "old" crypts. The best choice will be the production of ASIC-protected coins. For example, a GPU can produce coins on CryptoNight (or more recently, after ASICA for CryptoNight, only on its modified versions of CryptoNightHeavy and CryptoNight V7), such as Loki (LOKI), Ryo (RYO), Graft (GRFT), < strong> Monero (XMR) , DigitalNote (XDN), and others. On the algorithm of Equihash (or more precisely, on its ASIC-protected modification of Zhash) it is possible to extract Bitcoin Gold (BTG), possibly Zcash (ZEC) and Zclassic (ZCL) will soon also switch to the asymco-stable variations of the Equihash algorithm. On the Ethash algorithm or on another Dagger-Hashimoto, you can get Ethereum (ETH), Ethereum classic (ETC) for video cards with 4+ gigabytes of video memory or Ubiq (UBQ) and MusicCoin (if you have video cards with 3 GB or less).
This list is far from complete and it is constantly changing. There are new algorithms and coins, the old algorithms and coins appear on sale ASIC-devices. Among the new coins there are both forks already existing, and completely new developments. Almost complete list of crypto-currencies with their technical characteristics and current rates and can be found on popular services CoinMarketCap and CryptoCompare. And if you are interested in the profitability of mining for these or those algorithms and coins, you can use such online calculators of profitability of mining, as Profit-mine, WhatToMine, ShitToMine - where you just need to enter your hashes for certain mining algorithms, or choose your equipment from the list and select one of the coins that is currently the most profitable for mining.
What do I need to run on the video card?
Below is a list of what you need to start extracting coins on a video card:
- Most importantly, this is of course the video cards themselves. The list of recommended cards we already mentioned above, although in the end of course it all depends on the size of your budget and the availability of video cards in stores. In any case, it is recommended to use mid-range or top-end video cards of the last or the penultimate generation from NVIDIA or AMD. Do not rely on embedded solutions in the processor or motherboard and chippest and old models.
- The computer itself for installing video cards, that is, the motherboard, processor, power supply, HDD or SSD (in some cases, using the Linux OS, you can get by with a regular flash drive), a memory module, and a CPU cooler. At the same time, you do not need to install modern components, you will be good for some old Athlon X2 or the most budgetary Celeron, which you will find on the shelves of stores. The motherboard should choose the cheapest with the maximum number of PCI-E 1x or PCI-E 16x slots, and again not necessarily a new one, the BU or old models from the store shelves will do. If you decide to buy the Motherboard from your hands, be sure to look on the Internet for information on how many video cards can work on it at the same time. In some older motherboard models, the presence of 6 PCI-E slots does not guarantee the operation of 6 video cards at the same time. In addition, there are also miniature motherboard models, they usually have a large number of PCI-E slots, additional connectors for powering the PCI-E, and sometimes they even have a built-in synchronizer for connecting 2 or 3 power supplies and USB connectors for risers-extenders, instead of standard PCI-E connectors. As for RAM, a 4-gigabyte DDR4 or DDR3 module is usually installed (depends on the motherboard and processor), but sometimes it is recommended to put 8 Gb for mining with a large number of video cards, as well as some production algorithms. As for the power supply, it should be approached with special attention, it is recommended to choose a power supply with a power reserve of at least + 20-30% of the nominal consumption of your equipment, since if you overclock the video card, their power consumption can seriously increase, it is necessary to make the power supply work at 90-100% of its power, at maximum load, power supplies usually have a lower efficiency. For additional energy saving, as well as less heating the power supply, it is recommended to choose models with a minimum certificate of 80 Plus Bronze (or better Silver, Gold or even Platinum). In some cases, it is more advantageous to use several medium-power 650-800W power supplies (connected by a special synchronizer or connected to some models of miner motherboards) than one expensive 1200-1600W. Some recommend using server power supplies, but they are quite noisy and they have to solder the power connectors.
- It is better not to use the case at all, but to assemble an open stand from wooden bars or metal profiles. If one video card can still be installed in an open case, then the rig with several video cards even in the open bench cabinets gets pretty hot during the mining.
- If you use an open stand, you will need PCI-E risers - special extensions for PCI-E 1X or 16X, with which you can build video cards far apart. Such rizers can be purchased in special stores or on ALiExpress.
- It is recommended to install the rigs in a well-ventilated dry room, even better if it is air-conditioned or at least with the possibility of heat dissipation. Putting farms in living quarters, and even more so in the bedroom, is not a good idea, since usually rigging makes a lot of noise and emits a lot of heat, few will be pleased to be with them for a long time, let alone sleep in this room.
- You will also need a mining soft, with which you will extract the chosen crypto currency on a certain algorithm. Usually for AMD and NVIDIA video cards you need different software (although there are exceptions). For different algorithms, it is also recommended to select optimized programs.
- The equipment must be serviced from time to time. This is very important, since not everyone understands that the state of mining equipment should be monitored in order to keep it warm, work as long as possible and pay off (preferably several times). Once in 3-6 months you need to clean video cards and other equipment, and once a year to change the thermal grease. Do not forget about safety, do not overload the wiring, calculate the consumption of your farm and check that the wires are not heated. In general, it is recommended to change the wiring in the room before using it for mining.
More about mining equipment.
The selection of equipment for mining of crypto-currencies is a rather complex and extensive topic, below we have selected a list of articles from our site that describe in more detail the process of selecting hardware for mining.
- The new motherboard for mining AsRock X370 Pro BTC+.
- AMD Radeon 17.10.2 drivers add support for up to 12 GPUs for Windows10.
- Mining performance of Gigabyte Windforce OC AMD Radeon RX 460 2 GB.
- Mining hashrate of Sapphire NITRO+ AMD Radeon RX 470 8GB.
- NVidia GTX 750 Ti Performance with different versions of ccMiner SP MOD.
- Testing of the new AMD Radeon R9 Fury X in cryptocurrency mining.
Choosing Crypto Currency for mining
After we sorted out the equipment and assembled the mining rig, we should stop on the choice of the coin that we will mine. If you are interested in earnings in real time, it is better to choose the most current coins at the moment and sell them immediately after they are lured. You can also sow the most popular coins and wait for the pump - that is, when their course grows seriously (if it grows course), and then sell them - this is called mining for the future. In addition, it is also possible to mine a coin that is profitable at the moment, and instead of taking out the enraged in the real, poke in the popular coins and keep them until they grow in value, and then sell them. Some also use a rather risky but technically possibly most profitable approach - they look for promising but little-known coins and mine them, while the complexity of their mining is rather low, if the coin still becomes popular and the complexity of its mining will greatly increase, you will already have a good supply of coins for sale at a high price.
When using the first method, that is, mining the most popular coin and then selling them immediately after receiving the current exchange rate, you can use the mining calculators, such as Profit-mine, WhatToMine, ShitToMine. If you want to use the latest method, then you need a lot of experience, follow a lot of forums and news resources, so as not to miss potentially promising coins. Again, this method is very risky, although in theory with a certain amount of luck it can provide the highest yield, but if you do not have enough experience in this field, it is very likely that you will be wasting for several months for nothing, because the coins you have chosen are so and not "shoot", even lower will fall in price or in the worst case they will stop trading on exchanges.
In fact, at the time of writing this material, we would recommend getting any coin on the algorithms Ethash (Ethereum) or CryptoNight (Monero).
Choose a pool for mining
The pools for mining have some differences. Some require registration, while others use your wallet address as an account. In the first case, the pool stores the coins you have earned until you reach the minimum payout threshold in your wallet, a good example of such a pool is suprnova.cc. It supports a lot of crypto currency, and to work with it you just need to register. The service is easy to set up and well suited for beginners.
A similar system is offered by another popular pool, MinerGate. If you do not want to store the earned coins on the pool, then you can search the list of pools in the thread of the announcement of the coin you want on the forum BitcoinTalk. The topic of the announcement can be found by entering into Google a request like "ann coin name".
Help you choose the Mining Pool you can also use miningpoolstats.stream, which provides a detailed statistical for most pools for popular coins.
For beginners who do not want to mess with the choice of algorithms and coins, the service is ideal NiceHash, which allows you to sell your hasht to others, and can automatically switch between the most profitable at the moment algorithms and coins. In this case, you only need to install their client program, which, unlike the main mass of miners, has a convenient graphical interface and runs the mining process. The program will test your equipment and select the optimal production algorithm for you.
Create a crypto-currency wallet
You will not need this point if you use a pool that requires registration and has a built-in purse, after you get the required number of coins, you can immediately bring them to the exchange and exchange them for Bitcoin, Ethereum or other popular crypto currency or withdraw in real money using exchangers. If you want to receive payments to your wallet automatically, then a link to download the official purse can be found in the thread announcement line on the BitcoinTalk forum. In addition, you can start an online wallet for Bitcoin (BTC), Ethereum (ETH) and BitcoinCash (BCH) on a popular site BlockChain.com
Select and install the mining software
The choice of the program for mining will depend on the manufacturer of your video cards and the chosen production algorithm. Almost all developers of such software have official themes on BitcoinTalk, where you can find links for downloading programs-miners. Never swing the miners from unchecked sources and file sharing, so you risk taking the virus and staying without your crypto-savings. Download miners only on links from official topics on the BitcoinTalk forum. Usually there are laid out links to the developer's GitHub or to the file exchangers MEGA and Google Drive. In the official branch of the announcement of the miner, you can also get information about the supported algorithms, command line parameters for tuning the miners, the list of supported pools and coins, and also the hashreite issued by popular video cards.
Most popular programs are free, sometimes there are paid versions of the miners with increased performance on some algorithm, but they quickly become obsolete and free public miners catch up with them in performance. Some of the miners come with open source code, which ensures that they do not contain malicious code, and allows you to compile the source code for any version of Windows or Linux. Recently, miners have gained popularity with a closed source code and with a built-in commission of the developer from 0.5% to 3%. Excellent examples of such miners are:
- Claymore's Dual Ethereum AMD+NVIDIA GPU Miner.
- Claymore's NeoScrypt AMD GPU Miner Windows.
- Claymore's CryptoNote AMD GPU Miner.
- Claymore's ZCash AMD GPU Miner.
- NebuTech BTMiner.
- T-Rex Nvidia GPU Miner.
- z-enemy Nvidia GPU Miner.
In this case, the guarantee of the absence in the executable files of the virus code is the developer's fame and the official commission for the further development and improvement of the miner. Thus, these miners, a few minutes per hour, are extracted in favor of the developer, this does not hide from you.
Below you can see the list of materials on our site dedicated to various programs of miners. Note that some news is written a long time ago, so to get information about the latest version of this or that miner, simply click on the link in the article to the official thread of the miner announcement or the developer's repository on GitHub.
- LOLminer 0.43 universal AMD, Nvidia miner for Multi Equihash.
- New NebuTech BTMiner 9.0 for Bytom (BTM) mining with better performance.
- New Merit (MRT) Nvidia GPU miner - zjazz CUDA Miner.
- New SRBMiner 1.6.7 CryptoNight AMD miner with Binary Kernels.
- New Bminer 10.2.0 with Wider Equihash 144,5 support.
- The new version of NebuTech BTMiner 8.0 for Bytom (BTM) mining with better performance.
- PHI2 GPU miners for AMD with close and open source available.
- New T-Rex 0.6.1 Nvidia GPU Miner for Windows and Linux.
- Updated z-enemy 1.17 Nvidia GPU Miner with improved performance.
- WildRig - the new universal miner with Wild Keccak algorithm.
- NVidia ccMiner fork with KeccakC support for CreativeCoin mining (CREA).
- Mkxminer - new optimized Lyra2rev2 miner with Asm core for AMD GPU.
- New ccMiner 1.8.3-git tpruvot with improved LBRY support.
Setting up the miner is to specify a pool for mining, your wallet or login with a password and other options. You can also set the maximum temperature regime, the speed of the cooling system coolers and other similar parameters, which the beginner hardly needs to change. For this, a .bat file is usually created in which all the command line parameters for the executable file of the miner itself are written, after setting the .bat file, the process of mining should be started from it.
If you do not know which miner to choose, then read the articles on the links above и mining thread on BitcoinTalk.
We start the mining process and follow the mining statistics
After you run the .bat file configured on your pool and purse, the actual mining process will start. Before you will be a console window displaying the logs of what is happening. This log can then be found in the folder with the file being launched. In the console, you can monitor the hash, issued by your equipment and card temperatures, as well as the speed of the fans. You will also be able to see errors if they exist. This happens when the miner is not set up correctly, the wrong software for the coin is selected, the pool is unavailable or the video cards are too overclocked. Many miners also have a tool for their remote management in the form of an API.
Withdraw the crypto currency
When using registration pools, for example Suprnova.cc, your matches just accumulate on the balance of the account and you can withdraw them at any time to any wallet. The remaining mining pools most often use the system when the funds are automatically credited to your wallet when you reach the minimum amount for payment. Do you know about the amount on the balance sheet, and how much you earned, you can on the site of the pool, where you usually see detailed statistics of your mining. For this, you need to log in to your account or enter your wallet address.
How much can you earn?
Calculate the current profitability of mining will help you online calculators, the links to which we have already cited above. At the time of writing this material, the profitability of mining on the GPU is quite low, and electricity takes from 50% to 100% of the revenue from mining, depending on your video cards. The payback of video cards lies in the area from 1 year to infinity, depending on the cost of your electricity. Earlier this year, on the contrary, GPU-mining had a record high yield. reached the point that top-end video cards paid off in 2-3 months.
Such swings have occurred more than once and it is likely that in a month, and possibly in a year, mining again will be very profitable occupation. In fact, everything depends on the course of bitcoin and its forks, news and much more.
Conclusion
Mining is not only a way to earn money, but also a very interesting hobby for many people. However, not everyone wants to engage in iron services, spend their time monitoring coins, courses, follow up on new versions of miners, where optimization has been improved for this or that algorithm. Unfortunately, to be aware of this all, it takes quite a lot of time, but as is known in modern man time is the most important and valuable resource. We hope that this article, as well as our website as a whole, will help you understand the cryptology, as well as in the crypto industry in general and save a lot of your valuable time.
