#1 GPU Mining Guide. Set and forget. A guide to Making profit - Aimed at Gamers
Hi,
Most guides will show you simple CPU mining with programs like Minergate etc. They are ok but there is better programs. This is a guide to Dual mining CPU and GPU. Mining CPU only will net you a loss because of power costs unless the power is free. I will give you all the information you need and with a very simple setup guide any gamer or anyone with a top of the line GPU card can set themselves up within 15-20 minutes.
Most gamers will have the gear already but anyone can do it really. I will post a brief guide and show you some of my setup plus more to come. My blog will allow any gamer with a recent video card such as a AMD RX 570 to pay off their GPU within 3-8 months.
AMD cards are generally not worth while anymore (other than for ETH but the payout is almost too low to bother now) you can still follow my guide and test for yourself as some of the new ones still pay themselves off over time and allow you to upgrade your card or invest in cyprto currency.
The best cards currently to get a fast return on your investment are Nvidia GTX 1060, 1070, 1080 and my personal favourite 1080ti, one of the best cards on the market. You can also use any card that is similar to those cards. All you need is one card. All 4 of those cards will pay for themselves in a similar amount of time. But once it is paid off it is all profits so you may as well go for the best card.
I personally got into mining because I for once went for the best video card in the lineup 1080ti. Someone told me about ming and I was hooked. Here is a sneak peak of the mess I have got myself into. I am waiting on gear so everything is stitched together at the moment. Your setup will not require touching the hardware at all and it will be nicely in the case.
So you already have the hardware (you must have windows 7, 8 or 10 x64bit version not 32bit). Now all you need is a BTC wallet address if you don't have one already and mining software. Plus some software to adjust your video card settings so it runs power effecient).
You can go crazy and get complicated and earn around 1-3 USD more a day if you really really get into this but for a simple set and forget guide this is the way to go.
(please note some steps may be different as they are in the process of upgrading their website and program)
1. Goto Nicehash.com and click on getting started.
Scroll down and click on "I would like to sell hashing power".
Click and download nicehash miner.
Now go here and download MSI afterburner - https://www.msi.com/page/afterburner
2. This is all you need. If you don't already have a BTC wallet you can get web wallet by registering with nicehash.com. This is fine for what you are doing but eventually you may want a personal wallet or BTC address on your own personal computer so it is more secure but you really don't need it as this point.
3. First run MSI afterburner.
Goto settings > user interface and chagne the skin to Cyborg Red by drerex design. Under general settings > Compatibility properties make sure all of them are seleted. Click ok. Nothing is changed on your card at this time and you will have a box like this up.
Note, we will not be overclocking your card but you can if you are an advanced user and can find the settings for your own card. The picutre above is an Aorus 1080 ti. So the first setting you can see is power limit %. This is the over all power your card is outputting. With mining there is a sweet spot where your card outputs the most hashing power (or mining power) per Watt used.
On most cards this is around the 65-80% mark. So you will actually be under powering your card in most cases to save on power cost as you must factor that in. So I recommend setting this setting at 75% Never go over 85% as you are just burning power. If you have free power even then probably only stay at around 90% to keep your card cool if it is getting hot.
Temp Limit. Always set this to 65C or 70. I prefer to keep my cards under 60C all the time but alot of miners are happy for it to be under 70 24/7. If your card goes over this temp limit it will automatically under power your card to cool it! nice.
Core clock. Most of the models I listed can easily overclock anywhere from +50-+200. On 1080ti I recommend +50 as this works on most model. Google your model and fide what others are doing or just leave it at default. Is fine to play it safe.
Memory clock. This can be left at zero or clocked from 0-600+. Again same deal leave it where it is or do your research to get a little but more extra out of your card. For a newbie leave these overclock settings on zero.
Fan Speed. I like to set this manually, move it up and down until you card stays under 60C. If you find it is getting too hot even at 100% fan then you need to lower your power limit from 75 - 65 and see how it is. You will adjust this once you start mining.
Now click the disk icon in the botton right corner > then click 1 and it will save those settings in profile one and you can click to pick those settings. Please note if you use 100% power during summer and you dont set the fan speed for 100% your card will likely run at 84C. Which is actually fine but ideally you dont want to run a card this hot 24/7.
4. Now run nicehash miner. It might install some other programs it requires to run, just say yes, they are microsoft programs. It will then take 5 mins to download some files and setup. Say yes to whatever it asks.
Once started, enter the location that is closest to you then add your BTC wallet address if it asks or set it in configure. You may have to click on wallet to enter your BTC address. It looks like this "3Dz5TNYhKHf19XJBXkjGY6fdYALpEwVkUy" This is mine, dont use this it will give me free BTC.
At this point you can click start and read the rest of this guide as it will take 10 minutes to run some tests. PLEASE MAKE SURE you have msi afterburner running and your power is set to 75% and your fan to 55-75% if you dont it will use default settings. The default settings will cause your card to get hot but they will not cause it any damage. Plus we want it to benchmark you card at the correct settings.
5. So what is the program doing? I personally rarely use this program as I actually manually choose what coin to mine and what settings and what server and what pool and which algroithm to use as some give you more money and more hashing power.
What nicehash does is it monitors all the coins you can mine throughout the day and keeps an eye on their prices. Then automatically switches between the different coins and in some cases different programs that can mine certain coins. It also has several different programs that do exactly the same thing and right now it is benchmarking or testing all the programs with your card to find out which one is the best and also set a reference point to switch during the day as it now knows what your card is capable off. While it is doing the tests do not use your pc for anything else other than basic browsing or reading this blog as you want it to get the most accurate score it can.
It will mine all sorts of coins and stuff you wont understand but it auto converts everything to BTC. Which is perfect.
Here is a video of it doing its thing. So remember my top of the line video card which costs around $7-800 USD Can earn $5-6 per day and your CPU can earn around $1 per day if it is a new model. I suck at videos and I have a cold so hope it is not too terrible. I say in the video that the CPU doesn't really use more power the the cards, what I mean is the CPU uses almost no extra power load to have it mining.
This price goes up and down daily. Only three weeks ago I was earning near 10$ per card. This is because the coin market has ups and downs but mostly it is the BTC value that is important. But don't panic you can actually just hang onto your BTC and wait for it to go up in price before you sell it. So even if you are mining at $6 today it can actually be worth more when BTC recovers and it will recover. So right now is a near worst case senario (though it could get worse).
6 So here is how to work out how much power it will cost you and how long it will take to pay off.
https://whattomine.com/coins/166-zec-equihash?utf8=%E2%9C%93&hr=720.0&p=400.0&fee=2.0&cost=.187&hcost=700.0&commit=Calculate
The link I post is for Zcash coin. It is an average coin that generally keeps up with whatever nicehash is mining so it is a good one to use. The price right now is not great but you can get a rough idea.
So I have entered the HASHING power of a 1080ti with the power it plus all the other bits in the computer use adds upto around 400 Watts. And the price in my country is really cheap 0.187 cents per KWH. So just enter yours in here. I belive in US its cheaper in winter and more expensive than that in summer in most states.
You can see day, week, month, and year earnings for one of my cards. One week is $26, one year is $1360 that is enough to almost pay off two cards. That is profit after power. Before power it is $2000. It also tells you return on investment or break even point which is 187 days or 6 Months. That is at the worst price I have every seen. But also most CPU will make 1$ a day so that would reduce it a further 35-45 days. So the total time to pay off your GPU is 4.5months.
Remember you must convert this BTC to USD yourself or ask someone to do it for you which is generally pretty simple in the US. I will blog on that later. Also by the time you sell the BTC you would pick a good time and likely the price of BTC will continue to go up and up. Or you can cash out weekly or monthly to minimise the risks involved with BTC (IMO very little risk).
I personally paid off my first card in 1 month and 29 days, but that was when BTC was at its all time peak. I immediatly went out and bought several more cards which are all going to take around 3-5 months to pay off.
As a gamer you already have all the bits you need so it costs you nothing other than power. Please post your questions and what you want me to go into more detail on for the next blog where I will show you my setup and how to exchange BTC and maybe even use an exchange like Bittrex.
Another photo of some of the things you can do with running cards outside of the computer.
Link to next guide which is more advanced.
http://steemit.com/mining/@evilmonkey/gpu-mining-guide-how-to-make-a-profit-begginers-and-advanced-users
It was very useful for me as I was searching for GPU mining. Thanks a lot for your valuable post.
@evilmonkey Great post, I am planning to build a basic rig , I am working as a web developer and plan to run something like nicehash miner in the background while I work. 2 birds in one stone extra profits indeed. Lastly what is your take on the recent releasing of Mining Edition Graphics Cards? Will you be using it in your mining rig?
So far the mining edition cards have proven to be no better than the gamer versions. The gamer versions will have resale value and the mining additions wont. I could go into more detail about that but honestly that settings it right there. Being able to sell your gear when you want upgrades is a major deal.
Yeah, the resale value is a lot considering that you will be upgrading when better cards appear or mining difficulties increase. Thank you for answering the questions. Cheers
In fact you can profitably mine #gridcoin on your CPU, and you won't be wasting time on pointless hashes it's real scientific work like helping find cures for childhood cancers, AIDS, Ebola and much more.
You can use GPU too on Gridcoin, but if you prefer other coins for your GPU then just use your CPU for it.
SOUNDS AWSOME! @scalextrix @evilmonkey nice job with your first couple posts! people loving$ this info obv.
I wish i was really smart enough to understand mining already and had a pc or something other then old white MacBooks lying around (?)
wait so your saying if electricity is freeee? mining is profitable!!! omg
can you do this with solar power?
or under your slumlord building owners electricity tab?
i want to mine so bad i see all this cool gear on craigslist in just don't understand
-the $$ input $$ output investment/profit scale
-what gear is needed
-the bigger picture
Irrespective of which type of cryptocurrency you want to mine there are some general principals when thinking about profit.
Cost of equipment: If you have to buy new equipment, then before you make a profit you need to pay that off, typically this will be in your home fiat currency.
Cost of electricity: All mining takes power to run the equipment, the more power efficient the mining process, the less power used and the more profit is available, typically this will be in your home fiat currency as well.
Price of the crypto-currency: This is where it gets more variable, your home fiat currency will constantly fluctuate against Bitcoin, and the cryptocurrency you are minig will also constantly fluctuate agains Bitcoin; this means its hard to know what profit you are likely to make on a weekly basis. However if you spend some time in the markets, you will notice that currencies go through cycles of high/low prices, the wise miner holds onto his/her mined crypto-currency until the next high price cycle, before selling, to maximise profit.
Yes you can mine Gridcoin on those old macbooks, though it probably wont make you much money at all. Yes Yes, if you have free power as part of your rent this will maximise any profit, and yes if you have enough solar power you can mine for free, at least in the daytime. The great thing about Gridcoin apart from being able to use old/unused kit, is you will be doing real scientific research, so even if your profit is insignificant, you will have done something good for humanity.
I would advise you to start small with kit you already have, and as you learn you can then choose to buy more powerful equipment.
Thank you for the mention. I don't guess I had heard of it before.
Most GPU miners have not realised they are missing this profit opportunity.
Researching it now haha. Have a good night.
I just had another look at it. Consensus seems to be its not profitable to GPU mine and that it is random and depends on what project you join etc on your returns. There is no stable returns.
No CPU mining except maybe in specialised farms is profitable unless it is combined with GPU mining, in home setups at least. I have actually looked into gridcoin and its not profitable at all or barely and sometimes would not even cover the power. This was a while ago now.
Hashing power is not wasted because of what you choose to put it on. I choose the most profitable one for myself and I am making profit on 3 cards right now that are paid off. I can donate that money to child cancer funds if I wanted to. Anyone can rent hashing power to use it for whatever they want, grid coin is a cool idea though and I used to do something similar with SETI on the playstation 3 for free once upon a time.
Profit is based on the price of the coin, so if you hodl your mined Gridcoin, and sell on the highs, you can actually make a lot of money; look at the price of Gridcoin two weeks ago, now and you will see you missed a massive profit opportunity.
The point is while you are GPU mining you may as well use your CPU for something that's going to pay you back.
I looked its not profitable. You can do exactly the same thing with BTC yet you can start with alot more and its constant not sure what your push on grid coin is. All I see is a single pump and dump on that coin. It went up one cent its trending the same as pretty much every other coin except worse. I would love to be wrong on this one but its near impossible to find real data on mining it because no one seems to have any real decent data.
I have shown you real time video of how much money you can make following the MOST profitable coin to mine. I could also show you real time video of manually mined coins by showing you the hashing power then putting it into a calculator, which you can do with pretty much any coin except gridcoin. Too risky sorry man these cards cost alot of money.
How many grid coins are you mining a day and off what hardware? Just one of your CPU's Or GPU setups. I found some data where people had 4 GPUs and were averaging $0.33 a day. Two of those were were GTX 980's which are really powerful cards. I also note some of the large communitys all seem to convert over to BTC. So it's not really any different from mining/holding/selling any other coin.
I started a long reply explaining how my rewards were calculated, but to be honest as you take all your info from undisclosed web searches, I have run out of patience, I was trying to help you and your follwers with an option to use their CPU to make some additional return. However it appears you already have the confirmation bias that I am wrong, and keep talking about GPUs when I was very specific this is about CPUs.
I wish you the best, I wont try and help again.
The fact is that it is very tricky to find any decent info on gridcoin because no one seems to be able to relaibly work out their profits. But your poster below does an ok job at explaining what he can make. He is mining around 220 coins a day on undisclosed hardware so I can't make any comparison as to how optimised his hashing is per algroithm. But the fact he says hes making less than the top earner on whattomine tells me it is generally not worth it. Just like mining a single coin is not worth it with the way I do it. I never just mine one coin. I mine algorithms that mine several different coins and I switch around them during the day or daily to max profits. Doing this manually I can always beat the top payer on whattomine. If you use nicehash.exe you will always be around the top earner. If you just mine gridcoin you will end up wining on some days and losing on others and really risking everything on the price of gridcoin. But thanks for the info about it I am interested enough to set one of my smaller rigs up and see how fast it comes in and how it translaters to BTC.
Id would still like to know how many you are mining per day or week on what hardware. That really is not a hard figure to give out.
mind blown. i want to be better friends.. can I come over?
Ok simply then I have an i7-6700k with a GTX 780Ti, an old i5-430m laptop that overheats and has to be kept at 40% CPU, 2 raspberry Pis and 3 Android phones. All the kit except the RPis only runs about 12 hours a day!
The total power draw is 230 watts (measured from the wall) and I get 40 GRC per day, 20 from mining and 20 from staking, so that is $2.40 per day in total or $1.20 just from mining.
The reasons it's hard to pre estimate is because it's not hashes, you are doing real work, there is some variability. Project selection is critical to maximise earnings, you are awarded on your % share of work done in the projects you choose, so finding projects that suit your kit and that have the lowest competition is also critical. Also important is that the credit awarded is based on a recent weekly average, you need to run consistently for two weeks to start getting an idea of your output potential and ideally 4-6 weeks to get a really good idea of your total output.
So in summary from my bunch of CPUs I'm making 60 cents a day running 12 hours, and my GPU nets me another 60 cents a day.
Is your power free?
One of the GPU miners on Gridcoin made a post https://steemit.com/beyondbitcoin/@xaqfields/how-gridcoin-mining-compares-to-other-cryptocurrencies-nvidia-gtx-gpus
can you mine on macs?
Yes, only iPad and iPhone dont work because Apple lock them down
Hi @evilmonkey, another great post, which definitly helps me getting into mining world. I am counting hours to get my parts for new gaming pc, though I received a mail from supplier that graphics card might run late........arghhhhhh. However after I set it up I will use your guides to set up mining session. Tnx and keep up the good work ;)
Thank you. I have just been learning all this stuff the last few days. I am getting around 22 MH/s on a GTX 1060 mining ETH. I wonder if its better to do ETH or Zcash. I am not using NiceHash though. I'm using a dual miner.
The 1060 and 1070 have the wonderful gift of being both good and mining ETH and Zcash as well as most other things. The 1080 and 1080ti do not have this gift but they are good at everything else.
Whattomine.com says you are earning $2.50 a day with 22MH/s. The bigger cards are much better because the more hashing power you have per single rig the better because of the overhead of running the computer. You could probably earn a similar amount with that card a day on zcash maybe more. Either manaually use EWBF miner which is built into nicehash or use nicehash to see your rate in real time. Also you would use around 1.25 a day in power so are making around 1.25 a day.
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Well, hasn't this post garnered quite the following?!
I'd love to hear if you've caught wind of the upcoming Safex Cash mainnet release coming out around this August? It will certainly be bringing the AMD cards back into the limelight! Being a cryptonight algo, ASIC miners will be stuffed and those PC's running RX580's and the VEGA architecture will be primed and ready to make the most of it.
Take care and get mining! Check out safex.io as well as both discord and safexnews.
Nick.
great Post and for newbies on mining: https://minergate.com/a/f61611b1710b38ec861ea4cc
Great article. Keep us posted on any updates.
another one for the books. excellent!