WhiteGoblin

Testing Out Tri-Mining & Double Checking Claymore's Honesty: (powered by Jinsang's Life Beat Tape, get your ears some today)
 
Hey what up everybody! Today I wanted to investigate the fun times had using Claymore's famous dual mining software. If you've never heard of this, basically it lets you mine a primary coin (ethereum) on your GPU then on the backend dual mine a secondary alt coin with whatever left over power you have. If you check out WhatToMine.com today for 1080Ti's (screenshot for post preservation) then you'll see the most profitable coin we could be putting work into is Verge (XVG) via the Lyra2REv2 algorithm. Ethereum is the sixteenth best option & Monero is the twenty-eighth most profitable coin to dig up as the market shakes down today. This means we could be trading Verge for Monero and getting more Monero then if we just mined it directly. If you check out CoinGecko then you'll see they rate Ethereum (ETH) overall to hold second place in the market, Monero (XMR) is fifth, and Verge (XVG) is ninth. (screenshot for post preservation) Now I burn my Team Red Vegas on Monero7 all day and night, same with my leftover CPU power. Though this Team Green rig is going to need to spend it's GPU time on something a little better then twenty-eighth place for it's conversion of electricity into crypto holla dolla.
 
Even though Verge has been going through some rocky times lately, it's still doing extremely well for day trading as of this post. You know what else is cool about this coin? You can mine it via the Blake2s algorithm as well! Which means I could fire up Claymore's dual software, hit Ethereum as my primary, Verge as my secondary, and Monero as my tertiary coin, all mining at the same time! Though one big difference is Claymore is closed source, charges a dev fee, and honestly has a bit of a bad reputation out there. Don't get me wrong he's very famous and does some cool things with code, though he's got a bit of a shadow rep that follows him around the net. Plenty of people think he's dipping his hand in the cookie jar a bit to far though there's been pretty poorly documented arguments made for this case. The thing is, I don't stand against dev fees, they keep things moving along and I appreciate that. I've spoken to vast parts of the Monero community, developers, etc. and I trust them. Their code is on GitHub, open for all to see, and if you want to take out the dev fee then you're more then welcome to recompile the software without it. Though Claymore does not take this stance and it's his way, pay the mystery man behind the curtains, or get bent. He's even developed a security system into his mining software to detect when people are trying to cheat it. At which it'll report the same speeds to the frontend and to the pool but take extra shares well beyond the dev fee for himself as punishment for those attempting to hack.

A couple months ago I dug up Demion's NoDevFee project on GitHub. He was trying various ways of interjecting replacement wallet codes into Claymore's programs to remove his developer fee. This ended up getting more advanced and turned from NoDevFee into Divert, which was a new way of getting around Claymore's protection schemes using the WinDivert driver by basil00 which is using the Windows Filtering Platform. You won't see any of this on the front page of the project, you need to go into the issues/comments section to see all this new version action. I've been running alot of tests (ex: 1,2,3,4) to try and help these guys along mainly because I was really interested in that bad rep and seeing if we couldn't shine any light on the situation through these guys hard work. Of which I'm happy to post today saying progress has been made and we can finally see what's going on through the mysterious Claymore fog!

The methodology here was pretty simple, test the various modes of Claymore's newest dual mining program (v11.6) and see if there was any of them that lacked the SSL developer connections integrated a couple versions back. This was funny enough put into the program right after a bunch of us reported success with rerouting his wallet addresses. One could speculate from this timing of events he watches the internet for anyone working a bit too hard on taking his earnings. Anyways, the encrypted protocol was first supported by ethermine.org ...and testing there clearly shows you're not going to redirect the dev fee anywhere. Though testing the ETH-Proxy mode (ESM 0) seemed a logical step because I could run Claymore's Eth-Proxy integration right up against the official opensource EthMiner client when ran in combination with Atrides Eth-Proxy for DwarfPool. I could compare free software vs. fee software then if I found things still worth going forward I could hopefully test the fee and make sure it was honest. Here's where I found something really interesting, given this mode is written directly for RPCv2 pools using asynchronous networking (aka: DwarfPool), the client won't connect out via an encrypted port/pool as DwarfPool doesn't currently support SSL. It won't relaunch the miner in a new mode just for the dev cycle as that would be a huge waste of time & shares. So what does it do? It calls out to loads of DwarfPool servers on tons of different wallet addresses and just accepts it's fate as unprotected data. This is really cool because now we can get the Divert program to intercept it's data, so finally we can log dev cycles, shares, all of the goodness without triggering his security system. The latest release notes & Readme!!!.txt file found inside the Claymore V11.6 package say "This miner is free-to-use, however, current developer fee is 1% for Ethereum-only mining mode (-mode 1) and 1.5% for dual mining mode (-mode 0)..." then goes on to defend his fees / antihacking measures.

So let's look at some pics of the process so everybody can come along for the ride. Here's a screenshot of Divert 3.6 working so you can all see it in greater detail. As expected, down to the second, every hour it calls to authorize a change in the Ethereum login & start working towards a different account. What we see Divert doing is grabbing these new account credentials and redirecting the process back to the primary account by literally swapping them. So it just relogs into your own account, gives the thumbs up everything is great, and keeps on working until it's time to swap out of the dev cycle and back into the normal work cycle. Now let's have a look at this occurring as detected by DwarfPool's side of things instead of my side of things. Here you can clearly see it waiting to login once an hour for both the clients used in the test runs. The machines where started shortly after each other so there's a bit of a delay between one logging into the dev cycle and the other logging into the dev cycle. Though clearly we can see Divert working and the shares being rerouted back to the same account. If you want to actually see the history of shares via DwarfPool's account graphs over the time period of the testing then, here it is as well! I like this image because you can see the various stages things went through including my own faults in testing which caused me to restart them completely, twice. First you can see the official open source combo ran, next you can see legitimate Claymore operation paying forward all the dev fees, then after two unexpected downtimes, you can finally see testing Claymore's dev fees via Divert 3.6. You can also see where I was attempting to test this during the unexpected downtime hours because the developer cycle was still consistently logging into the account and submitting valid shares. What's all this time spent leave us with for results? Check for yourself, here's what I ended up with!

Claymore's Dual Ethereum v11.6 Miner + NoDevFee Divert v3.6 Trial Results:


 
2.01%! That's not at all what he claims he's taking for a developer fee. Actually, that's another third on top of what he claims he's taking for the price of dual mining. I was hoping to shed some positive light on the subject after months of hanging out with the NoDevFee GitHub crew. Though taking more then the stated dev fee is a bit of a dark spot for me, doesn't really come off very GoodGuyGreg that's for sure. Makes me happy there's folks out there double checking things and even making the tools to do so in the first place. If you're willing to believe that he's just made a mistake in his program's dev cycle or that maybe I've botched my test results then that's certainly possible. I've not ran ten passes of each test then compared results, this is just the first fully completed without interruption results I've gathered so far on the new v11.6 release. Though it's certainly food for thought and look at those numbers, they worked out to be exactly 2.01% over the previous test. I'll let you all decide how you feel about that as I'm sure opinions differ. Even bringing up the use of a tool like Divert to redirect dev fee cycles is a pretty hot topic in any mining community. Anyway, here's to a new version dropping after this post goes live. LOL! 

Moving on let's talk a little bit about the process of dual mining on your graphics cards. In my experiences, testing extensively on blake2s & pascal algorithms, it jacks up your juice pull & stress on your graphics card by about a third while giving you about a quarter to a third of a real card. Example: maxed out Ethereum mining at 36.6 MH/s on my EVGA 1080Ti FTW3 Hybrid Editions takes 225W of power. When I turn on and crank out a dual mine algorithm on top of this load it goes to 300W, increasing its consumption by 75w which is a third of its previous power consumption. So +33% power roughly delivers an extra 25-30% in results, it's not quite a 1:1 trade but it's a whole additional mining operation on top of equipment that's already mining. That's pretty cool if you ask me, this means that the beast Team Green Rig from the post above gains an additional three and a half 1080Ti cards worth of hashing power overall when dual mining. (just ran the blake2s conversion to double check) It also means it costs four additional cards worth of electricity, but once again, you just invented these cards out of no where sooooo still pretty cool. Depending on what you pay for power this may not be attractive to all people, though if you're looking to get your hands on results at the maximum possible rate your gear will produce then this is definitely an option.

The rig above when fired up Tri-Mining as the hipsters like to say, produces roughly: 439 MH/s ethash, 21.3 GH/s blake2s, & 175-225 H/s monero7. Here's some screenshots of the front end during operation: while testing legitimate Claymore v11.6 shares & while testing Claymore's developer fee with Divert. A worthy side note here is the power consumption per 1080Ti when the temps in the mine change over the course of the day. During the ball busting heat of the mid day if it's sunny it can go as high as 105%, which comes out to be 180 watts of extra power load!! (60 extra watts per power supply, 15 extra watts per card) Though in the middle of the night I've seen them drop as low as 93% during the dual mine which comes out to be 252 watts of savings! (now reducing the load by 84 watts per power supply or 21 watts per card) So as you can tell it's really important to over spec your machines so they can handle events like the natural day/night cycle of your mine. Winter is always going to be amazing but once it starts getting hot again... #roughbois.  This means at peak so far, torture down in the mine when it's been 95+F, the machine itself is drawing 3,780 watts of juice to keep the dual-mine alive, let alone the tri-mine of the processor going max as well. There's 4,600 watts of available power, which when going through the hottest day recorded yet in it's system logs looks to have left around 200 watts of overhead per power supply. Brutal, even on really high end parts! If I lived in a hotter area or didn't have other options for temp control at my disposal then I'd consider capping the machines ability to draw more power so that it stayed groovy, even if it was at slightly lower speeds.

Anyways that'll do it for me today, hope you all enjoyed the post! As always comments and/or questions are more then welcome. Thanks for reading, /cheers!

'Goblin

...and then I walked amongst the living again: (hey now, it's 2018, would you look at that)
 
Hello internets! It's nice to see you're all still alive and trolling as normal. As some of you have noticed (and sent me some very nice emails over) it's been a couple months since I've been around. As you can tell via the linkage in my previous post I've been dealing with some health issues & have been out for treatment pretty much exclusively since then. As much as I'd love to talk about high gamma ozone insufflation right now, an would find comfort in discussing it with folks of like mind, this just really isn't the time or place for that. This is a mining thread! Which as you can expect no matter what happens in my personal life the business world keeps on moving & I've been trying hard to keep up to date!
 
Which uuhhh, has anyone looked at the markets lately? It's a dark day for miners and traders alike everywhere! (and has been for a hot minute) Though I've found great pleasure in reading and listening to others reveal what seems to be another well orchestrated market manipulation that has lead to the crash we're currently riding out. Given one of my passions in life has been understanding fractional reserve banking, the concept of applying interest to it, and wealth creation in general it's been a real trip to see market mouth pieces hop on over to my side of the conspiratorial fence for a while. Banksters going to be banksters! What do we expect? LOL! This has actually all made for a pretty rough journey for the casual miner trying to go large. I've got a fifty plus page business plan and have hit banks, hard money lenders, even traditional mineral mining operations trying to get them to see the light of Proof of Work based crypto mining. I've toured mega mines, I've built and retooled more rigs then I can remember, I've checked out pool operation, I mean I've really tried to get 10,000% into this scene no matter the angle.
 
Mainly I've made a large fool of myself a number of times as I'm just a single man with a dream. When your health is down you tend to not give the best presentations or even speak to people with the respect and consideration you generally should show your fellow man in life. I've tossed off emails to media outlets like LinusTechTips, having some very nice exchanges overall but being a bit of an enthusiastic nut job through the process. How much sense I really made at any moment was probably thanks to how I felt on a given day. As I watch damn near every tech channel on YouTube I just want to throw out that I think Stephen Burke over at Gamers Nexus puts out the best mining and hardcore tech related content I can find, respect, and appreciate. I'd recommend anyone who's reading this thread in particular to head on over and check them out both on their website an affiliated channels. Getting back on track this all means that over the last couple months I've not managed to open my own sizable mine yet. Even the logistics of getting five hundred of any respectable graphic card delivered to my doorstep is a real eye opener in distribution. (if there's any reps out there reading this thread, send me a PM if you can help) 
 
Another logical problem is funding such a project! I've got three locations, two sitting around the 100K mark to get them up and running and one that would be absolutely god damn epic but require a real deep pocket to even consider, easily 500K to start. Hell it'd take half a year of just working every day to put it together, even with extra hands on board. Have you tried explaining blockchain, mining, efficiency curves, PoW vs. PoS, etc. to anyone who's not a nerd? Look if the bank itself doesn't already have a private mine with it's name on the side of it then they're not giving you money to create your own. Atleast in my last few months of experience on the manner, it's not like I've got years of experience here so maybe I'm still fumble fucking my way through doing it wrong. Then there's just the endless waves of clueless venture capitalist guys who are spitting out more random nonsensical industry terms per minute then a bestbuy cashier who wondered away from their register. Good lord I just want to build out a couple mega mines, thousand card stacks, run some pools, and get into some real interesting market plays once I have power to leverage. How hard could this be right? ROFLMAO!!
 
I've really been wanting to post here and share the journey I've been on. I could've tripled the size of this thread if I'd continued to actively blog on my experiences. But life has really been a learning curve for me lately and in all honesty, I should be dead right now. So not blogging, not being online, not even looking at a cell phone for large periods of time, that's been key to turning the corner an coming back at life full force. So while I've been missing the interaction I've come to enjoy so much with all of you, I've needed to be away as well and it's been good to be gone. Though like I said before, this is a mining thread and I'm sure you guys would like to see something cool instead of just reading about my experiences in the trenches! So today I give you a new machine I just finished putting together, the parts have been around for a while but I've not had the time to finish it until now.
 
The actual design has gone through a large number of revisions as you'll be able to see in the pictures. There has been some fun things to learn on this mainly because things really needed to be customized at certain steps. At one point I had the entire thing spread out across a monster six foot by six foot metal rack though let's all be honest, that's jank and not professional at all. I wanted to show you guys the process of putting together a cool little mining machine for your home while having a rig to be proud of an not to be embarrassed by when the fellow nerds come on over. There was also the problem of actually moving such a computer, the first few versions proved to be a nightmare to carry around. Which is why I've ended up with it's current two part design of a controller tower with an attachable plugin open air GPU frame. I'll be sure to attach a parts list onto the bottom of this post after all the pictures so people can follow along at home if they want to join in on a replication. It's also important I feel to note, I know this could be done differently and even better! This is just the current revision and I already have a growing list of things I want to change and/or just make better overall in the next one.
 
#00: Pro Tech ToolKit FTW!
Info: I see this company all over the internet advertising their kits and honestly I'm glad I grabbed one. This thing has came in sooooo handy. #notapromo #paidfullprice
 
#01: Quality power supply goes a long way!
Info: Corsair AX1500i PSU.
 
#02: Lots of power supplies go even further!
Info: More AX1500i goodness.
 
#03: Just lots of power supply box porn going on.
Description: Two EVGA 1600w P2 Supernova PSUs & a Corsair 150i Pro RGB AIO.
 
#04: Going ham on ram for lots of future hyper-v overhead.
Info: Corsair Vengeance LPX DDR4 2400mhz 32gb (2x16) Kit.
 
#05: Straight out of China here's our graphics cards new home.
Info: Veddha 8 Open Air Mining Frame.
 
#06: ..and like magic we've got a frame!
Info: Veddha assembly completed!
 
#07: Here we'll just gut this old mid sized gaming case and reuse it.
Info: NZXT S340 Black/Blue.
 
#08: ZOMG HOW MANY GPUS & PSUS!?
Info: Asus B250 Mining Expert Motherboard.
 
#09: Always wire up your big ass power supplies outside the tiny case then slide it in for success once it's done.
Info: EVGA 1600w P2 Supernova being installed into the basement of the S340.
 
#10: Getting creative with power cable management.
Info: These ten power cables (eight pci-e and two sata) are routed from the basement through a hole an out the side of the case.
 
#11: Cleaning up the controller tower wiring.
Info: Thirteen cables extend outwards from the tower, the extra length is so they can be plugged into the GPU frame that will sit next to it.
 
#12: Building bridges of fans, yes, bridges of fans!
Info: Seven EKWB Furious Vardar 3000 fans bridged across the front of the frame with safety grills installed.
 
#13: These annoying little fuckers are like red headed step children.
Info: The key to attaching anything to this mining frame is learning to utilize these all over the place.
 
#14: Fan cables everywhere! What to do with this mess?
Info: Each Vardar needs to be wired to the controller tower.
 
#15: Cleanbois wiring only! #alexfaciane @facianea
Info: Here I've used an EK-Cable Splitter 4-Fan PWM extended length dongle to bring four Vardar fans together. 
 
#16: Flipped for that extra cleanbois feeling!
Info: The GPU frame upside down to attach wiring on the bottom.
 
#17: Cheap bits getting the job done!
Info: These things cost $4 but I only needed one of them in particular to match the current hole size sooo three bucks down.
 
#18: Things getting messy around the build site!
Info:  1080Ti's hanging out staying sexy.
 
#19: Video card placement and radiator management complete!
Info:  Twelve EVGA 1080Ti FTW3 Hybrid Edition Cards mounted.
 
#20: Under the upper class graphics cards lives a windy world of pissed off vardars. 
Info: Fresh air comes in below then gets pushed around the cards themselves and finally out the radiators above.
 
#21: Extra airflow being added to the sides!
Info: Two Corsair high performance 120mm fans added to the sides to pull in more air.
 
#22: ONE WIRE TO RULE THEM ALL.
Info: After multiple dongles tying them all together there's one single input cable that comes out of the GPU frame and plugs into the controller tower.
 
#23: Two giants of power consumption and supply hanging loose.
Info: Two Corsair AX1500i power supplies.
 
#24: Power cabling hanging out everywhere.
Info: Decided to remove half the side intake fans and mount the power supplies this way instead.
 
#25: Let's take a second to relax and chill.
Info: Here's where all the magic happens. Goblins love mines.
 
#26: So many cables! 
Info:  Another eight power cables on each side (two per card) need properly cable managed.
 
#27: Keep with the zip ties!!
Info: Still need to clean this up some more but here's the basis of my attempt at getting two cables up to each card.
 
#28: More power supply cable management.
Info: This is the second power supply that's mounted on the GPU frame. (pre proper management going up to each card in the back)
 
#29: Meet a Riser.
Info: One Supercope PCI-E 006C 16x->1x Powered Riser Adapter Card w/ 60cm USB 3.0 Extension Cable & 6-Pin MOLEX to SATA Power Cable.
 
#30: Riser Orgy.
Info: Or maybe gangbang?
 
#31: Keep on that cable management train...
Info: Is there ever an end to wiring? Here's usb & power cables from the risers. Good work bois. #TPB
 
#32: One big blue cable of bondage
Info: Here's one of the riser cable bundles for connecting the graphics cards to the controller tower.
 
#33: Wiring of the GPU frame finished! 
Info: Three bundles of riser cables (four in each) plus the cable that controls all the extra fans.
 
#34: The two meet for the first time in the basement, on the white table, next to the monitor, ready to explore each other but still scared of being rejected.
Info: Uptight medium sized Controller Tower A meets huuuuge junk in the trunk open air GPU Frame B. 
 
#35: They hang out for a while before she decides he's worth sliding on the 1x pci-e usb adapters. 
Info:  Notice how they get closer to each other over time as a bond begins to form. Here you can see his long black extensions being emphasized in hopes they'll soon couple. 
 
#36: The importance of that one cable to rule them all.
Info: Remember that master fan controller cable for the GPU frame? It plugs in right here.
 
#37: Clearly some very naughty things have occurred.
Info: Full on blue tentacle sync here, some type of odd Japanese fetish. (oh that's a nzxt kraken x62 in push+pull on the cpu there)
 
#38: An entire shelf of innocent side devices deal with having seen the merging.
Info: EVGA has been consulted with personally for bringing in the appropriate trauma related counselors.
 
#39: Sparks can't fly without the power!
Info: That's not a knife, this is a knife. 
 
#40: After netflix and chill the two decide to make a life together by updating their drivers.
Info: Installing graphics drivers takes a really long time when you have twelve of them. Just go smoke a bowl and relax.
 
#41: One pretty tired Goblin calls it quits for the night.
Info: Oooohh it glows.
 
#42: Then the next day we finally get to take a look around.
Info: Task Manager showing off one management iGPU and twelve ready to mine 1080Ti inside Windows 10 Pro. 
 
#43: We also clean up the project area. Remember a clean mine is a successful mine!
Info: Don't you remember? Goblins love mines. 
 
#44: You know what would make this better? Remote temp monitoring!
Info: Yeah that's right, I went to home depot or some other big box store and bought something.
 
#45: I think it goes right here next to this block.
Info: Yeah, bitches love blocks that light up when you tap them.
 
#46: See now you can smoke a bowl and relax while still knowing how hot it is downstairs!
Info: Gives you today, last 48, and weekly lows/highs. See the secret is that "outdoor" actually means "on top of the miner".
 
#47: Let's go ahead and fire up some mining and see how stable our new baby is.
Info: Thirteen hours and thirty-three minutes into our first test run. (gpu+cpu mining as well acting as two separate hyper-v proxies)
 
#48: Let's add some airflow to this party and go to bed.
Info: One eighteen inch oscillating fan added to help keep the air moving & house warm.
 
#49: Twenty four hour test run eth mining results! (ethminer+ethproxy+dwarfpool)
Info: Whew boi, let's play spot the twelve gpu rig! Ready? Yeah.. that was easy. The other machines are two double wave vega 64 rigs and a single 1080Ti FTW3 Hybrid edition box I'm using for comparison. 
 
Build Log Parts List:
1x Windows 10 Professional x64 Operating System
1x Veddha 8 Open Air Mining Frame
1x NZXT S340 Black & Blue Mid Sized Case
1x Asus B250 Mining Expert Motherboard
1x Intel i7-7700K CPU @ 4.5ghz
1x Corsair Vengeance LPX DDR4 2400mhz 32gb (2x16) Kit
2x Corsair AX1500i Power Supplies
1x EVGA 1600w P2 Supernova Power Supply
3x Extra Heavy Duty Power Extension Cables
8x EKWB FF5-120mm Furious Vardar 3000 Case Fans
7x 120mm Metal Fan Protection Grills (still need two more for side fans)
3x Corsair High Performance 120mm Case Fans
4x NZXT 140mm High Pressure Radiator Fans
1x NZXT 140mm FN V2 Fan
1x NZXT Kraken X62 AIO
1x EKWB Ectotherm Thermal Compound (3g)
4x EKWB 4-Fan PWM Extended Length Cable Splitters
1x Asus 3-Fan PWM Cable Splitter (two inside case fans + gpu extension plugin)
1x Asus PWM Cable Extender (runs behind board then secured for gpu controller)
1x PNY 240GB SSD Drive
12x EVGA 1080Ti FTW3 Hybrid Edition GPUs
12x Supercope PCI-E 006C 16x to 1x Powered Riser Adapter Cards
12x 60cm USB 3.0 Extension Cables
12x 6-Pin MOLEX to SATA Power Cables
24x PCI-E Power Cables (16 from Corsair, 8 from EVGA)
5x SATA Power Cables
1x SATA Data Cable
3x 4-Pin Molex Power Cables
50+ Zip Ties & Misc. Cable Management Items
8ft Industrial Strength Velcro Strip
1x Cooler Master Octane Wired Keyboard w/ Optical Mouse
1x SteelSeries QcK Mass Mouse Pad 
1x Pellucid HD Series HDMI Cable (sixer)
1x Asus VX238H 23" Monitor
1x 25' CAT7E Network Cable
1x 18" Oscillating Fan
1x Remote Outdoor+Indoor Weather Station
1x Minecraft Light-Up Redstone Ore Block
1x Unisex Novelty Miner's Helmet With Light
A Whole Naughty Fuck Load Of Time The whole system has been incredibly stable since turning it on, I expected more problems to be honest. The 7700K is running at 4.5ghz because that's the max I can get it to accept inside the bios. It's chugging along at 1.25V on the core. The fan cable coming off the GPU frame that plugs into the controller tower is actually monitoring the CPU temp for it's fan speeds. Inside the bios you can only monitor CPU or Motherboard so I've gone with CPU. The fan curve is 60+C runs at 100%, 50+C runs at 75%, and 40+C runs at 50%. Same with the CPU's AIO pump as well it's supporting four 140mm fans in push+pull, plus the extra 140mm+120mm case fans. When playing around with full blast you can hear this machine rev like a car engine and it actually passes through the floor overpowering the living room. The Vardar fans are no joke and move so much air it pushes papers off the desk next to it and gives the admin sitting anywhere close to it a wicked dry eye. Each 1080Ti is running at 2025-2050mhz on the core (depending on where it decides to sit, generally depending on room temp) & 11244mhz on the memory. I've tried running these same cards at 2075mhz on the core but they'll only go for eight-ten minutes before locking up.
 
While this is a thread specifically about Monero mining, we can clearly see this happens to be a Team Green rig. Ethereum was the test currency of choice just to get things rolling quickly though the machine will become more agile as I have time to setup more complex software. Each power supply covers four graphics cards. Each card is currently drawing 225W of power at max which gives us 900 watts of draw though when flipping to other currencies or projects the cards can draw up to 300, even more if you dual mine, which would leave us in the 1200-1300W range. This is why some pretty premium grade parts have been selected here for power supplies, it's really important to keep them operating in the top efficiency peak of their curves so I went with as big as could be purchased given the situation. They also each power five fans on top of the graphics cards. Except the controller tower power supply, as it powers the system plus an additional fan as well. This is why it's slightly bigger being a 1600W instead of a 1500W like the other two. Each power supply has been ran to it's own individual twenty amp breaker meaning this machine has the ability to consume sixty amps maxed out. Each power supply comes with a rather large warning sticker on it saying not to plug it into anything less then a fifteen with twenties being recommended.
 
This rig heats the entire home it's placed in and air flow is critical. You know if somebody has shut the basement door pretty quickly as you'll hear the Vardar fans spin up to 3000RPM even while watching something on the television. Though since this is a 100% water cooled rig the parts themselves never tend to get to hot just the entire rest of the house. This is really cool when it's snowing outside and you have the windows open on your top floor with the heating turned off completely and no fire to tend too. As far as space heaters go though this is one huge sum'bitch that not only heats your home but trades electricity for crypto at the same time! I guess if you needed a password or two cracked at some point you've got that covered too.
 
Anytime you want to move this computer you simply disconnect the risers and the power cables coming out of the controller tower. Two people are absolutely required to lift the GPU frame in any sort of safe manner. The tower is pretty light weight as it's only a medium sized with no peripheral bays. The big boi amount of memory was put in for alot of hyper-v headroom and for misc. experimental projects. It already hosts two proxies, one for ethereum & one for monero7. That's actually still what all my leftover CPU time is devoted too, mining Monero. I sat on Aeon for a long time but have came back to XMR full force after stacking up some other coinage. Given those Wave Vegas are like having two of these 1080Ti's when it comes to cryptonight & cryptonight-lite algorithm based coins it feels like a waste to toss this system on the Monero right away when I could be trading more profitable to mine per hour coins into Monero at a higher rate of return. Though that's a post for another day as this one has taken a pretty long time to write.
 
At this point I'm pretty exhausted. Going to post this, check on the systems one more time, get back on the treatment train, an once I'm out of pain I'm going to go attempt to hug a pillow. I apologize for any details I've left out! Feel free to post with any questions or comments, I'd love to hear what you all think and any suggestions you might have moving forward. (optimizations!! give me the optimizations!) I'm going to try and return to posting on a more regular basis as I have a lot of topics I'd like to cover. Though between running around trying to get that next epic level mine off the ground as well stay healthy you guys might have to be entertained with this one for a bit until I return. 
 
'Goblin

Well, even though I've been six feet under for a long time now, the pony express never fails! Don't worry, once I live again I shall return but for now I'll leave you all with some cardboard premonitions...
 
Oh my, what's in this big box from EVGA? Could it be Hybrid FTW3?
 
Green Berets on tap like snow bunny bitches in Vail:
 
Hey, you over there, yeah you, sssshhh, heard you wanted some Team Green:

$80,000 Mining Operation w/ 70 Hybrid SC2 1080Ti Cards: (amazing interview)
 
Well the channel BitCoinHog recently released an extremely good video detailing an eighty grand operation that has just swapped over to utilizing Nice Hash.
 
It can (and should!) be seen over here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nXHAjBMLRqY
 
This is an excellent interview and chance to get an inside peak into people who take mining seriously & to the proper business levels. This man clearly knows what he's talking about, his advice about pulling heat away from the gear instead of putting cold air onto it is absolutely golden, those are words of a professional miner! It's also neat to see how they went with Hybrid SC2 cards & how he talks about accidentally destroying a couple during the learning phase. I would recommend checking this video out for anyone who is into mining at all, as it's well worth your time. It's really neat to see the Nvidia stack as most the people I get to deal with or have been blessed to see the operations of, all use Team Red. Speaking of which, hopefully here soon I'll get the paperwork squared away to show you all a vega stack that's about twice the size of the operation in this video built specifically for Monero! Which is pretty cool because the mining operation really had a lot of the same problems discussed in the video above. The sitting around the table smoking a bowl stories that come out of the hardcore mining community are pretty much just the tits of tech & it makes me proud to call this my industry.

Absolutely doable! I tested the entire operation from my Mining Monero (XMR) thread for a couple days off my LTE Band 12 Yagi setup and it worked great. I did this for a guy specifically in your position who wanted to know how well remote mining would work out and had no real gear to test it himself with. So before he tossed any hard cash at the situation I did a weekend mountain run with all my gear, worked perfectly, no flaws or issues. #thumbsup #LTEmining #remotebois 

Absolutely doable! I tested the entire operation from my Mining Monero (XMR) thread for a couple days off my LTE Band 12 Yagi setup and it worked great. I did this for a guy specifically in your position who wanted to know how well remote mining would work out and had no real gear to test it himself with. So before he tossed any hard cash at the situation I did a weekend mountain run with all my gear, worked perfectly, no flaws or issues. #thumbsup #LTEmining #remotebois 

Getting blasted on Reddit in /r/MoneroMining for being a noob:
 
After my last post about optimizing Windows 10 for mining user Nexion21 commented: "My goodness this guy sounds like he has no idea what he’s doing and lies/exaggerates like it’s his job. Maybe it’s a money generating blog in which case that would make sense. I just read the whole thing and gained nothing from it other than a story of someone with too much money hoping and praying everything works". I ignored it, though more discussion continued and he also continued to get upvoted on his comments. Another user by the name of bangblunt came in & told him to go easy as I was just trying to learn. He returned again commenting: "Yeah my first comment was definitely cruel, I’m leaving it because I really don’t want other people coming to this thread thinking they’re going to get what the title tells them. I was fully caught off guard with his blog because I was expecting something close to the title." Also commenting: "I just really dislike the spread of misinformation." Which I gotta say gave me an extremely sour taste in my mouth for a while as I thought about it. I really wasn't going to comment but the traffic through Reddit to both Ars & LTT is pretty decent. I wanted a chance to explain myself not just to Nexion21 but everybody who questioned anything they might read in my thread, aka: the mining blog. Specifically since the Windows 10 post has been constantly downvoted there an is wildly unpopular on Reddit. After posting & continuing to think on it, I decided to bring it here so more people could gain from the entire event.
 
Here is the original reddit thread that this all comes from: https://www.reddit.com/r/MoneroMining/comments/7da4a2/stripping_windows_10_down_tuning_it_into_a_mining/
 
Nexion21 your point stands an I do appreciate your interaction. Now I was going to just leave your comment untouched, frankly I get far worse then that on a daily basis being a moderator for SupportXMR. If you read my entire thread start to finish you'd see a large progression from novice to where I stand today. I don't really care where that happens to fall on the scale of eliteness I simply care that I'm learning. Now I'm not a great technical writer, I'm not putting out manuals or decent step by step guides to doing anything. English is extremely difficult for me and I find my grammar is absolutely atrocious though I'm trying to help the community, specifically new comers to the hobby/industry.
 
Now I wouldn't recommend to anyone something I wouldn't do myself or deem safe. I've been into computers & the overarching industry since the late 80s and building systems since the mid 90s. This is not some attempt at inflating my ePeen and is simply put out there for reference to speak to my ability as the author. I actually currently am investing my time & energy in crypto currency for a living, it pays my bills including my mortgage. (day trading included not just mining) Though it's new to me, obviously since the creation of the blog. Before that my only experience mining was playing with Folding@Home since it's creation long ago. To expand on my professional life I've been a long time FDA verified & listed pharmaceutical aseptic technician. I ended up specializing in Leuprorelin & Doxorubicin, I also own my own medical cannabis company. Focused on CBD access for the extremely ill & treating patients in fashions my chemotherapy background can't help. I've also been a chef, a welder/metal fabricator, a salesman, & a corporate IT cubical monkey though I found all of those jobs so boring I left them as soon as I could.
 
I list these to show I've been around the block & am not some "hi i'm twelve" experience you generally come across on reddit. I currently hold (although super outdated now) records on multiple leaderboards for overclocking, have destroyed a plethora of equipment over the years from pushing things too hard, and am fairly educated in how far you can take equipment in this field. Your thoughts about the power supplies are something to bring up but are not issues I'm concerned about. I have each machine plugged directly into their own 1500PFCLCD & I can watch it's actual pull from the unit live on the screen. This includes the use of their emergency management software where everything is logged & real situations dealt with immediately. Each Vega machine is drawing 625W and peaking at 700W, each power supply is 750W, leaving 16.66% baseline overhead & a 6.66% overhead during maximum peaks. As shown not just in the thread but experienced throughout a lifetime of tech fuckery these power supplies can handle way more then this. (although not recommended or advised to constantly do so) Still running a 750W power supply at 700W is not unheard of, it's not even uncommon in any industry but high-end enthusiast PC builds where people baby the shit out of their gear. If the world was going to explode tomorrow at 700W they would not rate it at 750W. Now this is a particularly bad practice for the overall efficiency of the unit, I'm waaay off where I want to be on that curve. So yes, I'm wasting money & profitability over the optimal use, the best usage case scenario of it's designed operation. Though it's not in danger, there's nothing terrible going to happen, I'm not in fear of middle of the night fireballs. Though I was in worry of this with the EVGA 650 Gold that came with the craigslist machine, which is why I replaced it before ever turning it on. (as the thread discusses and shows)
 
The blog is written to be entertaining as well educational. In the modern world of the internet where text mediums are dead & people hardly watch videos to completion it's alot to ask for people to work their way through my poorly structured & extremely long winded posts. Though at no point is it misleading or purposely taking people down the wrong path. I don't waste my time writing these for anything more then the fame of helping noobs, I'm not making additional money mining coins because I talk about it online. If you really want to see novice level interactions within mining then jump into any major pool's support channels. This is how I've gained access to developers & people of interest in the mining community. It's because I've been in the chatrooms giving people a hand and helping true noobs for weeks on end. It's donating this type of time & energy into any industry or topic you find intriguing that will ultimately bring you into the fold. Not to go on a bicycle ride here but life works like that, it doesn't matter what you're trying to do, as long as you keep putting one foot infront of the other you'll eventually get somewhere. So please view my continued blogging on the subject of mining not as some end all be all masterful explanation of how the world works, but as a guy putting one foot in front of the other while offering a word or two along the way to others.
 
As for the idea of having to much money, this is the gear I bring to the table. If you read the thread from start to finish you'd see I owned all of the expensive gear before I got into mining crypto. The monster EKWB Titan rig was a box that was crammed in the corner of a 4K studio I owned for a while. The over the top cooling on it was because the EV RE20 in the booth next to it wouldn't pickup the lower RPM speed of the Vardars. The fact that it's mining now is nothing but using what I have laying around. It's not like I went an bought any of that gear specifically to mine on. As discussed the only equipment I've actually put money down on purchasing for this is the craigslist box, the vegas, a mini workstation to play around on, and the NightHawk X10 for an access point. The mini workstation & access point where going to be purchased for other projects anyways so they're not really a mining related expense. So a decent 6600K rig I got at half price off and some vegas, that's what I've got going on here in terms of investment. This all fit together into the previous equipment I owned quite nicely. Is it a BTC+ board with 19 PCI-E slots, risers running out to a open air frame, multiple power supplies using add2psu, booting off a dirt cheap celeron? Fuck no it's not. What if I wanted to do something with these boxes other then mine on them? I mean I could easily take these to a family event, lan party, or who knows what & still play games on them, etc.
 
The entire debate of water cooled equipment, it's place not just in the mining industry but in the enthusiast gaming crowd is beyond the scope of this response. Needless to say I got blasted for a week straight in SupportXMR's chatango for going water 64s over cheap 56s. Literally between the people who write the mining software, the load balancer software, and run multiple pools, we've debated the situation extensively. It's an investment argument more then anything else but at the end of the day it simply doesn't matter. All of the machines in my home that are hand built are on water, I do water cooling, I like water cooling, I'm a guy who really enjoys his water rigs is another way to put it. Though they're not specifically mining machines, none of these are. Proper mining racked clusters, stacked ontop of each other, with proper environmental based cooling, is coming. Though it's not been something I've covered in the blog so far. If you read the whole thing you'll see I've been traveling alot lately, meeting with large scale 200+ card stacks all the way to small time miners like myself. Outside of reading manuals, I learn at an accelerated rate by actually doing things. I don't care how stupid I look, or how the wide public opinion of me swings, I'm doing my own thing & slowly getting there. Though I do care about helping others & I'd be a liar to say it didn't sting when people just shit all over your efforts.
 
If you'd like to form an extended opinion on everything, quote the shit out of my fifty+ post blog, and educate the public as to each an every place I've gone wrong over the last four months then please please please do. The amount of educational value you'd hold in that post would be absolutely massive. You could teach everybody from experts to people who just walked in the door like myself how to mine at the highest rates, at peak efficiency, with the most optimal system & network designs. I'm all ears as I don't know all of that, I'd love to know all of that, but you know, it's an educational journey we're on here. So please blow my mind in advanced knowledge & present it all in a very well constructed an laid out manner. That would be tits & I'd upboat you all day long purely for the time and effort you put into it. Hell people will probably just scroll through it's epicness and gild it without even reading it. Accolades for days! #ordoabchao

Stripping Windows 10 Down & Fine Tuning It Into A Mining Beast:
 
I was working with another Arsian on a mining project that was entirely Linux based. I can get around and my Nix Fu is decent, as you guys can see throughout this thread there's been some fun times, but damn I was getting really annoyed at my lack of ability to just do stuff in a snap. Even if it is just a short trip down memory lane or a quick google search away it's just not the same as knowing everything in and out. While I've been using Linux since the late 90s, most of my life has been spent working on, operating within, and overall using Windows. (including the Server editions) It occurred to me during an XMR-STAK compile that if I raced myself or even my friend I would be light years ahead if we where using any slightly comparable Windows OS simply from familiarity.
 
I had a copy of Ubuntu 16.04 LTS booting on the mini i7 workstation as seen throughout this thread. It was a cool place to play around with different misc. mining tools while comparing them to my Windows based hash rates. Though out of interest I grabbed a copy of the new version of Microsoft Windows and Office ISO Download Tool from Heidoc.Net, downloaded the newest Windows 10 Pro build (1709), used Rufus to slap it on a USB stick & off to the races I went. Given I've been using Windows since 3.1, it was like going home after being gone for a couple decades. Just for the completeness of this post I had the machine plugged into the internet during this process & let it download all the updates while going through it's install. When the desktop came up it was a fresh Windows 10 Professional copy with all the hoops, spyware, nonsense, stores, and bullshit you could want updated to the date of this posting.
 
The first thing I'll do is start downloading DoNotSpy10 from pXc-coding. I've mentioned them before in this thread but this is a tool used to remove vast amounts of things from the operating system like telemetry. If you're unfamiliar with this term our own Peter Bright did a story on this back in April when the process became slightly more transparent. It also allows you to strip elements like Windows Defender, Windows Updates, Windows Stores, blah blah blah away from it's bloatware filled fresh out of the box experience. ***THOUGH BE CAREFUL WHILE INSTALLING*** as the author of the software attempts to drop additional adware/malware/general bullshit during the installation process if you just spam right through the prompts. Make sure you read each page, turn off whatever revenue generating crap he's laced the installer with, and move forward with just his software alone. NOTE: this doesn't happen in the donation tier version but we can safety live without it by being aware & cautious instead of click monster noobs.
 
Go ahead and use Edge to do it since you won't have any other browsers unless you came prepared. At the same time this is downloading (preinstall) I'll download CCleaner which while offering a pro version, once again we'll take the freebie one. During the install this one will actually ask if you want to install Google Chrome along with it (one of their sponsors at the time of posting) so if that's your jam for browsers then you can go ahead and grab it right there instead of downloading it separately. (which they probably appreciate as I'm sure there's some kickback program going on there) Now if you've seen CCleaner in the news recently but don't know what it is, it's probably because as Dan Goodin covered they recently had a booby-trapped update. Though I've been using this program for well over a decade now and can highly recommend it to everybody. What it actually does is automatically detect then scrub caches, history files, & misc. leftover data on your machine after each use. Though it also has alot of neat other tools inside like a very efficient & direct uninstaller.
 
I'll also grab a copy of the Notepad2 Installer during this preinstall download phase. If Chrome isn't your thing or you simply don't want to have it installed via CCleaner then you'll need to grab your browser download stub now as well. Other software worth mentioning (specifically if you're mining Monero) that I'll always grab is the msvcp140.dll and vcruntime140.dll runtime package directly from microsoft (do not use  missing dll scam sites) & MSI Afterburner which I'll use for all the GPU tweaking as well keeping an eye on CPU temps, power consumption loads, etc. This is also the time to download your newest GPU specific drivers to override the default windows ones. Just a whole bunch of downloading going on here, not much more to say for this part. If you have specific SSD drivers you need to enable hyper modes or say additional overprovisioning (thanks TechQuickie) then like everything else, this is your time to grab it. I generally completely ignore motherboard specific bloatware like overclocking utilities, etc. Any board related overclocking I do is done in the bios and not from a soft overclocking perspective. 
 
Once you've got a packed download folder I'll start with DoNotSpy10, heed the warning above while installing. Once it's done I'll have it start the program from the installer on exit. Here we will use the checkmark all box to select everything it has to offer. We will decline it's offer to make a checkpoint before nuking the system. Afterwards it'll say the changes have been made but require you to reboot. Do not reboot. Next we'll need to install, then open, CCleaner and go right to the options -> settings section. (it's on the left hand side of the application with a gearwheel for a symbol) Here we will turn off the first four boxes (unmark them) then we will turn on Secure Deletion; simple overwrite(1 pass) w/ alternate data streams and cluster tips also getting wiped. (checkmark them) Next we'll go to the options -> monitoring section and turn off system monitoring and active monitoring. Ignore it's bitch windows that pop up and turn it off. Next we'll click into the options -> advanced section where we only turn on "hide warning messages", "close program after cleaning", "save all settings to ini file", and "skip user account control warning". To make this clear, everything else on this page should NOT BE CHECKMARKED.
 
Moving on we can now leave the Options section and click the Tools section right above it. As you can see the first part of this section is the almighty Uninstall that I hyped before. This is one of the most fun parts of the process so get ready to be excited, it's almost like riding a rollercoaster so be prepared! See all the bullshit that came with your new shiny operating system? Well outside of ccleaner and donotspy10 which you just installed, plus maybe calculator if you're bad at the maths, you're going to uninstall all this crap. Plus it's easy! All you need to do is right-click on each of them, then click uninstall. The prompt that pops up to confirm this decision can simply be accepted by pressing your enter button. It'll take no time at all depending on your system speed & wham you're already starting to feel an empty windows 10 environment showing up.
 
To be clear you can get rid of OneDrive & Skype here as well. PRO TIP: start with the app installer you see in the list. It's the pesky little fucker that likes to keep reinstalling crapware across your computer. I say this because I've literally started uninstalling things before it, only to find it had reinstalled them using my gig internet before I had gotten down to it itself. Which meant I had to go back and reuninstall the same thing I had just uninstalled. Sooo yeah kick that one in the nuts first, then remove everything from the OS until you have nothing but official security patches or the software you just installed on the machine. This is also an excellent time to click your start button look at the madness of live tiled bullshit going on, right click on all of them, and hit "unpin from start" so all the place holders don't show up blank with outlines on your next reboot.
 
Once done with this close CCleaner, click the start button and type in "control panel", open the app that pops up. In the new window look for the "view by" button in the top right side of the screen under the search bar. Select "small icons" in the drop down. Now that you can properly see all the items here we'll be going into "programs and features" first. Next inside the new window on the left hand side we'll be clicking "turn windows features on or off" which will bring us to yet another window. Here we'll select Hyper-V if it's required for your project, if not we'll deselect "internet explorer 11" & "media features", then click the OK button. This will ask if we want to download the required files from the internet in which we tell it we do.
 
Once this is done it'll prompt you for another reboot, decline it once again. Then close the programs and features window by using the back arrow in the top left. This will return us to the Control Panel. Here we're now going to select "power options" where we will select the "high performance" plan that is below the two normal plans. Then we'll click "change plan settings" which will change the window to a new one. Here we now click the "change advanced power settings" text which surprise, opens another window. Here we'll make sure to turn off (by entering zero minutes) hard disk auto shutdown & sleep mode. You can now click apply, and then OK, to return you to the edit plan settings page you where left at before.
 
Next (an you hoped we where done, lol) go ahead and press the back arrow button again until you return to the Control Panel. Here you'll now click the "system" option which will change the screen again. On the left hand side we're going to click "remote settings" which will bring up another window. Here we're going to deselect "allow remote assistance connections to this computer" as well make sure "don't allow remote connections to this computer" is the bubble selected below it. Then we'll go one tab on the top over to the left and click into "system protection". In this screen we'll click the "configure..." button & in the new window we'll disable system protection, crank the max usage down to nothing, then click the delete button as well. Once we've cleaned all that up we'll click the apply and OK buttons returning us to the previous screen. We'll click apply again then move to the next tab over on the top again, this time the "advanced" section.
 
Here we'll click into the "performance" section's "settings..." button. In the new window we'll select "adjust for best performance" then click the apply button. We'll then go into the next tab over from that, the "advanced" tab, and click the "change..." button under virtual memory. Inside the new window we'll deselect "automatically manage paging file size for all drives" then select the "C" drive, or more accurately, the drive in which you've installed Windows too. Next select the "custom size" button. If you're on SSD & mining via Vega you're going to need to assign 20GB (1024x20=20480) for the initial and maximum size per Vega. Now these numbers have been debated, I've ran slightly lower I've ran higher, but that's basically where people place these values. I've even done this on non-vega machines while mining and had positive results. If you're not Vega mining people traditionally set these values at how much system memory they have. (16x1024, etc.) Make sure you hit the "set" button before clicking OK to leave this screen. You can now click OK in the screen it returned you to as well.
 
Now we should be back in the "System Properties" window. Here we're going to go to the very left tab called "computer name" in which we're going to click the "change..." button. Here we'll change the name of the machine to whatever you prefer. Say like "Miner420" if you wished, next we'll select OK, then we'll enter the same name you just used into the "computer description" box as well. Then we'll hit Apply, then OK, and boom now we're back into the System section of Control Panel once again. Now complete with this part we can close the window completely by clicking the X in the top right corner. It is probably going to prompt you to reboot for a third time here, go ahead and an decline it as well. (and if it doesn't don't worry about it, kinda going by memory here) It occurs to me that if you need to be told how to do most of this then you're not going to survive long in the world of dynamic coin mining. Though if you're just getting your feet wet & I'm you're first step into the world of crypto-currency then keep following along as we're getting closer and closer.
 
Next we're going to need to enable large page support. Thankfully the XMR-STAK config file has a wonderful step by step guide to this that I'm going to copy and paste into place here. So THANK YOU to the devs for this next step. 1. On the Start menu, click Run. In the Open box, type gpedit.msc. (gobby note: in windows 10 just type "gpedit.msc" after clicking the start button, it'll popup the same as we did with control panel before) 2. On the Local Group Policy Editor console, expand Computer Configuration, and then expand Windows Settings. 3. Expand Security Settings, and then expand Local Policies. 4. Select the User Rights Assignment folder. 5. The policies will be displayed in the details pane. 6. In the pane, double-click Lock pages in memory. 7. In the Local Security Setting – Lock pages in memory dialog box, click Add User or Group. 8. In the Select Users, Service Accounts, or Groups dialog box, add an account that you will run the miner on (gobby note: make sure you click the "check name" button before leaving this screen)
 
Once you have the account(s) you'll be mining on added you can click Apply & OK back to the group policy window then simply exit out of it. These changes won't actually take effect until you reboot but like every other time we're going to hold off still. It's also important to know that Windows tends to fragment memory a lot. If you are running on a system with 4-8GB of RAM you might see problems when trying to obtain a large enough chunk of contiguous memory, just a heads up. Though this change is worth about a 20% boost in mining performance so it's important to attempt it even on low memory systems. So here's the point in which you install your SSD drivers, your real graphics drivers, VPN software, your browser of choice, & whatever other tech tools you need. Then finally, here we have it, our first reboot post install.
 
Coming back up, once you're on the desktop again we're going to reopen CCleaner. Go ahead and click in the section above the Tools section called Registry. Make sure everything on the list is checkmarked then hit "scan for issues", when it's done make sure everything is selected and hit "fix selected issues". If there's a huuuuge list of problems here don't worry about it we just did alot of ripping shit up. Next we'll go one above the registry, to the cleaner section. (on the left) You can select any extras that are currently not in the list of checkmarked items but go ahead and click "run cleaner" just for a solid once over now that we've done all that. If you truly want to clean things down to nothing just checkmark everything.
 
Another suggestion is to go back into the settings and have this run everytime Windows turns on, that way you get a fresh taste in your mouth everytime you power cycle. I would suggest setting up your graphics card drivers now, getting your start menu customized with your pinned items of choice, and if need be configuring your VPN or any third party security software at this point. (VPN/Security stuff was not discussed in this post, you didn't miss it or anything, just more tossing out there that hey, you do that right about now) I generally tend to setup all my overclock profiles on my graphics cards right now inside Afterburner and make sure I have a single "max overclock" profile and then an emergency "stock" profile right next to it. This is actually for when I'm testing things and produce crashes, you can't predict how hard any given crash might be so the second trouble is about I'll drop my clocks to the stock profile asap.
 
Finally we'll give your machine one last reboot before considering it ready to punch into work for a solid lifetime spent mining its ass off. That should be pretty much it though I'm sure given the length of this post I've missed a step or two. So you know, please don't eat me alive if I've overlooked some simple and obvious optimization. Though a kind post about what I've missed & where I've gone wrong would be tits for everybody reading this, including myself. Don't be afraid to come in here and speak your mind!
 
So back at where we started this journey, full circle, I was able to do this entire process in a very speedy an effective manner. Mainly because I've been stripping 10 down since before it even officially launched and converting a box into a miner isn't that far off. I don't need instructions for any of this and that's probably why I've done such a poor job of typing up a basic guide for you to follow. I often found myself forgetting what any given screen was called simply because I can do it like a robot at this point. I was up and mining in my stripped down Windows 10 Pro environment post fresh compiles of the dev branches in about half the time I was putting out boxes in the Linux environment. That's not to say anything about which operating system is better at all, that's simply to say, I know Windows Jiu Jitsu far better then my Kung Linux Fu. I shook my head at how much experience makes a difference on the production line & how badly I needed to touch up my Nix-Fu skills.
 
Anyways, there you have it. That's the basic Windows environment strip down I perform on every machine I use that's not linux or server based. Once you've got it down you'll Bruce Lee this bitch in no time, all flowing like water an what not. I hope this has been helpful to some of you out there & overall an educational journey to have gone on with me. Even to some of the more experienced users reading along I hope you found something of value buried in that wall of text. #gobbypost #walloftextcrits #windowsminers #tenbois #afterburneroverwattmanallday

That's an interesting question! There's a wide range between profits even on the same equipment and the same coin all depending on how you set up your operation. This entire thread can be read as a venture from novice to wherever I stand now and part of that was slowly integrating newer ideas and concepts into my mining practices until it's built up to where it stands now. There's a wonderful website I've mentioned before in this thread called WhatToMine where they have a plethora of calculators across all the primary coins. Here is the Monero calculator to find out exactly how much you'd make at any given moment in the market.
 
Though you will need to know your basic hash power per device, which if you don't want to do any trial runs then I'd suggest using MoneroBenchmarks.Info to find what other people are running your equipment at. Once you have a rough estimation of your hashing power you'll need to figure out how much power you're consuming to achieve this rate. The website from before should help you with this but it really shouldn't be that hard to figure out. Always over estimate so you don't get a bad day at the end of the month. Then you need to look up your local area's price per kilowatt hour (kWh) that you're paying to actually plug all this gear in. Enter each of these values in the calculator from above an TA'DA that's your basic profits for mining Monero before you get in there an start really tweaking and learning about advanced techniques. (like bios flashing for memory timing adjustments, undervolting, etc.) 
 
Thank you fine sir! Those hybrids ran me eight bones but right now if you're looking newegg has them at seven for the MSI Waves. I don't know why, don't really care, that's a decent price on them. It might be because XFX's hybrid and some other third party manufactured versions just arrived. Even though I paid an extra bone a pop compared to today's price they've already mined it back so I'm not sweating the investment. Given the dominance of Vega at the moment I've seen some pretty crazy deals on craigslist lately if you didn't mind going used. I'm also watching brand new retail boxed 64's go for cheaper then 56's so who the fuck knows in this market. Madness I say!!
 
Most the people I know simply watch a number of places for their inventories to refresh an as soon as they change the limit per order/customer to five each on anything decent they'll strike. Literally just adding five of each brand that's well priced an deciding well, this is the natural time for rig expansion. I know we're fueling the global problem and the gaming community has a general distaste for us at the moment but this is the business world. Cash is king & this is one situation where even high end gaming machines don't touch or even really compare to mining clusters in terms of moving hardware. Until your average gamer is sitting around just waiting to purchase 5-20+ graphics cards at a time this isn't going to go away until the supply side of things changes. (kinda went on a bicycle ride there but thanks for coming along with me)

Goblin show us your rigs & setup, get personal with us:
 
Well outside of watching 300+ people sit in the chatango room because the stats screen is down & they're all freaking out, there has been some decent discussion this morning as well! Everybody wants to see my mining setup and honestly it's not that cool. The desk I sit at, that's pretty PCMR, I'm not going to lie, makes my epeen feel about 1000x large but in reality I'd gladly trade my cool 4K proart monitors and updesk for some rx vegas to put in my rigs. I also decided I was tired of hearing the mining fan load throughout the house so I centralized all the equipment I could into a corner of one bedroom next to an open window. My desk isn't going anywhere so you still hear that but that's to be expected. This is nice because it also gives a location for everybody to return their mobile devices (laptop+phones) to for me to make sure mining is still running on them & they're being properly cooled. Speaking of properly cooled, whoa buddy that room got toasty fucking hot real quick. Even with it wide open and 57F outside, there needs to be a fan in that window asap. I've taken a picture of the temp in the room over the last 24 hours & it's pretty brutal. Thank goodness we're going into winter as this will heat my home no problem, just put a fan in the doorway instead of the window.
 
Looking out my window while I'm reading chat & studying XMR:



The i7-5820K's kraken x61 needs cleaned after mining nonstop without the prefilter installed:



Network starts here with it's own dedicated battery:



It then runs into the mining corner inside the next room over:



Mining room over 24 hours with the window wide open to the outside:



The PCMR desk I moderate your chat from & the i7-5930k+TitanXP:

Thanks - managed to push an extra 38 Hashes out of my Main 970 and an extra 10 out of my GT 1030  - I am only doing this Because it's fun, and electric isn't an object to me... 
Soon I will be running a mining rig 24/7 out of a nice Air conditioned room kept at 18 degrees, and on multiple GTX 1080's SO  

Thanks for the help and a great write up 

I will get back to you on the Hosted Proxy soon though. Because I need to look at that idea.. but for another reason!!!! 
 

Hey Metal Kitty! I was thinking about you this morning and the way for you to achieve more hash rate is to increase your blocks on your graphics cards! I had this thought an had to come back to actually check what you reported you where using. For instance my Titan does 112 blocks and my 1080 is doing 100. The higher you raise this number you should see greater hash rates but keep in mind this is suppose to actually be an appropriate number you get from doing some math after counting off your actual card's block diagram. Though in my experience it's pretty simple to dial in; 1.) to high it crashes on open 2.) still to high after it opens you'll see poor negative hash results even at higher blocks. 3.) to low and your performance will start going down towards what you have it at now. There's a perfect Goldilocks zone in there where you're going to see your card's top performance. Hope this helps! 

Thanks for the advice jwacher! This is a thread about Monero and investigating different ways at mining it on whatever gear I can get my hands on. Maybe in the future I'll do a zcash thread and see what happens in that scene but for now I'm an XMR man as I believe in it.
 
Thank you fine sir I really appreciate it! The main problem with compiling stak is that people generally try and do it inside windows. If you're one of those folks then I'd highly recommend the following step by step tutorials: CPU & GPU. That'll walk you through getting into the dev branch of each miner. Though they're about ready to all be re released as one single package that mines across cpus & gpus regardless of brand so you might want to wait for that before going balls deep an eating up alot of your time just to have to redo it.
 
You look like you're doing great so far! Tips to see improvement in your hash rate though would be to pick your favorite virtualization software & get a copy of Snipa22's XMR-Node-Proxy up and running. This will combine your equipment's power into a single thread which once it's dialed in should give you some pretty decent improvements as far as stabilizing your valley to peak ratio. It's a bit of a process as already investigated in this thread pretty deeply, but if you need a hand just come on back & fire another reply off here!
 
Well if only this was the case, I'd really like infinite money. Even if I had infinite money you'd probably still find me just sitting here playing around with Monero. I'm really interested in this entire field. I sit in the dev chat rooms, I ask questions, I experiment and test constantly, and I'm never to scared to look like a dumbass. That's the key I think, if you want something bad enough or are interested in something strong enough you'll find your way into it no matter what. This is the gear I personally have, it's not great, it's not meant for mining, and it's certainly not giving me the best results in the world. Though I'm mining and after a month of optimizations I've gained alot of knowledge on how to be a miner, how to walk the walk, setup rigs, maximize gains, etc. This was just the dipping my toe in the water experiment I needed before getting serious. Though I guess that doesn't explain the question. Fine sir, there appears to be a misunderstanding at hand here, as I do not have infinite monies or cheeseburgers.

Don’t forget the Monero Honey!



He invested in crypto… He Trusted Monero!



These are originally from The Monera.art which I absolutely love! Tons of great Monero themed backgrounds and artwork. I'm going to be framing some of these myself, love the oldschool themed pinup stuff. 

Pi-Hole Mining Enters the ARMs Race:
 
Well I was having a good time late last night hanging with an Arsian when the thought occurred to me that the pi-hole install on the raspberry wasn't utilizing it much at all. Now that I had a load balancer setup for nothing but ARM connections, maybe just maybe it could lose three out of it's four threads to a little mining on the side. Which was actually pretty easily done! But only thanks to shingolavine's raspberrypimining install script which pretty much took the piss out of the whole thing. Afterwards you can watch its temps from inside pi-hole's gui itself to make sure it's in the clear, we also logged in via ssh and watched the top process list while we stress tested the network to make sure a single thread would be enough to handle pi-hole or if I needed to reduce the mining to two threads. (one thread works great even during max stress tests) Temps are great for how much stress is being placed on the device & given it's inside a case. Oh we also overclocked & volted it to the high-OC settings getting it to 1ghz across all four cores stable. What's it push out? Well about 5-6 H/s with three single ghz threads which are of course being piped through the load balancer so it's joining in on the speed racer action as well. 
 
Here's the little Pi-Hole Miner itself:

Thank you to shingolavine for raspberrypimining:

Pi-Hole Temp Check / TOP During Stress Test / Seven Hour ARM Balancer:

Let's see those peaks baby:



As the provocative image description says, this is my equipment's peak performance. Which matches up nicely with the previous image, though you can't just make your equipment peak for a screenshot & you're not always watching your stats. I was actually just walking by my phone (which I tend to leave a mining stats or market watch screen up on) when I noticed I was peaking. I grabbed this screenshot & I also grabbed another one where the CPU & GPU farms traded .1 KH/s back and forth but still maintained the same peak. We all like seeing our numbers when they're balling large & this is as good as it gets in my world right now. This is 1 KH/s faster then the same equipment averaged on it's own before the hyper-v load balancers and 500 H/s higher peaks then I ever saw before bringing everything together inside XMR-Node-Proxy. This last round of changes are reproducing that one freak time I got this high of a hash rate previously but said I could never get it back. Well, finally I have & these peaks keep returning now. Which makes me believe I've finally started to dial all this in. 
 
Changes to the setup since the last post have been pretty slim. I installed some better security on the load balancers including putting the entire setup behind VPN. I really dislike ever having stuff coming out of my network that's not encrypted & generally limit it to televisions only & at that for netflix as explaining to users how to switch the TV's VPN address to get it to work is often more trouble then just swapping the TV off VPN while people want to watch stuff. This also gets rid of comcast's DNS servers which I was complaining about before. So now both the NightHawk and the Load Balancers are outputting 99% encrypted data again, atleast until it gets dumped out on the other side of my VPN. Which is actually pretty handy as I can now park my load balancers right next to any pool I want around the world. A feature I was really missing after making these network changes, but even better now because I don't have to route unnecessary non-miner related traffic to where ever I'm wanting to drop off the loadbalancers. Now the NightHawk can be on VPN to one location & the mining traffic off to a completely different location. Pretty happy with this actually, got some security reports getting flung back to my phone as well. Though it's not as good as just having a proper pfSense box setup as a router which clearly I need to build as I've pushed my entire household to the max over this Monero experiment.
 
Anyways just wanted to show off that those peaks where real & all this effort spent putting together / tweaking this operation has paid off. Those are (to me anyways) some monster peaks an everything has the stability I crave. Users come turn on monitors, turn off monitors, watch videos, do whatever, and the system scales up & down with them perfectly. This has been a very fun educational ride down the XMR tunnel. The funny thing is, I'm still a total novice. I sit in that Support XMR chat room and talk to the developers when they're around an they're still over my head, there's just sooooo much to learn out there. I'm sure I'll make another post when the next hash improving something optimizing thing catches my eye but given all the overclocks and crazy shit happening behind the scenes I'm pretty pleased with these results.

Getting Your Feet Wet In Monero, Starter Edition:
 
Okay everybody so there's alot of sources I've been using to get through my introduction to Monero. I thought instead of just tossing helpful advice in this thread I'd also give you guys a breakdown of the places I've been using. Keep in mind there is ALOT MORE OUT THERE then this, but these are the places & pieces of software I particularly like or have found useful.
 
Official Website: https://getmonero.org/
 - This is the starting grounds for all things Monero. If you want to learn more, find software, or just see who's behind things.
 
Official Monero Forums: https://forum.getmonero.org/
 - The natural extension of the above website, these are the official community forums for everything from PR to Dev.
 
Official Offline Wallet Installers: https://getmonero.org/downloads/
 - Download a wallet to receive/hold/spend your XMR from that is stored & protected locally on your machine.
 
3rd Party Online Wallet: https://mymonero.com/
 - An online only wallet to receive/hold/spend your XMR from that is stored & protected in the cloud.

Monero Coin & Market News: https://www.monero.how/
 - This is a great source of news for all things Monero! Recommended for getting your dive into the culture on.
 
XMR Profitability Calculator: http://whattomine.com/coins/101-xmr-cryptonight
 - Put in your equipment's hash rate, your local power cost, and what your pool fees are to see hour, day, week, month, & year long estimations of profits.
 
XMR Hardware Benchmarks: http://monerobenchmarks.info/
 - Not sure what you'll earn? Here's a wide list of broadly configured equipment hashing Monero.
 
PPLNS Explanation: http://give-me-coins.com/support/faq/what-is-pplns/
 - Thinking of joining a pool instead of solo mining? This explains how you get paid vs everybody else in the pool.
 
XMR Pool List: http://moneropools.com/
 - A giant world wide list of pools you could join, what they charge, how they work, & where to find them.
 
Support XMR: https://supportxmr.com/
 - This is the pool I'm currently running in & I mention it out of respect because it's extremely well maintained with intelligent & helpful admins.
 
SupportXMR Droid App: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=de.blindjerobine.supportxmrpool&hl=en
 - If you happen to join our pool then this is a cool android application you can download to watch your mining & the pool from afar via your phone.
 
Droid Market Management: https://www.blockfolio.com/
 - If you're larger then one pool or really into day trading across multiple coins this is another great application to watch all the markets & your investments.
 
XMR-STAK-CPU: https://github.com/fireice-uk/xmr-stak-cpu
 - This is the leading CPU mining program, it's the one I've been using throughout this entire thread so far.
 
Windows Compile Notes: https://github.com/fireice-uk/xmr-stak-cpu/blob/master/WINCOMPILE.md
 - If you're looking to get onto the Dev branch or change variables with a self compile, here's some great instructions!
 
XMR-STAK-Dependencies: https://github.com/fireice-uk/xmr-stak-dep
 - You're going to need these as well if you're looking to start compiling your own versions.
 
XMR-STAK-AMD: https://github.com/fireice-uk/xmr-stak-amd
 - This is the leading AMD based GPU mining program, it's made by the developer of the one I've been using throughout this entire thread so far.
 
XMR-STAK-Nvidia: https://github.com/fireice-uk/xmr-stak-nvidia
 - This is the leading Nvidia GPU mining program, it's the one I've been using throughout this entire thread so far.
 
 Nvidia Config Breakdown: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B6LV7PJ6boeBVGRZWTdLRkZKeUU/view
- This is a Step By Step breakdown of how to properly config your Nvidia graphics cards inside STAK w/ pics.
 
Windows Compile Notes: https://github.com/fireice-uk/xmr-stak-nvidia/blob/af2ac2dd064774e1e3825eb4c928490abfcb3f9b/WINCOMPILE.md
 - Same idea as above, here's some great instructions for nvidia compiles. NOTE: this process is quite a bit longer to setup then the CPU one, but just as easy so nothing to fear.
 
XMR-Node-Proxy: https://github.com/Snipa22/xmr-node-proxy
 - This is the load balancer and proxy I've been using to split workloads across my equipment & configure difficulty curving.
 
SilentXMR Win: https://gitlab.com/Elycin/SilentXMRWin
 - Monero (XMR) Wrapper to mine when a computer is idle. Will utilize STAK then claymore's as a failover.
 
Goblin's ARS Thread: https://arstechnica.com/civis/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=1396927
 - This is literally the same thread from here on Linus Tech TIps but running over at Ars Technica. (vastly different communities)
 
Goblin's LTT Thread: https://linustechtips.com/main/topic/827432-mining-monero-xmr-with-my-current-gear-lets-look-at-some-numbers/
 - This is the very thread you're reading right now if for some reason you wanted to know that.
 
Anyways that'll probably do it for helpful places to get started that don't require to much from you. Once you've got that all conquered and you've read this thread a couple times learning from my mistakes, well, you'll be a god damn coin wizard. 

Days 3 - 6 Updates:
 
Welcome back to the mining adventure everybody! Sorry for the long gap since updates and for not responding to questions on the different foras I posted this! So as the story goes, I did infact head across town and grab a dual xeon machine out of storage, it had sat in Colorado storage for a while meaning it had seen temps as low as -15F an as high as 100+. I'd never had a problem with it before but it was over a decade old now & when I pulled it apart looked like I'd ganked all the parts out of it once before an forgotten. I headed over to the CSU Surplus Store where they sell just about anything a nerd could want at discount prices. Example? Ram there is $2.50 a gig, doesn't matter type, speed, or manufacturer. They just have bins labelled "DDR 2 ECC/REG" etc. an you dig through them. I dropped in & grabbed six sticks for the xeon box (it maxes out at 12gb so six 2gb sticks), the best video card they had in stock an old firepro V3900 for $7, & $10 for a 160GB 10K velociraptor to slap in there. Total price was $51 for all the upgrades so in terms of stepping on the mining profits, not a cheap investment for a shot in the dark.
 
I got home, attempted to put them in, and oh no I'm a dumbass. I had grabbed DDR2 F thinking for sure this old xeon server ran fully buffered. Though as soon as you try to put a stick in and see that you're a couple pins off on your notch you'll for sure feel like a very bad tech. It was already to late to head back so I just called it for the day & started playing around with the Titan more. (more on that later) The next day I dropped back in and explained to the tech there testing parts the mistake I had made. He laughed, said no big deal, let me swap my ram out for the proper model. Cool deal, get home, plug them all in. Machine beep code of doom. Look it up, memory error. Oh cool I can't use slots 5 & 6 in this configuration, okay well whatever 8gb is still better then nothing. Pull them. BEEP CODE OF DOOM. Go into bios, look it over, proceed to spend the next hour with not just these sticks but other sticks testing everything I could imagine. Turns out from ?? who knows ?? things are now really screwy and not like how I last left the box before long term storage. Memory slots 1, 3, & 5 are gonezo, no detection, nothing. Memory slots 2, 4, & 6 work but only detect 1gb sticks I pulled from another box, none of the sticks I paid $30 for work at all. 
 
Being positive minded I'm all like, we can still make this work, fuck it! Let's just put Debian on here, start mining with 3gb of ram, and see what hash rates we get. Well okay, make a usb boot drive, go to install. System Halted. Can't get past boot, always System Halted. Throws a memory config error right before. Go into bios, notice that while it's reading the 1gb sticks, the system can't tell how much memory is actually installed, it's totally fucked up. This is a lost cause, but the day was late and I had other things to do. So next morning comes, I load up all the parts I bought, plus the other ram I had pulled as I didn't need it anymore & headed back to the surplus. They don't take parts back and you have to pay to recycle there. I said well look guys, I'm going to give this to somebody on craigslist or you can just consider it a $50+ donation to the school and sell these parts to the next guy. Somebody is going to come in needing this ECC/Reg ram and I don't want to hold it for no reason at all. They said they'd make an exception and appreciated the donation. I looked around for a while and they had a tiny little box in the corner for $75 bucks, I asked them about a deal on it & they said wait a second. Went into the tech bay for a bit, then came out with a much newer version of the same box! Went from i5 to i7. They said since I had made a donation they'd just make this a really good deal if I was interested. So I snapped it up, got home, put an old Server 2012 R2 copy I had on it for giggles, spent hours running updates even though it was a blank server install with no additional roles added / installed.
 
Finally I got to pretty much a blank screen with nothing but my network adapter enabled. Fired up XMR-Stak, 225-250 H/s! Turned on the stat screen for the battery it's plugged into, 63W! If you add the laptop into this you have 375+ H/s at around 100W of use which is more hash then my cranked out i7-5930K is doing at 4.5ghz across 11 threads. (though it's also still being used as a daily machine) These are some extremely interesting numbers to me! Though for the ones you guys probably want to see more then this, I went test mode over 9000 on this EKWB loop the Titan is running on. (with plenty of screenshots) One screen I grabbed with Afterburner & Taskmanager is pretty amazing because I don't think you'll see a Titan X Pascal jacked that high again without going beyond water. If there is other overclockers out there that have three+ day long mines at higher rates then I can't imagine their setups. I'm not saying it doesn't exist, I'm just saying, IMHO, this is the limit of pascal. I was even getting my nerves shaken a bit before finding the absolute limits. Enough you say, give us the numbers!! Well 2,240mhz which was consuming 61% power draw at 36C was when the system finally crashed. Which was not instant, I had music playing on the very system as I was doing this, not just for pleasure but listening for stutter or anything to say trouble was about. After about five minutes at this speed the music stuttered, slowed, and then stopped. System locked. I also noticed that only at 2,240mhz did I see a 61% power draw on the bottom line pre and post mining jumps. Even at 2,225 it was 60% and the temp stayed 35C, but that last additional 15mhz was the straw that broke the camels back so to speak. Which is probably pretty insane to most of you out there, as it was pretty god damn shocking to me.
 
Post reboot, the card is a little jank over 2200, you can't go right to that speed, you need to ease into it after a minute of mining. Also the system response goes to shit over 2200, so I've decided it's probably wise to keep the card at 2,175 for a little bit of a buffer & keeping the responsiveness nice. That is an absolutely mine numbing pascal overclock (atleast to me personally) & keep in mind, as the screenshot shows, it was mining for three days at 2214 before I just pushed it to far with the 2240 request. Truly curiosity killing the cat. Hash wise? Didn't make a real difference compared to the stresses placed on the card. The highest I saw it mine was 979 H/s, but it wasn't consistent an the card liked to mine at 965-970 most the time. Dropping the overclock from the balls to the walls limits of the damn card results in a slightly higher hash rate an a more stable system. If this loop wasn't pretty much always supplying room temp water to the GPU across a full block I don't think you could hit these speeds anyways, they're a wasted investment in the bigger picture of mining, nobody would do this. Though it's gotta be interesting to more people out there then just me! Feel like some LTT/J2C/GN video up in here taking the card that far. So back on track, now I have, two personal machines, a laptop, & a little micro workstation mining Monero. My new combined hash rate post a week of dickery is 2,624 H/s. It's been higher, it's been lower, there's alot of drop when a user is on one of the two desktops with two 4K monitors needing to be powered by the cards as well. You'll see the big numbers after a 12 hour stretch at night when nobody has touched them at all for a long time. Though outside of adding 63W for the new i7 the power usage has pretty much stayed the same. The Titan went from 59% power usage on normal boost clocks to 60% power usage where it's at today, the 1080 hasn't changed, & the cpus don't change really. The only downside was I woke up to a windows update kick in the nuts on the laptop once as I forgot to turn automation off.
 
So there you have it, just about a week into mining some Monero, still figuring things out, still achieving optimizations! Pictures to follow:
 
The Xeon Box, Fresh Out Of Storage:

Inside of the Xeon:

Xeon Upgrade Supplies:

Cost of Upgrade That Didn't Happen:

Remember Kids, Research Your DDR2 Needs Before You Buy:

The New Micro Box:
 
Lets Open Her Up & Free That Cooling:



Can You Mine Micro Box? Yes You Can:

At the Brutal Cost of 63W:

Cracked out Titan X Pascal Hash Rates:

Pushing Pascal to the Limits:

Okay so basically the idea was, with my gear I have laying around my place, can I actually mine? Everybody is on that Ethereum (ETH) craze but I was wanting something another step removed, something different, which landed me on Monero (XMR)! Now there's two desktops, an older laptop, and I'm considering the entire network to be a power usage for this as well. Each device has it's own 1500PFCLCD that keeps it online and running clean, though the laptop and network share one. Now I want to point out before I start getting into the stats, I just started out with XMR. I've spent a good amount of time doing little tweaks and optimizations, while watching system stability throughout the day. Though I'm positive more knowledgeable miners would be able to achieve much better results then what I'm showing here, though this is how we learn!


CPU #1 : i7-5930K @ 4.5ghz across 10 threads = 331.5 H/s GPU #1 : Geforce Titan X (Pascal) @ 2ghz/5ghz = 872.6 H/s POW #1 : 396W (monitors, speakers, mics off) CPU #2 : i7-5820K @ 4ghz across 11 threads = 304.8 H/s GPU #2 : Geforce GTX 1080 (Gigabyte WaterForce) @ 2ghz/5ghz = 581.7 H/s POW #2 : 324W (monitors & speakers turned off) CPU #3 : i7-3720QM @ 3.4ghz across 7 threads = 131.1 H/s POW #3 : 108W (laptop lid shut) (includes modem, router, & pi-hole) Total Hash Rate : 2221.7 H/s Total Power : 828W

Now this returns after all the power is accounted for $4.99 a day, or $149.72 a month! That's of course at this exact moments exchange rates though I'm not complaining for power that was going unharnessed beforehand. My gig internet is $200 a month, so it's paying for about 75% of my internet bill. Though as you can see, this is not how miners build rigs! A Titan X (Pascal) on an insane custom EKWB loop? Yeah that's not helping anyone make money mining, nobody would ever purchase this gear for mining. Though like I said, they're my personal machines, so I figured why not, let's see just what they'll do! Though I know you guys are going to want screenshots on everything, some text in a box just isn't going to cut it! So I've came prepared!
 
Box #1 Mining:


Box #1 Power Draw:


Box #2: Mining


Box #2: Power Draw:


Laptop Mining:


Laptop & Network Power Draw:


Profitability Calculator:



Overall this has been a fun day playing around with a newer crypto currency and looking to see what can actually be done with the gear laying around your home! I've got a couple old xeon boxes in storage that I might have to drag out, strip down, and see what they can mine in a linux environment. These two boxes still see daily use, so the miners have been dialed down a little bit to still allow for a responsive & easy to use interface. Though those boxes I could just go full tilt inside linux as they'd serve no other purpose. If I get around to this I'll be sure to post additional results! Anyways, I hope this was helpful or atleast entertaining to some of you out there.  
 
'Gobby
 
Update: I had already walked away from making this post when it hit me I had made a huge omission. Look at those overclocks on the graphics cards. Look a little odd? When you fire up the mining software it down clocks the memory on the cards. So once you've started mining (atleast on water), you can start pulling your clocks up again. Though, make sure you close afterburner before you close your miner if you're ever going to stop. Because once the miner closes, it'll return your clocks to normal, which means you've now got some stupid AF overclocks going on. So yeah, remember that little note. As you can see, the screenshots were taken literally like 6-7 hours into mining so the overclocks are in full force! Okay, now I'm going to walk away again. 

Okay so basically the idea was, with my gear I have laying around my place, can I actually mine? Everybody is on that Ethereum (ETH) craze but I was wanting something another step removed, something different, which landed me on Monero (XMR)! Now there's two desktops, an older laptop, and I'm considering the entire network to be a power usage for this as well. Each device has it's own 1500PFCLCD that keeps it online and running clean, though the laptop and network share one. Now I want to point out before I start getting into the stats, I just started out with XMR. I've spent a good amount of time doing little tweaks and optimizations, while watching system stability throughout the day. Though I'm positive more knowledgeable miners would be able to achieve much better results then what I'm showing here, though this is how we learn!


CPU #1 : i7-5930K @ 4.5ghz across 10 threads = 331.5 H/s GPU #1 : Geforce Titan X (Pascal) @ 2ghz/5ghz = 872.6 H/s POW #1 : 396W (monitors, speakers, mics off) CPU #2 : i7-5820K @ 4ghz across 11 threads = 304.8 H/s GPU #2 : Geforce GTX 1080 (Gigabyte WaterForce) @ 2ghz/5ghz = 581.7 H/s POW #2 : 324W (monitors & speakers turned off) CPU #3 : i7-3720QM @ 3.4ghz across 7 threads = 131.1 H/s POW #3 : 108W (laptop lid shut) (includes modem, router, & pi-hole) Total Hash Rate : 2221.7 H/s Total Power : 828W

Now this returns after all the power is accounted for $4.99 a day, or $149.72 a month! That's of course at this exact moments exchange rates though I'm not complaining for power that was going unharnessed beforehand. My gig internet is $200 a month, so it's paying for about 75% of my internet bill. Though as you can see, this is not how miners build rigs! A Titan X (Pascal) on an insane custom EKWB loop? Yeah that's not helping anyone make money mining, nobody would ever purchase this gear for mining. Though like I said, they're my personal machines, so I figured why not, let's see just what they'll do! Though I know you guys are going to want screenshots on everything, some text in a box just isn't going to cut it! So I've came prepared!
 
Box #1 Mining:


Box #1 Power Draw:


Box #2: Mining


Box #2: Power Draw:


Laptop Mining:


Laptop & Network Power Draw:


Profitability Calculator:



Overall this has been a fun day playing around with a newer crypto currency and looking to see what can actually be done with the gear laying around your home! I've got a couple old xeon boxes in storage that I might have to drag out, strip down, and see what they can mine in a linux environment. These two boxes still see daily use, so the miners have been dialed down a little bit to still allow for a responsive & easy to use interface. Though those boxes I could just go full tilt inside linux as they'd serve no other purpose. If I get around to this I'll be sure to post additional results! Anyways, I hope this was helpful or atleast entertaining to some of you out there.  
 
'Gobby
 
Update: I had already walked away from making this post when it hit me I had made a huge omission. Look at those overclocks on the graphics cards. Look a little odd? When you fire up the mining software it down clocks the memory on the cards. So once you've started mining (atleast on water), you can start pulling your clocks up again. Though, make sure you close afterburner before you close your miner if you're ever going to stop. Because once the miner closes, it'll return your clocks to normal, which means you've now got some stupid AF overclocks going on. So yeah, remember that little note. As you can see, the screenshots were taken literally like 6-7 hours into mining so the overclocks are in full force! Okay, now I'm going to walk away again. 

Introduction:
Sup LTT! I swear every time my buddy finds his way over here we spend a couple days just nerding out to the max. Projects that aren't even on our table just spontaneously happen. This time is no exception, woke up with no intention of screwing around with the LTE modem for this place but now we've built & spent all day testing two different satellite dish based boosters. The only empirical data we could gather through this process was my  modem's status page which gave us Signal Strength in dBm & then a Signal Quality rating as well. Though after a day spent trying all sorts of crazy things, watching those two numbers constantly, and trying to handle this in a scientific manner we've came up with some killer results. Night and day difference! Technically speaking, maybe this is all occurring for reasons we don't properly understand. Though the signal strength/quality gain is hard to argue with & it's noticeably faster for everybody across the network, so I'd call that a win.
 
The Setup:
This location is out in the middle of national forest, the closest cell tower is roughly five miles away. Forget power so everything is ran off generators / batteries. Options for decent internet out here are super limited, I've tried all the satellite internet options available, of which they all suck terrible ass. Finally I got temp phones with all the carriers that had towers around the area & just started speed testing the crap out of them. This worked so well in comparison to anything else I'd tried that I bought MOFI4500-4GXeLTE-V2's for all my locations, got unlimited data plans, and said welcome to the LTE revolution. Now these things are pretty cool they've got lots of neat features & run OpenWRT. As I mentioned in stevenkan's 4G/LTE hotspot thread, their customer service is absolutely terrible, plus their is $40 chinese versions of these exact models out there already. So I don't want to sound like a mofi fanboi even though I have enjoyed using their equipment so far.
 
Previous owners of the property had satellite television & left a dish attached to a cement block outside. Plus I still had a dish left over from trying out satellite internet options, one they never picked up or wanted back. Looking around this morning after having coffee we found this lovely guide; DIY 4G LTE Yagi Antenna in 10 Steps for $10 which was very inspiring. Though I tell you what, I don't have any of that gear, am out in the middle of no where for the holiday weekend, & am not driving the two+ hours back to the closest town to find those parts. Regardless if it's ten bucks or not, time & gas alone says no. So we started thinking what we could do that would have any effect at all. So we used Antenna Search.com to find the exact location of the only tower around & started moving the modem all over the place. Got the ladder out & tried mounting it to the roof on the second floor, sitting it in all the window seals, moving electronics, etc. The signal strength would range from -105 through -110 dBm & the quality would jump around like crazy but generally average from 15-20. Outside the numbers it just lists this generically as "poor signal quality" in the modem status page.
 
So we went out and took the dishes off both the old dish system & the old internet system. The when mounted them to studio lighting & green screen poles. Technically these are from Linco & are their 10ft editions. Not really sure what we were doing we used zip ties as a quick an easy solution to mounting things since we could undo them in a heart beat. We also tried to find other guides on the internet for people who have done this, most of which range widely in quality, generally on the terrible side. Most people that seemed more educated suggested mimicking the distance & angles perfectly from how the dish was originally used so we made sure to attempt that first before moving basically every piece possible into every possible position then watching for a while to see if the signal numbers improved at all. This was a day long process, we didn't want to act to quickly on anything though we also learned A LOT along the way. Whole lot of reinventing the wheel and just being noobs going on as curiosity truly was the name of the day. I kept taking pictures but in low light situations my phone did not do that well, I'll be sure to include them though so everybody can see how we progressed.
 
Interesting Notes:
The smaller television dish is actually a horizontal oval, we kept kidding it was the 16:9 dish. Though it was also more concave then the internet dish. Much lighter and easier to work with that's for sure. The receiver on it actually had three points laid out horizontal that matched the wider surface area of the dish. This turned out to be important later on while we were trying to get the two cellular antennas perfectly aligned for each dish's nuances. On the other hand the internet dish was easily three inches larger on the left and right plus was an actual circle so much wider top to bottom. Though it was almost flat in shape & it was used with a single receiver pointed right at the center of the dish. The weight of this unit actually made it much harder to move around & test, plus when fully extended ten feet into the air it wobbled pretty concernedly. It was so much harder to try and get the antennas aligned on this dish as well, the signal quality through the whole day was just worse no matter what we did, how we mounted things, or prayed to the cellular gods.
 
At the end of the day after slowly testing everything we could in different locations, adding wood blocks to change tilt, you name it. We started to see some pretty common themes that greatly impacted performance & ones that hindered it to laughable conditions. Finishing the day out with the smaller TV dish about five feet off the ground pointing out a glass door. We would also take our cell phones with apps like Network Signal Info & see if we couldn't boost them as well, which we could. So it was a decent second and third device to have around for playing with during the performance verification steps of each stage of what we were trying to do. I asked if he had any comments for this post & he said that he was really surprised with how precise you have to be & how much tiny amounts of movement mattered to overall signal quality. Getting the antennas to work with the dish is moving everything tiny amounts until you hit just the right spot. At that, he also said, it was neat even with the modem's slow status page poll rates you could see almost immediately when you found the sweet spot. Jumping on that point it was amazing to me as well. If you put the whole rig ten feet in the air and slowly worked it down inch by inch you'd find a huge different between say 7'6" and 7'. I didn't really expect that myself given I'd just been screwing these units into the ceilings / walls of places & walking away pretty happy.
 
The Results:
We managed to gain +10 dBm on our signal strength & +10 on the signal quality as well. Though one of the biggest differences is it just doesn't jump around like crazy. It use to spike left and right, no stability. Now it just sits at -98 / -10 with slight changes over time, mainly to the quality rating not the strength. Inside the software this took it from two bars of connectivity at a "poor" rating, to three bars at a "fair" rating. The entire network is considerably snappier & our speed test latency dropped about 25% on average. (from around 100ms to 75ms) Overall for something that cost no money & has no power going to it I'd say that's a massive win. Plus now it's all mobile! I can take this thing with me to other locations. Spin it, raise it, lower it, change it's pitch, completely aim it wherever I need to. Should make finding that sweet spot much easier in the future, plus just knowing WTF we're doing probably helps as well. Was a neat project for the day, sure it could've been done faster but we really wanted to see what would happen if we tested basically every possible outcome.
 
The Winning Idea:

Both Attempts Side By Side:

Zip Tie Mounting FTW:
 
Final Positioning & Working Version:
 

I literally just RMA'd a watercooled 970 to EVGA and on the special instructions list once a tech has already approved your issue for an RMA it says "please remove any after market modifications & return the card in stock configuration as purchased". The only thing it said voided the warrenty was if you had physically damaged the card in any way and / or the serial sticker was removed from the back of the card.