Suggestions on converting a nice gaming PC to a mining rig.

[Mk7-Golf-R]

I have a 5930k with gtx 1080s in sli. I don't game on it nearly as much as I thought I would, so I want to convert it to run nicehash.

 

ive also found a Evga 1080 ti sc2 that I want to add to it.  What is the best way to go about it? My plan is move the cards out of the case and run them from a second psu. And build a stand for the cards. 

 

Another possibilty is to mount the 1080 ti in the case and run the two 1080's outside the case. Someone said a card would have to remain straight on the motherboard be able to play games, is that correct?

 

 

Any help with tips or suggestions is appreciated. 

 

Here is my setup.

 

[Canada EH]

Might be better to sell your current 1080 gpu's and do not buy anymore gpu's

 

gpu can be any direction, just gotta watch airflow, you can buy risers

[Mk7-Golf-R]

20 minutes ago, Canada EH said:

Might be better to sell your current 1080 gpu's and do not buy anymore gpu's

 

gpu can be any direction, just gotta watch airflow, you can buy risers

Why sell them? They are making $12 a day right now with nicehash. 

 

I got lucky and got the 1080 ti for 700. They are going for $1200-$1300 on eBay. The monthly estimate for a 1080 ti is  $240 on nicehash. 

[mariushm]

Don't use nicehash, just mine directly some coin, whatever is more profitable for your cards. See WhatToMine website to figure out what coins are profitable for you, and which have some big market cap (so you can easily exchange them for dollars) ... for example here's calculation for two GTX 1080 and one GTX 1080 ti : LINK

So for example ZClassic , ZCash , Zencash would work well for you ... all use the same algorithm so you'd use the same mining software to mine either of them

 

ZCash you can sell on sites like this one (i've used them, they work fine) : https://anycoindirect.eu/en/sell/zcash

 

Nicehash has high withdraw fees, and you can only withdraw once you reach some high amounts like 100-150$ or more.

 

It's simple... download a wallet for that coin, find a good mining pool for that coin (one that has lots of miners and decent hash rate) and follow the instructions on that mining pool to set up the mining software. Leave the miner running... once you reach the minimum payout for that pool, they send that amount to your wallet. 

You can then use various services to convert your amount to dollars or whatever.

 

[CyberFern0]

4 minutes ago, mariushm said:

Don't use nicehash, just mine directly some coin, whatever is more profitable for your cards. See WhatToMine website to figure out what coins are profitable for you, and which have some big market cap (so you can easily exchange them for dollars) ... for example here's calculation for two GTX 1080 and one GTX 1080 ti : LINK

So for example ZClassic , ZCash , Zencash would work well for you ... all use the same algorithm so you'd use the same mining software to mine either of them

 

ZCash you can sell on sites like this one (i've used them, they work fine) : https://anycoindirect.eu/en/sell/zcash

 

Nicehash has high withdraw fees, and you can only withdraw once you reach some high amounts like 100-150$ or more.

 

It's simple... download a wallet for that coin, find a good mining pool for that coin (one that has lots of miners and decent hash rate) and follow the instructions on that mining pool to set up the mining software. Leave the miner running... once you reach the minimum payout for that pool, they send that amount to your wallet. 

You can then use various services to convert your amount to dollars or whatever.

 

Isn't mining free money?

[Mk7-Golf-R]

4 minutes ago, mariushm said:

Don't use nicehash, just mine directly some coin, whatever is more profitable for your cards. See WhatToMine website to figure out what coins are profitable for you, and which have some big market cap (so you can easily exchange them for dollars) ... for example here's calculation for two GTX 1080 and one GTX 1080 ti : LINK

So for example ZClassic , ZCash , Zencash would work well for you ... all use the same algorithm so you'd use the same mining software to mine either of them

 

ZCash you can sell on sites like this one (i've used them, they work fine) : https://anycoindirect.eu/en/sell/zcash

 

Nicehash has high withdraw fees, and you can only withdraw once you reach some high amounts like 100-150$ or more.

 

It's simple... download a wallet for that coin, find a good mining pool for that coin (one that has lots of miners and decent hash rate) and follow the instructions on that mining pool to set up the mining software. Leave the miner running... once you reach the minimum payout for that pool, they send that amount to your wallet. 

You can then use various services to convert your amount to dollars or whatever.

 

Thanks for the tip, I'm using nicehash because it seems like the most simple to get going. I'm completely new to this and have alot of research to do.

[Mk7-Golf-R]

4 minutes ago, CyberFern0 said:

Isn't mining free money?

So far it has been for me, I already had the stuff. People in another forum I'm on are investing stupid amounts of money building mining rigs. 

 

I'm talking like  8, gtx 1070's on  multiple motherboards. 

 

With The current payout rates though, they will breakeven on them in only three or four months. 

[knightslugger]

my suggestion is to dedicate a low power B250 board to it and run it off a USB drive. I'm running a ridiculously spec'd MB with three 1070's (my old gaming rig without the 6700k) and it's killing me. ...Like watching a race car ferrying sightseers around town. personally if you don't need the extra 1080, or end up with that 1080ti, pull the 1080's out of the rig and put them in a B250-BTC board with risers, some cheap ram, and a 2-core celeron. stuff it in a cold dark room and never look at it again.

 

believe me, once you start, you will want more.

 

if you use NH, use their wallet and get a Coinbase account and verify yourself so you can withdraw to fiat. for low power rigs, that's the smart play.

[knightslugger]

22 minutes ago, CyberFern0 said:

Isn't mining free money?

i donno who told you that, but i had to buy all my cards, and i pay the electricity bill on top of it. believe me it is not free money. far from it.

[WkdPaul]

36 minutes ago, mariushm said:

Nicehash has high withdraw fees, and you can only withdraw once you reach some high amounts like 100-150$ or more.

There's a way around it, last 3 payments I got were all 0.001 BTC and I transferred them for free on my external wallet

[Canada EH]

$12/day after electricity cost is pretty good, thats $360/month for 2 gpus, throw in a 3rd for $800-$1000 and get $18/day or $540/month.

 

Yeaaaa you gotta point, if those numbers line up. Get your credit card out and buy an extra 2 or 3 GTX-1080's, on 4 making $24/day or $720/month, doing fuck all but minus electricity costs.

 

Man I gotta seriously look into mining, I got some money saved up plus credit card. I gotta look at my utility bill and see what my electricity rate is. Everytime I think about that I think extension cord to neighbors house, oh me bad cant do that, no! no!

 

Whats the 1080's hash rate?

[Mk7-Golf-R]

5 hours ago, knightslugger said:

my suggestion is to dedicate a low power B250 board to it and run it off a USB drive. I'm running a ridiculously spec'd MB with three 1070's (my old gaming rig without the 6700k) and it's killing me. ...Like watching a race car ferrying sightseers around town. personally if you don't need the extra 1080, or end up with that 1080ti, pull the 1080's out of the rig and put them in a B250-BTC board with risers, some cheap ram, and a 2-core celeron. stuff it in a cold dark room and never look at it again.

 

believe me, once you start, you will want more.

 

if you use NH, use their wallet and get a Coinbase account and verify yourself so you can withdraw to fiat. for low power rigs, that's the smart play.

Thanks for your help. About how much do you think it would cost to build a low power rig, considering I already have the cards? I have the total of three now. I very rarely even use the computer I have now, is why I was going to convert it.

 

but if it's cheap enough I can build one.

[knightslugger]

6 hours ago, Mk7-Golf-R said:

Thanks for your help. About how much do you think it would cost to build a low power rig, considering I already have the cards? I have the total of three now. I very rarely even use the computer I have now, is why I was going to convert it.

 

but if it's cheap enough I can build one.

about $500 give or take.

[Daniel644]

16 hours ago, Mk7-Golf-R said:

Thanks for the tip, I'm using nicehash because it seems like the most simple to get going. I'm completely new to this and have alot of research to do.

you can make Nicehash more profitable, DON'T use the V2 Miner they list as being "for Nvidia" download the Legacy Miner listed as being "for AMD" go into the benchmarks and limit the GPU benchmark the the Nist5 algo that uses Ccminer_Alexis this has been the highest paying coin on Nicehash for a while now and will give you a 10% boost in daily earnings.

 

No point in spending money on a lower power rig unless you have sky high electricity costs, for example my 6700k EARNS more then it costs to run it due to the value coins are at now, so building a low power rig is just spending more money, something that would be better would be to put in the time to tweak the GPU settings, my 1080ti's like to run around a 72% power limit with a +200 on the core clock and a -300 on the mem clock (changing to these settings from the +800 mem clock I used to run for ethereum mining resulted in an 8-10% increase in hashrates on Nicehash. Basically the goal is to find the highest hashrate ou can get by tweaking your core and mem clocks then once you find that sweet spot start lowering the Power Limit as much as you can before you see a hashrate dropoff (which generally occurs in the low 70%'s).

 

Also remember Cryptocurrency just took a MAJOR dive in the last 24 hours so any earnings today are much lower then what they where just a few days ago, the estimators on Nicehash fluctuate based on the price of bitcoin and how consistently you are mining with them. and remember to look at actually daily earning, not estimated earnings, that jumps around a lot. If you mine for 12 hours straight noting how much "unpaid" you have when you start the 12 hours and when you end the 12 hours you can do your own math for how many BTC you will actually make that day.

[Mk7-Golf-R]

Well it's down 42% 2 days after joining in. For some reason I feel like I jinxed it.

 

ive always had terrible luck when it comes to gambling. That's why I don't normally do it.

 

to quote the movie airplane, "It looks like I picked the wrong week to quit amphetamines".

[WkdPaul]

I know it looks bad that it lost lots of it's value, but this isn't the first or last time it will happen, price will go back up with time.

[Daniel644]

16 minutes ago, Mk7-Golf-R said:

Well it's down 42% 2 days after joining in. For some reason I feel like I jinxed it.

 

ive always had terrible luck when it comes to gambling. That's why I don't normally do it.

 

to quote the movie airplane, "It looks like I picked the wrong week to quit amphetamines".

just dig in and keep going, as long as you are turning a profit thats all that matters, hold it if you can, if you look at the 1 year graphs the coins are pretty much where they should be for steady growth outside of the massive spike that happened around Late November/ Early December

[Mk7-Golf-R]

42 minutes ago, wkdpaul said:

I know it looks bad that it lost lots of it's value, but this isn't the first or last time it will happen, price will go back up with time.

If I want to use the computer every once in a while to game, would it be best to put the 1080 ti in the case and run the 2 1080's externally with another psu?

 

also, it's hard to find large wattage psu' right now and I want to save money, would a 600-700 watt psu be a good place holder for running 2 1080's?

 

 

or could I run them all externally and have the same performance? Someone had told me one would need to stay on the motherboard. Ideally I'd run them all external if I could.

[Daniel644]

8 minutes ago, Mk7-Golf-R said:

If I want to use the computer every once in a while to game, would it be best to put the 1080 ti in the case and run the 2 1080's externally with another psu?

 

also, it's hard to find large wattage psu' right now and I want to save money, would a 600-700 watt psu be a good place holder for running 2 1080's?

 

 

or could I run them all externally and have the same performance? Someone had told me one would need to stay on the motherboard. Ideally I'd run them all external if I could.

my entire 6700k and dual 1080ti''s when dialed into 72% power limit pulls 460ish watts from the wall, thats around 175watt per GPU.

[Mk7-Golf-R]

4 minutes ago, Daniel644 said:

my entire 6700k and dual 1080ti''s when dialed into 72% power limit pulls 460ish watts from the wall, thats around 175watt per GPU.

I have a Evga 850 watt psu now. It wouldn't be a good idea to run all three cards on it,  even turned down would it?

[Daniel644]

1 minute ago, Mk7-Golf-R said:

I have a Evga 850 watt psu now. It wouldn't be a good idea to run all three cards on it,  even turned down would it?

I think you could if you first setup 2 profiles, 1 for the overclock and lower power limit and the other just a lower power limit, when you get ready to mine first enable lower power limit profile, then start mining then switch to the lower power limit and OC profile.

 

I say to do this because some OC's can be perfectly stable for mining but as soon as you close the miner the video driver will crash, you definitely can't game on the system and you should for sure buy a Kill-A-Watt or similar meter so you can see the EXACT amount of power you are pulling from the wall, the question is how much your older CPU will pull, I did a test run with an old Q6600 system and that guy idles the better part of 50-100 watts higher, heck it idles at a higher power draw then my 6700k pulls while mining, so you really need to know the power draw of the system to determine whether you can or not.

[knightslugger]

7 minutes ago, Mk7-Golf-R said:

I have a Evga 850 watt psu now. It wouldn't be a good idea to run all three cards on it,  even turned down would it?

1080ti runs at about 200w when tuned, 250w full tilt. 1080's i imagine are about 150w each with a tune.

 

[Mk7-Golf-R]

26 minutes ago, knightslugger said:

1080ti runs at about 200w when tuned, 250w full tilt. 1080's i imagine are about 150w each with a tune.

 

I'm going to pick up a kill a watt today. I'm waiting on the risers from Amazon. I haven't hooked all three up yet. I'll hopefully see how many watts my current setup is pulling.

[Mk7-Golf-R]

1 hour ago, Daniel644 said:

just dig in and keep going, as long as you are turning a profit thats all that matters, hold it if you can, if you look at the 1 year graphs the coins are pretty much where they should be for steady growth outside of the massive spike that happened around Late November/ Early December

I hope your right, here's the chart from December to now. How will this effect nice hash and crypto? Basically cut the profits in half? 

 

A lot of people built super expensive rigs hoping for a 3 month return on investment. That's out the window if you recently got in.

 

[Daniel644]

8 minutes ago, Mk7-Golf-R said:

I hope your right, here's the chart from December to now. How will this effect nice hash and crypto? Basically cut the profits in half? 

 

A lot of people built super expensive rigs hoping for a 3 month return on investment. That's out the window if you recently got in.

 

 

I was always seeing the medium price of 15k for all my calculations, the 19k I knew was way to high, but it was being pretty steady around 15k so I used those numbers in my estimate, I'm way down, about 2/3rd now so 3 months payback will now be 4 months, no one should have considered the 19k high as a realistic stable number for now, it may return later this year, time will tell on that, I actually have on order 2 more cards right now and was prepping to build a second tower using a Ryzen 1600 (because they where pre-crash pulling like 2-3 bucks a day, but not sure I want to place that order now, but I need something to run the other 2 cards with and I'd rather put the money into a ryzen system then riser cards, the riser cards are spent money, the Ryzen system can pay for itself and be resold at half it's value later on.