Considering Mining On Gaming Rig While Sleeping

[AdvocateOfNyx]

I was thinking that I could use the extra money to go towards a new monitor or CPU upgrade, so why not take a shot at mining during the hours that I sleep?  I only restart my computer once or twice a week anyways so it won't inconvenience me too much.  I'd like to ask what options I have?  I currently am considering two different option
s.

1. Rent out my GPU power through NiceHash.  I've heard they don't pay great all the time and have lots of fees.  From what I can gather from their subreddit, these last 20 or so hours have been relatively good rates.  My one Vega 56 card says it's earning about $4.5 a day.  Considering I paid around $220 for it, I'm inclined to agree that seems like a relatively good rate.  I've left it running for somewhere between 60 and 120 minutes and made 0.00800 mBTC.

 

2. Is to mine Ethereum in a pool.  I was thinking of using wineth.net.  I haven't used it yet so I'm not sure if it uses it's own pool (I'm imagining it does based on it's "one click" promise) or if I could use something like ethermine.org pools.  I haven't tried it yet so I don't know how profitable it would be, but I'm willing to bet that mining directly is probably more profitable than renting to someone else to mine?  (the downside being it's more about your poor having luck from actually solving the block instead of getting paid a set amount if I understand correctly).

 

I've also seen a couple people saying pretty bad things about NiceHash, while I see others saying that for beginners it's a pretty useful program.  I'm not really doing this for profit, more just because I think it's fun to have some stake in the crypto scene and making some money to spend on more computer upgrades is a plus.  That being said, I'd like to at least pick the most efficient low effort way of doing this.

 

If anyone has any other suggestions for someone who wants to just give crypto a shot, I'd really appreciate the advice.  Please don't suggest command line only programs, I'm just not comfortable enough using them.  I'd much prefer something with a GUI, which is why the two programs I mentioned both have one.

 

Here are my specs, like I said I have a Vega 56 which I figure is pretty much the only relevant thing in this case.  Recently changed out my CPU/Mobo/RAM and PCPartPicker doesn't show them so I had to add them as custom parts.

PCPartPicker Part List

Type	Item	Price
Memory	G.Skill Ripjaws X Series 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR3-2400 CL11 Memory	$89.99 @ Newegg
Storage	Kingston SSDNow UV400 240 GB 2.5" Solid State Drive	$45.00 @ Amazon
Storage	PNY CS900 500 GB 2.5" Solid State Drive	$52.99 @ Amazon
Storage	Western Digital Blue 3 TB 3.5" 5400RPM Internal Hard Drive	$74.15 @ Amazon
Video Card	Sapphire Radeon RX VEGA 56 8 GB PULSE Video Card
Case	Raidmax Smilodon ATX-612WB ATX Mid Tower Case w/500 W Power Supply
Power Supply	Thermaltake Smart 750 W 80+ Bronze Certified ATX Power Supply
Custom	i5-4670k	Purchased
Custom	Asrock Z87E-ITX
	Prices include shipping, taxes, rebates, and discounts
	Total	$262.13
	Generated by PCPartPicker 2021-02-06 11:13 EST-0500

 

[Applefreak]

8 minutes ago, AdvocateOfNyx said:

I was thinking that I could use the extra money to go towards a new monitor or CPU upgrade, so why not take a shot at mining during the hours that I sleep?  I only restart my computer once or twice a week anyways so it won't inconvenience me too much.  I'd like to ask what options I have?  I currently am considering two different option
s.

1. Rent out my GPU power through NiceHash.  I've heard they don't pay great all the time and have lots of fees.  From what I can gather from their subreddit, these last 20 or so hours have been relatively good rates.  My one Vega 56 card says it's earning about $4.5 a day.  Considering I paid around $220 for it, I'm inclined to agree that seems like a relatively good rate.  I've left it running for somewhere between 60 and 120 minutes and made 0.00800 mBTC.

 

2. Is to mine Ethereum in a pool.  I was thinking of using wineth.net.  I haven't used it yet so I'm not sure if it uses it's own pool (I'm imagining it does based on it's "one click" promise) or if I could use something like ethermine.org pools.  I haven't tried it yet so I don't know how profitable it would be, but I'm willing to bet that mining directly is probably more profitable than renting to someone else to mine?  (the downside being it's more about your poor having luck from actually solving the block instead of getting paid a set amount if I understand correctly).

 

I've also seen a couple people saying pretty bad things about NiceHash, while I see others saying that for beginners it's a pretty useful program.  I'm not really doing this for profit, more just because I think it's fun to have some stake in the crypto scene and making some money to spend on more computer upgrades is a plus.  That being said, I'd like to at least pick the most efficient low effort way of doing this.

 

If anyone has any other suggestions for someone who wants to just give crypto a shot, I'd really appreciate the advice.  Please don't suggest command line only programs, I'm just not comfortable enough using them.  I'd much prefer something with a GUI, which is why the two programs I mentioned both have one.

 

Here are my specs, like I said I have a Vega 56 which I figure is pretty much the only relevant thing in this case.  Recently changed out my CPU/Mobo/RAM and PCPartPicker doesn't show them so I had to add them as custom parts.

PCPartPicker Part List

Type	Item	Price
Memory	G.Skill Ripjaws X Series 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR3-2400 CL11 Memory	$89.99 @ Newegg
Storage	Kingston SSDNow UV400 240 GB 2.5" Solid State Drive	$45.00 @ Amazon
Storage	PNY CS900 500 GB 2.5" Solid State Drive	$52.99 @ Amazon
Storage	Western Digital Blue 3 TB 3.5" 5400RPM Internal Hard Drive	$74.15 @ Amazon
Video Card	Sapphire Radeon RX VEGA 56 8 GB PULSE Video Card
Case	Raidmax Smilodon ATX-612WB ATX Mid Tower Case w/500 W Power Supply
Power Supply	Thermaltake Smart 750 W 80+ Bronze Certified ATX Power Supply
Custom	i5-4670k	Purchased
Custom	Asrock Z87E-ITX
	Prices include shipping, taxes, rebates, and discounts
	Total	$262.13
	Generated by PCPartPicker 2021-02-06 11:13 EST-0500

 

Does your calculation account for the extra power draw your card will have while mining? In most cases you will actually loose money because of that. Also keep in mind that the card is more likely to die on you while mining (stressing the card to limit). Given current shortages, you may not be able to replace it for months. So keep that in mind.

[AdvocateOfNyx]

Just now, Applefreak said:

Does your calculation account for the extra power draw your card will have while mining? In most cases you will actually loose money because of that. Also keep in mind that the card is more likely to die on you while mining (stressing the card to limit). Given current shortages, you may not be able to replace it for months. So keep that in mind.

I'm not really planning on doing this long term, mostly just get a few dollars in some crypto so I can have more fun watching it go up and down.  If I get $5 in bitcoin and a couple dollars in doge I'll be happy.  Just wondering what the best way to do it is.  I'd hope that my card won't die from a couple nights of mining, if it did I'm guessing it would have died from gaming for a couple days anyways.

[jaslion]

12 minutes ago, AdvocateOfNyx said:

I'm not really planning on doing this long term, mostly just get a few dollars in some crypto so I can have more fun watching it go up and down.  If I get $5 in bitcoin and a couple dollars in doge I'll be happy.  Just wondering what the best way to do it is.  I'd hope that my card won't die from a couple nights of mining, if it did I'm guessing it would have died from gaming for a couple days anyways.

Then your just better off buying it

[AdvocateOfNyx]

7 minutes ago, jaslion said:

Then your just better off buying it

I might be, but I think it's more fun to do it this way.  

[jaslion]

12 minutes ago, AdvocateOfNyx said:

I might be, but I think it's more fun to do it this way.  

What are you gonna expect from it? It's going to perform horribly it's first gen thunderbolt far too slow for any useable gpu that is better than what is normally shipped in your imac. You can throw legit all the money in the world at it and it will still be worse than stock config.

[AdvocateOfNyx]

10 minutes ago, jaslion said:

What are you gonna expect from it? It's going to perform horribly it's first gen thunderbolt far too slow for any useable gpu that is better than what is normally shipped in your imac. You can throw legit all the money in the world at it and it will still be worse than stock config.

I um... don't have an imac?  What is this about?

[tikker]

1 hour ago, AdvocateOfNyx said:

I've also seen a couple people saying pretty bad things about NiceHash, while I see others saying that for beginners it's a pretty useful program.

People just like to bash on NiceHash because of the relatively high fees once you want to get stuff out. Like you say, it is aimed to be an easy to use one click solution and so isn't for people who care about getting the lowest fees possible.

1 hour ago, AdvocateOfNyx said:

(the downside being it's more about your poor having luck from actually solving the block instead of getting paid a set amount if I understand correctly).

That's the whole premise of mining in a pool. Solo mining you have a pretty low chance nowadays to solve a block of e.g. ETH. In a mining pool you quite literally amass a pool of hashpower to solve blocks and rewards will be given based on how much you contributed.

1 hour ago, AdvocateOfNyx said:

I haven't tried it yet so I don't know how profitable it would be, but I'm willing to bet that mining directly is probably more profitable than renting to someone else to mine?

All depends on the market. NiceHash can be more profitable. It depends on how much people are willing to pay for it and you will always be paid in BTC. If you want other coins you'll have to find another service or mine directly in said pools.

 

Keep in mind that mining pools will typically have minimum payouts associated to them. For example, ethermine has a minimum payout of 0.05 ETH when I checked. That means you will not get paid / have to option to withdraw to your wallet until you have mined that much. On my 1080 Ti that equates to about a month of mining.

 

1 hour ago, AdvocateOfNyx said:

If I get $5 in bitcoin and a couple dollars in doge I'll be happy.

Keep in mind Dogecoin is a literal meme and purely a joke, not a "real" (for lack of better term) crypto currency. Only buy it if you want to meme and have money to burn. Unless you are just interested in mining for the sake of it, for such a small amount of money I'd just buy some crypto of choice really.

[AdvocateOfNyx]

48 minutes ago, tikker said:

Keep in mind that mining pools will typically have minimum payouts associated to them.

This is exactly why I went with NiceHash.  They said it will automatically pay out as long as I have like $0.40 in BTC, meaning it'd be pretty easy to cash out whenever I wanted.

50 minutes ago, tikker said:

Keep in mind Dogecoin is a literal meme and purely a joke, not a "real" (for lack of better term) crypto currency.

Yep, I'm aware.  Just figure it's fun to be part of the hype train, and hence why I'm not actually putting any money in to this.  As far as I'm concerned it's all money that could disappear tomorrow and I'm not gonna cry about it.  I'm just exploring how mining, trading, converting, sending/receiving, and other crypto basics work.   

 

52 minutes ago, tikker said:

People just like to bash on NiceHash because of the relatively high fees once you want to get stuff out. Like you say, it is aimed to be an easy to use one click solution and so isn't for people who care about getting the lowest fees possible.

So should be okay for my use case?  Where like even 10% of $5 won't hurt too bad?

[Kilrah]

2 hours ago, AdvocateOfNyx said:

They said it will automatically pay out as long as I have like $0.40 in BTC, meaning it'd be pretty easy to cash out whenever I wanted.

That is the payout to your nicehash wallet. To get it out of there you need 1mBTC or about $40 worth right now, from their estimator around 10 days with your R56 running 24/7.

[tikker]

4 hours ago, AdvocateOfNyx said:

This is exactly why I went with NiceHash.  They said it will automatically pay out as long as I have like $0.40 in BTC, meaning it'd be pretty easy to cash out whenever I wanted.

Yep, I'm aware.  Just figure it's fun to be part of the hype train, and hence why I'm not actually putting any money in to this.  As far as I'm concerned it's all money that could disappear tomorrow and I'm not gonna cry about it.  I'm just exploring how mining, trading, converting, sending/receiving, and other crypto basics work.   

 

So should be okay for my use case?  Where like even 10% of $5 won't hurt too bad?

I mean that's up to you. 10% is 10%. I would say it's fine to let it sit in your NiceHash wallet, we're not talking big numbers anyway. As @Kilrah says there are minimum withdrawal amounts as well, which means you can't withdraw lower amounts to a wallet. Getting it out as normal dollars/euros/whatever is different story altogether again.

[Poet129]

@AdvocateOfNyx

I recommend you salad.io, They are a much better mining platform with much simpler payouts as well.

[Kilrah]

Salad only allows you to use what you make on their store though if I understand well?

[Kilrah]

For the record I've started giving a try at nicehash on Sat when this discussion was going on and I've got about 0.63mBTC or approx $30 in my wallet by now (haven't been mining during the nights except last one).

Hadn't realized mining was actually profitable with a GPU again at these rates, I get about 5-6x my electricity cost with a well tuned 3080 @ 230W / 90MH/s / 400KH/J.

I get why miners scrounge all the 30 series cards now...

 

 

[airborne spoon]

nicehash is expensive fees and yes its for noobs because its easy to use but that ease comes with those high fees. but i digress.

 

Solo mining is fun and if you hit a block its pretty damn awesome, i solo mine BTC and i solo mine ETH i only send 50mh/s to ETH and i send 5th/s to BTC all the rest of my hashing power goes to pools for each of those coins. Solo mining is like the lotto you could mine for 10 min and hit a BTC block or mine for 27 years and not hit a damn thing. I hit a BTC block after 13 hours of solo mining when i was pushing 130th/s to it. I havent hit an ETH block yet but its a lotto so whatever.

 

Pool mining will give you constant payouts i get 0.01BTC every 2 weeks and i get 0.05 ETH every 2 or 3 days so you're still making money but the reward isn't nearly as high.

 

If you run ETH mining anywhere besides nicehash i recommend using phoenix miner, its very easy to config and the page is extremely well written for how to config and what everything does.

[AngryBeaver]

So I am going to chime in here. I have been mining when not using my gaming rig and it is something like a 2750% profit margin when looking at energy cost.

 

Now that I have shown the wife the fact it is very profitable and relatively easy... I am going to invest between 8-10k on a mining setup. Which with current eth value my payback period would be sub 3 months at which h point it becomes all profit. 10k investment will land me enough to turn a little over 4k in profit monthly (after power costs)

 

The hardest part is getting the gpus since I am limited to 1 per 30 days here, but with myself, wife, and a teenager I can score 3 per 30 days possibly more depending on friend family availability on drop days.

 

My new ultimate goal is going to be aim for 5-6k of passive income after other costs (including taxes) as my wife isn't working I will probably let her claim it and all the tax write offs you can also claim as a business expense.

 

I think with how things are playing out it is a good idea and a pretty straight forward investment with minimal risks. There is always the risk of the bubble bursting, but as we have seen several times it recovers and comes back stronger.

[Mick Naughty]

Free money, might as well. Always a lot of people that wish they got into it. 
Hell just a few cards pay the mortgage. 
Isn’t for everyone though. Long term investment is hard. 

[Kilrah]

Pisses me off I didn't notice this 2 months ago when I had a 2nd 3080 in my hands after receiving 2 orders at the same time, sold it on but I should really have kept it...

[Jrasero]

On 2/6/2021 at 11:14 AM, AdvocateOfNyx said:

I was thinking that I could use the extra money to go towards a new monitor or CPU upgrade, so why not take a shot at mining during the hours that I sleep?  I only restart my computer once or twice a week anyways so it won't inconvenience me too much.  I'd like to ask what options I have?  I currently am considering two different option
s.

1. Rent out my GPU power through NiceHash.  I've heard they don't pay great all the time and have lots of fees.  From what I can gather from their subreddit, these last 20 or so hours have been relatively good rates.  My one Vega 56 card says it's earning about $4.5 a day.  Considering I paid around $220 for it, I'm inclined to agree that seems like a relatively good rate.  I've left it running for somewhere between 60 and 120 minutes and made 0.00800 mBTC.

 

2. Is to mine Ethereum in a pool.  I was thinking of using wineth.net.  I haven't used it yet so I'm not sure if it uses it's own pool (I'm imagining it does based on it's "one click" promise) or if I could use something like ethermine.org pools.  I haven't tried it yet so I don't know how profitable it would be, but I'm willing to bet that mining directly is probably more profitable than renting to someone else to mine?  (the downside being it's more about your poor having luck from actually solving the block instead of getting paid a set amount if I understand correctly).

 

I've also seen a couple people saying pretty bad things about NiceHash, while I see others saying that for beginners it's a pretty useful program.  I'm not really doing this for profit, more just because I think it's fun to have some stake in the crypto scene and making some money to spend on more computer upgrades is a plus.  That being said, I'd like to at least pick the most efficient low effort way of doing this.

 

If anyone has any other suggestions for someone who wants to just give crypto a shot, I'd really appreciate the advice.  Please don't suggest command line only programs, I'm just not comfortable enough using them.  I'd much prefer something with a GUI, which is why the two programs I mentioned both have one.

 

Here are my specs, like I said I have a Vega 56 which I figure is pretty much the only relevant thing in this case.  Recently changed out my CPU/Mobo/RAM and PCPartPicker doesn't show them so I had to add them as custom parts.

PCPartPicker Part List

Type	Item	Price
Memory	G.Skill Ripjaws X Series 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR3-2400 CL11 Memory	$89.99 @ Newegg
Storage	Kingston SSDNow UV400 240 GB 2.5" Solid State Drive	$45.00 @ Amazon
Storage	PNY CS900 500 GB 2.5" Solid State Drive	$52.99 @ Amazon
Storage	Western Digital Blue 3 TB 3.5" 5400RPM Internal Hard Drive	$74.15 @ Amazon
Video Card	Sapphire Radeon RX VEGA 56 8 GB PULSE Video Card
Case	Raidmax Smilodon ATX-612WB ATX Mid Tower Case w/500 W Power Supply
Power Supply	Thermaltake Smart 750 W 80+ Bronze Certified ATX Power Supply
Custom	i5-4670k	Purchased
Custom	Asrock Z87E-ITX
	Prices include shipping, taxes, rebates, and discounts
	Total	$262.13
	Generated by PCPartPicker 2021-02-06 11:13 EST-0500

 

I use nice hash as a casual miner and for the 2% they take out of my two rigs it's not a big deal.  Now if you had 100 GPUs and did this for a living sure you would want to maximize every single cent possible and not auto mine.  For me it's not worth the hassle since again I am a casual miner and I am looking to do this just to make some cash on the side with my RTX 3080 and 3090.  I spent a lot of money on them cards I might as well use them when I am not gaming...

I live in NYC so power is high but even with power in the equation I project to make $600-$700 a month profit  

[Jrasero]

13 hours ago, Kilrah said:

Pisses me off I didn't notice this 2 months ago when I had a 2nd 3080 in my hands after receiving 2 orders at the same time, sold it on but I should really have kept it...

lol I know the feeling.  I had an extra RTX 3080 and RTX 3090, but I sold the 2nd RTX 3080 and returned my 1st RTX 3090.  Also I just started mining in Feb.  Now is the best time mine since in Spring Summer you have to start thinking about AC

[Kilrah]

On 2/9/2021 at 11:15 PM, airborne spoon said:

nicehash is expensive fees and yes its for noobs because its easy to use but that ease comes with those high fees.

Frankly at the moment the pool/payout fees are negligible compared to the current ridiculous transaction fees if you actually want to do something with your coin...

 

 

[Maddias]

On 2/6/2021 at 5:25 PM, Applefreak said:

Also keep in mind that the card is more likely to die on you while mining (stressing the card to limit)

I just started mining on my gaming rig, and I'm confused why people always say this, don't all miners underclock their cards for better efficiency? While I hear someone like JayzTwoCents saying that not overclocking your card is leaving free performance on the table and it won't hurt it's lifespan in a noticeable way.

 

With my RTX 3070 underclocked and never having reached over 45c while mining  for over 16 hours straight, (according to HWmonitor) I don't see how that could possibly be bad for my GPU?

[Mick Naughty]

If mining is bad, using components period is bad. 
I think people just like to make stuff up for the hell of it. 

[Maddias]

Yea I see your point, like buying an expensive GPU and not using it because "it reduces its lifespan".