Litecoin mining questions

[Basher99]

So first time poster, long time lurker... I have a few questions about litecoin mining and how it all works before I make the jump.

 

I have a couple of spare PCs(1 dell and 1 self built that is not finished atm of post) that I can sick on this project.

The system specs are as follows

 

Dell: I5 2320 3.0Ghz CPU

        GT530 GPU

        4GB ram(i think)

 

Custom: FX4100(plan to OC abit, it has reached 4.7GHz before)

              GPU1 - 7950 2GB

              GPU2 - 7850 1GB(optional)

              8GB ram

 

I was wondering what I could expect in term of income from this kind of setup.  I can find hashrates for the GPUs pretty easily but not the CPUs... as it stands the GT530 is about worthless for mining.. so I might try and find a single slot amd card to replace that cluncker lol..

 

I have checked my power cost in IL.. $0.09/KWh so the calculator sites say with litecoin i should see roughly $80-$90/month at the current exchange..

 

Any tips or thoughts on this would be awesome

[RuecanOnRails]

Here is a large list of expected hash rates for various pieces of hardware.

http://litecoin.info/Mining_Hardware_Comparison

I see it doesn't list your stats. I would recommend testing it and submitting the data yourself to help make the charts more thorough. I wouldn't worry too much about mining on cpu's you won't get a high enough hash to make it worthwhile.

 

You can then add up you're total hash and throw it into a calculator such as

http://litecoinpool.org/calc

The monthly amount it gives you does take into account a steady increase in difficulty (should not be relied on as hash rates can jump difficulty quickly)

That should give you a rough idea of what to expect.

 

In general CPU's won't do much in terms of mining unless you have access to a botnet. Mining with GPU AND CPU at the same time will likely lower overall hashrate. Litecoin requires some cpu and ram usage. You might be able to find a good balance of CPU and GPU, but it might increase your power costs.

 

 

My recommendation would be not to turn on the dell, unless you underclock and undervolt the cpu, and throw a few amd cards in it. The computer won't get you much if anything it could cost you more in electricity. Instead figure out how much that dell would cost to run in electricity each month, and put that directly into buying coins.

You're custom PC would make a decent miner, if you don't plan to use it at all. I'd recommend swapping the CPU to a cheap very low power cpu. Because there's not much point in mining on a cpu due to their low hash and extremely high watt to electricity ratio. If you want to turn it into a dedicated miner keep it as low powered as possible to save a few $$ every month.

With the 7950 and 7850 running, you're looking at about 1M/Hash which is pretty reasonable for a mining rig that you potentially already had. While difficulty is constantly changing right now, 1000 Khash you're looking at about 1.09 litecoins per day.

 

You can also figure out your costs for running it by using a watt meter to check computers power draw. The running costs could cut your earnings in half.  However that's only relative if you plan to sell the coins right away. If you intend to hold the coins electricity costs fall in line with more of an investment versus running costs and cut into profits.

Calculate your electricity costs with something like this, if you know the wattage. http://www.electricity-usage.com/Electricity-Usage-Calculator.aspx

[Basher99]

yeah the only reason im using the FX cpu is that I have it laying around gathering dust.. so i figured why not?  Also the custom rig will be a dedicated miner... built mostly of parts laying around.

 

As for the suggestions... the Dell probably can only house 1 card in it.. a suggestion there would be awesome... otherwise ill prolly set it to do WCG stuff...

 

I do plan on getting a kill o watt to watch my power usage so i can really determine if this will be profitable or not.. tho it will probably take a month or 2 to figure that out.

[RuecanOnRails]

When it comes to mining, you don't need to use 16x PCIE slots. You can use any or all of the slots using PCIE slot riser/adapters. Allowing you to make use of the 1x, 4x, 8x pci slots. You do need to look up the motherboard and make sure it doesn't automatically disable one or two of the pci slots if a GPU is installed.

 

You can sometimes rent a watt meter at the local library. No need to buy one ;) 

[Basher99]

So i got the rig mining on the 7950.. but anytime I try and start up the 7850 in this rig it crashes the driver... do I need to have the crossfire bridge installed but crossfire diabled in CCC? the only other option I have here would be to move the 7850 to my other spare rig that my parents/niece/nephews use for internet and youtube. If i move the card id probably buy another 7850 to beef up the hash rate of that rig...

 

Anyway any help with this is appreciated as everywhere I look I can't find anything about mixing cards and them not working :)

[Notaek]

I would guess that you are having an issue with ULPS, AMD's power saving feature.  

 

You need to disable ULPS in the registry.  You can search online for how to do that.

[Basher99]

I disabled ULPS in the registry(at least i think it is) and still no effect.. is there anything else I can try to get this to work in this configuration?

[RuecanOnRails]

what are you configs?

what are you using to mine? (program)

How many threads are you mining on? the 7950 I think works best with gpu thread on 2 where as 7850 works on 1 thread better. Trying to set up different threads in one miner will not work, you will need to set up two different miners for different configs.

 

Are you trying to mine on both cards with one instance of the miner open? Or opening two separate miners?

 

A lot of the time for scrypt miners will crash constantly until it's able to create a correct and working .bin file. If your settings are good and should work, trying to launch the miner over and over will usually result in creating successful miner.

[Basher99]

I only had one instance of GUIminer open with 2 different workers setup... should I open another instance of GUIminer and run the 7850 from there?

 

The settings in GUIminer for the cards are the presets that come preloaded for each card.. they have high usage and low usage variants for higher/lower hash rates.

[RuecanOnRails]

You should really try using a miner outside of GUIminer, you get much better control in terms of setting up and configuring.

 

You can definitely try opening a second GUIminer. Try a thread concurrency of 8192, and intensity 19 for the 7850

[Basher99]

well GUIminer uses cgminer to do the mining itself... its just abit easier to configure as you dont have to use the command line interface.. anywho I shall try the settings you mentioned on a second instance of GUIminer and see what happens and report back here in the morning