Topic: 8th Alt coin thread. Or what to do now that asics are all over the place. - page 12. (Read 81547 times)

Fantastic!  We should talk as I like 4U Monero builds.  Delta fans in the front (3).   You can use lesser fans, and this is what equalizes the temps across all cards, zip tied to the support beam that you can move towards the back 1/3 of the case in RoseWill cases like the RSV-L4500.

Place an APW3++ on the bottom/back of the case to the side of your motherboard.  Stack something like a HP server PSU on top of the APW3++ with an X-adapter to supply power to a PICO PSU (eBay, 100 watt minimum) and one or two video cards/risers.  Use dual 6+2 splitter cables to extend the length of the APW3++ cables to power all or most of the GPUs.

This Spotswood kit is really helpful for 4U builds, but the screws and parts are tiny (frustrating at first): https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/fs-bracket-to-mount-7-gpus-at-front-of-rosewill-l4xxx-server-chassis-updated-1731197

Your first "Spotswood" build will leave you cursing, the second will be much easier.  If you are of my age, you will need those reader glasses to handle the tiny screws.  But his designs are elegant in some ways.

I had to build some "partner friendly" living room rigs.  As far as she is concerned, they look like the amplifiers I used to have for Hifi.  Sapphire Pulse Vega 56s, especially the Samsung memory ones give good results.

https://gyazo.com/d98e3651c436ab6cde03cd33b6eb7580

Tuning:  run the miner (right now Team Red miner is working well post cnvR fork).  Open up ONT.  Open up GPU-Z, switch to the Sensors tab in GPU-Z.  Change ONT settings on a card by card basis, watch GPU-Z closely.  Save what works as a ONT profile on a card by card basis if you have the time.  I also use and like the Brnstd Excel SoftPowerPlay table generator.  With Team Red, more often than not you need to reduce mV settings rather than increase to get stability/higher hashes.

Edit:  vBios tricks -- You can flash Reference Vega 56s with the same model/make Reference 64 bios, some debate whether this adds anything.  You can flash the Sapphire Reference Vega 64 air bios to a Sapphire Pulse Vega 56 *Samsung memory* not Hynix memory card.  There are at least four variants of the Sapphire Pulse Hynix Vega 56 bios and I would say don't waste your time on flashing/re-flashing these variants.  So there really is not that much to do as far as bios modding on Vega cards.  You will get more bang for the buck with the Brnstead SoftPowerPlay tables and then spending a little time tuning individual cards using ONT saved profiles, if that is an option.  This is not a situation like the RX 480 8GB Samsung cards where, with a bios mod, one minute you were doing 700 kH/s and then the next with the right bios mod you jumped to 860 kH/s on Cryptonight.  I have not seen huge gains on Vega cards with just reflashing BIOS versions.

XMR dev said they'll fork every 3 months from now on, so even better:
https://beincrypto.com/monero-asic-rebels-have-won-the-battle-but-can-they-win-the-war

"However, the fork’s effect proved to be short-lived. In February 2019 ASIC-miners were responsible for 85 percent of all Monero coins mined, according to the nonce analysis performed by a researcher known as MoneroCrusher.
After the publication, Monero’s lead developer Riccardo Spagni promised to fork the network once every 90 days to resist ASICs domination."

Yes it's the lowest power usage mining algo out there. I am actually trying to build a enclosed rig which is more living room friendly when the guests or family arrive. Seems with adequate cooling you can easily do 5-6 GPUs in a server chassis without the temps going up or without the fans going max speed.

XMR however is not as easy as ETH to set up properly. The bios needs to be difficult and if you take the time to tune each GPU individually you can get decent power efficiency.

So it's a good thing that it's hard to tune because most lazy miners might just stay on ETH using Claymore. Should keep the difficulty low temporarily.... until the FGPA arrive again that is.

XZC is a hard coin to mine - diff level too high - did make some money solo mining this coin until diff skyrocketed

GRS also popped 180% today .... sigh... sold my stash too early.

Is it still true to say that Cryptonight algo (including the forks) is still lowest in power consumption compared to all the other algos?

Hopefully it pulls everyone off the coins I'm trying to mine 

looks like a pump n dump, hopefully it can keep some of the gains.

XZC popped this morning and is super profitable on nVidia currently.

If the switch gives one good month for gpus it means two good months a year.
If your gear is paid off it is viable.

If the switch gives 45 days for gpus it means three good months a year.
If ETH did the same and alternates ie winter and summer for ETH spring and fall for monero

You would get four to six months a year of decent gpu mining.
I do not code but two algo tweaks a year are not impossible to do.

I am guessing the difficulty will probably settle at the exact same area as it was before these massive FGPAs took over in January. I think it will be between 30-50 Million or so. Eventually people will see its more profitable and they will make the switch.

Basically what happened before. It was slightly more profitable to mine than ETH, so people switched, and then a few months later they switched back to ETH when the FGPAs arrived.

Wonder how my R9 280X will perform on this algo?

One month chart is a jaw dropper for Monero difficulty:

https://www.coinwarz.com/difficulty-charts/monero-difficulty-chart

Where have all the ASICs/FPGAs gone?  Long time passing.

How long do we have until the FPGAs start coming back online?  I will say one to three months, with three months marking the outer limit.  But that's okay though.  I will shut off for Summer and wait for the Fall Monero fork.

LTHN, which I've been mining continuously for over a year. I don't care so much whether it is profitable or not because it has an actual product that makes sense to pay with crypto - a distributed VPN.

...not yet at the ugly $0.16/KWh I'm dishing out for power, but if it keeps going in the right direction, it might just fairly soon!
There's no secret though. Prices need to go up for profits to rise as well. Wonder how long it'll take for Asics (and FPGAs) to kick into gear and up the diff on CN/r.

Oh btw have any other coins forked to CN/r yet, or only XMR thus far?

XMR has made my Vegas profitable to run again!

...at least for the next few days.

Ahh I missed how he was the one who originally opened the issue, thought it was the founder for some reason.

 if you READ github thread, ifdefelse posted on zcash repo when ProgPoW was proposed and replied later. Seems like after grant was approved there wasn't more communication between them.

Edit: Redaction.

Isn't the work open source? Why would the other team respond to a github item on the zcash repo..?

I think both are guilty. Zcash didn't have the best intention to keep decentralized but at least they approved the grant for ifdefelse.

When you take a look at github's thread, ifdefelse seems unresponsive. I mean there wasn't a single reply from ifdefelse to zcash team as they post from time to time waiting a response. I hope this won't be the case for eth 

Or progpow.pro will become in a meme page  lol

Well that really sucks. I never thought they were gonna do it anyway, they always seemed happy to do whatever got them the most attention.. reveal secret transactions that were "suspect", keep ASICs on their network, etc. I've never really been a fan of them personally.

I think you hit the nail on the head.
I'm seeing GPUs bid up quite nicely (especially the higher-end ones though - not too many bids on the RX cards over here in the UK at first glance) but mining rigs don't seem to be fetching a lot of interest. Maybe it's because it scares off a lot of people, who otherwise would blissfully have bought GPUs from you, thinking you were gaming with them...

An idea would be to snap up cheap used mining rigs and sell the GPUs separately!