It's funny how i-devices are not designed such a way you could utilize their 100% potentional without damaging them. All at the cost of better looks and "usability".
Like a car that breaks a propshaft if you put your feet down, who would buy such a car? Somehow it seems to be acceptable in electronics.
Topic: Don't Mine on an iMac! (Read 25676 times)
A mac is a terrible, inefficient choice for mining of any kind. A purpose built PC can do it much better and allows for future expansion with more GPUs, or as a host system for future ASIC devices, diverting GPU power to Litecoin later on as GPU mining for Bitcoin is just about to get snuffed out by immensely superior hardware.
Don't steal from work.
old topic but question that i'm still trying to answer: how loud is your iMac while mining? thanks in advance. have a lovely day.
I'm guessing the fans would go all the way up. Hear what that sounds like by googling and downloading smcfancontrol which lets you set preferred fan speed settings from the menubar. Just create a setting where the fans are on full. I do that for mining on Mac Pros and they're pretty loud either way, but my MacBook Pro is fairly quiet even on full. Seeing as you have a mobile GPU it might not be too bad.
old topic but question that i'm still trying to answer: how loud is your iMac while mining? thanks in advance. have a lovely day.
I mine with my iMac. It's got a 6750M as well. But I've notched up the fans with SMC Fan Control so the GPU temp doesn't go beyond 60 C.
Wow sorry to hear that but still kinda LOL. 
Hm.. If you bought an expensive car, should you not be able to drive it across America without it breaking down the first night?
Yet you accept that an iMac breaks down after one night of bitcoin mining ?
Sounds like poor engineering from Apple's part if you ask me. What's the point of having a powerful computer if it can't be run to the maximum? Would you buy a house with 8 rooms, where you could never use more than 5 of the rooms, and if you did, the house would fall apart?
I am sure there are legitimate uses of running the GPU's at full speed apart from bitcoin mining. But now everyone know to stay away from the iMac when mining.
What about suing Apple over this? Would it be less ridiculous than Apple suing MACARAJA?
Yet you accept that an iMac breaks down after one night of bitcoin mining ?
Sounds like poor engineering from Apple's part if you ask me. What's the point of having a powerful computer if it can't be run to the maximum? Would you buy a house with 8 rooms, where you could never use more than 5 of the rooms, and if you did, the house would fall apart?
I am sure there are legitimate uses of running the GPU's at full speed apart from bitcoin mining. But now everyone know to stay away from the iMac when mining.
What about suing Apple over this? Would it be less ridiculous than Apple suing MACARAJA?
OK I just measured the power through my iMac with a 6750 chip in it.
iMac not mining: 72 watts.
iMac running DiabloMiner: 88 watts.
So turning mining on adds 16 watts! Whereas mining on my 5850 adds about 150 watts.
The iMac is not using much power for the graphics card!
The the electricity to keep the iMac on all day mining is only $0.34. Whereas the 44 MHash/second earns you $0.85.
So the iMac is still profitable as a miner.
Sam
You do realize that is a 6750M as MOBILE, as in a laptop chip. 6750M is not the same as a desktop 6750 (if there even is such a thing).iMac not mining: 72 watts.
iMac running DiabloMiner: 88 watts.
So turning mining on adds 16 watts! Whereas mining on my 5850 adds about 150 watts.
The iMac is not using much power for the graphics card!
The the electricity to keep the iMac on all day mining is only $0.34. Whereas the 44 MHash/second earns you $0.85.
So the iMac is still profitable as a miner.
Sam
it is quite possible the gpu overheated and was permanently damaged.
best thing to do is not tell anyone what you did. Delete all signs of bitcoin off of the machine and then walk into your boss's office wit a puzzled look on your face "gee boss I dunno what happened"
Theres a good chance Apple care will fix the repair but they may try to weasel out of it if they knew you were bit mining with it.
best thing to do is not tell anyone what you did. Delete all signs of bitcoin off of the machine and then walk into your boss's office wit a puzzled look on your face "gee boss I dunno what happened"
Theres a good chance Apple care will fix the repair but they may try to weasel out of it if they knew you were bit mining with it.
This is what I did. The tech dept ended up having to replace the Mobo and video card, but was covered by Apple Care.
All-in-all, it ended up ok, but probably not worth the .5 BTC I made
i'd extend this thread to not mine on any laptop based computer or laptop all in one boards in small enclosures are not made for 24/7 mining. Your just asking for trouble. unless you get your own cooling solutions going.
all in one boards in small enclosures are not made for 24/7 mining. Your just asking for trouble. unless you get your own cooling solutions going. Apparently Open CL doesn't work very well on a Mac, so I was only mining at about 1/4 the rate that the 6970 would get in a PC
Anyone have any idea if Lion will even come close to fixing this? Or is there going to be no change?Yes it does indeed appear so. Upgrading from SL to Lion has roughly doubled DiabloMiner.app's performance on my MacPro from an average of 140MH/s to 285MH/s with a Radeon HD5870.
Apparently Open CL doesn't work very well on a Mac, so I was only mining at about 1/4 the rate that the 6970 would get in a PC
Anyone have any idea if Lion will even come close to fixing this? Or is there going to be no change? 
OK I just measured the power through my iMac with a 6750 chip in it.
iMac not mining: 72 watts.
iMac running DiabloMiner: 88 watts.
So turning mining on adds 16 watts! Whereas mining on my 5850 adds about 150 watts.
The iMac is not using much power for the graphics card!
The the electricity to keep the iMac on all day mining is only $0.34. Whereas the 44 MHash/second earns you $0.85.
So the iMac is still profitable as a miner.
Sam
5850 > 6750iMac not mining: 72 watts.
iMac running DiabloMiner: 88 watts.
So turning mining on adds 16 watts! Whereas mining on my 5850 adds about 150 watts.
The iMac is not using much power for the graphics card!
The the electricity to keep the iMac on all day mining is only $0.34. Whereas the 44 MHash/second earns you $0.85.
So the iMac is still profitable as a miner.
Sam
your argument is invalid. It's like saying "derp imma use 6650 to mine, coz it use 50W!!"
OK I just measured the power through my iMac with a 6750 chip in it.
iMac not mining: 72 watts.
iMac running DiabloMiner: 88 watts.
So turning mining on adds 16 watts! Whereas mining on my 5850 adds about 150 watts.
The iMac is not using much power for the graphics card!
The the electricity to keep the iMac on all day mining is only $0.34. Whereas the 44 MHash/second earns you $0.85.
So the iMac is still profitable as a miner.
Sam
iMac not mining: 72 watts.
iMac running DiabloMiner: 88 watts.
So turning mining on adds 16 watts! Whereas mining on my 5850 adds about 150 watts.
The iMac is not using much power for the graphics card!
The the electricity to keep the iMac on all day mining is only $0.34. Whereas the 44 MHash/second earns you $0.85.
So the iMac is still profitable as a miner.
Sam
I'm not saying they won't replace it for you as I've never dealt with Apple. I'm just saying that it's very likely they will know that it wasn't faulty hardware to begin with.
It was faulty hardware to begin with, though, that's the thing. It might not be everyday usage to run the thing at 100% GPU load, but that doesn't mean it's out-of-warranty usage (although overclocking would be). In any case, I'd be very surprised if they didn't replace it without question - I've never had any major hassle with in-warranty servicing from Apple, and with the margins they make on their hardware, it's easier to just replace it and have a happy customer than waste the time arguing.
Thunderbolt is apparently an external connection based on PCI-e, so no need to put the cards in the computer. Obviously power would be another issue though.
Have you seen the size of the 6970? There's no way that the desktop version would even fit inside the iMac, never mind be cooled properly. They shouldn't be allowed to fool people into thinking they're using decent GPUs when it's only the mobile version 
I have the cheapest new iMac with a 6750 card. When I first ran a miner on it it got hot, that was a CPU miner. Then I ran DiabloMiner which uses the GPU and it doesn't generate any extra heat.
I calculated how much money I was getting for the watts I was burning and turned the miner off. But after the price of bitcoins went over $20 I have started running my iMac miner again. After about a week of this I have not had any trouble.
I'm guessing that the iMac uses 200 watts, I could measure it but I haven't. That's about $0.78/day added to my electric bill. The iMac does 44 MHashes/second, with the latest difficulty change that's about $0.84/day added to my bitcoin wallet. Now that I've done the calculation again I'm not going to run my iMac as a miner anymore.
The best reason to not mine on my iMac is that it doesn't make any money.
My other miner is a 2.4 GHash/second machine.
Sam
I calculated how much money I was getting for the watts I was burning and turned the miner off. But after the price of bitcoins went over $20 I have started running my iMac miner again. After about a week of this I have not had any trouble.
I'm guessing that the iMac uses 200 watts, I could measure it but I haven't. That's about $0.78/day added to my electric bill. The iMac does 44 MHashes/second, with the latest difficulty change that's about $0.84/day added to my bitcoin wallet. Now that I've done the calculation again I'm not going to run my iMac as a miner anymore.
The best reason to not mine on my iMac is that it doesn't make any money.
My other miner is a 2.4 GHash/second machine.
Sam
Wait for sonnet to release their thunderbolt to pci express enclosure (http://www.sonnettech.com/news/nab2011/). Then with 2x thunderbolt ports you can daisy chain up to 12 graphics cards to one iMac (24 gpus with 6970's 
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