Thank you for your reply, Call_Me_Bambi.
That helped a lot. First half of your email sort of confirmed what I understood from my research last 3 days and the second half does give me a very good path forward. Thank you for sharing your knowledge.
I mined XMR first day and SIGN threafter. for 16 USD to 20 USD a week, returnwise.
Poolwise I used MinerGate and NideHash.
I see returns 20%-25% better on other pools/coins/algos on whattomine, and those seem to change almost daily.
Since my hashpower is limited to 2x RX560, I take a while to mine enough for a payout.
Should I stay focused on 1 or 2 pools and use their algos (both pools have multi algos) or shold I just swap pool on a daily basis based on whattomine suggests?
Also, on whattomine I don't see the 560 so I usually pick 1x 570 and I sort of imagine it should be about as much hashrate as 2x 560.
What card(s) should I use on whattomine to get the best returns for 560?
Lastly.... Power.
My Mobo has 4x PCIs but my PSU is 400w. I believe I am on my power limmit with my current 2x RX560 as you also pointed.
Should I:
1) stick to my current rig as it is (2x RX560) and use it to learn more for another 2 months before investing
2) get a 600 PSU and 2x RX560 = 600 USD investment = 20 USD/week = 30 week ROI
3) new 6x 560 budget rig = 1800 USD investment = 60 USD/week = 30 week ROI
4) new 6x 570 or 6x580 rig (didn't make the maths yet)
Both will take about the same time to pay themselves, the difference is that second option has more risk, but if the whole mining thing doesn't collapse, I will have a higher return once investment is covered. What do you think? I live in central europe and a 570 8GB costs 3x as much as a 560 4GB. 580 8GB costs 4x. I didn't consider rigs with 570 or 580. Should I?
OK, looks like I was wrong about 4GB being too small for Ethereum (I don't mine it ).
On Whattomine you can select individual coins and just put in the hashrate, I use whattomine as a guide and not as 100% accurate; selecting 1x570 is OK just put your hashrate and power costs in - don't expect the answer to be 100% accurate.
Check the pool fees, I've seen some (in the past) as high as 20%, most are around 1%.
Pool choice is a bit of a personal thing, some people love Pool-X and others love Pool-Y.
Coin choice is also a very personal thing, I like the Cryptonote coins as they are low power consumption and can be quite profitable.
I'm mining Electroneum
https://etn.spacepools.org/ as I think it's a good bet - at the moment. I used to mine Monero on
www.miningpoolhub.com and mignt mine Electroneum there once they get more miners so the blocks get mined quicker.
My recommendation, don't switch pools;
(1) Especially the PPLNS pool as they 'punish' pool hoppers
http://give-me-coins.com/support/faq/what-is-pplns/(2) Pools will have a minimum payout limit, they only payout once you have mined X amount of mined coins, for some coins this could take you a long time to get to the minimum amount.
Power:
Get a power meter, they are cheep, and measure the power-at-the-wall that your rig takes his will give you a better idea of what your future power requirements will be. (remove 1 card from rig and measure power - put card back in and measure difference. this will give you actual power drawn for 1x RX560. Measure power when mining).
If I had my time again I would have started small to better understand what I was doing rather than jump in at the deap end, so with that in mind stick with what you have, and play around with it, try differnet coins, different miners (and there tweeks), different pools, it should take you less than 2 months to get familiar enough with what you're doing.
When selecting a card you have to work out the ROI to ensure you're not going to lose your money, check card cost, electricity cost and hashrate (remember a factory set card will have a lower hashrate to one with a modded BIOS, I used to have an RX560 and boosted the hashrate by flashing the BIOS).
An RX470 can be as good as an RX480 or RX580 and they are cheeper on Ebay. I have an R9 270X 4GB Sapphire on my 'general use' PC and it gets 460 h/s on Electroneum and 15Mh/s on Expanse (after modding the BIOS and boosting clocks in Afterburner).
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