Quick Start Guide To Mine Ethereum

agent412agent412 Member, Moderator Posts: 293 mod
edited May 2017 in Mining
PLEASE READ THIS, OR USE THE SEARCH BAR. We'd like to keep this forum clean of repeat questions. Thanks!

I've made this quick guide to help people new to mining, and I'll add to it if I missed anything. I hope this helps.


Hardware requirements to start mining.

GPU: It's up to you to choose what graphics card you want to mine with. Do your homework. How much is it. How much power does it need. How fast is it in terms of its hash rate. The GPU must have at least 2GB of memory, AMD cards are best to use and AMD GPU driver 15.12. This Mining Hardware Comparison list is very helpful. http://62.212.74.86/~mining/list/
If you want a custom rom (Higher hash, lower power), you can contact Heliox
For example: RX 480 8G Samsung: 32+Mh ETH, RX 470 4G Hynix: 31+Mh ETH

Motherboard: You'll need a motherboard that has enough PCIe x16 and PCIe x1 slots to support the ammout of graphics cards you plan on using in your rig. The Asrock H81 Pro BTC and Asrock H97 Anniversary, are both good boards to use, they are relatively cheap and they can support 6 graphics cards with 1 PCIe x16 slot and 5 PCIe x1 slot. And you will need to buy a power button, obviously to turn on your rig.

Riser Cables: To use the PCIe x1 slots on your motherboard, will need to buy PCIe x1 to x16 riser card extender cables, it can also be used on the PCIe x16 slot. It's also great to give your cards some space from each other. I would recommend buying 1 or 2 extra ones, because sometimes you'll get one that doesn't work.

CPU: You'll want to buy a CPU that fits your motherboard. If you go with the Asrock H81 Pro BTC or Asrock H97 Anniversary, the Intel Celeron G1820 or G1840 works just fine for it.

Power Supply: You'll need to calculate how much power you need. For example, I have a 6 card AMD R7 370 rig, each card uses 110watts of power for a total of 660watts, and the rest of the rig uses about 200watts. So knowing this rig will need 860watts of power, I went with a good 1000watt power supply that came will all the necessary cables.

Hard Drive: A 60GB hard drive is all you need, and you can find a small solid state drive now for a good price.

RAM: A minimum of 4GB of RAM.

You'll also need to buy a keyboard, mouse, monitor, and its best to use an Ethernet connection not WIFI. You may temporarily need an optical drive, to install your drivers and Operating System. If you can do all that with a flash drive, that's great too.

Mining

In this link from Nanopool.org, http://eth.nanopool.org/help, you'll find 3 mining clients you can easily download and configure to start mining. Claymore Dual Miner, Genoil Miner, and EthMiner.

For example. I use Ethminer and I point it to nanopool, so I edited the start.bat file so it looks like this:
setx GPU_FORCE_64BIT_PTR 0
setx GPU_MAX_HEAP_SIZE 100
setx GPU_USE_SYNC_OBJECTS 1
setx GPU_MAX_ALLOC_PERCENT 100
setx GPU_SINGLE_ALLOC_PERCENT 100
ethminer -M -G -F http://eth-us-east1.nanopool.org:8888/YOUR_WALLET/YOUR_WORKER_NAME

Then all you have to do is just run the bat file and you're mining away.

You should know where your DAG file is, because if you don't keep an eye on it, your hard drive may quickly fill up. You only need the 2 most recent DAG files so it's OK to delete any older ones, but sometimes you'll have to delete all of them. For me, I just had to search for the folder "Ethash" and put a shortcut of it on the desktop.

Also some helpful tips.

Set your rig to turn on when power is connected, AND set your miner to run on startup. Just google run on startup. It's a must and you'll love it when your power goes out and you're not home. When your power comes back on, your rig will turn on and start mining again.

Use a remote desktop. I use Google Chrome Remote Desktop, and I set it up on all my rigs. From my phone or another computer, I can control any of my rigs and keep an eye on them.
Post edited by Heliox on
«1345

Comments

  • BiodomBiodom Member Posts: 693 ✭✭✭
    edited August 2016
    In Mining:
    1. Do 15.12 drivers work for RX 480 and 470? I thought that you need 16.7.2/16.7.3?
    2. Is anything else needed, like AMD OpenCL SDK and Microsoft redistributables, or are they unnecessary now?
  • agent412agent412 Member, Moderator Posts: 293 mod
    Biodom said:

    In Mining:
    1. Do 15.12 drivers work for RX 480 and 470? I thought that you need 16.7.2/16.7.3?
    2. Is anything else needed, like AMD OpenCL SDK and Microsoft redistributables, or are they unnecessary now?

    1. I'm not sure, I haven't used the RX 480 or 470 yet. But I'm sure it has been discussed on the forum.
    2. I didn't need anything else to mine.
  • CoinsinfoCoinsinfo GlobalMember Posts: 2
    Is there any cloud mining for Ethereum ?
  • core16core16 Member Posts: 16
    edited August 2016
    @Coinsinfo Yeah, but i wouldn't recommend it. The services are usually over priced and with the looming switch to POS you wouldn't be able to use your 1 year contract for anything else (as opposed to selling gpus or mining something else)
    Post edited by core16 on
  • MarlynNevesMarlynNeves Member Posts: 55
    Hello, can help me? I want mine on ubuntu 14 but i dont have any experience with this OS... Who can give me a tutorial to this? Thanks
  • kovancekkovancek Member Posts: 13
    core16 said:

    @Coinsinfo Yeah, but i wouldn't recommend it. The services are usually over priced and with the looming switch to POS you wouldn't be able to use your 1 year contract for anything else (as opposed to selling gpus or mining something else)

    Not true.

    https://www.nicehash.com/?p=buy-ethereum-mining

    Use them for quite some time now...
  • core16core16 Member Posts: 16
    kovancek said:

    core16 said:

    @Coinsinfo Yeah, but i wouldn't recommend it. The services are usually over priced and with the looming switch to POS you wouldn't be able to use your 1 year contract for anything else (as opposed to selling gpus or mining something else)

    Not true.

    https://www.nicehash.com/?p=buy-ethereum-mining

    Use them for quite some time now...
    Fair point, I would say they're the exception though
  • wlefeverwlefever Member Posts: 7
    So I tried adding a 5th card today (Red Devil rx 470) and can't get it to detect on Windows 10. Other gpus are reference 480's, Motherboard is Asrock H81 Pro BTC and I have powered risers, and plenty of power 1300 EVGA. 4 cards was working just fine but the fifth wont show up, fans just spin. Any recommendations?
  • agent412agent412 Member, Moderator Posts: 293 mod
    @wlefever did you try using one of your other riser cables? To see if you have a bad cable.
  • wlefeverwlefever Member Posts: 7
    Thanks. I ended up switching out the riser with one that was already working, uninstalled the drivers and just did a fresh driver install and it worked.
  • Jamis1979Jamis1979 Member Posts: 22
    If I have 4 Asus rx480 reference cards, and I want to add two more rx480 cards, do they have to be Asus or could they be powercolor, msi, gigabyte, or some other brand?
  • SivaSiva Member Posts: 5
    U can add cards from whatever brand u want. Shoudn't bother anything. I use 2x Sapphire R9 290X and 2 XFX R9 290X and i have no Problems ;)
  • HasLuxHasLux Member Posts: 48
    Biodom said:

    In Mining:
    1. Do 15.12 drivers work for RX 480 and 470? I thought that you need 16.7.2/16.7.3?
    2. Is anything else needed, like AMD OpenCL SDK and Microsoft redistributables, or are they unnecessary now?

    No! You need AMD Pro drivers for linux. You must use ubuntu 16.0.4 and you may need to upgrade your kernel to get them working. You will no longer have aticonfig commands.
  • armymanarmyman Member Posts: 23
    @agent412 thank you for the very useful guide! Just one question about the software.

    I have just finished to set up my new rig which is composed of:

    ASROCK H81 PRO BTC
    1200 PSU
    INTEL PENTIUM DUAL CORE G3258
    8 GB RAM
    EXTERNAL SSD
    6 x XFX RX 480 8 gb

    Considering that I don`t need the miner to do anything else than just mining (is not my pc), what do you think is the best software setup starting from scratch, to make sure I use 100% of the miner capabilities (so best operating system, best mining software, if I need drivers, GPU`s managing software, mining pool, etc)?

    I hope your reply can also be useful for someone else more than me, thank you so much for your help!
  • agent412agent412 Member, Moderator Posts: 293 mod
    @armyman It depends on what you're more comfortable with using. Windows 10 is fine and you can mine with claymore's dual miner. Personally I use windows 10 because I'm not really familiar with Ubuntu and it's easier for me to install drivers and software, and I use ethminer because I'm used to it and works just fine for me.
  • armymanarmyman Member Posts: 23
    @agent412 thank you so much for your reply.

    So just to make sure I have got it, win10+ claymore's dual miner if I want to mine ETH and something else (let's say SIA), otherwise, if I just want to mine ETH I can simply use win10+ethminer, is that correct?
  • agent412agent412 Member, Moderator Posts: 293 mod
    @armyman That's pretty much it. But, you can also use claymore to mine only eth if you don't wanna dual mine.
  • armymanarmyman Member Posts: 23
    @agent412 Thanks again, one last thing.

    If I do dual mining with Claymore, will that affect my performance in mining eth?

    Would I get better results on eth if I just focus my mining on it instead of dual mining, or it is not affected by dual mining?
  • agent412agent412 Member, Moderator Posts: 293 mod
    @armyman I don't think it affects the performance, but it will use a little bit more power.
  • RabassoRabasso Member Posts: 151 ✭✭
    I'm running a rig with EthOS and is smooth learning, but im building a new miner with 6 RX 480 or 470 dono yet, if i buy windows 10 (feel that will give me best customization abilities on the cards).. could i install it in multiple rigs...i mean 1 copy... you can direct message me of just agree for a yes! cheers and thanks in advanced
  • danny1danny1 Member Posts: 42
    wlefever said:

    So I tried adding a 5th card today (Red Devil rx 470) and can't get it to detect on Windows 10. Other gpus are reference 480's, Motherboard is Asrock H81 Pro BTC and I have powered risers, and plenty of power 1300 EVGA. 4 cards was working just fine but the fifth wont show up, fans just spin. Any recommendations?

    Did you get it work? Try setting pcie to 1x in your bios
  • Manny_X10Manny_X10 Member Posts: 5
    @agent412 have you heard of the software nicehash? Do you have any experience with it. Is the program you listed easy enough for a beginner? Thanks.
  • agent412agent412 Member, Moderator Posts: 293 mod
    Manny_X10 said:

    @agent412 have you heard of the software nicehash? Do you have any experience with it. Is the program you listed easy enough for a beginner? Thanks.

    i'm not familiar with nicehash, ethminer and claymore miner are pretty easy to use.
  • shooter40swshooter40sw Member Posts: 47
    nicehash is very easy to use in windows 10 a saw a problem if you have multiple logins, if someone uses another session it will stop mining until you log in again, at least that happend to me, I switched to ethminer and nanopool to test this week because nicehash has a 3% pool use...
  • supguyssupguys Member Posts: 23
    agent412 said:

    PLEASE READ THIS, OR USE THE SEARCH BAR. We'd like to keep this forum clean of repeat questions. Thanks!

    I've made this quick guide to help people new to mining, and I'll add to it if I missed anything. I hope this helps.


    Hardware requirements to start mining.

    GPU: It's up to you to choose what graphics card you want to mine with. Do your homework. How much is it. How much power does it need. How fast is it in terms of its hash rate. The GPU must have at least 2GB of memory, AMD cards are best to use and AMD GPU driver 15.12. This Mining Hardware Comparison list is very helpful. http://62.212.74.86/~mining/list/

    Motherboard: You'll need a motherboard that has enough PCIe x16 and PCIe x1 slots to support the ammout of graphics cards you plan on using in your rig. The Asrock H81 Pro BTC and Asrock H97 Anniversary, are both good boards to use, they are relatively cheap and they can support 6 graphics cards with 1 PCIe x16 slot and 5 PCIe x1 slot. And you will need to buy a power button, obviously to turn on your rig.

    Riser Cables: To use the PCIe x1 slots on your motherboard, will need to buy PCIe x1 to x16 riser card extender cables, it can also be used on the PCIe x16 slot. It's also great to give your cards some space from each other. I would recommend buying 1 or 2 extra ones, because sometimes you'll get one that doesn't work.

    CPU: You'll want to buy a CPU that fits your motherboard. If you go with the Asrock H81 Pro BTC or Asrock H97 Anniversary, the Intel Celeron G1820 or G1840 works just fine for it.

    Power Supply: You'll need to calculate how much power you need. For example, I have a 6 card AMD R7 370 rig, each card uses 110watts of power for a total of 660watts, and the rest of the rig uses about 200watts. So knowing this rig will need 860watts of power, I went with a good 1000watt power supply that came will all the necessary cables.

    Hard Drive: A 60GB hard drive is all you need, and you can find a small solid state drive now for a good price.

    RAM: A minimum of 4GB of RAM.

    You'll also need to buy a keyboard, mouse, monitor, and its best to use an Ethernet connection not WIFI. You may temporarily need an optical drive, to install your drivers and Operating System. If you can do all that with a flash drive, that's great too.

    Mining

    In this link from Nanopool.org, http://eth.nanopool.org/help, you'll find 3 mining clients you can easily download and configure to start mining. Claymore Dual Miner, Genoil Miner, and EthMiner.

    For example. I use Ethminer and I point it to nanopool, so I edited the start.bat file so it looks like this:
    setx GPU_FORCE_64BIT_PTR 0
    setx GPU_MAX_HEAP_SIZE 100
    setx GPU_USE_SYNC_OBJECTS 1
    setx GPU_MAX_ALLOC_PERCENT 100
    setx GPU_SINGLE_ALLOC_PERCENT 100
    ethminer -M -G -F http://eth-us-east1.nanopool.org:8888/YOUR_WALLET/YOUR_WORKER_NAME

    Then all you have to do is just run the bat file and you're mining away.

    You should know where your DAG file is, because if you don't keep an eye on it, your hard drive may quickly fill up. You only need the 2 most recent DAG files so it's OK to delete any older ones, but sometimes you'll have to delete all of them. For me, I just had to search for the folder "Ethash" and put a shortcut of it on the desktop.

    Also some helpful tips.

    Set your rig to turn on when power is connected, AND set your miner to run on startup. Just google run on startup. It's a must and you'll love it when your power goes out and you're not home. When your power comes back on, your rig will turn on and start mining again.

    Use a remote desktop. I use Google Chrome Remote Desktop, and I set it up on all my rigs. From my phone or another computer, I can control any of my rigs and keep an eye on them.

    Nice guide agent412, this seems to be the most short and concrete guide out there, and I've seen many. As far I know there is no need to sync with the network as long you'r in a mining pool and almost every guide out there make emphasis on sync with it.

    But I am facing a problem that is driving me crazy and I'm pretty sure is a software problem. I've been 3 days trying to start mining and there is no way I can make it happen.

    My system is a

    Windows 10
    genoil,etheminer or claymore
    crisom 16.7

    Hardware

    AsRock H81 PRO BTC
    CPU Celeron G1840
    PSU EVGA 700W
    Powered USB 3.0 Risers
    8GB corsair memory
    120GB SSD
    2 XFX RX 480 8GB

    - The problem is that any of the mentioned miners above can find or do not recognize my GPUs, as soon I execute Start.bat it close intermediately after. My listing hardware is fine, the drivers are fine I'm using this PC to write this connected to one of the cards, my iGPU is deactivated in the MOBO, I've tried with just one GPU, changing the PCI-E ports and frankly I'm exhausted trying to find the answer in the forums and google, but there is no answer because everyone that happens this is because they don't have the proper GPUs and enough memory and the problem is that! I DO have the proper video cards!

    - I'm full of frustration about this because I have 4 more GPUs and 2 more PSU ready to mine but I can't even start with just 2 cards. My conclusion for know is, I'm doing something terrible stupid or terrible wrong.

    PD: The motherboard says if you want to connect more than 3 GPUs you should connect the 2 molex extra power to the MOBO but I have powered risers and as far I know only data go trough the connectors that goes into the MOBO I suppose I don't need to connect the extra molex. Do anyone have a comment about this confusing recommendation of AsRock?

    -
  • agent412agent412 Member, Moderator Posts: 293 mod
    @supguys can you send me what your .bat looks like, the pool you're mining to, and which miner you want to use? Go with claymore's miner. As for the 2 molex connections on the MOBO, I would connect them.
  • supguyssupguys Member Posts: 23
    agent412 said:

    @supguys can you send me what your .bat looks like, the pool you're mining to, and which miner you want to use? Go with claymore's miner. As for the 2 molex connections on the MOBO, I would connect them.

    - Sure, here is my start.bat of Claymore

    GPU_FORCE_64BIT_PTR 0
    GPU_MAX_HEAP_SIZE 100
    GPU_USE_SYNC_OBJECTS 1
    GPU_MAX_ALLOC_PERCENT 100
    GPU_SINGLE_ALLOC_PERCENT 100

    EthDcrMiner64.exe

    -mode 1

    -logfile

    -tt 1

    -tstop 85

    -ttli 83

    -fanmax 85

    -epool eth-eth-us-east1.nanopool.org:9999

    -ewal 0xb6cdD1E003a8fa77553F1F55b30AD79F9c258602/ETHRIG00/[email protected]



    - I'm not sure if the problem is I'm configuring the miner in the start.bat


    - This is the log:

    20:14:12:283 ee0 args:
    20:14:12:286 ee0
    20:14:12:290 ee0 ÉÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍ»
    20:14:12:294 ee0 º Claymore's Dual ETH + DCR/SC/LBC GPU Miner v7.0 Beta º
    20:14:12:297 ee0 ÈÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍͼ
    20:14:12:300 ee0
    20:14:12:503 ee0 ETH: No pools specified! Specify at least one valid pool in "-epool" parameter.


    - About the Molex connectors I'm still not sure if I'll connect the 2 molex from the primary PSU or split the to connections across the other 2 PSU. I know the right thing to do is the first one but I'm not sure my PSU will hadle that.

    - Thanks for the time.
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