The revolution is largely down to enthusiastic 'miners', who build or use their own machines to perform the complex proof of work algorithms to process data blocks, creating more of their chosen currency such as and Ethereum. Specialized mining equipment is available online and you can even rent processing power from companies such as Genesis Mining (we’ve got a ). However, if your home computer is powerful enough there's no reason you can't get started mining Ethereum today. In this guide, you'll learn how to use the friendly MinerGate client. This handy program quickly and easily connects you to MinerGate's from where you can share some of your machine’s resources, and then subsequently share in the rewards of generating Ether.

Before you begin, remember that the actual amount of hard cash you'll make from doing this will vary depending on the mining difficulty, the fluctuating price of Ether and how powerful your hardware is. MinerGate has a built-in benchmarking tool to give you a rough idea how much you stand to make per year, although this doesn't take into account the electricity used by your machine. • We show you 1. Download MinerGate client Open your browser and navigate to.

Jul 13, 2017 - Once you get Ethereum mining hardware, your next step is to decide on which Ethereum mining pool you'll join. A mining pool helps you get more frequent. Ethpool and Ethermine are two different sites although they appear to be basically the same pool. They are currently the largest Ether mining pool.

Click on the button marked ‘Download Miner & Start Mining’. If you're using Microsoft Edge, you can click ‘Run’ to launch the installer at this stage.

Windows 10 will ask you to confirm that you wish to allow MinerGate to make changes to your system. Setup will now launch. Close down any other open apps and agree to the license agreement. On the next screen (Install Options), select ‘Add MinerGate to the system PATH for current user’ as well as ‘Create MinerGate Desktop Icon’. Click ‘Next’, then ‘Install’. Launch MinerGate Once MinerGate has finished setup, it will place a shortcut on your desktop.

Click ‘Finish’ to launch the program automatically. Once MinerGate launches click ‘Create Account’ at the top right. Enter both your email address and password. Make a note of both of these as you'll need them to be able to access any mined funds.

Next click ‘Register’. MinerGate will display a message to say that 'smart mining' has been activated. The MinerGate Mining Pool will automatically try to use your computer's resources to mine cryptocurrency in the most profitable way. Benchmark your PC Your machine's success at mining coins will be determined by the hashrate afforded by its processor and GPU(s). If you’re unsure whether your machine is powerful enough to mine cryptocurrency at all, click on ‘Benchmark’ in the top bar, then on ‘Start Benchmark’. MinerGate will automatically test your computer's ability to mine various types of coins and provide you with an overall score.

Dedicated miners usually buy custom equipment specifically for mining cryptocurrencies like Ethereum. The next most profitable way to mine is to own a machine with multiple graphics cards as these can mine Ether much more efficiently than a plain old CPU. Start mining Click on the ‘Miner’ tab at the top of the screen. From here you can choose a specific cryptocurrency to mine such as Ether rather than have MinerGate choose for you. Click on ‘Start Mining’ next to ETH. MinerGate will congratulate you on mining 'like a man' by doing it manually.

Click on the ‘View’ menu to deselect other cryptocurrencies, until only ETH remains. MinerGate will notify you that it's loading a DAG (Dagger Hashimoto) file. This is around 1GB in size and represents the proof of work algorithms necessary to mine Ethereum data blocks. If you want to understand this further, see the Ethereum Github for more information.

What the numbers mean Once you've started mining, you may want to have some understanding of your progress. Click on the ‘Miner’ tab to view your currency balance. This represents all the Ether you have mined to date. The CPU Mining and GPU Mining sections display your current hashrate. Use the dropdown menu in each section to choose the number of CPUs/GPUs you wish to dedicate to mining (assuming you have more than one). The Shares section relates to how the work is divided by different machines in the mining pool to ensure everyone receives a fair reward in line with work done by their machine.

See the Bitcoin for more information on this. The unconfirmed balance represents the amount of mined Ether which is waiting for confirmation from MinerGate's servers.

This will ultimately be added to your wallet balance. Top image credit: •.

Ethereum mining can be difficult, I know! However, you shouldn’t worry! In this guide, I’ve covered everything from the bottom up so whether you’re a beginner or a pro you should be able to glean some useful insight and learn something new.

It doesn’t matter if you’re planning to do mining using Linux, ethOS or Windows. I’ve made sure to cover the steps for each. You will also find some great tips, tricks, optimizations, and solutions to common troubleshooting issues. If you don’t have time to read all of it today, then bookmark this page, or sign up to our email list and receive it as a free ebook! • • • • • • • • • • • • • What is Ethereum? Is an open blockchain platform similar to Bitcoin but with additional in-built flexibilities. With Ethereum, the blockchain can be considered to be intelligent thanks to the Ethereum Virtual Machine and Whereas with Bitcoin it’s a glorified ledger.

Smart Contracts With Ethereum you can execute code on the blockchain in a distributed way. These are called Smart Contracts. These allow you to set up a system, whereby a person will only receive payment under certain conditions. As Ethereum grows, the scale and complexities of these contracts are expected to increase. Smart Contracts is what has given Ethereum such a solid footing, as like with the blockchain has a functional use. If you’re interested in about how Ethereum came about and wanted to find out more about it, then. Ethereum Mining Profitability Before you determine if you should go on your Ethereum mining adventure; you’ll need to decide whether it’s going to be profitable or not.

While, on the surface, this is incredibly easy, as I’ll show below, you must be aware that mining is very much like trading. Cryptocurrency prices fluctuate, your equipment might break, and so on. For example, when I started putting this project together, the rough number estimate was that I’d recoup my investment within six months. Now, with the same calculations, it would take eight months. The advantage of mining over trading is that coin prices can be somewhat more stable, and at the end of the day, you’ll still have the equipment. Which, if you’ve chosen wisely, wouldn’t have lost too much of its value. Calculate your expected hashrate and Payout First, you must calculate how much you’re hashing power will be.

If you already have some GPUs that you’re planning to use, then you can use Google to find out its hash rate. Alternatively, you can use a site such as to determine what the best value for money GPU is. However, I’ve not yet found a database with a full list so you may wish to start your own excel file and compare the hashrate you get per dollar spent. GPU prices can also vary significantly, country to country, so make sure you take this into consideration as well. I’ve chosen to go with the RX480 as it’s expected to give 25MH/s at stock settings with a price of $200.

Therefore, I’m paying $8/MHs, and the aim is to get this price as low as possible. Therefore, if you see second-hand GPUs where you’re paying less than that, then they might be worth a high consideration. Based on your hashrate you can use to calculate your expected payout, this would be 4.2Eth/month at the moment. This is worth approximately $42 at the moment.

Calculate your Electricity Cost However, once you have your GPU cards, they will need power. Therefore, the second most important factor is how much your card will consume, and how much you’ll need to pay for this. In order, to calculate this, you’ll need to find out how much power it uses and how much you need to pay per KW/h. These are respectively 150W and $0.10 per KW/h for me. To calculate the per hour cost just convert W to kW (by diving by 1000) and multiply together, so for me the rig would cost 0.15*0.1= $0.015/hour to keep alive. This amounts to $0.36/ day or $10.80/month.

Calculate your Profit and Loss, and Return So now you know how much money your making and how much you’re spending. With the above numbers, I’ll be making $42-$10.80= $31.20 a month with one RX480.

The calculations neglect the electricity used by the other computer components, but these are usually negligible, especially if you have multiple GPUs in a single rig. In my case, I am mining with multiple RX480s, and expect to generate around $200 a month. Since all the equipment cost me $2000, I will break even after ten months, and make $400 profit or 20% by the end of the year. Unlock the internet with a VPN today Ethereum Mining Hardware To start mining, all you need is an incredibly simple computer. You will need a mouse, a keyboard and a screen for it as well, but this is only required for the setup, so you should be able to use any existing ones that you may have. Below, I have outlined the considerations you need to keep in mind when choosing these base component and the popular options for each. You can use a website such as to ensure that the parts you have chosen will work together.

Also, if you’d like you can buy complete CPU, RAM and Motherboard bundles from. Motherboard The motherboard is the most important aspect to any mining rig. The reason for this is that it needs to be able to support all of your GPUs. If you only plan on having one or two, then it’s not so important. However, most people will aim to maximize and have 6 GPUs in a single rig. There are very few motherboards that will support the running of 6 GPUs.

The big advantage with mining is that you can run the GPUs from x1 PCIe slots, so you don’t need to find a. Since the mining ‘craze’ has started, ASRock has produced motherboard aimed exactly at mining. It’s for this reason that arguably the best, and most popular motherboard to buy is the or the Other popular motherboards are:,, MSI and the.

You can also find further recommendations. CPU When choosing the CPU, you only need the bare minimum. I wouldn’t recommend getting the absolute cheapest, but one or two points above.

The reason for this, is that some extra processing power is useful when setting up and makes reboots slightly quicker. I chose to go with the. RAM Again, you will need the bare minimum, 4GB will do. I chose to go with 8GB just in case.

Also, if you’re going to be doing solo mining, it’s a good idea to have as much as possible at the start as this will make syncing the block chain a lot faster. Of course, once that’s finished, you can remove the excess.

GPU I’ve outlined choosing the GPU above. Currently, the RX480s are one of the most popular mining cards, but if you look around the, you’ll be sure to find plenty of more recommendations.

PSU To calculate the size of the PSU you require you will need to add together the power requirements of all of your components. A site like PCPartPicker will do this for you perfectly. Add 20% on to the required as a safety factor. Also, make sure you’re using a high-quality, well recognized, and high-standard PSU, as if it blows, you could say goodbye to some very expensive equipment.

Harddrive For the hard drive, using an SSD is essential. While SSDs are more expensive, you will only need a 16GB one, which will set you back less than $30. If you’re planning to solo mine, it’s recommended that you buy a 32 or 64GB one, but again this will only be a few dollars more. Other Components Apart from the main components, you will also need GPU risers. I’d recommend getting USB powered 1x to 16x risers, which you can get from, for a few dollars. With some motherboard models, you will need to short some pins for the motherboard to recognize the riser. You can find.

It’s also recommended that you buy some additional PCIe to Molex (or SATA) connectors so that you can connect the risers to different rails on your PSU. Again, you can find these on Amazon, and will only cost a few dollars. On the whole, your hardware, excluding GPUs, shouldn’t cost you more than $500, and the large part of this will be your PSU. Below is a recommended purchase list from Amazon.

The total without the GPUs comes to $472.21. While with 6 RX480s your total cost would be $1702.15 sans shipping costs. – $89.99 – $43.88 – $204.99 – $49.95 – $24.99 – $224.42 – $28.99 – $9.99 Ethereum Mining Guide So now that we have covered profitability and hardware, it’s time to get mining.

However, even with mining, there are three important considerations to make: operating system, solo or pool, and mining software. Which OS to choose? When it comes to choosing your Ethereum mining operating software, there are three main contenders: Windows, Linux, and. If you’re a Mac fanboy, it is possible, but it’s advised for numerous reasons. Ethereum Classic ETC Mining Warehouse. Windows If you’re used to and haven’t ever gone near Linux, then stay with Windows. If you’re planning on using 6 GPUs, then Windows 10 is recommended as it has support built in naturally. Windows 7 & 8 will require some playing around with.

If you are used to command line style systems, and mining will be the only aim of the rig, then I’d highly recommend looking at ethOS. Additionally, Windows has the benefit of more universal support and generally speaking, better. Furthermore, accessing it is an absolute ease with something like TeamViewer. It does have the downside of slightly more complicated setup but nothing too difficult, especially if you don’t plan on tweaking the GPUs performance. Furtheremore, if you’re only looking to mine Ethereum as a hobby with your normal PC, then allows you to do this extremely easily. EthOS ethOS is a stripped down version of Linux (Ubuntu 14.04 to be specific) that has the simple aim of mining Ethereum (and a few other cryptocurrencies).

Not only is it incredibly easy to set-up, but it’s also easy to use and maintain. I’ve also noticed that it runs more optimally than Windows. It does have the downsides that you won’t be able to use your rig for much else, but most people don’t tend to anyway. Furthermore, remote access is only through SSH so you should be comfortable with not having a GUI.

However, for $39, it’s a no-brainer in my opinion. Linux Some mining enthusiast swear that Linux is the best operating system for mining. While this did use to be the case, there are stronger disagreements on the topic then previously. While I do prefer Windows, Linux does have it’s advantages and being a slimmer system it can have its upsides. Furthermore, Windows usually comes with a price tag, so if you’re looking for a free option, then Linux is the one for you. Pool Mining When it comes to cryptocurrency mining, the situation is very similar to a real mine when you consider each GPU to be a person that is mining. Solo Mining is when you mine by yourself. The advantage of this is that anything you find is completely yours to keep.

Unfortunately, if you only have a few miners it might take a very long amount of time to find “gold.” Furthermore, the frequency of finding gold can also vary extensively. You may have a week where you hit gold thrice, but then nothing for a whole month. Clearly, if you have a lot of miners (GPUs), then the outcome will be more stable, but below 1GH/s mining rate, Solo mining is not advisable if you want a stable return. If you’re not worried about shifts in when you find Eth, then Solo mining is a good option above 100Mh/s as you do not need to pay fees to anyone. Pool Mining With Pool mining, many miners join forces to try and find the coin.

The found coins are then equally distributed between the miners, though with some pools the ratios can vary on a few factors. However, you do need to pay a small fee (usually less than 1%) to the pool operator for maintaining the service. The upside is that you’ll have consistent payout and thereby make money related calculations more accurate.

If you’re reading this guide, you probably want to mine on a single rig, so I’ll primarily cover Pool mining, but will touch upon Solo mining as well. Ethereum Mining Pools • – 0.8% fees. Payouts released 2 times a day for balances higher than 0.5 ETH. Payouts released 4-6 times a day for balances higher than 1 ETH.

Payouts released every 24 hours for balances higher than 1 ETH. • – Predictable Solo Mining pool. Payouts after 10 confirmations. More info on comments below.

• – PPLNS 1% fees. Payouts released 2 times a day for balances higher than 0.1 ETH.

Payout every 30 minutes for balances over 0.2ETH. Requires registration • – 1% fees. Payouts are up to the miner (Manual or Automatic from 0.01 ETH). Mining Software Going back to the analogy of real-world mining, in cryptocurrency mining you can use different tools to find the gold, so-called mining software. Each mining software has evolved over the years, but some have developed more than others. The primary contenders for Ethereum mining are Claymore and Genoil. Geth is the original software from the Ethereum team.

If you wish to solo mine, this will be your best option. It’s simple and straightforward to use. It can also create your wallet for you, but as discussed below, you should get Mist/Ethereum Wallet as well if you prefer a GUI option. Isn’t recommended if you plan to have dedicated mining rigs. If, however, you wish to mine on an existing computer as a hobby, or out of interest, it’s perfect.

While it does take a fee from your mining, it’s GUI is quick and simple to use and once install you can be mining instantaneously. It also has some challenges that encourage you to mine, and if you’re an absolute beginner, then the simplicity of this software will have you jumping for joy. If simplicity is something you prefer, then is also a very solid option. Genoil is a continually developing and very optimized miner for Ethereum. It runs smoothly, and you can get up and running with it very quickly. Personally, I’ve had a few issues with DAG generation, but a few tweaks quickly solved this.

If you’re only planning on mining Ethereum, then Ethminer by Genoil is a strong contender. Claymore Personally, I’ve found to be the strongest and best all round miner. It’s easy to set up, I’ve never had any issues with it, and it has a ton of added functionality (e.g. Fan management), that I haven’t seen with other miners. It also has the bonus that it can mine two coins at once, which some people have found very useful to optimize their income.

There have been reports of anywhere between 3 and 10 percent extra income. For each operating system, I will give the setup instructions for the preferred miner. Ethereum Wallet Once you start mining, you will also need to keep your Ethereum in a safe location. This is possible in two ways, a local wallet or an online wallet. A local wallet, has better safety as it always remains in your control.

However, if you do use a local wallet, then either install it on a computer that’s not your miner or regularly transfer funds elsewhere. The reason for this is that should your computer crash; it could be hard to recover any Ether that is kept on there. Mist / Ethereum Wallet are the official developments by the Ethereum team. While at the heart of it it’s straightforward to use, it does pack a lot of extra features. Since it’s integrated with, you can also accept payments from Bitcoin other altcoin accounts as well.

It also allows you to develop Ethereum based apps and services – a.k.a. Smart Contracts.

Geth (with Etherwall) is the underlying code for the Mist wallet and is the core service for syncing the Ethereum blockchain. Unfortunately, it is a command line service, which can make it hard and annoying to use.

Adds a GUI front-end to it, making it easier to use. My EtherWallet is an open-source client-side Ether wallet running on Javascript.

MyEtherWallet makes it easy to create secure wallets without the command line or the need to run an Ethereum client on your computer. By running MyEtherWallet on an offline computer, you can create secure paper wallets for your ether holdings. Is a similar development that is also worth taking a look. Poloniex and Kraken and are online cryptocoin trading platforms. You can use the deposit addresses there to transfer any Ether you make directly there. Windows So now that I’ve discussed all the prerequisites, here are all the steps that you will need to start mining on Windows.

Install Windows and C++ Redistributables This is pretty much a given. However, I thought I would mention it as it’s always best to start off with a clean installation. If you’re using more than 4 GPUs, then I’d recommend using Windows 10, or you will need to do some tweaks. If you’re going to use Windows 7 or 8, then also install the software. An important fact to remember with fresh installations is that you should disable your computer from ever going to sleep or hibernating. You will also need to install the. Download Drivers and Packages Download the drivers and control packages for your GPUs.

While it is possible to have a rig with both Nvidia and AMD GPUs, this is ill-advised as it can lead to several issues. For driver and the OpenCL CUDA package, which is CUDA 8.0 at the time of writing. For AMD, install and the. Depending on your GPU, this might not be the correct driver.

So if you’re having issues, check the Ethereum Forum for advice. Install Additional Software Before you start mining, it’s recommended that you install some additional software that will help monitor and optimize the performance of your system.

DDU helps create clean uninstalls of display drivers. This can help if you are having issues with the video drivers. In Windows 10 it also disables the automatic display driver updates that can cause compatibility and mining issues. GPU-Z is a tool for monitoring the stats of your GPUs and displaying core details about it. You can easily plot the stats, and log/export them should you wish to. If you’re planning on remotely accessing your rig to monitor it and control it, then the free version of TeamViewer will be the easiest to use.

Overclocking Tool. If you’re planning to optimize the performance of your rig (which you should be), it’s recommended that you get an overclocking tool of some kind. Most GPU manufacturers will provide one for you to use. Also, depending on which mining software you will use, you will need it to control the fan speed on the GPUs. Furthermore, AMDs new has proven to be a very well designed software tweaking your GPU settings. Set-up your Wallet Decide on which service you will like to use for your wallet, and sign up to it.

I’ve created a Poloniex account, as I plan on doing some trading with the Ether I mine to try and further increase my profits. Make a note of your address. It should look something like this: 0x7b5eff562ee17b9e27a7af6afc26944266c8b025. If you want a local address, then download the Mist wallet, let the blockchain sync and create your account there. Alternatively, download Geth, and save it to a folder such as C:Ether. Then type “ geth account new“.

Whichever method you go for, make sure that you save your password with a secure software such as KeePass. Set-up Geth (Optional for Solo Mining) If you’d like to Solo mine, you will need to be in sync with the blockchain. To do this, you will need to download Geth and save it to a folder such as C:Ether. Then open a command prompt, and navigate to this folder using the cd command. First, if you’re not using a local wallet, you will need to sync the blockchain. The quickest way is using the command: geth --fast --cache=1024 --jitvm console The cache value is the amount of RAM you have, 1GB in the example above.

The more RAM you have, the faster you can sync the blockchain. In Notepad create a file with the below text and save it as a gethsync.bat, in your Ether folder. Launch this bat file every time before you start mining. You can also create a shortcut to it on your homescreen. Geth --rpc 6. Set-up your Miner For Windows, the Genoil miner has proven to be the most effective, and I’ll show you how to set this up. However, if you’re interested in other alt-coins, then you should also consider looking at Claymore miner.

Once you have downloaded Genoil, save and extract it to a suitable folder, e.g. Open Notepad and create a file called genoil. Best Decred DCR Mining Pool. bat with the following text, in the same folder. These settings will optimize your mining capability and launch the mining itself. Make sure to replace the pool and wallet address by what you’re using.

If you’re Solo mining, then replace the last line by using the command “ethminer.exe -G”. Setx GPU_FORCE_64BIT_PTR 0 setx GPU_MAX_HEAP_SIZE 100 setx GPU_USE_SYNC_OBJECTS 1 setx GPU_MAX_ALLOC_PERCENT 100 ethminer.exe -F -G --farm-recheck 200 --cl-local-work 256 --cl-global-work 8192 Launch genoil.bat, and you will start mining. Every time you start it, there will be a small while where the system will say 0Mh/s as your hashrate. Do not worry. Usually, this means that your DAG file is still being generated. The more GPUs you have, the longer it will take. Monitor your Rig Once you’re mining, make sure you watch your rig.

The first 24-48hours are essential and will determine if your system is stable or not. If it runs without problems during that period, then you should be fine. I’d recommend staying within reachable distance of your rig during this time as all sorts of issues can occur, and if you’re extremely unlucky, you could end up burning a building down. You can remotely keep an eye out on your rig by checking it’s hashing status on the pool of your choice and also by logging in using TeamViewer. Improving Performance If you wish to improve your hash rate, then read the section on this at the end. Install Ubuntu 16.04 and the AMD Driver.

And install it. Once you’re set up, download the, unzip and install that as well. Install the Ethereum Software First, you will need to add the repository. Use the commands below for this. Sudo apt-get install software-properties-common sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ethereum/ethereum sudo apt-get update Now install the software preferred Ethereum software, the miner, and Geth. These will help you with syncing with the blockchain and then starting to mine.

Sudo apt-get install ethereum sudo apt-get install ethminer sudo apt-get install geth If you’d like, you can use Geth to create your wallet, but as discussed previously it’s more ideal if you use an online wallet. Benchmark and start mining You can now test that your rig is mining using the first command, and then start mining using the second. It’s a simple as that.

If you want to use a pool different to Nanopool, then, of course, replace it with your chosen one. Ethminer -G -M ethminer -G -F --farm-recheck 200 If your having an issue with one of your miners, you can use the below commands to help you try and find which GPU is the problem ethminer -G -M --opencl-device x (where x is your GPU id starting at 0) list--devices (shows all the GPUs you have available) ethOS ethOS is possibly the simplest way of setting up a mining rig and is my go-to option when creating a new one. While it does cost $39, the amount of time it saves on troubleshooting is more than worth it. Arguably, it’s also easier and more streamlined to monitor as you can access it simply through SSH or look at your custom dashboard. You can read my, or head over to to purchase it. Purchase, Download and Install ethOS Once you have bought a license, you will be given a download link. Download it, and install according to their instructions on a small SSD.

Initial Boot-up & Set-up When you first boot it up, you must have a single GPU connected to the x16 slot closest to the CPU. The initial boot up will take a few minutes. Once that’s done, you will need to change the remote and local config files. To help with this, gpuShack has a fantastic knowledge base. Of course, if you haven’t yet, then you will need to get yourself an Ethereum Wallet/ address. Add GPUs Add each GPU one by one, making sure that the system runs stable each time.

By doing so, you’ll ensure that the system recognises each one correctly, and if there are any issues, it will be easier to pinpoint. Monitor your rig To monitor your rig, you have two options. You can either log in through SSH or look at the generated stats panel. The stats panel has the advantage that it’s a simple web page and you can easily view it from anywhere. SSH poses the advantage, that should you have any issues, you can easily remotely manage the system (as long as you’re happy with Linux command line operations). Improving Performance If you wish to improve your hash rate, then read the section on this at the end. Tips for ethOS Change your password: Use the below commands to change both the root, and main ethOS user passwords.

This is important especially if you’re planning to remotely access through SSH. Otherwise, your machine could be maliciously taken over.

Sudo passwd sudo passwd ethos Set up SSH: If you’re going to set up SSH, there are two important things you need to do. Firstly, set up on your router, so that traffic redirects to your rig. Secondly, use the below commands, to change the SSH port to something different e.g. While this won’t stop an attack if there is a port scan, it will reduce the possibility of an attack by a crawler. You can also consider using to 100% ensure that only you can access the rig.

Sudo nano /etc/ssh/sshd_config Change the line that says ‘# Port 22’ to ‘Port 2221’, or your prefered port. Cloud Mining It is possible to mine Ethereum, using online services such as AWS, or DigitalOcean. However, no-one has managed to make this real-time profitable, and you should only take this root if you don’t wish to build your own rig and want to speculate on the pricing. There are also Ethereum Mining Contracts such as. These companies provide you with your own dedicated mining rig, and you have to pay for this up front.

Again, unless you’re speculating heavily on the pricing, these don’t tend to be worth it. General Tips Improving Mining Performance Motherboard Settings In some cases, your motherboard BIOS might not be set-up correctly straight away. If you’re adding your GPUs one by one, and at one point your rig crashes, and you’ve eliminated GPU related issues, then it’s likely that your motherboard is the issue. Have a look around the forums for help, but often you will need a few settings changing. Personally, I’ve had experience with having to disable switch off some BIOS features and altering allocations, but system setups vary largely so I would say Google is your best friend. Fan and temperature: control and monitoring Always, always make sure you have a system in place for monitoring your fans and temperature, and you can check on these remotely. If you’re using Genoil, then the system will try and correct itself, and if you’re using ethOS, it will shut down a GPU if there is an overheat issue.

However, not all miners are created equal, and if you’re not careful, you could burn your house down. This is one of the reasons why it’s so important to continuously monitor your rig and ensure that it runs stable within the first 24 hours. Also, bare in mind the heat fluctuations during summer and winter months as those few degrees difference can have a huge impact.

Improving Performance If you wish to improve performance, you have two options: overclocking and custom BIOS. A custom BIOS usually has overclocking built into it, as well as a few other tweaks. Overclocking: Overclocking is the simpler of the two methods. Windows and ethOS support these easily through Wattman and ethos-overclocking respectively.

The general rule of thumb is that increasing the mem clock by 10% increases your hashrate by 10%. You can also change the core clock.

However, this has a smaller effect. Also, reducing core clock can be beneficial because it can reduce your power use and while your hashrate will be slightly lower, you could be positive overall as you’ll be using less power. The right core/mem balance will depend on your electricity cost and hashrate.

Custom BIOS. Custom BIOS’ are trickier. While it’s easy to use a tool such as to flash your GPU, bare in mind that it is risky.

You will also need to find a BIOS that is suitable for your GPU unless you’re proficient at tweaking it yourself with a tool like However, this can have the largest gain. For example, for the RX480 a custom BIOS can raise its hash rate to 30Mhs+ which is a considerable 30% improvement! Extra Fans. Especially if you have multiple rigs, then make sure you attach some additional fans to your case/ housing. Some people also use normal desk fans or in some cases high-power industrial fans., to get some creative ideas about how to create a useful but attractive mining rig at the same time! Ethereum Mining Conclusion So that’s it. I hope you enjoyed reading this Ethereum mining guide, now go ahead and start building your rig so you can start mining as quickly as possible! Have any feedback, questions, comments?

Let me know in the comments and I’ll make sure to keep this article up to date. Great guide, I wish I had this a few months ago before I started mknkn. I’ve gone through all this the hard way which is good but this guide is very clear and straightforward.

Having said that I wonder if you would have any idea how to fix the issue I have come across. After mining for two weeks on windows 10 with claymore on nanopool @ 6 x 1070 GeForce. My miner went offline. It says “ cannot write a buffer for DAG” CUDA error 77. It also says “an illegal instruction was encountered” and “calc DAG failed” I have increased the virtual memory but that did not work.

My hard drive says it has not 15gb of 110. What do you recommend? I was thinking on formating the hard drive. Claymore’s miner ETH fee removed (Win 64bit only) Hello everybody. I would like to share with you my program that will help you get more ETH with Claymore miner. You can watch this youtube video where I livestreamed my mining with earlier version of this program for 11hours.

Now back to Claymore. **Features:** -Removes fees from miner hence improves your hashrate -Autorestart when miner dies -Autokill other miners which could be blocking your miner **Limitations:** -Works only for ethermine.org and nanopool.org -Works only on Windows 64bit -You won’t get all fees The “ethical” issue of this thing. If you have problem with this and you think this modification is not ethical. I have to say if Claymore didn’t make milions dollars monthly of your 1-2% fees I would have agreed but in this case NO I don’t think this is problem. I doubt he could even notice! Well I left a debug feature for people just like you this feature shows Claymore’s wallets and show them in your miner console. So you can check his wallets and see for yourself how many bitcoins he make daily.

He has many wallets on many pools here is just one of them there is maybe 30+ of these you can look them up yourself. **FAQ:** **1. You can upload the exe to virustotal.com yourself its clean. How does it works?** This program starts miner process and monitor it. Precisely it monitors wallets on which fees are sent.

You can set your startup arguments as well as your payout wallet for fees in config file there is no need for.bat files or other scripts. How to use it?** Place this exe into same folder where you have Claymore miner and run it. It will create a default config for first run so you can test immediately and see if it works. Let it run for 15 minutes and wait for first dev fee. How do I know it works?** Best way to use it is to use same wallet for normal mining and for fees but set a worker fo your standard payout as for fees you cant set a worker it has to be “default” or “x” worker. Simply when your miner starts mining fee and find a share you should see on your pool stats “default” or “x” worker submited x amount of shares. Why did you do this?** I made it for my own use because I wanted to try if its possible or how hard it would be.

It turned out to be doable so I did it and used it for few days myself and then I decided I would share it. I have rewrote it to make it useable for all users and make their mining easier.

I have added about 60% code to check for stupid things users may do and much better error handling to ensure your mining will be absolutely flawless. You wont get all fees?!** Yes you won’t get everything initially. I wanted to sell this program first for little donation but over time it started to look like a worse idea. The main issue was that noone want to buy some random program which claims to do xy. It would mean that I would have to personally persuade each person to send me a little donation and thats simply not worth those 5-10 dollars I initally wanted. So I would take some of these developer fees which you wouldn’t get anyway. So what do you get?** You will get more the longer you mine.

Here is small table with what I get. Basically to be honest I want just a little something I dont want to rob you especially if you like this program I want you to use it and profit from it most so in the end I would get one session daily that is 36/72 seconds based on what you mine. Mine 2 days = each 10th fee session is on me. Mine >6 days = each 15th fee session is on me. Mine >13 days = each 20th fee session is on me.

This program show you in real time how many fees were saved and how much time it saved you. Now its good time to ask how much mining time you actually lose to Claymore when using it. When you mine just ETH you lose 36*24/60 = 14.4mim (daily) When you dual mine you lose 72*24/60 = 28.8mim (daily) For fist day of using you should get atleast additional 12.5min when mining just ETH and 25min when dual mining.

NOTE: These numbers are not accurate they are an estimate it yould be off -+10% I chose this values for better readability. Where can I get it?** Link: VirusTotal: You can donate me with any amount of ETH if you like my powerplay mods or this program I would appreciate it very much! ETH: 0x951B737cc259f5d05286183b75eF8C544B4c3772 If you have any questions just ask. I’m using Genoil as per your guide on Windows with NVidia GT 650M graphics card, 2GB memory. When I run genoil.bat, it is stuck at “Received new job ” C: Users Aniket Desktop ethminer-0.9.41-genoil-1.1.7 ethminer-0.9.41-genoil-1.1.7>setx GPU_FORCE_64BIT_PTR 0 SUCCESS: Specified value was saved.

C: Users Aniket Desktop ethminer-0.9.41-genoil-1.1.7 ethminer-0.9.41-genoil-1.1.7>setx GPU_MAX_HEAP_SIZE 100 SUCCESS: Specified value was saved. C: Users Aniket Desktop ethminer-0.9.41-genoil-1.1.7 ethminer-0.9.41-genoil-1.1.7>setx GPU_USE_SYNC_OBJECTS 1 SUCCESS: Specified value was saved. C: Users Aniket Desktop ethminer-0.9.41-genoil-1.1.7 ethminer-0.9.41-genoil-1.1.7>setx GPU_MAX_ALLOC_PERCENT 100 SUCCESS: Specified value was saved. C: Users Aniket Desktop ethminer-0.9.41-genoil-1.1.7 ethminer-0.9.41-genoil-1.1.7>setx GPU_SINGLE_ALLOC_PERCENT 100 SUCCESS: Specified value was saved. I don’t even know where to start “geth –fast –cache=1024 –jitvm console” Does not work.

I get: flag provided but not defined: -jitvm. I downloaded Mist, so I think I have a local wallet? Not necessary? The mining command doesn’t work regardless geth –rpc seems to start a synch. Its been running for a long time now.

How long should I expect this to take? You say, if mining solo, replace the “last line” with “ethminer.exe -G” So would that look like: ethminer.exe -G ethminer.exe -G //your wallet address here ethminer.exe -G //your wallet address here -G –farm-recheck 200 –cl-local-work 256 –cl-global-work 8192 I’ve tried creating a batch script with every iteration of the final line, it does nothing. The CMD prompt appears and then closes within a second.

I’ve been at this for HOURS. Any help would be awesome. One of the bests tutorials, thank you so much!! I really appreciate! “ethminer.exe -F “””-G –farm-recheck 200 –cl-local-work 256 –cl-global-work 8192″ It’s in here that i put the pool address? Just that and it’s on the pool? Which apps can we install to watch the rig?

Can i run with windows and comodo firewall? (since i don’t know a linux) Port forwarding is programming TCP and UDP to come and go on 2221? Thank you so much for your help, good karmas for you and your family. Hi Peter, Thanks for the sensational information.

I have never mined crypto coins before. Am looking into Ethereum based on its recent rise to about $200AUD. Apparently preferred GPU RX480 are really hard to get so I guess RX 470 will do the job? I am also looking at Claymore so I can mine another coin – which one would you suggest? In Adelaide SA, our going rate for 1Kwhr is 36c, not 10c that most seem to base their calcs on.

I have put these figures through the profit estimator and it still looks viable. My question is this Is Ethereum going to get ‘scarcer’ and therefore harder to mine.

Take longer, need higher hashrate and cost more (power) due to time taken to find coin? Do you think ‘solo’ mining Ethereum on a rig with a hashrate of (say) 170MH/s at a cost of 36c/KWhr is still worth it?

Thanks again, Peter. Hello, Peter, I`ve read your article and I found some thing that are unclear to me: 1.

You published this article on January 19,2017 and you talk about RX 480, but you recommend a driver that is not for this type of video card. I know that Claymore recommends it, but I think it was long time ago, when he wrote his program. You say that “You can also change the memory clock. However, this has a smaller effect”. Is this for real? Everywhere I read about overclocking it has been said that the memory increase increases your hashrate.

The core clock also increase it, but this affects the power consumption. So, my question is: is your article a little outdated or I have read thing that are not correct on this subject. BTW, a very good article. Whish I had read it at the begining of the year, but I found it just today. Hi Liviu Thanks for the compliments.

1) I’m running ethOS at the moment, but I’m fairly certain I used that driver, however, I’ll check at a later date. I will update the article to mention that you’ll need to find out the best driver for you as you’re correct it does vary from GPU to GPU. 2) You’re 100% correct, I must have switched the clocks around by accident, so again, thanks for the feedback. Let me know if you spot any other mistakes, or if there’s any additions you’d like to see Thanks Peter.