Noob Questions..

theDon

[H]ard|Gawd
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I’ve been doing some research on crypto mining, and my results have been too much and too little at the same time. My son and I thought maybe we would start mining as a group hobby but I don’t know where to start. I hope the community can give some much needed assistance.

1. I have 2 Xeon servers older ( 7 Yearsish ) but functional previously Minecraft servers. Given power usage is it a good idea to attempt mining on these? I was looking At adding low cost GPUs but wasn’t sure of viability.

2. I have a I7 with an R7 290x that I had planned on using for light gaming, but it’s an option. I only ask because many of the articles talk about multiple 1080s so I wasn’t sure where this fell..

3. Currency? From my research I was thinking Litecoin or one of the smaller coins. But with more reading it just made the rabbit hole very deep.

Thanks in advance. A few things the machines are all flavors of Windows, and the servers have the advantage of already being racked in a cool place. The I7 would require a new location.

TheDon
 
First, how much does your power cost?

1. What specific CPUs do the Xeon servers have? You say they're ~7 years old...so Sandy Bridge-based?

2. What specific i7 CPU do you have? You mean R9 290x? Depending on your power cost, that 290x is probably going to be your most profitable option.

3. For starting out, I'd suggest just using Nicehash Miner (specifically Nicehash Miner Legacy for the 290x). It's quick and easy to setup and will automatically mine what's most profitable for your hardware.
 
I'm mining with an i5 760 from 09. the mb can handle 5 cards. Works great. You need gpus. The xeons probably won't be much on their own.

look up hash rates for the 290. Probably would mine ether.

you aren't mining litecoin. Go to whattomine.com.... Look at the gpu tab....

good luck finding video cards....
 
Thanks for the replies.,

Power costs according to the provider 8.563 / KWH

1. They are older than I thought.. vintage 2003 Xeon 5400

2. 3770k , R9 yea, it’s the water cooled version

—————-

Yea I’ve noticed card prices are insane especially amd. With the age of those xeons getting cards that would do slot of good might be an issue.. that said this forum has more reasonable prices on used cards than most.
 
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Depends what you're trying to mine... some coins are better than others to CPU mine. But you really need GPUs. It's a fun thing to do, I did some litecoin mining back when it was cheap to get into, but it's getting so that it just isn't worth it anymore. By the time you pay your electricity bill it simply won't be worth the time/money/effort. I mine Monero with my 980 ti... I do it more for fun than for making any money.
 
So nicehash is a smart miner that will move to the more profitable currency for my hardware. That’s pretty cool..
 
FWIW, my Ryzen 1600 on cryptonight is about as profitable over the day as my 280x. Fully appreciate that your Xeons aren't as energy efficient, though.
 
I was thinking of setting nicehash up on the lot of them to see what shook out.. ironically my breaker box took a dump this morning so right now my water heater can’t even mine hot water..
 
I was thinking of setting nicehash up on the lot of them to see what shook out.. ironically my breaker box took a dump this morning so right now my water heater can’t even mine hot water..

With a power rate under 9 cents/kWh, yeah, go for it.
 
FWIW, my Ryzen 1600 on cryptonight is about as profitable over the day as my 280x. Fully appreciate that your Xeons aren't as energy efficient, though.

and 1/10th as fast.


It's not worth it mining on xeon's from 2003.
 
Even older boards, especially workstation and server boards, as well as older ram, will add up in electricity usage compared to modern ones.
 
True.. nothing worse than realizing how old your hardware is.. I was concerned about their power draw those old school machines probably suck the juice..
 
I have 2x MSI R9 380 4GB doing next to nothing... still wondering if I should try to get on the bandwagon or sell those... No clue how much they're worth right now ?
Sorry for thread jacking.. I'm curious to see how your cards play and at the same time wonder if I should put a FS thread up for those..
 
I’ve never been less sure of a fair for video cards in my life.. the 290x I have now is going for more than I paid over 2 years ago. I’d be interested depending on price..
 
I’ve never been less sure of a fair for video cards in my life.. the 290x I have now is going for more than I paid over 2 years ago. I’d be interested depending on price..

PM me, we'll see what can be done.
 
So is adding cards a 100% gain or is more like how SLI or Crossfire work?
 
I have a media server that runs 24/7 .. would adding vid card and mining kill plex/sonar?
 
I have a media server that runs 24/7 .. would adding vid card and mining kill plex/sonar?

As long as that video card isn't necessary for any hardware acceleration of your media it should be fine.
 
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hi new here intrested to mine where can i go to learn mining basics
 
Cool, thanks.. you guys have helped a ton. This a weird question but in your experience are there any pci-x cards out there worth mining on? Or is profitability limited to 16x pcie?
 
The board In my media server only has 4 free pci - x slots.. just wondered if they were too deprecated.
 
PCI-X unfortunately won't help you very much. You really need PCI-E, even old v1 PCI-E will work with modern cards for mining.
 
Thanks for the reply.. I for some reason thought there were some relatively recent cards on that spec, but it has been a long time since a 9500gt
 
I got all my hardware setup, and created a nicehash account.. It keeps suggesting I download nicehash 2.x, but all of the link bring me back to the main page. I can get the AMD NHL, but I really would have preferred the simpler miner to get started on.. Any insights are again appreciated.
 
after you get the, for example, minimum needed in your bitcoin address where u can cash it out what do you do to transfer that to good old cash?
 
after you get the, for example, minimum needed in your bitcoin address where u can cash it out what do you do to transfer that to good old cash?

1. Mine to Nicehash address, once you get to 0.002 btc, cash out to Coinbase (0 fee for the transfer).
2. Go to GDAX and deposit the coins from your Coinbase account to GDAX (0 fee).
3. Place a post only BTC/USD limit sell on GDAX for at least slightly more than the market price (0 fee).
4. Cash out to your bank account (0 fee).
 
you guys are answering the questions I didn’t even know I had. I appreciate it..

As a side note the 290x seems pretty effective, but I’m concerned the water cooler that is on it maybe dorked.. Because of this I’ve been Leary to leave it unattended mining. This kills the profitability but with cards so expensive now cooking it over 40 a month seems silly. All of that should the temps be alit higher than gaming? It seems to jump into the 60s 70s very very fast. Thanks for the insight.. you guys are [H]ard!
 
When should you transfer the funds from your nicehash wallet to your coinbase account? When/after you transfer to coinbase what is the next step?
 
when you get .002 BTC in Nicehash. Then you can send the funds to Coinbase for free, and then sell on Gdax for 0 fee as long as you 'make' something on it ( you need to set it to sell at slightly higher than market ). If you sell it for market value, you become a 'taker' and are charged .025%

Going from BTC to USD through Coinbase is not recomended as it includes a service fee of $1.99
 
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