I had huge hopes for profits from ZCash mining, but after running my rig for 3 days straight, I’m only making about $1.42/day (using Nicehash miner, price of ZCash currently $206.69). I was expecting around $7/day. Is this small income normal?
I’m extremely driven to get this mining operation going correctly because most of my life was spent with health problems that kept me from working (I’m 42 now). Within the past 2 years, my health problem have been resolved, so I’m looking to make up for lost time. My friend, who introduced me to mining, told me he was making $350-$400 per month with his 6gpu rig back in January (ZCash was only about $48 then). At the current price of ZCash, I could be making close to $200/month off 1 gpu, if my calculations are correct. With my computer knowledge, I thought maybe ZCash mining would be the door to the bright future I always wanted.
However, after seeing my income at only $1.42/day ($42/month), I’m starting to have my doubts. Am I missing something? What do I have to do to bring out my miner’s full potential? Do I need to do further optimization, or do I need to readjust my expectations? If my daily income is accurate, what is the huge draw to ZCash mining (or mining, in general)?
Here is my setup:
-Celeron processor
-8GB RAM
-64GB sata2 ssd
-4 pcie motherboard
-Windows 10
-presently using only a single MSI Radeon RX 580 4GB OC (Core clock set for 1.473GHz, but actually runs between 1.250GHz-1.288GHz); Memory Clock is 1.871GHz.
-Using Afterburner with Crimson Relive 17.8.2
-Using Nicehash Miner Legacy v1.8.1.2
Looks like you are mining Etherium from your screenshot. You should post to the Etherium forums. That said, you won’t make any profit for a single card. You likely need 4-6 cards.
AMD cards like you have are better suited to mine Etherium than Zcash, so I would mine Etherium like you are, buy some more cards, and find an Etherium specific forum so you can get some good hints and tips from people mining Etherium.
The expectation of making $7 a day with ANY single GPU is unrealistic; and the $1.42 per day you are getting with a AMD 580 is probably right.
When the difficulty was low back in January/February you would have been making less per day. The difference is if you would have held on to what you mined, then your overall per day average would have increased, because the value of the coin increased.
A 1080ti will net you $3.50 to $4.00 a day and a AMD Fury about $2.25 - $2.75 per day
NiceHash works and is easy to use, but mining any coin directly, with a pool, will see your per day go up 5% to 15%
IF you want to increase your per day, then you need to increase your GPU count with an understanding that you are looking at a 6 month to 10 month ROI/break even
BTW in your screenshot, its mining Decred, not Zcash
also its not recommended to alter your settings with afterburning if you are using NiceHash. NiceHash auto overclock’s to their stable spec’s.
Thank you. I did not know that AMD cards are not the best for mining ZCash. I am still learning about the various graphics cards and their capabilities. I hear that the hash rate per wattage for gtx 1080 cards is good. Would that be a good one to replace the RX 580 with?
As for additional cards, I did intend to add more cards as I could afford them.
My intention was to mine only ZCash. However, using NiceHash for Windows was more profitable than Claymore’s ZCash miner for Windows. So, I gravitated towards NiceHash. It is my understanding, however, that with NiceHash I am actually renting out my hash power; which means I don’t get control over what is mined. So, I am not really sure which forums would be appropriate to post questions about mining with NiceHash.
Let me know if this understanding is incorrect.
And yes, I did intend to add more cards after I optimized the first one.
Ok, I will adjust my profit expectations. I did intend to increase the number of cards I have as I could afford them.
I don’t really understand how you’re getting the profits you describe re: NiceHash vs mining directly. When I used Claymore’s ZCash miner for Windows using Flypool, I made only about $1.22/day. Moving to NiceHash, that immediately jumped to about $1.42/day. Am I doing something wrong?
Also, without OCing using Afterburner, profits are only about $1.04/day (as of right now). Whereas with Afterburner OCing, this jumps to about $1.09. Why am I getting different results than what you describe?
Lastly, I don’t know why NiceHash is mining only Ethereum and Decred for me. All I do is click on the NiceHash shortcut and pres [Start]. The shell window opens up, and in the title bar it says “EthDcrMiner64.exe”. It is my understanding that with NiceHash I’m actually renting out hashpower, so I don’t understand why only 2 type of currency are being mined. Hmmm. Any suggestions?
Setup 2 1080TI using NiceHAsh 1.8.1.2 and on September 19 2017 I am getting $2.40 to $2.65 per card.
Each card has its own per day return.
I put the date in because in 3 weeks someone will say I am doing something wrong because it is low or what special powers I have because of how high it is…
The difference in my pricing is easy, I figure it when I cash out to buy more GPU’s or equipment. I usually do this when the currency is on an increase or near a ceiling that I believe it can not pop this time (it usually does next time). I base it on the number of coins I sell, coins mined directly from the last sell, total sell price divided by number of days then by number of cards gives me per card per day price.
With NiceHAsh, it again is the right now, current market pricing. What you mine there this week, could be 80% higher in 2 weeks; but you’re paid in 2 weeks ago pricing. This also goes the other way.
Then there is BTC, since this is what they pay you in, if price of BTC goes down, your $$ balance declines, as well as the per day . BTC goes up then your $$ balance goes up and your price per day per card.
In short, you can either mine for $$$ right now or play the long game and mine for $$$ later.
I mine for later and for additional equipment.
I’m a little confused by your numbers where you say with your 1080 ti you’re currently getting $2.40-$2.65 per card per day. Further up the thread you had written that a 1080 ti would net $3.50-$4.00 per card per day.
9 days ago zec was 218. - 222.00 and BTC was 4299 to 4334 which is higher than what the two were yesterday.
and other than a couple of POS computers that I have running NiceHash, I do not use NiceHash on my Vega Frontiers, Fury’s, or 1080TI GPU’s. I did a test using two of the 1080ti GPU’s just to test out their new software and to see what they would pay me for my hash power.
and I do not look at the rate every single day, I figure out my per day rate when I sell Zcash to buy more equipment.
