NVIDIA GTX 1080 ti GPUs

Mining
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I thought miners here might appreciate some knowledge share of these top of the line Nvidia 1080 ti cards. This took some trial and error, so my apologies for the length. Hopefully this helps someone.

First, I started with several 1080 ti founders edition cards. These cards run fast ~690-720 at around 70c. The issue for me was the noise. I wanted a semi-quiet rig that stayed very cool for longevity so I decided to pickup water cooling kits for these.

After installing an EVGA water cooler all-in-one for one of the cards, I found that it did stay considerably cooler but also ran much slower. Further, it became difficult to overclock because both EVGA Precision and Afterburner couldn’t find the radiator or blower fans, and were stuck with the default gpu bios temp-arc settings. Also the kit fans are 3pin instead of PMW, so you’re not able to plug these directly into the motherboard to control the radiator fan speed that way.

I decided this didn’t meet the requirements of what I wanted to build, so instead I ordered the EVGA 1080 ti SC2 all-in-one cards with built-in water coolers.

There are some good things about these all-in-one cards: they easily run ~710 Sol/s out of the box at about 55c. These cards also have really great temperature sensors throughout the card that EVGA Precision has a nice interface for displaying. Further, both fans are controllable through Precision (not Afterburner, which doesn’t recognize either fan).

The problem with these cards is when you try to run more than four. EVGA’s Precision XOC limits you to four graphics cards and will tell you “too many gpus”. This means that you can’t overclock these if you have more than four cards because Afterburner can’t control the fan speeds. Huge let down, but not enough to return them.

Next, I decided to dive into the new Corsair Hydro 1080 ti liquid cooled cards. These are by far the best option in my opinion.

First, the radiator fans are 4 pin pmw and plug directly into the motherboard sysfans or fan splitter. This is a huge win because it means you can get rid of EVGA Precision’s 4 card limit and use Afterburner. Afterburner does correctly recognize the blower fan and lets you override the default speeds.

Second, these cards run 5-10% faster stock even than the EVGA all-in-one gpus. I’m overclocking these to 730-750 without breaking into high temps. These cards are excellent. The radiator fans are also quieter and higher quality than the EVGA all-in-one card stock fans.

Bottom line, if you’re looking for longevity you might want to think about water-cooled 1080 ti cards and if you’re looking to build a rig with more than four cards you should consider the new Corsair gpus. Sure they are about $100 more than non-liquid cooled, but they will stay cooler, last longer and have a three year manufactures warranty.

Last, I just wanted to make a comment about knowledge share. Yes, it will increase the mining difficulty having more miners with faster cards, but I think the ethos of this place is healthier if we can learn from each other. Further, I believe that the price increases as the difficulty increases, so it’s actually a good thing having more miners mining Zcash. It also just feels right to pass on knowledge that others will benefit from and I hope others share that viewpoint.

I also want to make a shoutout to @cryptomined for his youtube videos that have helped thousands of newcomers get up to speed on mining.

Please share your thoughts/experiences here.

19 Likes
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Dope info here, thanks for sharing. 1080ti’s are definitely the way to go - My 2 Asus Strix 1080ti’s are running ~715 sol/s each but temps are kinda high. I had both cards on the motherboard because I was going to SLI them for gaming, but they were too close together and one card’s temp started hitting 84 degree or so. Now that I’ve separated them they’re running around 75 degrees each.

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75 is getting up there especially if you plan on running these for a couple of years or want to resell them later. It all depends on whether you’re mining short or long-term and what sort of warranty the cards have.

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Thanks for sharing!

I have a MSI 1080 Ti Seahawk X and get between 700-750 Sol/s at 100% TDP with slight overclocking. I prefer to run at 85% TDP though and reach about 55 C (23 C ambient). I really wanted more of these but can’t really find them in stock anywhere! So just ordered Zotacs today.

Eventually, I plan to get 4 of these: MSI Global - The Leading Brand in High-end Gaming & Professional Creation and put them in my main gaming + mining PC!

By the way can you tell me which risers you use? I have never used any and am scared since these cards are power hungry and I don’t watch them to catch on fire!

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Wow you definitely tried your cards.

I went from 1070 MSI (dual fan) which were just loud and HOT to EVGA 1070 SC ACX which were almost 20C cooler.

Just bought 6 EVGA 1070 hybrid’s today though in hopes that I could get it cooler. Your thoughts?

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definitely want to re-sell and mine for long-term. What temp should I be aiming for? Below 70 degrees?

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I’ve used all three: molex to sata (no issues), the direct to sata and the 6-pin to sata. I think in terms of quality the direct to sata and 6-pin to sata were the best, but the others are also working just fine. If you’re worried about it just avoid the molex connectors.

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You should be running at 85% power and underclocking until you’re <= 69 degrees. <65 would be ideal.

1 Like
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I’ve heard good things about the 1070 Sol/s and Sol/watt but haven’t used them myself so I can’t speak to them.

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1080 Ti are pretty decent for mining. We have built a few rigs to test density both for the rigs themselves and also for our power setup. Our FE cards usually stay at decent temps in the 60s.

Speaking to your point about water cooling - we have built a couple 6x 1070 rigs with the hybrid cards. The definitely stay cooler (high 30s - low 40s) and run very, very quiet. They also have higher hash rate on less power vs. air cooled cards. However, the difference is not very much and they still put out the same amount of heat which for us is the bigger issue.

In the end mining is all about ROI. We are experimenting now with immersion cooling which is very interesting.

1 Like
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430sol.jpg976Ă—517 201 KB

MSI GTX 1070 QUICK SILVER 8G 435 sol/s

1 Like
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What sols / watt are you seeing with these cards?

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Yeah, I push 10-15 sol/s less with evga but I think its worth it. My 2 MSI rigs are just hot. Just got the evga hybrids today. skeptical to see how much cooler they are.

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Thanks for sharing. I saw your video. I’m very interested in your immersion cooling setup. I’m also experimenting with some underclocked founders edition rig setups.

Also, are you running EWBF’s miner (windows)? After noticing that it sometimes shuts down and fails to restart correctly I’ve writing a small script to handle this issue. I’ll post this in it’s own post shortly.

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Here is a quick PowerShell (3) script to keep your EBWF miner running in the case that it fails and exits while you’re away.

It’s pretty simply, the script checks for the process and if the process isn’t running it attempts to restart it every 5 minutes. You can change that value (Sleep 300) at the end to less or more.

You’ll need to change the batpath, error path (or comment that out) and email information. This uses Gmail’s smtp and you will need to setup an application-specific password to make that part work. You could always leave out the email.

Also, if the app exits due to lost internet connection the email won’t send until it comes back online (obvious but worth mentioning).

I’ll be improving this over time, maybe adding desktop screenshots of the command prompt window? We’ll see.

In order to run this, save to a mine.ps1 file and throw it into the base EWBF directory, then run powershell as an administrator and cd into that directory. Then: .\mine.ps1

Last, in order to run this you might need to set Set-ExecutionPolicy Unrestricted if you’re using this on more than one machine and transfer the .ps1 via usb. Kinda a hassle with PowerShell, but I figure it’s cross-platform so someone on linux/mac might be able to us this as well.

# make sure to use these flags in the bat file: --eexit 3 --log 1 --logfile error.txt
while($true) {
  $batpath = "C:\Users\username\path\to\batfile.bat"
  # get mining process
  $mining = Get-Process miner -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue
  # check to see if the process exists
  if (!$mining) {
    # start the process
    Start-Process $batpath
    # give it time to startup
    Sleep 5
    $didrestart = Get-Process miner -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue
    if ($didrestart) {
      $message = "ZecBot - Restarted miner."
    } else {
      $message = "ZecBot - Unable to restart miner."
    }
    Write-Host $message
    # email
    $pwd = ConvertTo-SecureString 'yourGmailAppPassword' -AsPlainText -Force
    $cred = New-Object System.Management.Automation.PSCredential yourmail@gmail.com,$pwd
    $body = Get-Content -Path C:\Users\username\path\to\error.txt -Raw
    $param = @{
      SmtpServer = 'smtp.gmail.com'
      Port = 587
      UseSsl = $true
      Credential  = $cred
      From = 'yourmail@gmail.com'
      To = 'yourOtherMail@gmail.com'
      Subject = $message
      Body = $body
    }
    Send-MailMessage @param
  } else {
    Write-Host "mining"
  }
  # wait 5 mins, change this as desired
  Sleep 300
}

Please comment for additions/improvements/etc. I might throw this into a repo if someone finds it useful.

12 Likes
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Anywhere from 2.5-3.2 Sol/w but right now I don’t really care about power usage so I’m at 98% power.

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how about MSI GeForce GTX 1080 Ti SEA HAWK X ?
899eur

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I can’t seem to find any difference between this and the Corsair Hydro 1080 ti. The Corsair site says they worked with MSI to develop their version and the base clocks are the same. The only difference seems to be the fan (maybe Corsair’s is nicer). The new MSI one also has the Corsair logo on it - so I’m pretty sure the only difference is branding.

The Corsair one has a PMW fan and I can’t find that on the MSI version, but it would make sense. The PMW fan is one of the big selling points over the EVGA 1080 ti all-in-one, that uses a 3pin to on-board gpu fan.

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from : MSI GeForce GTX 1080 SEA HAWK X review

" … That heat will lead towards a low-profile aluminum radiator, which is easy to install and can fit in anychassis being equipped with a silent 120 mm PWM controllable fan…"

or you are talking something else?

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How are your eVGA performance/temperature? I’ve just ordered it in amazon and waiting…