Some noob questions re mining

Mining
1

Hola there,

I have just managed to whack together a mining rig and set up a zcoin wallet (not as easy as one would first expect). I missed getting in on the ground floor of bitcoin (god am I regretting that) and since i have a fair whack of cpu power often sitting around I thought why not?

However in the past I have often been lazy and being too shy to ask for help has often left me creating way too much work for myself that costs me in the longrun for the short term fear of looking stupid.

So I hada couple of quick questions that I hoped you guys might be able to answer for me.

So I am running two rigs at the moment - Rig 1 is a 5820k with 16gb of RAM running windows 10 and a Nvidia GTX 970. It’s getting 54 Sol/s give or take. I get the impression this is on the low side for this rig. Rig 2 is my older rig running a 3930k with 32gb RAM and a AMD 7970 it’s getting around 28-29 Sol/s.

I am currently using the nheqminer 0.4b on the 5820 and .3 on the 3930 - there doesn’t seem to be an appreciable difference between the two builds. I’m pooling on flypool because what little research I have done indicates the gentleman running it is reputable enough. The miners are using the tromp solvers for the GPUs and the xenoncat solvers for the CPUs

I’ve read that the tromp solvers are slightly faster/more optimised - I know in linux you can change the conf file to use the tromp solvers - how is this done with the windows miners? I assume that mining under a Ubuntu VM would negate any efficiency gains from using the tromp solvers for CPU (if they are indeed to be had or work that way). How do I enable Tromp’s solvers for CPU mining in nheqminer under windows? Is it worth my time doing so? Does it work that way or are they GPU only?

Is nheqminer the way to go for mining or are there better miners?

Are these Sol rates about right for my hardware? Is there anything else I could be doing to increase the rate?

Do I need to be running the zcash daemon in my linux VM whilst I am mining under windows in order to collect? That is to say does it need tobe active in parallel to the miners on windows?

I am just running it with the default flags - is there any danger of running down my hardware - I’m at 100% utilisation but system temps seem okay (mid 50’sC)

What are the best config flags - given I am just running my hardware at stock? Are there any tweaks to increase solrate?

When looking at my stats, I see things like “Shares” - whilst i have some idea of what that might mean - perhaps it’s better if someone were to explain it to my like I’m five. ALso flypool shows my hash rate at 60 compared to the solrate of 55 - is that an approximation or are they actually different metrics?

What other concerns, e.g security should I be aware of?

Thanks in advance, I cannot wait until zcash makes me an overnight billionaire, more attractive to members of the opposite sex and grows my hair back. :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

2

What I can tell you straight away is just get Claymore’s ZEC miner for that HD 7970, it will go to 50 hashes, minimum! :slight_smile:

3

Yes but that requires teh 15.12 catalyst driver - whilst the AMD page is only offering me the 16.2 Catalyst drivers. Will it work okay with newer drivers ?

4

It will work with newer drivers, but I do not know if they are just as good as with the older driver.
In my case, as i switched from Genoil to Claymore, my sol/s increase from 20 to 30 sol/s.

I used a R9 380x AMD with the newest driver

Edit: I correct a mistake: Genoil instead of nheqminer

5

Should I run a separate instance for the GPU and then another for the CPU - I get the impression this isn’t an CPU miner?

Apparently that is the case. Well I shall give it a whirl presently

6

Well there’s some odd behaviour here. It seems to think my 7970 is a 280/380x

It’s getting 40 H/s -s that equivalent to Sols/s ? Because that’s quite impressive - a little too impressive. The card itself is getting quite hot - 72C fan at 81%

What params should I use to keep it cooler?

It will work with newer drivers, but I do not know if they are just as good as with the older driver.
In my case, as i switched from Genoil to Claymore, my sol/s increase from 20 to 30 sol/s.

I used a R9 380x AMD with the newest driver

Edit: I correct a mistake: Genoil instead of nheqminer

I’m currently using it on 15.20 I think?

Is the H/s displayed in the miner equivalent to Sol/s ?

Also where/how do i set the worker in the conf so that it is correctly updated in flypool’s stats?

What I can tell you straight away is just get Claymore’s ZEC miner for that HD 7970, it will go to 50 hashes, minimum! :slight_smile:

Well It definitely seemed to add a lot more if H/s == sols/s - but only 39-40 h/s for the AMD - still much more than the 29 I was getting for the GPU + CPU combined. Added a nice boost of around 20 sols/s to my effective hashrate according to fly pool. Not quite 50 sol/s as you said though :stuck_out_tongue:

A little uneasy about the temps though. 73C is about the edge of what I’d consider acceptable.

7

As far as i know, the H/s are the same as the sol/s, just another name.

Which version of claymore do you use? I read shortly about a v2.0. Do you use that version?

I used v1.0 and get round about 30 sol/s, now i use Ubuntu with silentarmy. It is almost the same sol/s, but without devfee.

I’ll try to find the v2.0 and change my hdd to the one with Windows, if there are 40 sol/s possible.

8

I’m using the 1.0 beta Claymore AMD miner. I’m starting to get some variance now as you can see in the below screenshot.

a1claymorecap.PNG661×805 35.6 KB

It is quite a marked improvement. I haven’t played with any of the config options yet - jsut pointed it at my pool.I should probably put in some of thesafety vars as this is an older rig and needs a bit of TLC before being subjected to some heavy workloads and I expect ambient temps today might top 30C.

9

I played around and get:

Windows 7 (newest driver, GPU only a single R9 380x card)

Claymore v1.0 ± 30 sol/s with 163 Wh
Claymore v2.0beta ± 33 sol/s with 173 Wh

Ubuntu 16.04 (the same equipment)

Silentarmy miner ± 30 sol/s with 161 Wh

I will use the silentarmy miner on Ubuntu, less energy, no devfee and almost the same sol/s