The Cryptocurrency Mining Thread: just flip your old cards on eBay

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Serious Hardware/Software Crap > The Cryptocurrency Mining Thread: just flip your old cards on eBay

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Fauxtool: Oct 21, 2008; by Jeffrey of YOSPOS

I'm making about 300 a month on paid off equipment. My heating bill is normally around 150 so as long as it stays cold I'm running a profitable heater

# ? Mar 1, 2018 22:15

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# ? Jun 9, 2024 22:49

Risky Bisquick: Jan 18, 2008; PLEASE LET ME WRITE YOUR VICTIM IMPACT STATEMENT SO I CAN FURTHER DEMONSTRATE THE CALAMITY THAT IS OUR JUSTICE SYSTEM.; Buglord

Profits are flat since I cashed out, its still worthwhile in bulk imo

# ? Mar 1, 2018 22:16

1gnoirents: Jun 28, 2014; hello

BangersInMyKnickers posted:

lol you nerds would make more money with less investment farming bing rewards for gift cards at this point

what is this bing you speak of and whats the bings per winks ratio, im sitting on a lot of those

edit: I should note its definitely profitable for me its just ... less so. I'm sitting around $300 a month as well which is no chump change but thats also 4 video cards and 3 cpus, albeit none of those are ideal parts by any means

1gnoirents fucked around with this message at 22:35 on Mar 1, 2018

# ? Mar 1, 2018 22:29

Zero VGS: Aug 16, 2002; ASK ME ABOUT HOW HUMAN LIVES THAT MADE VIDEO GAME CONTROLLERS ARE WORTH MORE; Lipstick Apathy

BangersInMyKnickers posted:

lol you nerds would make more money with less investment farming bing rewards for gift cards at this point

Why not both? Bing and decide (tm)

# ? Mar 1, 2018 22:32

Setset: Apr 14, 2012; Grimey Drawer

DrDork posted:

Bring me evidence suggesting that ex-mining cards fail at a higher rate than normal cards, and I'll happily change my mind. poo poo, bring me evidence that used 10-series cards fail at a rate worth being concerned about, and I'll happily change my mind. I won't ask for hard numbers because obviously the only ones with the real return stats are the manufacturers, and they're not saying poo poo. So bring me people bitching on forums, bad Amazon reviews, negative eBay posts, something here!

But right now the current body of evidence is a conspicuous lack of horror stories, which strongly suggests that things are pretty ok.

Also that 3 year warranty is pretty great at solving the issue of getting a hosed up card--sure, it's obnoxious, but if you're saving $300+ then I'd imagine a lot of people would be willing to deal with the hassle.

There's plenty of evidence that heat will kill GPUs. 6-months to a year running without good cooling is enough to kill a capacitor. And there's no warning sign, just one day it stops working.

Saving $300 on a MSRP 1070 would only cost like $100, so yes that's a great deal and worth the risk. But $500 for one is different. I dont think gamers are actually paying those inflated prices for new cards

# ? Mar 1, 2018 22:44

1gnoirents: Jun 28, 2014; hello

Lube banjo posted:

There's plenty of evidence that heat will kill GPUs. 6-months to a year running without good cooling is enough to kill a capacitor. And there's no warning sign, just one day it stops working.

Saving $300 on a MSRP 1070 would only cost like $100, so yes that's a great deal and worth the risk. But $500 for one is different. I dont think gamers are actually paying those inflated prices for new cards

Its a curve, excessive heat exponentially degrades components but if you stay where you're supposed to be the components outlast any reasonable lifespan of a video card. 290's in the last mining surge and dump handled it well enough and those cards potentially ran much hotter with little to no regulation on component quality. Pascal cards are basically the opposite of those, I have little reservation in recommending a mining Pascal card even a year from now. And I was definitely someone who wouldn't buy a clapped out $200 290x, even though a lot of people were happy to.

Gaming loads are worse on components, but I haven't actually seen any kind of study on such a thing so thats just "my opinion".

# ? Mar 1, 2018 23:00

Klyith: Aug 3, 2007; GBS Pledge Week

lol @ miners rationalizing

anyways the big dumps don't seem to be happening yet, 1070s are still selling for $600-ish on ebay. we'll see how reliability looks in 6 months after the next gen nvidia cards have come out.

# ? Mar 1, 2018 23:06

1gnoirents: Jun 28, 2014; hello

Klyith posted:

lol @ miners rationalizing

anyways the big dumps don't seem to be happening yet, 1070s are still selling for $600-ish on ebay. we'll see how reliability looks in 6 months after the next gen nvidia cards have come out.

Are you referring to literally decades of solid evidence and experience with capacitors as "rationalizing" lol. I dont know why so many of you are jizzing over the idea that mining ruins video cards but there is nothing to support that unless

1) its running way too hot
2) is a poorly made piece of poo poo

Its possible Pascal cards are poorly made pieces of poo poo and time will tell, but somehow I doubt it.

# ? Mar 1, 2018 23:17

Fauxtool: Oct 21, 2008; by Jeffrey of YOSPOS

dont buy amd and dont buy blowers. easy

# ? Mar 1, 2018 23:34

Setset: Apr 14, 2012; Grimey Drawer

1gnoirents posted:

Are you referring to literally decades of solid evidence and experience with capacitors as "rationalizing" lol. I dont know why so many of you are jizzing over the idea that mining ruins video cards but there is nothing to support that unless

1) its running way too hot
2) is a poorly made piece of poo poo

Its possible Pascal cards are poorly made pieces of poo poo and time will tell, but somehow I doubt it.

Yeah, pascal with poor components that's impossi...

http://www.guru3d.com/news-story/evga-gtx-10701080-cards-almost-all-of-them-have-overheating-issues.html

# ? Mar 1, 2018 23:38

Fauxtool: Oct 21, 2008; by Jeffrey of YOSPOS

and then they got fixed for free

# ? Mar 1, 2018 23:47

1gnoirents: Jun 28, 2014; hello

Lube banjo posted:

Yeah, pascal with poor components that's impossi...

http://www.guru3d.com/news-story/evga-gtx-10701080-cards-almost-all-of-them-have-overheating-issues.html

So ... yes, that qualified for #2. Unless I accidentally typed "a list of impossible things that cant happen" and had a stroke and forgot

# ? Mar 2, 2018 00:00

QuarkJets: Sep 8, 2008

DrDork posted:

Bring me evidence suggesting that ex-mining cards fail at a higher rate than normal cards, and I'll happily change my mind. poo poo, bring me evidence that used 10-series cards fail at a rate worth being concerned about, and I'll happily change my mind. I won't ask for hard numbers because obviously the only ones with the real return stats are the manufacturers, and they're not saying poo poo. So bring me people bitching on forums, bad Amazon reviews, negative eBay posts, something here!

But right now the current body of evidence is a conspicuous lack of horror stories, which strongly suggests that things are pretty ok.

Also that 3 year warranty is pretty great at solving the issue of getting a hosed up card--sure, it's obnoxious, but if you're saving $300+ then I'd imagine a lot of people would be willing to deal with the hassle.

Horror stories have been posted in this very thread. It's a simple fact that overuse increases the rate of hardware failure (e.g. fans break), and inadequate cooling can further wreck your hardware. So it's a gamble on whether you think that the person you're buying a GPU from someone who may have mistreated their hardware. But one clue is that images like these are pretty normal/common:

Eh just shove the GPUs in this old TV box and stick a dryer hose on one end, it'll be fine

Anyway here are some google results

First up, Microsoft published a study with 1 million consumer PCs and found that even a 5 % overclock can increase silicon-based hardware failure rates by 200x, and after the first hardware crash subsequent crashes are 2 orders of magnitude more likely to occur. GPU mining these days largely involves undervolting, so GPU miners in the know are going to be bucking the overclocking trend, but the more amateury miners...

Pro-mining article points out that running a mining card at full tilt can damage them

Bitcointalk thread full of people sharing their own experiences with GPUs catching fire while mining

Bitcointalk thread where people are dishing about their experiences with hardware failure, and how prolonged use, especially with inadequate cooling, results in higher failure rates, from back when gpu mining bitcoins was a thing

My own experience working with academics trying to save a buck is that running a GPU (at least the 980 series) nonstop with inadequate cooling is ill-advised and you'll suffer a higher than average rate of hardware failure

QuarkJets fucked around with this message at 00:13 on Mar 2, 2018

# ? Mar 2, 2018 00:11

Dr. Fishopolis: Aug 31, 2004; ROBOT

it doesn't matter anyway, there's such a backlog of demand that even if mining profits dropped to zero tomorrow you'd still be seeing used cards at or above msrp three months from now. Plus, ram prices are still hosed so it's not like new cards will start showing up at msrp either.

# ? Mar 2, 2018 00:28

1gnoirents: Jun 28, 2014; hello

QuarkJets posted:

Horror stories have been posted in this very thread. It's a simple fact that overuse increases the rate of hardware failure (e.g. fans break), and inadequate cooling can further wreck your hardware. So it's a gamble on whether you think that the person you're buying a GPU from someone who may have mistreated their hardware. But one clue is that images like these are pretty normal/common:

Eh just shove the GPUs in this old TV box and stick a dryer hose on one end, it'll be fine

Anyway here are some google results

First up, Microsoft published a study with 1 million consumer PCs and found that even a 5 % overclock can increase silicon-based hardware failure rates by 200x, and after the first hardware crash subsequent crashes are 2 orders of magnitude more likely to occur. GPU mining these days largely involves undervolting, so GPU miners in the know are going to be bucking the overclocking trend, but the more amateury miners...

Pro-mining article points out that running a mining card at full tilt can damage them

Bitcointalk thread full of people sharing their own experiences with GPUs catching fire while mining

Bitcointalk thread where people are dishing about their experiences with hardware failure, and how prolonged use, especially with inadequate cooling, results in higher failure rates, from back when gpu mining bitcoins was a thing

My own experience working with academics trying to save a buck is that running a GPU (at least the 980 series) nonstop with inadequate cooling is ill-advised and you'll suffer a higher than average rate of hardware failure

Now this is good stuff, but the microsoft analysis shows hardware crashes, not hardware failure. Unless I didn't see what you were talking about I see a 19-20x increase in crashing over the 8 month testing time - which makes sense for CPU overclocking. It also seems to be directly related to clockspeed rather than anything else. Logically, I imagine this crashing is due to a lack of voltage as well rather than any kind of silicon damage.

That Me article just seems to say "its going to fail" without explaining how, or why, and I disagree with that one the most by far. Its worse than speculation, and even contradicts itself.

The stuff catching fire is the most solid warning here, but most fires are from cables. That can happen to any card of course, but any legitimate GPU fire that actually starts at the GPU will happen if you play games or mine, the workload will make no difference at all. It doesn't become more flammable as time goes on, anything that catches fire is a poorly made piece of poo poo. I dont think Pascal cards can get hot enough honestly, but I dont know that.

And finally the real threat: running anything in a hot environment will kill it. This is the biggest danger with buttcoin cards in my book and is totally valid. Even though Pascal cards have very hard limits that force it to downclock, I dont doubt if you put it in a box for a year with no ventilation you will see degradation of mosfets and caps faster than if it weren't , no matter what it downclocks to. This directly affects output though so thats a pretty small dice to roll imo.

# ? Mar 2, 2018 00:34

PerrineClostermann: Dec 15, 2012; by FactsAreUseless

BangersInMyKnickers posted:

lol you nerds would make more money with less investment farming bing rewards for gift cards at this point

Those are a lot more of a pain in the rear end and generally require some form of regular active involvement

:goonsay:

I remember farming club live when I was in high school.

# ? Mar 2, 2018 01:03

DrDork: Dec 29, 2003; commanding officer of the Army of Dorkness

1gnoirents posted:

The stuff catching fire is the most solid warning here, but most fires are from cables. That can happen to any card of course, but any legitimate GPU fire that actually starts at the GPU will happen if you play games or mine, the workload will make no difference at all. It doesn't become more flammable as time goes on, anything that catches fire is a poorly made piece of poo poo. I dont think Pascal cards can get hot enough honestly, but I dont know that.

While this is all true, previously-on-fire cards are unlikely to hit the secondary market!

e; I'd also be curious as to what the actual running temps of some of those hilarious poo poo-box setups actually end up being. 5 x 1070's = 700w, which is a good bit of heat, obviously, but, approximate maths:

700w = 2450 btu/hr
2450 btu/hr = CFM x Density factor x Temp drop
Assume the density factor is around 1.08
Assume the 1070's are throwing off 55C air (I've never measured it, but this would seem ballparkish for "noticeably warm but not terribly hot")
The temp drop between the 55C air and ambient 21C air is 34C

Thus, to move 700w of heat, you'd need a fan that would do about 67CFM, which is about the range of a medium sized bath fan.

So, as stupid as it looks (and I don't doubt that there's a factor here I'm overlooking--maybe the circulation is poo poo so most of the heat gets localized on the cards and never gets exhausted, for example, or maybe he's an idiot and actually tried sealing it so the intake is so choked that it's only moving a tiny fraction of the CFM the fan is technically capable of, or the exhaust line is funky and provides excessive back pressure, etc.), from a pure engineering perspective it should be possible to use a mid to large sized exhaust fan to successfully cool 4-5 1070's in an enclosure.

DrDork fucked around with this message at 05:43 on Mar 2, 2018

# ? Mar 2, 2018 05:26

SaviourX: Sep 30, 2003; The only true Catwoman is Julie Newmar, Lee Meriwether, or Eartha Kitt.

Has anybody posted about investing in the company selling the shovels yet?

# ? Mar 2, 2018 07:40

Zero VGS: Aug 16, 2002; ASK ME ABOUT HOW HUMAN LIVES THAT MADE VIDEO GAME CONTROLLERS ARE WORTH MORE; Lipstick Apathy

SaviourX posted:

Has anybody posted about investing in the company selling the shovels yet?

I bet the Twin Peaks guy who sells golden shovels would totally mine crypto.

# ? Mar 2, 2018 08:37

Fauxtool: Oct 21, 2008; by Jeffrey of YOSPOS

just got my 10% nicehash repayment. Finally, now to wait another year for the rest

# ? Mar 2, 2018 11:26

PerrineClostermann: Dec 15, 2012; by FactsAreUseless

Do you have to keep pushing the total of new balance + old balance to the threshold to get more old balance payouts?

# ? Mar 2, 2018 17:56

Zero VGS: Aug 16, 2002; ASK ME ABOUT HOW HUMAN LIVES THAT MADE VIDEO GAME CONTROLLERS ARE WORTH MORE; Lipstick Apathy

PerrineClostermann posted:

Do you have to keep pushing the total of new balance + old balance to the threshold to get more old balance payouts?

No because I got 10% while under the original threshold.

# ? Mar 2, 2018 18:12

Alpha Mayo: Jan 15, 2007; hi how are you?
there was this racist piece of shit in your av so I fixed it
you're welcome
pay it forward~

I set up a BTCP node. It was thrashing the disk a lot so I used Primocache to put a RAM buffer for writes in place.
After two hours:

I wonder how many people have murdered their SSDs by running a node on their PC without realizing what was going on in the background.

also BTCP is dumb and just an obvious lazy cash-in fork and the software still mentions zcash and zclassic everywhere because they couldn't even be bothered to change the names, so by crypto logic it will be a huge success

# ? Mar 3, 2018 16:08

DrDork: Dec 29, 2003; commanding officer of the Army of Dorkness

PerrineClostermann posted:

Do you have to keep pushing the total of new balance + old balance to the threshold to get more old balance payouts?

No, you just get 10% whenever they feel like it (monthly, so far). You do, however, have to meed the minimum requirements in order to withdraw, which for coinbase right now is 0.001BTC, or about $10.

# ? Mar 5, 2018 01:45

Fauxtool: Oct 21, 2008; by Jeffrey of YOSPOS

it only took me a month to get my first 10%. Such service!
My balance said the initial 10% was paid out a month ago but it never actually arrived until recently

# ? Mar 5, 2018 02:15

BangersInMyKnickers: Nov 3, 2004; I have a thing for courageous dongles

Alpha Mayo posted:

I set up a BTCP node. It was thrashing the disk a lot so I used Primocache to put a RAM buffer for writes in place.
After two hours:

I wonder how many people have murdered their SSDs by running a node on their PC without realizing what was going on in the background.

also BTCP is dumb and just an obvious lazy cash-in fork and the software still mentions zcash and zclassic everywhere because they couldn't even be bothered to change the names, so by crypto logic it will be a huge success

You need to be maxing out a drive with 100% writes for months on end before you begin to start having write endurance issues on even the cheapest flash drives. It's probably fine hardware-wise, though if people are running this off a platter drive they might be seeing a fair bit of performance degredation

# ? Mar 5, 2018 20:25

Phosphine: May 30, 2011; WHY, JUDY?! WHY?!
🤰🐰🆚🥪🦊

Okay, so, i'm up to 0.0042 BTC on coinbase from nicehashing, and i'm thinking it's time to turn my fake money into real value. Unfortunately, gyft/egifter won't take my fake money in exchange for nintendo eshop gift cards because i'm not american. Anyone got any tips for a place where I can give away my bitcoin in exchange for something actually useful that doesn't require me to be in the US? I'm in Sweden.

# ? Mar 6, 2018 11:41

mobby_6kl: Aug 9, 2009; by Fluffdaddy

Phosphine posted:

Okay, so, i'm up to 0.0042 BTC on coinbase from nicehashing, and i'm thinking it's time to turn my fake money into real value. Unfortunately, gyft/egifter won't take my fake money in exchange for nintendo eshop gift cards because i'm not american. Anyone got any tips for a place where I can give away my bitcoin in exchange for something actually useful that doesn't require me to be in the US? I'm in Sweden.

You can get around the gyft geolock, just use an American proxy or VPN and that seems to be enough to shut it up as it doesn't actually ask you for your physical address.

E: Huh looks like NH actually sent the $30 I from the external wallet a week or so ago! But are the earnings still poo poo for everyone though? Coins seem to be up in general but I'm at $2/day on the 1070.

mobby_6kl fucked around with this message at 17:12 on Mar 6, 2018

# ? Mar 6, 2018 12:07

dogstile: May 1, 2012; fucking clocks
how do they work?

If i habitually forget to turn my PC off during the day, is it worth trying to mine *something* on a 1060 to get some of that money back or should i just set up a scheduled task to shut it off at 11am or some poo poo.

# ? Mar 6, 2018 18:41

Paul MaudDib: May 3, 2006; TEAM NVIDIA:
FORUM POLICE

A 1060 is pulling in about $1.47 a day before electricity, $1.27 after electricity (at 0.16/kwh, for just the GPU). Bearing in mind that the rest of your system has its own idle power consumption, probably not worth tearing up your system for $1 a day (plus all the fees).

# ? Mar 6, 2018 19:18

QuarkJets: Sep 8, 2008

If you have a kill-a-watt maybe measure over an hour of mining and see what you get. The answer is probably to not bother.

If you don't have one then buying one would probably eat up any potential profits and you probably shouldn't bother unless you want one for other reasons

# ? Mar 6, 2018 19:26

1gnoirents: Jun 28, 2014; hello

I'm doing a little light data gathering and it appears that mining returns correlate to trading volume rather than the value of any coin. In retrospect, this makes some sense. There is also a very distinct lag before what you mine matches anything the market seems to be doing. There was a upswing in trading volume over the last 24 hours so I get to put my theory to the test, even though its still fairly low.

I probably could have just looked this up too.

# ? Mar 6, 2018 21:03

Kazinsal: Dec 13, 2011

Yeah none of this is really worth it in any way anymore. Too volatile and the number of scams grows daily.

# ? Mar 7, 2018 01:39

Fauxtool: Oct 21, 2008; by Jeffrey of YOSPOS

one of my rx 580s does about 2.40 a day and the other is like 1.80. They are identical models but running in different computers.
They are both running stock speeds on the same driver and very stable
I wonder if one has the better memory and does having the "good" memory actually matter that much or only for overclocking?
Moving them around to different PCs doesnt change anything, I think one of them is just bad at mining. It plays games fine which is its primary use.

# ? Mar 7, 2018 01:44

Paul MaudDib: May 3, 2006; TEAM NVIDIA:
FORUM POLICE

Probably Samsung vs Hynix memory, Samsung does a lot better. If you bought them used, one might be flashed with a mining BIOS, also. It doesn't really affect stability that much - it's just tighter timings, the memory can either do it or it can't. Its no different from tuning the timings for your CPU memory, you're not overvolting anything and you won't cause any cumulative damage.

And Eth mining is probably more of a workout for the memory system than most games, so if it's stable there it should be anywhere.

Paul MaudDib fucked around with this message at 06:32 on Mar 7, 2018

# ? Mar 7, 2018 02:01

Fauxtool: Oct 21, 2008; by Jeffrey of YOSPOS

what can i use to confirm the memory brand?

I bought them both new from newegg at the same time

# ? Mar 7, 2018 02:23

Kazinsal: Dec 13, 2011

GPU-Z will tell you.

# ? Mar 7, 2018 02:36

Fauxtool: Oct 21, 2008; by Jeffrey of YOSPOS

they are both hynix so something else must be at play. They were bought new at the same time but maybe had a different production date and bios version?

# ? Mar 7, 2018 03:00

Lockback: Sep 3, 2006; All days are nights to see till I see thee; and nights bright days when dreams do show me thee.

Fauxtool posted:

they are both hynix so something else must be at play. They were bought new at the same time but maybe had a different production date and bios version?

Same Bios? Using monitoring tools do they both have the same clock while mining? A small difference I'd expect, but that's a pretty big difference.

# ? Mar 7, 2018 03:20

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# ? Jun 9, 2024 22:49

New Zealand can eat me: Aug 29, 2008

How do the thermals compare under load?? Did you happen to measure power consumption for both cards on either pc??

Try tightening the screws on the slower one once it's warm. Not a lot, half a turn at max unless something is especially loose.

If that doesn't change anything, and I didn't want to RMA it, I'd probably try redoing the thermal paste, maybe there's an air bubble in there ?

If redoing the paste/reseating the heatsink doesn't change anything I'd definitely RMA it

# ? Mar 7, 2018 11:02

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Serious Hardware/Software Crap > The Cryptocurrency Mining Thread: just flip your old cards on eBay

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