New NiceHash Miner Legacy 1.8.0.1 With Updates and Fixes

With the release of their version 2 of NiceHash Miner there are two different versions of the software available now. The old branch version 1 is now called NiceHash Miner Legacy and it is intended for more advanced users while the new NiceHash Miner 2 is for people that are new to crypto mining and just want an easy to use GUI. NiceHash Miner is essentially a profit switching mining tool that chooses the most profitable algorithm based on your mining hashrate and sells your hashrate for that particular algorithm.

NiceHash Miner 2 does not contain third party miner software, it uses the miners being developed in house by NiceHash such as excavator for example, while the NiceHash Miner Legacy still relies on the best performing third party miners for some algorithms. The Legacy version includes miners from Claymore, EWBF, Tpruvot and others in order to maximize performance for particular algorithm. This does however make it a bit more complicated for setting up many different miners thus the advanced users target.

– To download and try the latest NiceHash Miner Legacy release 1.8.0.1 from GitHub…

Innosilicon A5 DashMaster X11 ASIC Miner to Offer 30.2 GHS

If you were surprised by yesterday’s announcement from Bitmain with their 15 GHS X11 ASIC miner, then the new X11 ASIC from Innosilicon will surprise you even more. The Innosilicon A5 DashMaster is claimed to be capable of delivering up to 30.2 GHS X11 hashrate with just 750W of power usage, that is double the performance with lower power usage compared to Antminer D3. Of course we’ve seen before Innosilicon pre-anounce specifications of ASIC miners that end up too much with the actual product not able to deliver what was initially offered, still even if they deliver slower hashrate and higher power usage than what is currently cited it could still be an interesting product. What is really important here is what the price will be as Bitmain did manage to offer a really sweet deal price wise for their 15 GHS X11 miner, no word on pricing for the A5 DashMaster yet though.

For the moment there are still not that much details about the A5 DashMaster ASIC, the information about it is published only on the copany’s Chinese version of the website, nothing on the English site yet. Innosilicon A5 DashMaster should start shipping in early September according to the information on the website, so you can expect that around September time the difficulty of DASH will be already sky high. Other manufacturers of X11 ASIC miners such as Baikal, iBelink and PinIdea are also working on new products or have recently launched such. Of course they are not with the performance of the latest announcements from BitMain and Innosilicon, but could still be interesting products. For example Baikal’s miners support multiple algorithms and not just X11 like most others do.

New BitMain Antminer D3 ASIC Offering 15 GHS X11 Hashrate

BitMain has released their first X11 ASIC miner for DASH and the initial batch was sold out in no time. It is no wonder as the specifications of the device claim 15 GHS X11 hashrate for 1200W of power usage, essentially killing all other competition currently on the market offering X11 ASIC miners. The price of the BitMain Antminer D3 ASIC is $2699 USD (1.12020985 BTC or 59.30564711 LTC) at the moment, so pretty attractive for the performance you get even with no power supply included in the price. There is not much information or details available as the launch of the new ASIC miner from BitMain was pretty surprising. They were so in a hurry that even the photo of the new miner on the official website is actually that of an L3+…

Specifications of the Antminer D3:
– Hash rate: 15 GH/s X11 (Variation of ±5% is expected)
– Power consumption: 1200W (at the wall, with Bitmain’s APW3 PSU, 93% efficiency, 25°C ambient temp).
– Dimensions of the miner: 320x130x190 mm

– To visit the official product page of the Antminer D3 X11 ASIC miner for more details…

Trying Out the AsRock H110 Pro BTC+ With 13x GTX 1070

We have been playing around with the AsRock H110 Pro BTC+ motherboard for crypto mining with support for up to 13x GPUs and we can already share some feedback based on our experience with it. So far we have tried running the motherboard with thirteen Nvidia GPUs of the same model – namely GeForce GTX 1070 under Windows and Linux. AsRock recommends that you use a mixed combination of 8 + 5 GPUs under Windows and we can confirm that we were not able to make more than 8x GTX 1070 GPUs work properly under Windows. Adding a 9th or more video cards makes Windows unstable and even if the driver gets properly installed as soon as we run a miner the system freezes, running multiple instances of miners on just a few cards each does not help. With Linux-based mining distributions however we had no trouble running the motherboard just fine with all 13x Nvidia GPUs out of the box.

Running 13x GPUs on a single motherboard brings up a lot of potential problems with you connecting everything up and making it work. It does require more space than a regular rig designed for just 6 to 8 GPUs, even though we actually managed for squeeze 12x GTX 1070 GPUs in such a rig for the sake of testing only, the last card was a bit too much however, so it remained on the top of the frame. Again this setup was just for testing things up and not for a production mining rig that will run 24/7, so make sure you have a larger frame for 13x GPUs when using the AsRock H110 Pro BTC+ motherboard.

AS expected the power supply is one of the biggest issues with 13x GPU mining rig and more specifically the number of available connectors that are needed to provide power to the GPUs and the PCI-E extenders. We have used a 2000W Leadex power supply that has plenty of connectors and even then they were not enough for all the GPUs. 12 of the GTX 1070 cards were with a single 8-pin PCI-E power and only the 13th was with a single 8-pin and 6-pin power connector…

Even the 2000W Leadex PSU does not have that many 8-pin PCI-E power connectors, not to mention the need of SATA/Molex power connectors for the extenders per power line to be on the safe side. You are looking at minimum two power supplies with enough power connectors and try to avoid using power splitting cables, apart from maybe a second 12V CPU line that can be safely used for provide one or two extra PCI-E power connectors (depending on the PSU). Going for video cards that have two PCI-E power connectors or need more than about 150W of power is not a wise thing for this motherboard as things will get even more complicated.

There were some concerns regarding the PCI-E connectors on the motherboard placed too close to each other and possibly shorting when you insert the PCI-E extenders in them. It seems however that this is actually not an issue, even with connectors being dangerously close and pushing them by hand they are still not shorting – the USB connectors are saving the day by touching each other and preventing shorts. Still with the varying type and size of USB cables used with PCI-E extenders it will still be wise to put some insulation tape on the back of the small PCI-E boards that go into the PCI-E slots just to be on the safe side.

AsRock H110 Pro BTC+ comes pre-configured in the BIOS and is ready to start mining without any additional changes needed from the users. Of course you might still want to enable the automatic Power On function after power loss for example and do some minor tweaks yourself, but even if you just install the GPUs and turn on the power it should work out of the box. This is really important thing for mining motherboards to make the life of miners easier and not to have them go through many settings and change them in order to make thing work properly for more GPUs.

As already mentioned we were not able to get more than 8x Nvidia GTX 1070 GPUs work properly under Windows and at the same time we did not have any trouble with some Linux-based mining distributions we have tried. So 8 + 5 GPUs of different kinds (Nvidia/AMD) under Windows, but no 13x of the same kind seems to be possible for the moment, at least not out of the box and with any of the tweaks we have tried to make things work. With Linux no problems with just 6 or 8 or the full house with 13x GPUs, all worked just fine and mined without problems. You can try the KopiemTu Linux mining distribution, or the more recent nvOC distribution. While for Linux-based 13x AMD GPU mining rigs you might want to try the ethOS Mining OS or the more recent rxOC distribution.

We are yet to try using the AsRock H110 Pro BTC+ motherboard With 13x AMD GPUs, but we are expecting to see the same problem under Windows as with the Nvidia GPUs and a problem free experience when using a Linux-based mining distribution or if you manage to install Linux yourself and make it usable for mining (this usually requires more advanced users). While a mixed setup of AMD and Nvidia GPUS user Windows may seem like an interesting idea we are not that much fans of such setups as in our opinion they are more prone to potential problems. Still feel free to experiment and try it out yourselves even with a mixed setup of GPUs if you insist on staying on Windows and using 13x GPUs.

The use of the AsRock H110 Pro BTC+ crypto mining motherboard seems to present more challenges and with the shortages of GPUs and other hardware it can be even more difficult to build properly a 13x GPU mining rig. Still it offers an interesting opportunity for miners that are building AMD Ethereum mining rigs or Nvidia ones with the mid-range cards such as GTX 1060 or GTX 1070. The only problem at the moment with this particular motherboard is that it is nowhere to be found at the recommended prices and at the places you can buy it is at speculative price that is pretty much double than what it should normally cost. The speculative high price can be a deal breaker as well for many users that are considering using this motherboard for 13x GPU mining rigs.

Use and Mining Performance of the Gigabyte NP106D5-6G GPU

Yesterday we have shared our First Impressions from the Gigabyte NP106D5-6G GPU Built for Crypto Mining and today we are going to talk a bit more about actually mining with the GPU and what to expect from it in terms of hashrate. You probably are already read that we were not that happy with the hardware implementation around the Nvidia GP106-100 GPU that Gigabyte did with this particular model. There are however a few more things that need to be noted before we move to the performance numbers…

Since the GP106-100 GPU is intended only for mining and although based on the consumer GTX 1060 it is a different product the latest official Nvidia Graphics Driver 384.76 for GeForce GPUs does not have support for the Gigabyte NP106D5-6G. Things get even weirder when you go to Gigabyte’s website and you do not find a product page for that particular model, nor a support page with the drivers you need to install. There is no driver CD included in the package either, so you just go to Asus’ website and download the driver for their GP106-100 implementation and it works just fine.

Since the Gigabyte NP106D5-6G GPU does not have any external video outputs you will need to use it along with motherboard that has a built-in Intel GPU support (or maybe even AMD APU). You still need to be able to install the OS and configure things some way, after that you can use remote administration of some kind to control and monitor things, so not that big of an issue. There are however some motherboards that can be used for mining with 6 GPUs, however you cannot get 6x GP106-100 GPUs on them along with the built-in graphics working, so you need to be careful about that as well.

Here are the specifications for the Gigabyte NP106D5-6G GPU according to GPU-Z. The stock settings do not seem much different than the ones of a regular GeForce GTX 1060 6GB model and performance wise there should be not that much of a difference either. That is as far as the stock settings go, but one would still hope that labeling this a mining GPU would still bring some extra benefits not only in terms of properly designed hardware for the miner’s needs, but also improvements such as better memory timings for mining for example. Unfortunately that was not the case for Gigabyte’s product in either of the two – the hardware design and the memory optimizations…

The mining performance for ZCash (ZEC) and other Equihash-based mining algorithms is pretty much the same as on a regular GeForce GTX 1060 6GB GPUs. You can expect to get around 300 Sol/s using the popular EWBF ZEC CUDA miner and overclocking the video memory does not help much in improving the hashrate, though playing with the frequencies can squeeze a bit more extra performance. Clearly while not bad in terms of performance these Nvidia mining GPUs are not intended to be sued for ZEC mining as much as for other crypto currencies.

When talking about other crypto currencies we actually mean that the Gigabyte NP106D5-6G GPU and more specifically the whole Nvidia GP106-100 product is targeted at Ethereum (ETH) miners. Using the latest Claymore ETH dual miner we managed to squeeze just about 20.9 MHS mining Ethereum with the card and unfortunately that is not very satisfying result. Still this is just the default result at stock settings, things get more interesting when you start tweaking things a bit.

Overclocking the Samsung GDDR5 video memory has produced some surprisingly good results. We have managed to squeeze +900 MHz extra form the video memory using Afterburner and the card remained stable for mining. The result was a performance of about 26 MHS at stock TDP of 120W. Lowering down the TDP to 65% or with just about 80W per GPU the result was still about 25.9 MHS, so things started looking pretty good. So clearly Nvidia is targeting the product at Ethereum miners where with some overclocking it can provide really good performance results in terms of hashrate and power consumption.

The big question here is if the slightly lower price of the Nvidia GP106-100 GPUs like this one on the retail market is worth for small home miners. Originally these were intended for large scale mining operations where the prices are probably more attractive when you are talking about hundreds and thousands units. If you are able to get similar results in terms of performance from a regular GTX 1060 GPU with full warranty, video output connectors and no other cost cutting at a slightly higher price then things are may not be looking that good for Nvidia GP106-100. Though in our experience most GTX 1060 6GB models with 8 GHz video memory max out at about 24 MHS with overclocking on Ethereum. So it is up to you to decide if it is worth it, but again we are not too happy with Gigabyte’s solution to the mining problem. Their NP106D5-6G GPU is essentially a stripped down model of a consumer product to make it cheaper, not to make it better or more useful for crypto miners.

First Impressions from the Gigabyte NP106D5-6G GPU Built for Crypto Mining

Gigabyte NP106D5-6G is a variation of the Nvidia GP106-100 GPU targeted at miners and based off the consumer GeForce GTX 1060. Originally Nvidia had plans to sell these only to large miners, but apparently big partners such as Asus and now Gigabyte among others also want to sell these to small miners as well, so we actually managed to buy one Gigabyte NP106D5-6G from the retail channel at a price that is slightly lower than that of the regular Gigabyte N1060WF2OC-6GD that it is probably based on.

The Gigabyte NP106D5-6G comes in an anti static plastic bag, no box or any accessories. It has a GPU core running at 1506 MHz Base Clock and 1708 MHz Boost Clock and comes equipped with 6 GB GDDR5 video memory running at 8008 MHz. Just like a regular GTX 1060 GPU, though there are some important differences to note. The mining card from Gigabyte does not come with any mounting plate and that can be a bit of an issue for mounting, even though there are no video output connectors available… ASUS for example has it on their version.

The PCB of the mining card is pretty small and there is no backplate like on the consumer variation of the GTX 1060 from Gigabyte. It is normal, the idea of these cards is to make them cheaper and that needs some cost cutting, though you should still be careful where you cut from and not compromise on important things for miners. There are not warranty stickers on the screws at the back, but who would worry about that when you get the mining card with just three months of warranty instead of the regular 2 or 3 years (depending on the region).

The mining card NP106D5-6G is equipped with a single 6-pin PCI-E power connector for external power, the default TDP is 120W. This means that you shoud not be having much trouble with finding a suitable power supply for connecting 6, 8 or even more of these in a single GPU mining rig.

A quick look at the cooling solution of the NP106D5-6G. There is a small separate aluminium radiator on top of the voltage regulators that are locate on the left side of the PCB. The big aluminium cooling radiator uses a single copper heatpipe that goes through the GPU and memory chips as well – they are both in contact with the cooler. The heatpipe is in direct contact with the GPU and the big surface of the cooler does a pretty good job in keeping things cool.

Here is how the PCB looks like, the GPU is labeled GP106-100-A1 and the video memory is GDDR5 from Samsung. The video memory is really important here as this is a mining oriented video card and you need good chips that can handle overclocking for improved performance and the Samsung ones manage to do quite well in that department.

The final thing we need to note about the Gigabyte NP106D5-6G, a really important thing is about the cooling fans of the card. Gigabyte is popular with their pretty good in terms of cooling capacity and silently operating Windforce fans and it is no surprise that we also find them on this board as well. These fans however are not good for crypto mining and we do not like how they handle 24/7 operation under high temperatures, so we are not big fans of these fans.

The fans are 92mm ones made by Power Logic and are model PLD09210S12HH (12V, 0.40A) and they use bushings instead of bearings (single or dual). These are cheap fans that may start failing withing a few weeks of mining, we have seen that with other Gigabyte cards using the same cooling fans. We don’t mind as much that you get these with just 3 months warranty, but at least when you are making a GPU for mining use more reliable fans that will last longer (like ASUS does on their version of the P106).

All in all we can say that we are not too happy with how Gigabyte approached the situation with their NP106D5-6G mining GPU. They just removed stuff from their consumer GeForce GTX 1060 model and did not address the specific needs and requirements of miners at all. The lack of mounting bracket and the cheap crappy fans in terms of reliability and durability are not Ok. That fact, coupled with the just 3 months warranty, no resell value apart from mining use and just 10% lower price compared to the regular consumer GTX 1060 model does not really help in making this an attractive alternative to smaller home miners.

In the next post we are going to be sharing more details about the actual use of the Gigabyte NP106D5-6G for mining as well as what kind of performance results you can expect from it, so stay tuned…

Excavator Miner 1.2.10a With Performance Improvements

We just gave a try of the latest NiceHash Excavator 1.2.10 alpha miner (source) that includes new algorithms and some performance improvements. It has been a while since we have played with last, so there are some changes that we wanted to try out. Excavator supports both AMD and Nvidia GPUs and works with some of the more popular mining algorithms, though performance wise it may not be the fastest on all of them.

Nvidia CUDA supported algorithms: equihash, pascal, decred, sia, lbry, blake2s, daggerhashimoto
AMD OpenCL supported algorithms: daggerhashimoto, equihash, pascal, sia, decred

More notable is the performance improvement from the latest ethminer for Nvidia GTX 1060 and GTX 1070 GPUs that has also apparently been implemented in Excavator, so you might want to try that as well and see what results you are going to get if you are mining coins using the (Ethash) Dagger-Hashimoto algorithm such as Ethereum and others. Below you can find a 64-bit Windows binary that you can download and try will all of the supported algorithms, just modify the sample config files provided. Do note that Nvidia supports two more algorithms that have not yet been implemented on AMD GPUs!

– To download and try the latest Excavator 1.2.10a miner for 64-bit Windows…

Building a Simple Mining Rig Restarter with Raspberry Pi

Making your own solution for restarting a mining rig that has frozen is relatively simple for pretty much anyone, you just need a Raspberry Pi board and a couple of 5V relay boards and you can be up and running in no time. You can use the base RPi operating system and with the help of WiringPi you can get easy control of the GPIO pins of the Pi, even direct console one with the GPIO utility. Of course you can install a web server with some basic visual interface as well, simple buttons to drive on/off the relays connected to the GPIO pins of the Pi board.

If you have a spare Raspberry Pi 3 you have up to 28 channels available to drive on/off relays, though based on our experience only 25 of the GPIO puns are actually reliable usable. Pins 2, 3 and 14 have a bit of erratic behavior being in high (triggered state) when the Pi board boots up or temporary switching on and then off when rebooting the board, so it is wise to skip them. Another possible issue is the GPIO pin 0 (the bottom white one) as using zeroes can be tricky when programming something, so be careful with that one as well. We have been using the relays to short the on/off button on the motherboard forcing the mining rig to shut down and then start up again. This works surprisingly well and you avoid the need to work with the high 110V/220V mains power going through the relays that can cause problems for not so experienced users. Our latest setup relies on driving 18 rigs though a single RPi 3 board, so we have a couple of spare channels available for extending the functionality of the controller further if we need to.

So if you are looking for relatively cheap way to get remote control over the power of more mining rigs that are not easily rebootable otherwise you might want to start playing with Raspberry Pi and relays. It is not so cheap for just a few rigs as you need to buy a Pi 3 board, but once the number of rig rises the cost per system lowers. You can always start with a few and then add extra systems if needed, again you should have no problems driving up to 25 systems through the GPIO pins of the RPi 3. There are of course other commercial solutions also available for you to purchase that have been developer by miners for miners such as the SimpleMining SimpleRigResetter that we have talked about last year and now there is apparently a new version of the device already available, though it seems to be out of stock at the moment.

Counterfeit Nvidia GTX 1080 Ti Cards Out in The Wild

We should start that what you see in the video above is not a joke, it is real and what we got with an order of GTX 1080 Ti video cards from a reputable European online retailer. Three seemingly brand new Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080 Ti video cards ended up with surprising contents, scrap metal instead of the GPUs we expected to find inside. The video cards seemed like brand new and unopened, they were GTX 1080 Ti Founders Edition from Gigabyte, all boxes packed with a nylon and with stickers on the boxes as you can see on the video. Yet when you open them up you end up with a surprising content and definitely what you would expect to find inside the box of such an expensive GPU…

Some supplier on somebody on the supply chain has apparently made quite the effort to make these as aside from packaging the boxes to make them seem like new, the contents was made to be the exact same weight as the original box with a real card inside. Obviously the retailer does not open the boxes to check if they contain the correct item, but they can easily weight the boxes and confirm if there is something wrong or not without opening the box. The actual video cards will find their place on eBay or any other place for selling them or maybe they will get used for mining.

Putting pieces of scrap metal with additional lead weight and packaging them in a way that they will not make strange noises when handing the box, some effort to make a counterfeit Nvidia GTX 1080 Ti. Then repackaging the whole thing and shipping it to the seller that in turn sends it to customers and in the end you get an angry customer that is no way happy with what he gets instead of the GPU he expected and paid for.

You may find different prices of scrap metal inside the box, but each one is well made in order to avoid possible suspicion of an issue like metal parts hitting and making strange noises or the package being too light or too heavy.

Of course buying from a reputable retailer will get your problem with the scrap metal instead of GPUs resolved with some extra headaches and time, so nothing too serious besides the bad surprise. Regardless if you are buying GPUs for mining or for gaming, just be careful that you do not buy online from places where returning the items if you end up with a problem like ours will not be an issue.

We Got Our Hands on an AsRock H110 Pro BTC+ 13x GPU Mining Moitherboard

Thanks to AsRock we already have a sample of their new H110 Pro BTC+ crypto mining motherboard with 13 PCI-E slots for testing, so you can expect a review soon. The motherboard should start appearing on the market sometime later this month, so it is not yet available in the retail channel. It is a really interesting design and definitely something that AsRock had to do in order to “show muscle” after the competition in the crypto mining motherboard space started to heat up with shortages of the hugely popular AsRock H81 Pro BTC and other brands like Biostar announcing multiple new mining motherboards.

The AsRock H110 Pro BTC+ motherboard is pretty interesting with the 13 PCI Express slots available for use with video cards with the help of PCI-E extenders, but this also comes with some challenges. Initially we got information that the motherboard should work out of the box with 13 GPUs under Windows and Linux, and although that might be true indeed there seem to be some limitations. It seems that the 8x GPU limit is still a problem, however you should be able to run 8x AMD with 5x NVIDIA GPUs under Windows, but not all 13 from the same type out of the box (it could still be possible to overcome this limitation). For Linux users 13x GPUs do not seem to be a problem or at least thirteen ADM GPUs with the ethOS mining distribution.

Building a 13x GPU crypto mining rig could also bring some other challenges including problems with the power supply or to be more precise power supplies now that there are shortages and it is hard to source higher power models. Of course it depends on the type of video cards that you are using for your mining rig, but in general the new H110 Pro BTC+ crypto mining motherboard from AsRock seems to be more useful for builds that have mid-range GPUs and not high-end ones. Builds such as 13x AMD Radeon RX 470/480 or RX 570/580 that use single PCI-E power connector or Nvidia GTX 1060/1070 again with a single PCI-E power connector (sub-200W power usage) seem more reasonable. To help with the power supply limitations AsRock has even included a dual power supply adapter cable/module in the retail box, though for three or more power supplies you would still have to find another solution.

Imagine what a challenge it will be if you want to build a mining rig with 13x Nvidia GTX 1080 Ti GPUs. At 250W for 100% TDP per card you are looking at 3250W of power required just for the video cards, there are simply not much options for dual PSU setups that can handle that, so it is more at least a three power supplies setup. In this configuration it is not just the power requirements, but also the number of PCI-E power connectors that you would need for the video cards. You would need 13x 8-pin PCI-E power connectors and 13x 6-pin PCI-E power connectors, then also 13x 4-pin Molex connectors for the PCI-E extenders. You also need to be careful not to overload any of the power lines of the power supplies by connecting too much components on to a single cable.

– You can check the official AsRock H110 Pro BTC+ product page for more details…

Sapphire Also to Release AMD-based Crypto Mining GPUs

Not a lot of details about the upcoming AMD-based Crypto Mining GPUs from Sapphire Yet, though they have been already listed for pre-order over at Overclockers UK. There are four Sapphire Mining Edition video cards listed that are based on AMD’s Radeon RX 470 GPU with different video memory configurations, all of which are without external video connectors. There is also a single AMD Radeon RX 560 GPU also labeled as Mining Edition, though it is a bit different with a single DVI connector on the back, so it can be used for other things than just crypto mining. It is interesting to note that the Sapphire Mining Edition cards do come with 1 year warranty instead of the regular two or even 3 years warranty that Sapphire cards targeted at gamers usually have (depending on the market).

Sapphire Mining Editions cards:
– Sapphire Radeon RX 470 MINING Edition 8192MB GDDR5 Samsung 7 Gbps (11256-38-10G) – 25-28MH/s ETH
– Sapphire Radeon RX 470 MINING Edition 8192MB GDDR5 7 Gbps (11256-37-10G) – 24-27MH/s ETH
– Sapphire Radeon RX 470 MINING Edition 4096MB GDDR5 Samsung 7 Gbps (11256-36-10G) – 24-27 MH/s ETH
– Sapphire Radeon RX 470 MINING Edition 4096MB GDDR5 7 Gbps (11256-35-10G) – 23-26 MH/s ETH
– Sapphire Radeon RX 560 Pulse MINING Edition 4096MB (11267-11-10G) – 12-15 MH/s ETH

It is interesting to note that the store lists the type of memory on different models and what mining performance they will be able to offer for mining Ethereum (ETH). There are two values that apparently represent the stock and the modified BIOS result, though it is not yet clear if the dual BIOS comes with modified settings, or Sapphire has just left that part to the miners. Unfortunately the prices listed for pre-order are not making these very attractive alternative compared to the regular models, though with the current shortage miners may not care that much as long as there is stock of these new Mining Edition cards from Sapphire available.

Something that is important regarding the warranty of regular Sapphire GPUs that are not originally intended for mining, the website of the company has some additional terms listed about mining usage, here is a quote below.

Warranty may vary from Country/Region, the customer must verify directly with the SAPPHIRE Authorized Dealer/Reseller from where the product was purchased as to the specifics of Warranty provided.

Warranty also varies for products used in Industrial , Block chain and crypto currency mining applications and the customer must verify with the SAPPHIRE Authorized Dealer/Reseller from where the product was purchased for more information.

So make sure you check the warranty information of the seller whether you are buying regular gaming GPUs or any of the Mining Edition cards to make sure about the warranty period you get with each. We have already received reports form users that some retailers are selling GPUs without any mention about warranty getting void on their websites if they are being used for crypto mining and you get that told to you after you purchase the cards and have them shipped to you.

New Optimized Ethminer for Nvidia GeForce GTX 1060 GPUs

There is a new development version of the ethminer 0.11.0rc1 (source) available that brings CUDA performance improvements especially optimized for GTX 1060 GPUs. People are reporting a couple of megahashes increase in the performance of GTX 1060 GPUs over what they are getting with the same settings from Claymore’s ETH miner, some slight, but less performance improvement is observed in GTX 1070. Unfortunately it seems that the performance optimizations submitted by David Li don’t do much good for GDDR5X GPUs like the GTX 1080 and GTX 1080 Ti.

Feel free to test it on your Nvidia mining GPUS and report what and if there is some improvement in the hashrate over your previous settings. If you do make sure you try different value for the --cuda-parallel-hash command line flag (default value is 4), but you can experiment with 1, 2 and 8 and see what works best for you. Again the highest benefits are apparently observed on GTX 1060 GPUs as the performance optimization is apparently targeted at them, though some other GPUs might still benefit a slight boost as well. You can download and try the Windows binary compiled from the latest source below.

– To download and try the CUDA optimized new ethminer 0.11.0rc1 for Windows…

ASUS Mining P106 is a GPU for Crypto Currency Mining

VGA card manufacturers seem to have finally started taking care for the crypto mining market that has been growing significantly lately due to the high profitability for crypto mining. ASUS, one of the top brands not only for VGA, but for other PC components as well has announced their Nvidia GeForce GTX 1060-based mining video card and the product is called ASUS Mining P106. We have already talked about Nvidia’s plans to release a crypto mining oriented GPU for miners based on their GTX 1060 GPU. Originally the plan was to have this product on limited markets and not available in the retail chain, but it seems that this plan can change with ASUS and other VGA brands joining with products that can become available through the usual distribution channels as well.

The ASUS Mining P106 is based on the NVIDIA P106-100 GPU and comes with 6GB GDDR5 that has probably been modified with custom timings in order to increase the hashrate for more memory intensive mining algorithm such as Dagger-Hashimoto (Ethash) used by Ethereum. The GPU Base Clock is 1506 MHz and the Boost Clock is 1708 MHz, the video memory is 8008 MHz GDDR5. The initial information was that the NVIDIA P106-100 GPU should be based on the 9 Gbps version of the GTX 1060, though this might still be true with the memory is apparently at 8 Gbps with more aggressive timings. As expected the ASUS Mining P106 GPU does not feature any kind of video outputs so it is essentially limited to only computing tasks such as mining and will not be an interesting product for gamers that might also want to mine, but still be able to play games.

Other interesting features on the ASUS Mining P106 include the dual ball-bearing fans that are IP5X-certified to be dust resistant and thus offer a longer fan lifespan and this is really important as far as crypto mining goes. ASUS also claims that they have used components that enhance efficiency, reduce power loss, decrease component buzzing under load, and lower thermal temperatures for unsurpassed quality and reliability. There is no mention about warranty period as initially Nvidia had plans to offer their mining GPUs with just 3 months of warranty, though we are hearing that other brands such as ASUS might actually be with 1 year warranty. No word about pricing either, though the mining GPUs should be cheaper than the consumer version of GTX 1060 in order to be more attractive to miners and we are probably going to be seeing them starting to appear on the some markets sometime next month.

ASUS has also announced a second GPU targeted at miners, but that one is really not that interesting like the NVIDIA P106-100 GPU is. The ASUS Mining RX 470 is essentially a standard AMD Radeon RX 470-based video card with 4GB video memory at 7000 MHz, there is no word about improved timings for mining that will result in better performance. The design of the AMD mining GPU is very similar to the Nvidia mining model, though here you have video output connectors and cans till use the card for gaming if you want to. The fans are the same and ASUS claims that the same improved components are being used to offer better reliability for longer term mining usage.

– To get more details about the ASUS Mining P106 GPU on the official website…

How to Keep an Eye On Crypto Token ICOs

Crypto Token ICOs (Initial Coin Offerings) are not slowing down and if you need to be able to get a better understanding on the ones that are more interesting and seem more promising, then you need a resource to help you get a better understanding and have a handy calendar when and what is launching and how long it will be available. One such service that we find useful is TokenMarket as it provides information for tokens and crypto currencies launching ICOs, they also have a calendar to help you keep track what to expect and when. Of course you still need to do a proper research in any ICO that you might be interested in, read the Whitepaper, check the Roadmap, see if there is actually something already available to as a products or service (even a prototype or alpha version) and so on. Just like with crypto currencies the advice to not invest more than you can afford to loose in ICO tokens is even more on the spot.

– To check out the TokenMarket website and what information it provides…

Bitcoin VR, a Virtual Reality Bitcoin Block Explorer

Bitcoin VR is an interesting Virtual Reality application available for the HTC Vive VR headset as well as for the Google Cardboard VR platform available to Android mobile device users. It is essentially a visual gamified VR Blockchain explorer where you can can see real time Bitcoin transactions fall from the sky in the form of gems you can grab a gem to see the transaction details or shoot them with a Bow and Arrow.

Bitcoin VR has been developed by MandelDuck, the same guys that did the Sarutobi Bitcoin game that we have covered a while ago. Bitcoin VR is a free application for both the HTC VIVE and the Google Cardboard platforms, so you can download and try for either VR Blockchain explorer if you have any of the two at your disposal. It is interesting and fun to see a different perspective of the transactions that is taking advantage of VR technology, even though it is not terribly useful it is still worth checking out. Do note that the applications for the two platforms are not exactly the same in terms of functionality due to the specifics of the capabilities that they do provide to the user and especially due to the extra level of interactivity provided by HTC VIVE.

SiaCoin (SC) To Get a Dedicated Mining Hardware ASIC Device

The people behind the development of SiaCoin (SC) have tweeted an interesting, but very brief post about an upcoming release of a dedicated ASIC mining hardware intended for mining the SiaCoin tokens. The Obelisk SC1 is supposed to be the first ASIC built for Sia mining according to the official tweet from Sia Tech (@SiaTechHQ). There are no more details revealed at this point, though more information should be made available by the end of the week.

SiaCoin has been getting more attention lately and the price of the crypto tokens has been rising, though releasing a mining ASIC for a token that is intended to be used for renting and leasing file storage is an interesting decision. Having a dedicated NAS device tied to SiaCoin like the MineBox makes much more sense for a service like that. SC can currently be mined using GPUs and not only being earned by providing free space to users that need to host some data and getting paid in SiaCoin tokens in return.

We are going to see what SiaCoin will actually announce and what their upcoming Obelisk SC1 will offer, but the initial user feedback is not that positive as one would expect. Switching to ASIC mining can actually result in negative results with GPU miners moving away switching to other altcoins and not getting into ASIC mining SC. As far as we are aware there are no other altcoins based on the same algorithm and mining like SiaCoin so essentially an ASIC miner will be very limited in terms of usability and may actually reach its end of life cycle much faster than other ASIC miners that can be used for multiple crypto coins that use the same algorithm.

Crypto Ping Telegram Crypto Monitoring Bot

A new and interesting service for the occasional or more serious crypto traders – Crypto Ping Telegarm Bot that tracks crypto prices and gives you trading signals. Do note that the service is not a trading bot that gives you advice on crypto trading, the goal is to provide you only with early warnings about increasing demand on the crypto markets. One more tool to help people with monitoring and analyzing the crypto market to predict price movements and give you a good timing to get in or get out of a crypto currency trading position. Currently the service is in beta mode and free to try, so we do recommend that you give it a go and see if it works for you or not…

Currently the Telegram bot supports monitoring for the following exchanges: Poloniex, Bittrex, Cryptopia and Yobit and gives you signals for the coins traded on them hinting at profitable trades before any pumps actually start. Although the Crypto Ping service is free to try at the moemnt it is also in the process of running an ICO to secure some funds in order to continue the development of the bot and add new features to it. After the ICO is over the tokens that will be distributed will be traded on exchanges and will also be a means to be used for the subscription fee that will be introduced for users willing to continue using the full functionality of the bot.

There aren’t a lot of such services available to the average crypto user that may not be too good at trading or may actually be too afraid to even try doing some trades on crypto exchanges. Should you decide to use a service like that one that gives you trading signals based on market analysis you should still be careful and not go all out You can just check the reliability of the signals by just doing some virtual trades and monitoring the outcome without actually doing some real trades. There is always risk involved, so some signals may not end up that good while others may be really profitable. Again, give the service a try while it is still in beta and free to use and see if it works for you or not.

– For more information and to check out the Crypto Ping Telegram Bot yourself…

Ethereum Hashrate Drop for Radeon RX400/RX500 GPUs is Incoming

Do you remember how last year AMD Radeon R9 280X GPUs started dropping in terms of mining hashrate for Ethereum due to the growing DAG file size? Well, it seems that we are in for the same thing happening with the Radeon RX400/RX500 series of GPUs in the next couple of months. We are currently at DAG epoch #129, but in the next 30-35 or so DAG epochs we are going to be seeing gradual drop in hashrate resulting in up to about 30% decrease from the current hashrate on the Radeon RX400/RX500 series of GPUs. It seems that other more powerful GPUs such as R9 290(x)/390(x) as well as Nvidia Pascal GPUs will not be affected or the drop in performance will be much smaller to a level considered pretty much insignificant compared to what will happen with AMD’s Polaris GPUs.

You can easily check what will happen with your existing GPU mining hardware and if it will be affected in terms of performance and how much by adding the option -benchmark 130 to the Claymore ETH miner. Change the number 130 (the next Ethereum DAG epoch) to the DAG epoch you want to test with such as 140, 150, 160 and see how your hashrate will change or if it will change. The Ethash DAG changes every 30000 blocks which is roughly every 4-5 days and with Ethereum this is called a DAG epoch, so every few days we move to the next DAG epoch. As DAG epochs move further on they also grow in size and put more stress to the video cards that are being used for mining and as a result there is also some performance drop observed over time. The more powerful the GPUs is and the more video memory it has, the more likely it is to be bale to handle better long term mining Ethereum.

Update on the Merito App for Gamers Who Want to Profit from Mining

A quick update on the Merito service that is intended to help gamers not yet into crypto currencies to easily make some extra cash from their gaming computers’ hardware. We’ve been keeping an eye on the service and everything seems to be progressing pretty well with new updates and fixes getting released and more users joining. Since Merito is targeted at gamers it allows you to use your computer hardware and mine in order to get a new game as a reward, vouchers for game purchases from G2A or get your earnings paid with PayPal. We have tried cashing out our earnings while testing to PayPal and in a couple of hours after requesting the payment they were transferred in our account. This makes it easy not to care about what crypto you are mining or what is the exchange rate or how to convert them to cash if you are a gamer. Of course this is intended for gamers, not for the regular crypto miners that actually do care about all these things.

– For more information and to download and try yourself the Metrito application…

The Cryptonomos Platform and the Giga Watt (WTT) Token

If you have been following us for a while already you have probably noticed that we are not big fans of ICOs and we aren’t covering much of these, even though lately there is a boom of Initial Coin Offerings and it seems that pretty much everyone is releasing tokens for something. There are however some that we do mention and take part into, mostly in serious ICOs that are being pushed by entities that already have some good product or service available and have some background and not just promises that might as well turn out to be empty. Once in a while there are some that are really worth talking about and that goes not because they have generated a lot of noise or have managed to secure insane amount of funding, but because they are really something worthwhile, different, disruptive and so on. A recent such example is Brave’s Basic Attention Token (BAT) that we have covered as we’ve been following the development of the Brave browser for a while already.

Another interesting ICO that we think is worth talking about and taking a part in is the Giga Watt (WTT) Token that is currently ongoing and will continue until July 31st or until all of the 30 Million tokens are sold. The Giga Watt WTT token are being issued on the Ethereum blockchain like many others that we have seen recently, but what is different here than most other ICOs is the fact that the launch of the ICO is together with a whole platform to support the token (as well as other future tokens). One of the issues with Ethereum ERC20 tokens we are seeing is that normally they are not very easy for people that are not more into Ethereum to take part into… the process is just really not that easy for not so technical or “into crypto” type of people.

The WTT tokens are being distributed via the new Cryptonomos platform for token sales as well as management. The Giga Watt (WTT) Token is essentially the first token launched together with the platform for easy purchase and management of the available tokens by the user. This eliminates the need for the user to look for compatible Ethereum wallets and to do complex things in order to take part into an ICO based in a crowdsale essentially significantly lowering the requirements and removing many of the obstacles. Thanks to the Cryptonomos platform you can easily transfer Bitcoin (BTC), Ethereum (ETH) or cash via a wire transfer and use them to purchase WTT tokens, and probably other tokens in the future as well. You should be also able to transfer tokens in and out of the platform when they are abvailable just like you would do if using a compatible Ethereum wallet for interacting with smart contracts. Of course there is the other point of view regarding the use of a dedicated platform – you are not in full control of your tokens like you can with an Ethereum wallet for example where you hold the private keys for the wallet.

Let us get back to Giga Watt (the former MegaBigPower), a USA-based company offering crypto mining hardware as well as hosting for it and of course enough electricity to power it and keep it cool. The company offers also users to host their own existing miners and even an add-on paid option of emergency equipment repairs in case of an issue in order to minimize downtime. The release of the WTT token allows the token holders to gain access to Giga Watt’s facility at a lower hosting rate, which in turn significantly increases the mining rewards. Each Giga Watt Project Token (WTT) represents the right to use the Giga Watt processing center’s capacity, rent-free for 50 years, to accommodate 1 Watt’s worth of mining equipment power consumption. Token owners can use the capacity they purchase to accommodate their own miners or if they don’t own or plan to purchase any miners to takr advantage of the hosting offer to just rent it out to other users. The idea that Giga Watt has is to use the token sale to be able to expand their capacity and to reward token holders that help them achieve that, so a win-win for both sides. For all the details about the Giga Watt (WTT) token and the plans of the company issuing it you should take a look at the detailed WTT token whitepaper (PDF) where everything is explained in much more details and all your questions should be answered.

– For more details about the Cryptonomos platform and the Giga Watt (WTT) Token sale…

AsRock H110 Pro BTC+ With 13 GPUs Under Windows and Linux

While AsRock has not yet released for sale their new motherboard AsRock H110 Pro BTC+ With 13 GPU support we already got confirmation that it is working with 13 video cards for mining under Linux and Windows. The sale of the new Pro BTC+ mining motherboard will probably not start before next month, but we already hope to be able to get an in-depth review hopefully by the end of this month or early next month.

Running 13 GPUs on a single mining rig might be a bit of a challenge as it is not only the motherboard that needs to provide you with the base, but you also need to take care of other hardware as well. Hardware such as power supplies that will handle 13 GPUs, we are talking about multiple PSUs for sure. There are also other possible challenges associated with more GPUs such as higher requirement towards the memory/swap as well as maybe even faster CPU to handle additional load coming from the mining software.

We have seen proof of 13 AMD GPUs running on the AsRock H110 Pro BTC+ motherboard under Linux using the ethOS distribution for mining as well as 13 Nvidia GPUs recognized and working under Windows 10. We are yet to confirm this ourselves by testing the motherboard, but what we are seeing as results already is reassuring that we are going to get a real and working solution for more GPUs per mining rig than what is currently available in terms of 6, 7 and even 8 GPU mining motherboards. Since the AsRock H110 Pro BTC+ motherboard is designed with crypto mining in mind it should be easy and problem free to setup, unlike some other motherboards that people are using at the moment that need some special settings or tweaks in order to make them work with more video cards than they are originally designed for.