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.

Biostar TB250-BTC PRO Motherboard to Offer 12 PCI-E Slots

Biostar is apparently planning to release a new version of their TB250-BTC mining motherboard that is called Biostar TB250-BTC PRO. This is a bit confusing naming as the previous model is also from the Pro series of motherboards, so not that great idea, but anyway. The new Biostar TB250-BTC PRO motherboard will have 12 PCI-E slots or double the number of the regular mining version, so it should allow for up to 12 GPUs on a single board… in theory. AsRock has recently shown their own variant of a new Pro BTC crypto mining motherboard, namely the AsRock H110 Pro BTC+ Mining Motherboard with 13 PCI-E slots. It seems that the new trend is to offer higher density of GPUs on a single motherboard, that is of course if you manage to have more than 8 GPUs under Windows as with Linux things get more complicated for many users that rely on the familiar and more user friendly Windows-based tools. Biostar has listed the TB250-BTC PRO motherboard on their website, but there is still not much information and even a photo of the actual product available…

– See the official product page of the Biostar TB250-BTC PRO 12x PCI-E motherboard…

Comparing Bitcoin vs Ethereum Using Google Trends

Here is an interesting comparison between BTC and ETH for the last 12 months using Google Trends, the interest in Ethereum is still on the rise as you can see from the graph while the interest in Bitcoin is going down after the peak about 2-3 weeks ago. What is more interesting however is the Interest by region statistics, namely where the most searches are coming form. The top 5 countries for Bitcoin are Nigeria, Bolivia, Ghana, South Africa and Colombia… this rises some concerns, while for Ethereum the top 5 includes Netherlands, Singapore, Switzerland, Austria and Venezuela. Of course the number of searches for Bitcoin is much higher compared to Ethereum if you want to compare that as well and not look at the graphs separately just as a trend.

– You can check some more stats and do additional comparison on Google Trends…

The Creator of Litecoin Leaving Coinbase to Focus on LTC

The creator of the crypto coin Litecoin (LTC) – Charlie Lee has tweeted that he is leaving Coinbase and will going in order to focus on his creation. Good news for one of the oldest altcoins and a total change from the “no need of further development attitude” from the last couple of years. In the last couple of months we have seen significant changes in LTC and that has lead to the revival of the altcoin after a long period of “sleep” and the news that Charlie Lee is focusing his attention on Litecoin is also a very positive one. We are already seeing the market responding to this positive news with the price of LTC rising…

Dual SATA Power to 4-pin Molex Power Adapter Cable

With all our efforts failing when trying to find if such a cable exists as a products that you can order and get ready made to be installed we had to make one ourselves. Why would you need a cable like that anyway? With the abundance of SATA power connectors and just a few 4-pin Molex power connectors with all more recent power supplies you can end up with the need to have more 4-pin Molex power connectors, especially when building a mining rigs. Sure, you get plenty of SATA power to 4-pin Molex power adapter cable with the risers you buy for video cards, but they are all single SATA power and that is precisely the problem. Anything that requires a 4-pin Molex power connector can actually have a higher power usage than what a SATA power cable can supply in terms of maximal power rating. The result can be issues with stability and functionality due to overheating and melting SATA power cables due to higher load than what they are designed for.

The solution is just to get a 4-pin Molex power connectors (Female ones) and turn two SATA power to 4-pin Molex power adapter cables into a single dual SATA power to 4-pion Molex power one. This way you can connect two SATA power cables from a single line for peripherals from the power supply to a single 4-pin Molex power and get completely safe with higher power draw components. Do note that you still need to be careful not to connect too much of these adapters to a single power line going to the PSU as you may overload the total capabilities of the cable and/or more likely the ones of the modular power connector that is used to connect the cable to the power supply. More than two dual SATA power to 4-pin Molex power cables on a single cable is not advised with 60W per power adapter cable max load just to be on the safe side, even if they are actually able to handle a bit more.

Some more tips to help you stay on the safe side. Make sure that the peripheral power cables of your power supply are at last AWG 18 or lower number (thicker cables), so that they are able to handle more power. Typically good power supplies use AWG 18 cables for that and AWG 16 for the PCI-E power lines (especially if you have dual PCI-E power connector), but single PCI-E power connector per cable should be just fine with AWG 18 as well. When using two SATA power to 4-pin Molex power cable adapters for extenders make sure that they are also with AWG 18 cables, regardless if you build a dual SATA power cables like we do. There are some extenders that are being shipped with AWG 20 cables on these power adapters and this could cause even more serious issues if you try using them with higher power loads required, so try to avoid using these.

Be Careful Where You Buy Your Mining Hardware From

We are getting reports for a new trend that is peaking up recently with all of the shortages with hardware due to the boom in mining. It seems that some retailers will happily sell you their stock of GPUs and will then tell you that they will not give you any warranty or accept RMA in case of a problem if you are going to be using the video cards for mining. At the same time they are happily willing to sell you not only the GPUs, but all other hardware that you may need to build a mining rig. The problem here is that instead of clearly pointing that they will not hold any warranty for products used for mining, they take your money, ship you the goods and then inform you that there will be no warranty if the hardware is used for mining. This is just not the correct way of doing business… though it is hard to confirm what a GPU was actually used for anyway, it sounds more like a threat to the customer than something that can be truly enforced.

The main concerns with hardware used for mining are regarding the GPUs working under heavy load 24/7. This makes them prone to more issues as they hold higher operating temperatures, fans are more susceptible to failure (especially if not good quality ones) and as a result the cards can fail. Base on our experience however if properly cooled and maintained the fact that a good GPU is used for mining instead of occasional gaming is not really a problem. Most of the GPU failures usually happen in the first few days and are often caused by some small defect that is prone to result in an issue sooner or later anyway. All in all it is important that miners take a proper care of their mining hardware in order to ensure its long and reliable operation and if they do it good enough, then the trouble they will have are going to much less than if they don’t…

The problem is that there are a lot of people that are getting into mining that do not care about anything, they just throw a bunch of video cards somewhere and start mining and when there is a problem they just RMA them. They do not care about proper cooling, optimizing settings for efficiency or performance or anything else, they just want to mine and make profit from as easy and as fast as they can. We know for a fact that one of the most common RMA reasons are failed fans of video cards that are under warranty, again here some vendors are to blame as they are putting cheaper and lower quality fans. If you have good dual ball-bearing fans that are well protected from dust and do not have an issue with increased temperature you are much less likely to get into trouble. We are however still seeing cheap fans with bushings instead of ball bearings and not very tolerant to higher operating temperatures being widely used on not so cheap GPUs.

This brings us to the 3 month warranty that Nivida is planning to offer for their GeForce GTX 1060 9Gbps based mining GPU. It seems that they are also worried that a longer warranty might not be cost effective for products dedicated for mining, but then again it also shows that they may not be that ready for properly making mining GPUs… just more cost effective solutions. On the other hand if you look at the warranty that ASIC miners do come with limited warranty. For example the Bitmain Antminer S9 ASIC miner does come with a 180-day warranty starting from the date the unit is shipped to you. Baikalminer has just a 30-day warranty for miners. In general the warranty you get for dedicated mining hardware may vary from none to up to about 6 months period. However this is clearly stated before you buy the product, and not you getting a nice and not so pleasant surprise after you pay for it and get it shipped to you for example.

Seems Like Nvidia is Making a Video Card Especially for Mining

There is some information circulating around in the last couple of days that Nvidia is making a video card specifically designed for mining as well as some speculations that AMD is doing the same as well. While are know for a fact that this is true for Nvidia, we are having some doubts about AMD doing it with all the AMD GPU shortages we are seeing lately and the news they can continue for the next few months. With the lack of AMD GPUs on the market the miners started buying Nvidia GPUs, so very soon we are most likely going to see cards such as the GTX 1060 and GTX 1070 getting harder to find on the market. Higher-end GPUs are probably going to have better availability for now, but who knows if miners will move on to these as well if there are not other options available.

We know that Nvidia is focused on gamers and not as much interested in mining and miners like AMD for example, so they do not want to have availability issues of their GPUs just like it has happened with AMD now just because of the miners. So they have apparently figured a solution to the problem – just make a GPU intended for mining and miners and sell that to miners instead of their gaming-centered products. The card that they are building is an NVIDIA Pascal GP106-100 GPU that comes with no video output connectors, passive cooler (still needs airflow for proper cooling) and much shorter warranty – just 3 months. The idea is to have a more affordable price wise option for miners that can be used only for mining (hence no video outputs) and that could make it even more interesting alternative. The crypto mining GPU from Nvidia is apparently based around the consumer GeForce GTX 1060 9Gbps model and the price should be cheaper than that of the consumer model.

The information that we are seeing about the GP106-100 mining GPUs mentions some numbers regarding mining performance, the following numbers are for 8x of these GPUs: 200 MHS for ETH, 2500 Sol/s for ZEC, 4400 H/s for XMR. These numbers translate to about 25 MHs for Ethereum, 312.5 Sol/s for ZCash and 550 H/s for Monero and only the ETH number seems surprisingly high considering what we’ve seen in our recent test of the GTX 1060 9Gbps. So while the GPU might be essentially the same as on the consumer GTX 1060, there could be some differences in the video memory… maybe 256-bit memory bus or optimized memory timings intended for better performance. With a sub $200 USD prices these mining oriented GPUs could be interesting, but the 90-day warranty period could be a bit of a setback.

We’ve left the not so great news for last. The Nvidia GP106-100 mining GPUs will not be available on the regular market to the regular users apparently, they are going to be sold only in large volume to big customers such as cloud mining companies like Genesis Mining and/or other big private mining operations. So the whole thing should not make any difference to smaller home miners as they are most likely not going to be able to get their hands on the hardware anyway. That is of course prone to changing at some point if the crypto mining business continues to grow and forms a larger part of the revenue for companies like Nvidia, so that they could actually form a separate business unit to handle it. For now however the company does not seem to think that they should change their focus from gamers and gaming and mining is more like creating issues for them than helping… something that cannot be said is the same from AMD’s point of view where the market for their Polaris-based GPUs goes mostly in the hands of miners.

Enthusiasts Designing Specific Hardware for Crypto Mining Needs

The peak of interest in crypto mining in the last months has apparently sparkled the need for some interesting new products designed to help the users of mining rigs get things done in a better and more efficient way. As a result we are seeing enthusiast designed things like a power distributor board allowing the users to connect up to 4 power supplies that can be used to work together powering a single mining rig. Of course you can always go for a 2x PSU boards such as the Add2PSU, but what if you need to connect three or four power supplies? With Add2PSU you can use a number of devices to connect more power supplies together, but this will take up more molex connectors on the main power supply. Going for an optimized board that can use up to 4x power supplies together with a single molex from the main PSU is more convenient, especially if going for a 8x GPU mining rig with more powerful video cards that take up two PCI-Express power connectors.

Another commonly needed thing for multi GPU mining rigs is an easy way to connect multiple cooling fans to go along with the video cards by helping them get cooler air and eliminate the forming of hot air pockets around the GPUs. So getting an easy way to connect multiple fans, up to 6 for example via a single board powered by a 4-pin Molex power connector makes things much more simple and user friendly. Adding an easy way to select the operating voltages of the fans via jumpers and getting them to work at either 5V, 7V or 12V without the need of additional electronics is more than welcome. Of course you need not only to get good and useful functionality from a fan distributor board, but also make it affordable as with crypto mining extra costs are always considered.

While enthusiast designed products like up to 4x power distributor boards for multiple power supplies for a single computer or fan distributor boards with 6x fans and voltage control option may be interesting for regular users, however the real market for devices like these has opened with the boom of GPU mining rigs. The two boards that we are showing you here are just an example, there are other interesting products getting designed by enthusiasts for the crypto mining market as well. An interesting example of other such products is the SimpleMining SimpleRigResetter that allows for easy power cycling of multiple GPU mining rigs if they have an issue and hang up.

Total Crypto Coins Market Capitalization Now Over $100 Billion USD

According to the data from the website CoinMarketCap that tracks all of the more serious crypto currencies the total market capitalization has just passed the $100 Billion USD mark. Furthermore in less than three months it has risen multiple times from just about $25 Billion to today’s peak of a little over $101 Billion USD with Bitcoin surging shortly to a little over $2900 USD, before getting back down to the $2700 USD range. Many are wondering already when the bubble will burst or if it will at all, as other people are considering Bitcoin and some of the altcoins still being greatly undervalued. For now the craze continues, even with the shortages of GPUs and other mining hardware on the market.

It is interesting to note that Bitcoin (BTC) is responsible for just about the half of the total market cap of crypto currencies, if we take BTC from the equation and look only at all altcoins the number falls down to abut $53 Billion. In the last three months Bitcoin has significantly reduced its dominance in the market cap from over 80% to less than 50% currently. The most significant altcoins gaining in the total market cap at the expense of BTC are Ethereum and Ripple. Although we’ve seen some positive movement with Litecoin, Dash, Monero and some others as well, they are still much smaller compared to the market cap of the top three crypto coins in terms of market cap.

AMD GPU Shortages May Continue Longer Than Expected

We are hearing information from different sources that AMD may have more serious issues with supplying enough of its Radeon RX 500 series of GPUs on the market for the next couple of months. It is not all about the increased demand from crypto miners as it seems that that the company may be experiencing some other issues that are causing it to not be able to produce enough GPUs to cover the demand. Looking at Ethereum’s hashrate and difficulty data however does not yet show a significant slowdown in growth, but the reason for that could easily be the move of existing mining power from other crypto coins to ETH.

With AMD GPUs hard to get for a while now miners are looking for alternatives that are good for Ethereum mining and while Nvidia GPUs are generally more expensive, there are some that are interesting for ETH mining. We are talking about the GTX 1070 that can do 25 MHS stock and 30 MHS or even a bit more after some memory overclocking and it can do it with a reduced TDP. As a result some miners have started looking at GTX 1070 as a solution to use for new mining rigs, again it might be more expensive, but with the high profitability mining now with a more expensive GPU than waiting to possibly secure some cheaper AMD cards in some days or even weeks…

Other more powerful GPUs from Nvidia are not so great for mining Ethereum due to the use of GDDR5X video memory instead of GDDR5 that is found on the GTX 1070. The GDDR5X memory is faster in terms of clock speed and offers more bandwidth, but apparently uses less aggressive timings and as a result is not much faster than the “slower” GDDR5 memory. As a result if you are looking at GTX 1080 or GTX 1080 Ti for Ethereum mining their price/performance ratio is really not attractive at all as far as Ethereum mining goes. Nvidia on the other hand is faster on ZEC and many other algorithms, but then again people are currently crazy about ETH. So do your math and think about it and don’t overthrow the GTX 1070 as a good option for Ethereum mining.

Using a PCI-Express x1 to 3x PCIe x1 Slots Splitter

Miners willing to increase the number of available PCI-Express slots on their motherboards and thus get a better density with more GPUs on their mining rigs are always looking for different options. One of these options is the use of the cheap Chinese PCI-Express x1 to 3x PCIe x1 slots splitter boards that can be found relatively cheap if purchased directly from China. These boards take up one PCI-E slot on your motherboard and provide you with three x1 slots to use, so essentially they are adding up two extra slots for you to try and populate with video cards.

Now, you should be aware of the limitations of these boards. First off they do not seem to work with Nvidia GPUs, only with AMD video cards, so have that in mind depending on the mining rigs you are building. The fact that these boards add two more PCI-E slots physically does not mean that you will be able to fill them with video cards and they will all work. You may need to try multiple slots on your motherboard when plugging the splitter board as not all slots may work properly with it. We’ve seen some motherboards work with no additional cards using such a splitter board, on some only one extra card is working and on others both extra cards will function.

It is best to try what works on a particular motherboard first and then decide if you are Ok with the results you are getting. Going for a motherboard with 6 PCI-E slots to be able to install 8 video cards with the help of such PCIe splitter is a nice thing, but then again not all motherboards will work with 8 GPUs this way. Some people are suing such boards to upgrade motherboards with just 4x PCI-E slots to six in order to go for a “standard” 6x GPU mining rig. Again, there is no guarantee that the motherboard will work properly with these splitter boards and add extra two PCI-E slots, even if you are able to get the extra slots the motherboard might still have trouble working properly with more than 4 GPUs. In general we are not big fans of solutions like these as they may have varying results, but sometimes a thing like these boards can help you overcome some limitations nevertheless.

Quick Look at the ASUS GeForce GTX 1060 OC 6GB 9Gbps

Back in March when Nvidia introduced the GeForce GTX 1080 Ti it has also announced two upgrades – the GeForce GTX 1060 with 9 Gbps and GeForce GTX 1080 with 11 Gbps memory. These two new models with faster video memory did not get a lot of attention and they have just recently started becoming available on the market. The GTX 1060 with 9 instead of 8 GHz GDDR5 video memory is what caught our attention and more specifically the ASUS GeForce GTX 1060 OC 6GB 9Gbps and we took one for a quick spin to see its crypto mining performance.

The faster GDDR5 memory from Samsung found in this model is what makes the GPU pretty interesting for the currently quite popular and profitable Equihash and Ethash crypto algorithms. We wanted to see the mining performance with ETH and ZEC, even though the memory bus on the GTX 1060 is just 192-bit and that is a bit of a limiting factor. The big question here is how this GTX 1060 model compares to GTX 1070 that uses slower GDDR5 memory clocked at 8GHz (like the regular GTX 1060), but with 256-bit bus and comes with significantly higher number of CUDA cores.

Going for the Ethereum (ETH) mining performance with the latest Claymore ETH miner we are not that happy with the performance we see – just about 17 MHS at stock settings. We kind of expected the lower result due to the 192-bit memory bus, but had hoped that the hgiher clocked GDDR5 memory could help for a bit better results. The GTX 1070 does about 25 MHS at stock settings, but can be pushed to about 30 MHs with some memory clock. Overclocking the GTX 1060 9Gbps helps a bit, but still that can push the performance to just about 19 MHs, so not that much better.

The situation with ZCash (ZEC) is a bit better with about 300 Sol/s at stock settings using the EWBF ZEC miner for the GTX 1060 9Gbps while the GTX 1070 does of course much more at over 400 and can go up to about 450-460 with some extra tweaking. It seems that the faster 9Gbps memory on the GTX 1060 does not do it that much good for mining, tough it might be more usable for gaming. With prices for the GTX 1060 9Gbps not that much lower than the price of GTX 1070 there is actually not that much reason to go for it the faster memory instead of the faster GPU in general.

Now, if Nvidia does tweak up the GTX 1070 with the faster 9 Gbps GDDR5 video memory things might get more interesting, especially for Ethereum mining using these, because of the the problems that AMD is having with Radeon RX series availability. At the moment Ethereum mining on a decently clocked in terms of video memory GTX 1070 can bring it to about 30 MHS with 600+ MHz on the RAM and with reduced TDP. So power/performance wise the next best thing as an alternative to an AMD Radeon RX 570/RX 580 with a good video memory that can get to about 28-29 MHS after modding is in fact a GTX 1070. There are already rumors that AMD may have a couple of months with stock shortages for the RX series of GPUs, so we might soon start seeing the demand for the more interesting for mining Nvidia GPUs increasing.