Mining DarkCoin, a beginners journey...

MrMime

MrMime

Active member
Foundation Member
So I have known about bitcoin since late late 2011, when prices were $3 a coin! I jumped on the mining bandwagon with ASICS via butterfly labs and a year later received my first BTC miner (2 weeks later ™)! As difficulty has skyrocketed, I've started looking for other means to mine, and create a hobby for myself in this exciting cryptocurrency age. I didn't want to continue my ASIC's arms race, and saw that scrypt and other non SHA-256 coins would be a great foray into not only building my first mining rig, but also to continue my passion of coin mining. I knew when I ran into DarkCoin that I had to drop some profits made from BTC mining and go all out on a nice old fashioned GPU rig. I should be getting all my components in this week, and will update this thread based on things I've learned, and hopefully awesome pictures! My set up as follows:

Much thanks to http://www.coinminingrigs.com/ for the component ideas! I hope you guys enjoy the updates, and hopefully if anyone else is considering building a mining rig, we can do this together and hopefully learn more about this exciting endeavor!
 
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Propulsion said:
Very cool! Where are you getting your hardware from? I hope not newegg or tigerdirect lol.
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Not there. Prices are super expensive. I just gyft'ed some coins onto an amazon gift card. Got my mobo and ram today! Can't wait till the rest of the pieces comes in.
 
phryed said:
if its not too late, i'd recomend this type of riser, much easier to work with, and your 290s are gonna need breathing room if you ever mine scrypt:
http://www.amazon.com/Powered-Exten..._sim_pc_1?ie=UTF8&refRID=0N17K1X62DK18DNQZA81
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Oh okay, thanks for the tip. Already got my risers, but if I plan to switch to scrypt I'll get those ones, man they're long. Speaking of which, just received my whole set-up and first GPU today! Man those cards are massive!! Thanks for the link phryed. :)
 
I finally got it all set up! The mining that these cards do is incredible. I just have two cards in with an Intensity of ~20, fan speed about 60% at a cool 65 degrees Celsius, and a combined hashing power of nearly 5Mh/s. I love mining darkcoin! Thanks guys for all your help. Pictures will be coming soon :D!

Here are some pics!
 
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Hey gorensan. It's been going for about 7 weeks strong! Made about ~250 coins so far. Just using updated sgminer, had some issues with risers and had to take out 2 cards since it was stalling sgminer whenever I tried to bump intensity up, but school is out and have more time to fiddle with it now!
 
great success story. What cast/structure build are you using? I built an open air PVC case for my 3 rigs and i freaking love it. Cheap and sturdy.
 
noruka said:
great success story. What cast/structure build are you using? I built an open air PVC case for my 3 rigs and i freaking love it. Cheap and sturdy.
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I went cheapo, and used a milk crate @_@;;... It works awesome though. I tried using those 4 cards though to litecoin and my room instantly heated up! About 20 minutes later it flipped the circuit breakers to the house, and had to go reset them. Will never mine scrypt again lmao.
 
MrMime said:
I went cheapo, and used a milk crate @_@;;... It works awesome though. I tried using those 4 cards though to litecoin and my room instantly heated up! About 20 minutes later it flipped the circuit breakers to the house, and had to go reset them. Will never mine scrypt again lmao.
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if my circuit breakers had a dollar each time i flipped a breaker It would retire for life. i used to use milk crates too but i expanded so much that i needed to go with a more compact option. I "transformed" each 3 card crate into a single 6 card PVC case. It runs alot cooler b/c there is no crate to block the airflow and i have 12x R9 290s and 6x R9 280xs running X11. I can put a whole machine on a single circuit. with scrypt/n-scrypt i had to split it up and have 2 PSUs powering. I need to make sure the glue set well before i move it....but its working out great so far.

The heat on the other hand.....well lets just say my A/C thats meant to cool just a small one bedroom apartment hates me......
 
MrMime said:
So I have known about bitcoin since late late 2011, when prices were $3 a coin! I jumped on the mining bandwagon with ASICS via butterfly labs and a year later received my first BTC miner (2 weeks later ™)! As difficulty has skyrocketed, I've started looking for other means to mine, and create a hobby for myself in this exciting cryptocurrency age. I didn't want to continue my ASIC's arms race, and saw that scrypt and other non SHA-256 coins would be a great foray into not only building my first mining rig, but also to continue my passion of coin mining. I knew when I ran into DarkCoin that I had to drop some profits made from BTC mining and go all out on a nice old fashioned GPU rig. I should be getting all my components in this week, and will update this thread based on things I've learned, and hopefully awesome pictures! My set up as follows:

Much thanks to http://www.coinminingrigs.com/ for the component ideas! I hope you guys enjoy the updates, and hopefully if anyone else is considering building a mining rig, we can do this together and hopefully learn more about this exciting endeavor!
Click to expand...
Wow you picked a great time to start mining :) Price is looking pretty good. I have a few questions. Im a Bitcoin miner myself. I run KNC and BITMAIN asics. About 7Th worth.
Even though i have all that im kind of a noob when it comes to mining altcoins. Im curious is mining DRK different then mining LTC? If i bought a scrypt mining rig it would not mine DRK ?

If not what is your rig worth. I would like to build a few . Or maybe you could build me one or two and i could pay you for your time and parts in BTC. Get back to me when you can. Thanx alot
 
Hey Znolimit, yeah it worked out pretty okay. Still would have been better to buy the coins direct (like it usually is) but I wanted to mitigate risk, and ended up buying some anyways. Anyways, to answer your questions, DRK mining is a bid different than scrypt. It's a whole hell of a lot cooler (pardon the pun) and uses much less electricity. If you can mine scrypt, you can mine X11 (dark) also! My rig would be worth about ~1800-2000. I spent much more on cards and they've dropped in price about 20% due to ASIC's coming out for scrypt. Each card would probably run you around 350 used, and the other components will however around 500 or so. The setup listed in op is a great one and highly recommended!

Building one for you could be arranged! PM for more.
 
Hi again MrMime,
Did you use the add2psu adapter for connecting the two power supplies?
Also, is there any parameter tweaking necessary on the mining software?
 
I used the vantacor PSU Adapter. You just have to be careful how you plug in the PSU's if you use it (i.e. don't plug in the second power supply to the wall) since you can fry power supplies easily if both are plugged in. I messed a bit with parameters, but found one online and looked up video card specs for thread concurrency and all that. I like adding auto fan for gpu's and temperature control as it makes it easier to manage.
 
I'm struggling here. Where do you connect the screen/monitor to? USB on the motherboard? What do you boot from motherboard CD? Sorry for the stupid questions, it's been 20 years since I last assembled a PC...
 
Hey gorensan, no stupid questions here. I plug my HDMI from monitor into my R9290 directly. I decided on buying a copy of Windows 7 to install on my ssd. Only need a small storage space if you're keeping it as a dedicated miner.
 
Nadapersonal said:
Im starting to mine but im still on that side of whats better mining or just trading.
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Trading and buying coins direct is 9/10 the best decision to make. I enjoy mining for hobby and strengthening network and getting fresh coins. Not a bad hobby that at least helps pay you back for loving it =D
 
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