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So you've got a GPU or two sitting around, and you want to put them to use mining some crypto. You settle on Ethereum, but you've got a basic understanding of computers and best and you don't even know where to start. I'll do my best to break that down for you, as starting out I was in that same situation. Through a little internet sleuthing I was able to get started a couple months ago, and now that I've got a bit more of an understanding into what I'm doing, I figured I would share what I could and I will do a "How To Mine Raven Coin" soon as well. With that said, we'll get started.
If you'd like to see if mining would be "worth" it for you before you get started, there are programs called mining calculators you can use to calculate your profits, electricity cost and more. For example if I plug my 3070ti I can see around waht I can expect to mine, and what it'll cost to do so.
Now, where do we get these numbers? For starters, programs like MSi AfterBurner can help you determine not only what your GPU is capable of strength-wise, but also allows you to boost those numbers (carefully), monitor your computers temperature, fan speed, and more. Once you've got a program like AfterBurner installed, you should run a GPU benchmark program. What this does is runs a series of programs and tests your GPU to it's max, basically as if you loaded of Skyrim on full graphics, shaders and all. Through AfterBurner now, you can see you a multitude of different metrics.
The most important thing you want to look at here is what your computers temperature is. Depending on how nice of a system you have, or whether you have liquid cooling or and open rig set up, everyone will be different. When mining RVN, my computer can get up to 66-67C, which is the highest I'll push it and I don't even like to do that, but again everyone is different. If you're having problems with crashing, and things like that you might need to underclock your rig. I have mine set to +35/+35 at the moment, and I have tested over and underclocking multiple different ways through the benchmark tests and otherwise. I have crashed my computer by overclocking it too far and I can tell you I will do that again.
Now that we've got all of our initial tests out of the way to make sure it would be either profitable, or , we can move on to finding out we can mine. For most people, and chances are if you're reading through this post you're one of them, you'll be using what is called a mining pool. What this is, is a group of miners - usually small, single GPU miners like us - to put their little hearts together and pull! This gives people a chance no matter how small at still being able to participate in the wonderful world of crypto. There are many different pools, from NiceHash to f2pool, 2miners and more but in this example I will use the latter of those in 2miners.com as that is what I am currently using.
To start off with, you'll go to their web page and scroll down to find their pools. They have many options but here we're going with Ethereum. Once you've clicking on ETH, you'll see a "quick start" button. Clicking that will bring you to a step-by-step guide to setting up the mining program (including starting with a wallet if you haven't done that already).
In order to mine, you need to run a script on your computer that sets your GPU to work. For 2miners they have their own mining program that you can use for quick easy access. I found this extremely easy to set up, and that's what I'll use here - but they also suggest using T-Rex or GMiner for Nvidia, and lolminer and GMiner for AMD miners.
Clicking on the hyperlink will download a Setup folder for the mining program:
Once you click on the file, towards the top you will see a Compressed Folder Tools tab. You'll want to click on that, go to "Extract all" then press "Extract".
Once you've extracted the folder, it'll be easier to move it to a spot on your desktop so that it's easier to find. You obviously want to use the uncompressed file here.
Now that you've done this, you've got everything you need to get started mining... but wait! How do you make sure getting credited for the work? For starters, we're going to open up that mining program. You'll see three different folders here, I'm going to show the setups for NVIDIA as that's what I have, but you can see the different programs for AMD and Monero(CPU) mining there as well.
You'll see a whole list of programs that pop up called .bat, or batch files. Each one has a specific script, that when ran will operate the mining application for that specific cryptocurrency - in this case again, Ethereum.
In order to make sure that you are credited to the pool for the work that you complete you need to edit the "eth-pool" .bat file so that you are one, mining to your specific ETH address, and two, to the correct pool and application. Since I used the t-rex miner quick setup up provided by 2miners, I will be showing that. Depending on what program you use, there are a list of edits to the .bat file that you will make depending on the program. Either way, you will need to right-click edit the "eth-pool" .bat file. Doing this will bring up notepad, with some lines of text.
Again, you will need to change the file depending on the program, but if you're following the quick setup for an NVIDIA GPU, your .bat file should look like this:
The main things you're looking for here (most of which is copy-pasted) is that you're mining to the correct program (t-rex), you're mining to the correct server (mine is set to USA, there are also EU and Asia servers - make sure you're setting this accordingly) and then, that you are mining to the correct address! This is how you get paid, so make sure you're switching out the default mining address in the .bat file to your address!
Once you've done that, you're all set. Whenever you're ready, pop open that AfterBurner just to keep an eye on things and double-click on that "eth-pool" .bat file to blast off. If you've set everything up accordingly, a windows command will pop up and a list of commands and checks and balances will run, and soon enough you'll be set mining your shares!
Basically here, you're running a series hashes against other hashes, and when they match up you get what's called a share. A share is a "proof of work" which means there is computational that you've done something on the blockchain. When these hashes match up with the specific hash that marks a block, the miners are rewarded with the spoils of that block. Since all these shares are valid proofs of work, and there are many miners all contributing to mining the blocks for pools, the rewards are split based on a number of the shares that you submit towards these blocks.
In order for pools to profit from this, and for example in this case, pay for a portion of the gas fees on payout, pools take a cut of your mining rewards. In the case of mining ETH on 2miners, they take a 1% cut of the shares that you send to the block pool. 2miners does what is called a "PPLS", or Paid Per Last X(number) of Shares. This means if in one hour the pool mines a total of 1 million shares, and you get 100 of those shares, you'll be getting an average of 0.0001% of the total shares for that period of time. If by going by previous metrics, and you get 2 Ethereum per block, we mined 5 blocks totaling 10 Ethereum, and we got 0.0001% of that 10 Ethereum, we would have in a one hours time and 100 shares - mined 0.001, or ~$3.00.
That is just a quick break down of the numbers, and in reality - at least for small miners - the numbers are quite a bit smaller. As I posted at the start with the mining calculator, I average around ~$2.00 a day at current prices and while at times the numbers can seem a bit discouraging, I am having a ton of fun learning, and exploring along the way. The hash rates here look a little wonky as I had stopped mining last night until previously to give my system a break to ignore that, but this is a snap shot of the last 10 days of mining.
You can see a breakdown of your rewards, and the gas and txn bonuses from the blocks as well by clicking on the rewards tab, and also set specific withdraw levels to withdrawal to your address at certain payouts.
2miners suggests a minimum Ethereum payout of .05 ETH as you will lose a guaranteed minimum of $8.60 to gas fees, and more from what 2miners doesn't pay - but any less and some of your ETH risks getting left behind.
If you've got any questions, or topics you'd like me to dig into and possibly break down, don't be afraid to ask! As I said previously I plan on doing this for f2pool and RVN soon as well. I appreciate you taking the time to read over this little blurb, and I wish you all well in your mining endeavors!
