Archive for the ‘General Info’ Category

New White PCI-E Extenders With Multiple Power Connectors

8, Sep 2017

It seems that there is now a new model of PCI Express extenders for connecting GPUs to mining motherboards available in white color PCBs and with three different power connectors available. The new extenders come equipped with a SATA power, 4-pin Molex power and 6-pin PCI-E power connectors and you can apparently are able to connect power through any or on all of them. This would allow for better flexibility, especially in cases where you do not have enough power connectors of a certain type, but can also help in overcoming issues with too much power draw over a single power cable. Normally the SATA power is the lowest rated in terms of power capability and thus it is most often the cause of possible issues with burnt or melted cables with GPUs that draw more power from the PCI-E slot. Connecting a Molex to SATA power along with the SATA power onboard on these extenders could help in preventing such problems for example.

Regardless of the power connector options available on these and how you mix and match them you should still be careful how much power is being drawn over a single physical cable going to the power supply. More than two PCI-E extenders on a single physical cable is not recommended, though it also depends what is the power draw of the GPUs as some may have very little or even no power draw from the PCI-E slot, while others may have huge draw even if the GPUs are not with very high TDP. Even if the power cables themselves (18 AWG or even 16 AWG) are capable of handling the higher load the modular power connectors that connect the cables to the power supply are often the failure points as they are really not rated for that much power. So always be careful if your mining GPU rigs in order to avoid any possible hardware failures that can result in extended downtime to diagnose and/or fix afterwards.

Unofficial Ethash DAG Epoch Fix for AMD Polaris GPUs Now Available

8, Aug 2017

We have already discussed that AMD’s Polaris series of GPUS such as RX 470/480 and RX 570/580 had some issues with dropping performance in the upcoming DAG epochs, regardless of their video memory size. Last month there was information from Claymore and Wolf0 that AMD is working on a driver fix to resolve the problem.

It seems that there is already a solution that resolves the issue with dropping performance, even though it comes with unofficial driver (probably leaked official one with fix). It was posted by a new user on Bitcointalk, but has been confirmed to actually fix the problem and as a result you might regain some of the already lost hashrate and should not worry anymore that your performance will drop significantly if mining Ethereum by the end of the year. Do note however that this fixed driver is not going to make things work on 4GB GPUs when the DAG size approaches the limit of the video memory they have available and that is still happening!

The driver was posted on Dropbox (not working at the moment due to too much traffic) and on alternative download website. You need to install it via Device Manager, then patch it and restart the mining rig. You must also use the latest Claymore Dual Miner v9.8 and there seem to be some problems with using Afterburner for voltage and fan control, though you can still modify them via the Claymore miner settings just fine.

If these drivers are leaked from AMD (highly likely) we are most likely very soon going to see an official release available as well, so if you do not want to risk it, then just wait for the official release from AMD. It should most likely have the same effect as the modified drivers mentioned here. We have tested and can confirm they work and indeed fix the DAG problem.

– For more details about the Ethash DAG Epoch Fix driver for AMD Polaris GPUs…

Bitcoin Cash (BCC/BCH) Has Forked, But Things are Moving Slow

2, Aug 2017

Bitcoin Cash (BCC or BCH depending on the exchange) has successfully forked yesterday around the planned time, but things are still moving slow. Some of the exchanges such as Bittrex and Kraken were pretty quick to respond in crediting users with BCC/BCH coins and launching trading. The increased demand and high volatility however is still causing issues for some exchanges such as Kraken that apparently is having trouble with their infrastructure handling the load. Still most if not all exchanges that started supporting Bitcoin Cash and offer trading have not yet enabled deposits from local wallets. Even if they do at the moment, it could still take a day for a transaction to be confirmed and be credited in the exchange. We still need to wait a bit more for the difficulty of BCC/BCH to adjust to the significantly lower hashrate and the blocks to start moving at a faster pace as they are currently taking a lot of time, much more than just 10 minutes per block.

The price volatility of Bitcoin Cash is very likely to continue as there is a lot of speculation and actually not that much coins in circulation in exchanges. It seems that quite a lot of people proffered to keep their BTC and get BCC/BCH with a local wallet where they have full control over the private keys and the coins inside. This means that the coins in exchanges will remain less than apparently the demand there is at the moment, but as soon as deposits to exchanges are allowed the Bitcoin Cash price may start a downward trend. This is especially true if most people do what they were planning – namely dumping the “free” BCC/BCH coins they have received for BTC or other altcoins. Still, we are yet to see what is going to happen as things may end up very different than what some people expected or planned. We are still in favor of Bitcoin (BTC) over any forks such as Bitcoin Cash (BCC/BCH), but the new fork is already getting decent support and slowly building momentum.

If you take a look at the coin market capitalization, then you might be surprised that the market cap of Bitcoin Cash (BCC/BCH) is already at almost 8 Billion USD and that is placing the currency as number 3 in terms of capitalization. BCH is just after Bitcoin (BTC) and Ethereum (ETH) in terms of market capitalization, but that is the situation at the moment and with the high price volatility things could change at any moment. Ripple (XRP) is not that far behind on the 4th place at the moment, so even a slight change in price may cause BCC/BCH to lose its 3rd place. Litecoin (LTC) is number 5 and it is with much smaller market cap in order to take one of the higher places. Anyway a significant price correction with deposits enabled on crypto exchanges and much higher trading volume of Bitcoin Cash could as well shake things up or down significantly, so be prepared for this as well.


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