Posts Tagged ‘SMOS’

How To Still Mine Ethereum With AMD Radeon RX 400/500 Series 4GB GPUs

21, Jan 2021

AMD’s Radeon RX 470/480 and RX 570/58 with 4GB of video memory can still be used to mine Ethereum (ETH), even though the DAG size is already a bit over 4GB which is more than the video memory available on these GPUs. The current Ethereum DAG epoch number is #389 and the size of the DAG file is 4.04 GB and it will continue to grow, however with the current profitability mining ETH makes it worth to continue using these 4GB video cards at least a bit more. They can still be used in the so called “Zombie Mode” with a mining software that supports it in order to continue mining Ethereum for a bit more, even though the hashrate is going to be lower and continue to go down a bit by bit with each new DAG epoch coming.

At the moment an optimized AMD Radeon RX 400/500 series GPU with 4GB video memory should be capable of doing 17-18 MHS for Ethash mining with optimized memory timings and downclocked GPU with about a 100W of power consumption at the wall. So, do not be in a hurry to dismiss these “old” and “obsolete” 4GB video cards yet, they still have some life in them for mining Ethereum, you just need to play a bit more to make them work.

The AMD crypto mining software that supports “Zombie Mode” for AMD Radeon 4GB GPUs includes TeamRedMiner, lolMiner and PhoenixMiner and they are available for both Windows and Linux OS, free with some development fee built-in. You will need to add the following command line parameters for each specific miner to enable the “Zombie Mode” and make mining Ethereum work. Have in mind that the number might need to be changed up/down in order to find what works on your mining hardware. Currently we are using 4074 on our test video cards (Gigabyte RX 580 4GB), but on different cards and with a change in the DAG number you may need to set a different number, so do try what works for you.

– For TeamRedMiner: --eth_4g_max_alloc=4074
– For lolMiner: --4g-alloc-size 4074
– For PhoenixMiner: -daglim 4074

If playing with the miners directly is not your thing you may also try the SimpleMining or HiveOS Linux Mining Operating Systems that make it much easier for management of multiple mining rigs. They do come with support for the three miners we have mentioned and thus Zombie Mode for mining Ethereum (ETH) on 4GB AMD GPUs, so you just need to prepare a USB flash drive with the OS on it, plug it in the mining rig and boot from it. Then you continue from a web-based management windows through your browser setting up and monitoring your GPUs. Both SMOS and HiveOS are free to try with a limited number of mining machines and then you need to pay a small monthly fee for additional mining rigs, to continue using the OS. For HiveOS you can use the promo code CMB10USDPROMO that will give you $10 USD in your account balance to play with.

– For more about Simple Mining (SMOS) Linux Mining OS…
– For more about HiveOS Linux Mining Operating System…

KopiemTu, a Kubuntu-based Bootable Linux Image for Nvidia GPU Mining

9, Apr 2014

kopiemtu-kubuntu-nvidia-miner-live-distro

KopiemTu is an interesting project that aims to make it easy for people with Nvidia-based video cards such as GTX 750 Ti for example to be able to start mining crypto currencies under Linux. KopiemTu is based on Kubuntu and comes in the form of a bootable image that you can put on an 8 GB or more USB flash drive and directly boot from it, no need to install it. It includes Nvidia drivers and CudaMiner compiled for Linux, so as soon as you boot it you can start mining. There is also a simple web-based monitoring service available that you can watch remotely without having to login to the Linux machine to check the status.

And while KopiemTu is not yet like BAMT or SMOS Linux mining distributions it still makes it easier for people that are not very familiar with Linux to start mining. What is kind of missing at the moment is an easy way to configure and use the live distribution without having to rely on console commands. When you start you are presented with an empty desktop and an icon only for the console, but no easy to use icons to automate the most common tasks, you still need to go to the console, switch to root user and edit a configuration file to set your pool settings (config files stored in /etc/kopiemtu/). Even a wallpaper with the most common things you need as commands or a ReadMe file on the desktop would be nice for new users.

What you need to know to get you started is that the root password is live, and you start and stop the mining by typing the “mine start” command in the console, after setting your settings in the config file for the pool you want to mine in. with “monitor start” you are activating the web-based monitoring that you can see from a web browser by typing the IP address of the system. The good thing is that since CudaMiner does support most of the crypto coins algorithms you are easily able to configure settings for different coins without having to recompile something for example. The only problem that is common under Linux and is also present here is the overclocking of the GPUs, the solution to that problem is to modify the video BIOS with the overclocked frequencies and flash it on the video card(s), so that the right settings will be applied all the time.

– For more information and to download and try the KopiemTu Linux live mining distribution….

Dedicated Linux-based Litecoin Mining Distributions

9, Feb 2014

smos-linux-web-interface-monitoring

A lot of people that are not into Linux and are not familiar with it try to stay away form it, but when we are talking about Litecoin and other scrypt crypto mining you might want to reconsider if you are building a mining rig. Linux has some advantages other than being free when you compare it to Windows, and the best thing is that there are special distributions already available that might make it very easy for you to use them for scrypt mining rigs that you are building. One of the advantage is that Linux has no trouble using multiple video cards like 6 on a single motherboard, something that can bring you a real headache with some Windows versions. Also using a specialized mining Linux distribution means that you don’t need to have a lot of free space, actually you don’t need to even use a hard drive to install it on, you can directly boot it from a flash drive. And the specialized mining distributions you only need to setup the mining pool, your username and pass for the worker and they are ready to be used and you can remotely monitor them – no need of advanced Linux knowledge at all.

smos-linux-cgminer-monitoring

Now, it all may seem like a dream, however there is one important thing that you should be well aware of – the pretty much only more significant disadvantage of using a Linux Litecoin mining distribution. You are most likely not going to be able to control the GPU voltage from these distributions on all video cards (from within AMDOverdriveCtrl), some may work, others may not, but most likely you will have trouble with most of the cards. On Windows you have multiple options like Sapphire Trixx, MSI Afterbutner and other manufacturers specialized overclocking software for a specific video card. On Linux mining distributions you do have a tool that may show you the voltages, but you will probably not be able to change them, though you cans till control the clock settings for the video memory and the graphics processor. This is important, because normally you can lower the voltage below the standard set value and overclock the video card and it can still mine cryptos stable. This is being done in order for the cards to use less power and emit less heat, thus staying cooler and more silent. If the cooling and the noise is not a problem and you have ensured low operating temperatures, then there is no problem not to lower the voltage of the cards.

After this short introduction we are going to point your attention to two specialized Litecoin mining distributions based on Linux that you might want to check out and try on your mining rigs. These are the Litecoin-BAMT and SMOS Linux with them being very similar to each other. They both come in the form of an image file that you can write directly on a USB flash drive and then boot the operating system from that drive. After the first start you have to edit the cgminer config file ( /etc/bamt/cgminer.conf ) with your mining pool settings and you are ready to start mining. You can then monitor the performance of the mining rig and control it either trough a remote console login, or through a web based interface, so there is no need for physical access anymore.

– For more information about the Litecoin-BAMT Linux mining distribution…
– For more information about the SMOS Linux scrypt mining distribution…


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