Im well into new ground here and still learning but I started dabbling. I normally run Fedora 25 / RX 480 and the machine is on 24/7 anyway. With all these cant buy GPU's I thought well lets try.
Dont stone my but my little research lead my to NiceHash for a miner which seems easy to use on Windows. For a bitcoin wallet I found Coinbase. Been running on Windows for a few days and my one Asus Strix RX 480 is making about $4-5USD a day. Pain in the arse being on windows but I had virtual machines for itunes and torrent etc and they run on linux or windows in VM's regardless.
Im stuck with coinbase and Nicehash until my first pay out which is about $30USD and I am waiting to see what happens then.
Now I dont game as much these days I can shut down NiceHash to game it works I spend a few hours on skyrim. Watching youtube and movies seems to make no difference to my machine other than the GPU is sitting at 61-66C loaded up 24/7.
Is this just free cash for me or am I missing something. Since my PC is 24/7 anyway the ~100W extra from the loaded RX 480 is more than covered my $4.5USD a day.
Since you are only using hardware you already own (i.e. not buying anything new) there's very little risk involved and you really are basically getting free money. The only things to consider are your electricity bill (which you did), the wear on your GPU (fans in particular) and the time you have to invest periodically checking the system and selling bitcoin.
If you instead intend to buy hardware specifically for mining there's a lot more things to be considered. I intend to post a new thread where people can just chime in and post any 'hidden risk' they find to hopefully have all of them in one place. I'll post a link once that thread exists.
One more thing in case you are unaware: Overclock your GPU memory. It helps a lot. You can also slightly underclock the GPU proper to save on some energy without sacrificing mining performance.
Maybe its cosmic luck but I did turn down my GPU from 1400MHz to stock 1330 but left the memory at 2200MHz over stock 2000MHz. Thanks for the tip
Update: turned up the memory to 2250Mhz in WattMan (AMD driver) and for anyone else interested my GPU fan is running non-stop ~50%. Its totally quite because Asus Strix is a really solid RX 480.
Well after your advice I dropped to the default 1310 the strix has dual 1310 and 1330. Kept the memory maxed. I will have to see how that goes over time as I just did it. Config in a pic cause Im a lazy bastid
When I began mining I turned off the asus overclocking software because I ran all sorts of diabolical voltages and speeds and defered to the AMD driver.
Looks about right. Since this is my desktop and Im playing TV shows and youtube etc while mining I get about ~23-26M G H/s. I even have a VM running at the moment as well.
There a nice windows GUI way to mine easily? Id love to try or atleast see my hash rates but all the diff utils and cmd prompts make my little dutch brain bleed.
@pFtpr don't forget to undervolt your GPU, it should keep your card cooler and reduce the electricity consumed, while your performance will be the same.
