Bitcoin mining.

[Bitcoin]

Zero carbon footprint.
We currently use Green Mountain Energy for our electricity. Green Mountain Energy uses wind and solar power to power our mining facility with a zero carbon footprint. Green Mountain has been a leading renewable energy provider in Texas, since 2002. We are dedicated to renewable energy and sustainability.
3333 Lee Parkway Suite 671A Dallas, Texas 75219 Phone: (214) 665-9400 Mon - Fri, 10:00am - 6:00pm.
Mining Warehouse/Distribution Center.
2609 Technology Dr. Plano, Texas 75074 Phone: (469) 718-3777 Not open to public.
Current customer support - [email protected]
Self mining bitcoin.
You need to run a full node [2] to validate transactions. First, install Bitcoin-core (both GUI and Daemon) with the complete blockchain downloaded. Bitcoin Core is a full node software program that fully validates transactions and blocks. The installation will take a long time because it requires the whole growing blockchain [3] to be downloaded.
server=1 listen=1 daemon=1 rpcuser=X rpcpassword=Q rpcallowip=localhost rpcport=Y.
Download and install the ASIC Bitcoin Miner software like CGMiner, BFGMiner, and many other choices [4].
For a solo miner, the mining software connects you to the blockchain (Bitcoin Core). The main job of the Bitcoin Miner software is to deliver the mining hardware's work to the rest of the Bitcoin network.
Bitcoin mining Difficulty: A Self-Regulating System.
Mining is the backbone of the Bitcoin network.
Without this utility, the network collapses on its back, just like a human who breaks their backbone. Mining ensures that the network is decentralized, and transactions go through with a supervising central entity. Miners, in their hundreds of thousands, keep the system fluid and accountable with their service.
But no one wants to work for free. Yes, for miners to have the motivation to provide this valuable service, they need a fitting incentive. Block rewards and transaction fees are what interest most miners in this activity. Maybe one or two do it out of real belief in decentralization. But humans being humans, profitability has to be a primary consideration.
What Determines Mining Profitability?
Various factors come into play as relates to your bottom line from mining. The two main variables are:
The mining difficulty level. The price of Bitcoin.
a. Min ing Difficulty.
More people, more problems.
Well, that is a non-typical application of this quote but still fitting. The more people try to mine Bitcoin, the more difficult it is. If you move into a town and open the only convenience store, you make easy profits and don't struggle to sell your product.
Assume five other people open similar stores.
Naturally, it becomes challenging to make the same profits as before. Unless you can offer the consumer something the other stores don't, you have to contend with the competition.
Apply the same logic to mining.
As Bitcoin became more popular, mining got more difficult. There are only 21 million Bitcoins to prevent inflation. Bitcoin is a deflationary cryptocurrency because there is a finite amount.
Therefore, to justify the mining difficulty, you need the best equipment available and the cheapest power you can find. VBit Technologies has both of these.
b. Bitcoin Price as a Factor.
Let's rope in the second variable, Bitcoin prices. To make the variable practical, let's use a real-life gold mine as an example.
Picture a gold mine with 100 gold nuggets in it. Suppose you are the only one with access to mine, but in the outside world, few people care about gold. So, you mine the 100 nuggets and sell each for a paltry $1.
Even if you manage to sell all the 100 nuggets, you only end up with one hundred dollars.
Now, take the same mine, but this time everyone is trying to mine the gold. In such a competitive environment, each nugget of gold will invariably become more expensive. Say $1,000 per nugget. If you manage to land a single nugget of gold, you have a thousand dollars in your pocket!

[Bitcoin]

SECRETS To Finding a 100x Token Sale!! ✅|22:53

[Bitcoin]

How to mine Valerium!!!! Mining Only! PoW blockchain!!! No ICO!!!!!!|6:29

[Bitcoin]

In the exact same way, the more people get involved in trying to mine and use Bitcoin, the higher prices go.
Even though it is more difficult to mine one Bitcoin, the rewards for mining that Bitcoin means that you still have the incentive to try and compete for the mining rewards.
Bitcoin mining Difficulty Follows Price.
These two factors are dynamic. The higher the mining difficulty, the less Bitcoin you get for a fixed amount of power.
To justify the difficulty, prices tend to go up. The higher the price, the more people get interested in Bitcoin mining. As with any asset, more people get interested in it when prices are going up.
Therefore, mining difficulty follows prices.
But the drag effect is not necessarily instantaneous.
After the historic Bitcoin Bull Run of late 2017, peak mining difficulty actually came about seven months later. People don't know how to time the market. This is because people saw the Bitcoin price skyrocket and got interested in mining.
Even though the bear market made mining unprofitable for most, they still hoped that prices would recover and return to profitability.
Bitcoin mining equipment prices also follow prices. As Bitcoin prices went up in that period, the prices of mining equipment like Antminer went up.
Bitcoin Is a Self-Regulating System.
When people see Bitcoin prices go up, they go into a frenzy buying equipment. The natural consequence is that mining difficulty goes up.
If there is a drop in Bitcoin prices, people lose interest because people with high electricity rates become unprofitable and mining difficulty levels off with time. Even with lower prices, if you can keep mining as mining difficulty goes down, you will be able to mine more Bitcoin with the same amount of energy.
The drag effect prices have on mining difficulty leads to a self-regulating system. Bitcoin mining has been a self-regulating system for a decade, and there is no reason for this trend to change.
Mining follows the basic laws of supply and demand.
Yes, mining difficulty may lag, sometimes by months. However, if you find a mining solution with low electricity costs and low overhead, you can maintain profitability throughout.
Profitability for Efficient Bitcoin Miners.
High-efficiency miners, with the resources to seek the best locations, energy rates, and scale mining capacity, are more likely to succeed. This bracket is where VBit Technologies fits.
The high efficiency miner can be able to make even more during periods of bear markets before mining difficulty drags to adjust to the new prices. Miners without the low power costs and high overhead will have to turn off their machines because low Bitcoin prices take them out of business.
Having this endurance means that a high-efficiency miner can be in business all throughout the period. As mining difficulty goes down, this is the best time to start mining Bitcoin. With smaller competition, resilient miners can mine more Bitcoin per fixed unit of power than before.
Mining is about surviving hard times. The self-regulating nature of Bitcoin mining means that low-efficiency miners are most vulnerable during bear markets. Just like natural selection in evolution, it is about survival for the fittest.
Human emotion has fueled many to go into Bitcoin mining with low efficiency during Bull Markets. When prices go down, such entities find themselves reeling into obscurity because their costs become too much. During a price downturn, it can be the best time to buy into mining and Bitcoin from a high-efficiency miner. You can mine more Bitcoin when mining difficulty goes down and sell mined Bitcoin for good profits when prices rebound.
VBit Technologies as an Efficient Bitcoin mining Company.
VBit Technologies is a high-efficiency miner. We did our research to ensure that we had the best locations for our data centers, minimizing both power costs and overhead.
When VBit started mining, Bitcoin prices were about $15,000. When prices cratered during the Bitcoin bear market, a lot of companies were forced out of businesses. VBit Technologies was able to survive one of the worst bear markets in Bitcoin's short history, and there is no reason why we should not survive the next.
Even with the Coronavirus fueled Bitcoin selloff, VBit Technologies will survive and probably thrive. As some miners go out of business, our equipment will keep running and even benefit as mining difficulty goes down.
VBit is well-positioned because we have no liabilities and have great liquidity. As some companies go out of business, VBit Technologies can go another level. We have gone through a bear market even when there was more panic within the Bitcoin community.
At the moment, VBit Technologies has ordered over a million dollars worth of the latest Antminer mining equipment to ramp up operations further. This equipment is fully-paid for and coupled with cheap electricity rates, gives us a more competitive advantage.
VBit offers seven mining packages ranging from the $25 Explorer package to the most exclusive $50,000 Black diamond package. It is a great way to mine Bitcoins because VBit Technologies has been able to retain profitability throughout the bear market.
Accordingly, joining the VBit mining family is a great way to make a passive Bitcoin income stream. To remain profitable during bear markets, we sourced out low power costs throughout North America . During periods of high Bitcoin prices, we can increase our hash power and pass profits to our customers.
Join VBit Technologies today and be part of the future of Bitcoin mining! Sign up now!

[Bitcoin]

World of Warcraft: Legion - How to get ranks in Mining in Legion|7:07

[Bitcoin]

How to GPU mine NVIDIA on linux - ubuntu 16.04 - step by step|9:45

[Bitcoin]

What Bitcoin mining.
What is Bitcoin mining? The Full Guide.
Bitcoin mining is an interactive way to secure the Bitcoin network and also (hopefully) earn a small profit. The reason why only a small profit may be available is that, like any other large industry, Bitcoin mining is dominated by professional players. It can be difficult to make much money on a small scale.
That being said, Bitcoin mining is still a fantastic way to learn about Bitcoin, give back to the cryptocurrency community and earn some BTC on the side. In this article, we’ll cover everything you need to know about mining including why it’s important, when it started and who the major players are.
Before You Mine or Use Bitcoin.
Before mining or using Bitcoin (BTC), make sure to set up a wallet where you can send your Bitcoin to! You don't want to send your BTC to an online exchange since they're notorious for getting hacked or otherwise losing user funds.
The Exodus Bitcoin wallet is a community favorite thanks to:
Supporting over 100 crypto assets Focusing on premium design and ease of use Being the only wallet to support desktop, mobile, and hardware wallet (Trezor) integration Allowing you to exchange your Bitcoin for other cryptos right from your wallet - without creating an account! Giving you the ability to sync your wallet between desktop and mobile Having 24/7, fast human support if you ever need help From left to right: Exodus on Trezor, mobile, and desktop. Download Exodus BTC wallet.
What is Bitcoin mining: Bitcoin mining Meaning.
In a sentence: Bitcoin mining is the process by which specialized computers secure the Bitcoin network in return for a payment in BTC. В.
Here’s the longer explanation:
When we talk about Bitcoin mining what we’re referring to is the extensive network of specialized computers that are used to secure the Bitcoin network. Here are a few key fundamentals of this network.
There are about 1 million ASICs (specialized computers) that mine Bitcoin. These are spread all over the world. The ASICs do complex math to help secure Bitcoin, and in return, are given a block reward. A block reward is equal to 6.25 BTC as of May 2020. To “attack” or “hack” the Bitcoin network, a perpetrator would need to control a majority of the hardware being used to secure Bitcoin. As this hardware costs billions of dollars, it would be complicated to acquire it all and then hack Bitcoin. An ASIC miner with its power supply.
What is the Point of Bitcoin mining?
The point of Bitcoin mining is security. Every network needs security and Bitcoin is no different. One of Bitcoin’s key components is its scarceness. There are only so many Bitcoin (21 million) and no matter how high the price goes, more cannot be created.
This fundamental scarcity is similar to what makes gold so useful as a currency. No matter how high the price goes, it’s difficult to mine more gold. This supply inelasticity is part of what makes gold valuable.
Back to Bitcoin mining, the process of securing the Bitcoin network is known as Proof of Work (POW). POW is one of Satoshi’s most game-changing inventions and it is what allows Bitcoin to be provably scarce. Bitcoin mining is what ensures that more Bitcoin cannot be created or “copied.”.
This leads to an interesting point, Bitcoin was the first digital asset in the world that couldn’t be copied. When you think back, DVDs, Xbox games, top-secret government files, every digital “thing” prior to Bitcoin could be copied, but not BTC. That’s thanks to Bitcoin’s network of miners.
When did Bitcoin mining Start?
For as long as there has been Bitcoin, there has been Bitcoin mining. It started with Satoshi Nakamoto (the mysterious person or group who created Bitcoin) and a select few others mining Bitcoin on their laptops. All of that mining was productive and Satoshi accumulated some 1 million coins before he/she/they disappeared.

[Bitcoin]

Mining With HiveOS - Step-by-Step Tutorial \u0026 Review|35:01

[Bitcoin]

The Satoshi coins have not moved in about a decade and it is generally believed that the only way any person could ever prove themselves to be Satoshi is by moving some of these early coins.
We mention all of this just to illustrate the point that mining started with Satoshi and it has been going on since the first block of Bitcoin. Without miners, Bitcoin cannot exist.
How Much Bitcoin mining Per Day?
Bitcoin mining is a big business. It’s not always profitable and bear markets are especially tough on miners. However, when mining is profitable it can be quite profitable. Let’s do some basic math assuming that Bitcoin is selling for $10,000.
There is a new block on the Bitcoin network every 10 minutes. That’s six blocks in an hour, twenty-four hours in a day so approximately 144 blocks per day (there can be small variations in how often blocks are produced). Since the May 2020 Bitcoin halvening the block reward has been 6.25 BTC.
6.25 BTC per block X $10,000 BTC price X 144 blocks per day = $9,000,000 per day that’s paid out to miners. Or, $3.3 billion per year. That’s the Bitcoin security budget, not too shabby.
Now imagine that Bitcoin goes up to $100,000. In that case Bitcoin mining becomes a $33 billion annual industry!
Who is Mining Bitcoin?
A majority of Bitcoin mining today is done by large operations (mining farms). These mining farms tend to have thousands or tens of thousands of ASIC computers running simultaneously.
Although Bitcoin mining can be lucrative, there’s a lot of competition so you need to have quite a few miners in order to make a good profit (also, by buying miners in bulk, the larger mining operations can get healthy discounts).
Many of the largest Bitcoin mining operations are based in China (thanks to cheap hydropower electricity), although this is slowly changing.
In the coming years, Bitcoin mining is expected to decentralize throughout the world, especially to areas with cool temperatures and cheap electricity.
An ASIC (Application-Specific Integrated Circuit) is the cornerstone of Bitcoin mining. It’s a rectangular computer about the size of a narrow shoebox that’s loud and hot and designed exclusively to perform the complex math that’s used to secure the Bitcoin network.
What is a good hashrate for Bitcoin mining?
There is no good hashrate for Bitcoin mining, the way there is a good temperature for hanging out at the beach. The Bitcoin network's total hashrate changes over time and in the long term is always going up.
So trying to determine how good an ASIC is based on its hashrate is only useful when you take into account the total network's hashrate (e.g. if the total hashrate rises, your share of the total hashrate decreases, making it harder for you to mine new blocks).
Image credit: Blockchain.com.
In terms of mining profitability, the best time to mine is after a difficulty adjustment downwards (as can be seen on this graph around March). When this happens, you can mine more efficiently until the hashrate rises again. You can keep track of the Bitcoin hashrate here.
Bitcoin Miner Software.
If you’re just getting started with mining you might want to consider using a program to manage your mining operation. Hive OS, for example, is a good option. Hive OS has a centralized dashboard so that you can keep track of all your miners in one place.
You can choose which coins you want to mine (Bitcoin miners can mine BTC, BCH, BSV, LTC, and others), track electricity usage and update the ASIC firmware.
Hive OS isn’t quite as customizable as some of the other programs on the market but what it lacks in customization it makes up for with usability. There are many other programs on the market as well.
A Bitcoin mining pool is a collection of Bitcoin miners working together. All of the miners pool their ASIC computing power and then split the proceeds.
What ends up happening is that no matter which particular ASIC in a mining pool “wins” the block reward, the reward is split evenly among everyone in the mining pool (minus a service fee, typically 1 to 2%).

[Bitcoin]

Learn how to mine Cryptocurrency, including Monero, using Linux.|21:20

[Bitcoin]

Let's Try Nicehash OS!|28:28

[Bitcoin]

There are a few advantages to contributing to a mining pool rather than mining on your own:
A small Bitcoin mining operation can earn a steady profit in proportion to the hashrate that they contribute to the mining pool. If a small mining operation were to mine on their own they might go a month, six months, even a year without once winning a block reward and getting the Bitcoin. For larger Bitcoin mining operations a mining pool can cut down on the volatility of Bitcoin mining. Bitcoin mining is already an incredibly cyclical industry (thanks to the volatility of Bitcoin’s price) and anything that can be done to reduce that volatility is a good thing.
You can check out the largest mining pools here.
Bitcoin mining pools. Image credit: BTC.com.
A Bitcoin mining farm is a large collection of ASICs being used to mine Bitcoin. Essentially, a mining farm looks a lot like a data center, except that instead of servers there are Bitcoin mining rigs.
The largest Bitcoin mining farms are truly spectacular to behold in their sheer size. The number of Bitcoin mining farms spread across the planet are why some people say that Bitcoin has the largest network in the world.
As mentioned, Bitcoin mining farms tend to be built in areas with cheap electricity and/or cool temperatures.
What is Cloud Mining Bitcoin?
Cloud mining happens when a company sets up a Bitcoin mining farm and then rents out the hashpower. Cloud mining allows an organization or person to mine Bitcoin on demand without having to set up their own farm.
As cloud mining is typically not the most cost effective way to acquire Bitcoin. As such, it’s fairly uncommon for people to engage in it, although there are some advantages.
There may be tax advantages in certain jurisdictions, to acquiring Bitcoin from mining instead of purchasing it. Newly mined Bitcoin is “clean.” When you get new Bitcoin you can be sure that it’s never been involved in a hack, used on the black market, etc. This is especially important for institutional investors who will pay a premium to get Bitcoin straight from a miner.
Bitcoin mining App.
Hive OS has a mobile app for Android (iOS App coming soon) that offers the same functionality as their dashboard. You can turn your ASIC miners on and off, update the firmware, switch mining pools, etc.
Bitcoin mining Free.
There is no way to mine Bitcoin “for free.” That would be akin to saying you can mine gold for free. Even under the best circumstances, you still have to buy a shovel and some prospecting gear.
Perhaps when people say that you can mine Bitcoin for free what they mean is that you can use your computer to mine BTC. Well… The problem is that mining Bitcoin will push your computer to its limits and keep it there.
Computers used for mining wear out and break. Also, even if your computer lasts five years you’re unlikely to ever earn enough mining to even pay for the cost of a new one, let alone become financially independent.
If someone says that you can mine Bitcoin for free it’s most likely a scam.
Why does Bitcoin mining Use so Much Energy?
Bitcoin uses a lot of energy because ASICs are always running near their threshold. For example, your laptop probably is only using 25 to 50% of its computing power at any given time, less when it’s idle. On the other hand, ASICs are designed to run near their peak limits 24/7, which requires tremendous energy.
ASICs also generate heat so they must be cooled. If mining in a hot climate, that means air conditioning. Even in a snowy climate, hundreds of fans may be needed to circulate in the cold air from outside to cool down a mining farm. В.
There have been articles claiming that Bitcoin mining uses as much energy as the entire country of Denmark. It’s hard to determine if these claims are accurate, but even if they are, they don’t tell the full story.
Bitcoin mining is predominately powered by renewable energy, which isn’t as bad for the environment as fossil fuels. This is especially the case in China, where Bitcoin mining uses hydropower energy that would otherwise go underutilized.
One of the most exciting developments in Bitcoin mining is the introduction of portable mining. In the fracking industry, one of the largest problems is that wells produce an excess of natural gas.
Since it’s too expensive to build pipelines to transport this gas, it’s common for drilling companies to “flare” the gas, which is just a fancy word for burning it off into the atmosphere. There is a legal limit to how much gas can be flared and once this limit is reached the well must shut down. A portable Bitcoin mining rig can solve this problem.
A portable Bitcoin mining rig contains a bunch of ASICs and a generator, built into an old shipping container. The generator uses the excess natural gas to generate electricity which in turn powers the ASICs.
Using this technology petroleum companies can avoid flaring and they can also earn a profit on a product that they were otherwise releasing into the atmosphere.
As of yet portable Bitcoin mining has yet to catch on in a big way but hopefully it will in the coming years. For those who would like to learn more about it, there is an excellent TFTC podcast covering this topic.
Yes and no. Bitcoin mining is a cutthroat business and it’s unlikely that any small-time miner without millions of dollars’ worth of equipment will ever get rich off it. If money is the only factor then it’s probably better to just buy Bitcoin and HODL it into the next bull market.
However, Bitcoin mining can be worth it as a hobby. It can be rewarding to contribute to network security, to hold coins that you’ve mined yourself and to learn more about the nuts and bolts of Bitcoin.
It also helps if you live somewhere with cheap electricity (college dorms where electricity is a fixed cost have become popular for crypto mining).
If you’d like to learn more about whether mining Bitcoin is worth it, we’ve written another article that dives deeper into this subject: is Bitcoin mining worth it?
When does Bitcoin mining End?
This is where Bitcoin gets really interesting: it has a predictable supply curve all the way through the next century. Bitcoin’s monetary policy is the total opposite of our current banking system controlled by the Federal Reserve and other countries’ central banks, where traders and investors make and lose millions betting on what central banks will do with the money supply. В.
What Bitcoin does is cut its inflation rate in half every four years. We’ve most recently experienced this in May 2020 with the Bitcoin block reward going from 12.5 BTC per block to 6.25 Bitcoin per block. This halving will continue until the block reward stops altogether around 2140.
At this point, the hope is that the transaction fees on the Bitcoin network would be high enough that miners would continue to mine and Bitcoin remains secure. How expensive would fees have to be for this model to be viable?
Frankly, nobody knows. $50 per transaction? $500? It’s anybody’s guess and unless some great new medical advancements are made it’s unlikely many of us will be around for that day.
For now, Bitcoin mining is alive and well and we owe a debt of gratitude to Bitcoin miners for keeping the network secure and allowing us to experience a new form of money.
Posts Tagged ' Intel Xeon E5-2650 '

[Bitcoin]

Mining Cryptocurrency With ONLY ~1 WATT?! Custom Raspberry Pi Micro Miner Review|14:10

[Bitcoin]

Trying Crypto Mining with a Dual CPU E5 Second Hand Servers.
The enterprise segment is constantly upgrading their hardware and this fuels the second hand market with interesting and very affordable yet pretty powerful hardware that can also be used for crypto mining. The latest wave of hardware getting replaced and available at a really affordable prices are the first generation of Intel 2011 E5 dual CPU Xeon workstations and servers. This means that you are able to easily acquire a very nicely priced second had server system with two 8-core processors such as Intel Xeon E5-2650 v1 getting 16 physical or 32 logical cores with Hyper Threading. The big question here however is if systems like that that may be acquired cheap are really worth using for crypto mining as they only come with a lot of CPU power, but no GPU capable of being used for mining as for server needs not much GPU power is required generally. We have picked up one such cheap systems off eBay with dual Xeon E5-2650 processors and put it through some benchmarks to gent a better idea on what to expect...
Currently it seems that the only worthwhile CPU-based algorithm to check is the CryptoNight and using the what seems to be the fastest CPU software available at the moment - the XMR-Stak CPU Miner for Monero (XMR). Running the XMR-Stak miner on all 32 logical cores has managed to get us an average hashrate of about 523 HS (hashes per second). The result may not seem that bad for CPU mining, considering that it is a bit slower than a single high-end GPU and the power used by the system is about 150 Watts, so again similar to a more recent higher-end GPU.
We need to run the numbers through an XMR mining calculator and doing just that on Cryptocompare shows that we are actually going to be mining with profit, but the profit isn't going to be that much. With the current rate it would take a couple of years just to earn back what we have paid for the hardware itself. Not very interesting to CPU mine with such a system, but this is just at the moment, with some new and interesting developments for coins that are only CPU mineable appearing things might look very different... especially if you get a couple of these dual CPU systems to have handy. For the moment however you might want to check them out if you have some other computational needs than crypto mining as the price they can be acquired for is really attractive and again they are still pretty powerful as far as CPU performance goes.
Published in: Tests and Reviews Related tags: CPU crypto mining, cryptonight, CryptoNight CPU mining, Dual CPU crypto mining, Intel Xeon E5-2650, monero, Monero CPU mining, xmr, XMR CPU mining, XMR-Stak CPU Miner.
Read More (6) Comments.

[Bitcoin]

Monero Mining Benchmarks - CPU Mining With Select Dual Intel Xeon E5 Systems.
We recently started using Monero mining in our data center lab for a burn-in application. We are certainly far from a large operation accounting for only around 0.06% of the worldwide Monero hash rate. At the same time, our penchent for collecting data made us test a variety of configurations. We benchmarked several server CPU configurations and have data on the biggest drivers of performance. We also have resources to get started with Monero mining on your own systems.
The Quick Monero Background.
At the turn of 2017, and for the past several years, Bitcoin has been the largest cryptocurrency by far. Monero is a cryptocurrency that put an emphasis on privacy and is considered significantly more anonymous than Bitcoin. As a result, Monero has moved from a $0.50 / 1 XMR currency a year ago to $13/ 1 XMR as of today. That movement, and the privacy focus, has made Monero a top 5 cryptocurrency and pushed it into the mainstream with even a recent WIRED article on the currency.
The advantage of this has been that Monero is now very easy to exchange and has tools that are more mature than several other cryptocurrencies. For STH readers there is a larger implication. Unlike Bitcoin mining which is dominated by ASICs, Monero is currently best mined on GPUs. CPU mining can be profitable as well. That means STH readers have the infrastructure able to mine Monero.
Monero Benchmarks - Why STH?
At STH we have a unique position as we have an independent test lab facility with the largest array of different processors running at a given time. We even allow folks to try out different configurations with our DemoEval service. During downtime that affords us the ability to run, in a controlled manner, benchmarking and power consumption measurements. While there are various sources of user-submitted benchmarks, they do not provide exactly the same test setups to make apples-to-apples comparisons of Monero mining performance.
STH readers often have Intel Xeon E5-2600 series processors with spare CPU cycles and potentially power budgets in data centers, so this is an application with a small footprint that can help offset some data center costs. For those running E3 and Xeon D CPUs, this is far from an ideal application. For example, a Xeon D-1587 with 16 cores / 32 threads performs about the same as a single Xeon E5-2630L V3 with 8 cores/ 16 threads. This is due to the L3 cache size reduction on Broadwell-DE and the importance of cache with Monero mining.
We do not advocate buying dual processor Intel Xeon E5 systems for the purpose of Monero mining. At the same time, it can be a good way to burn extra CPU cycles on servers that are already deployed.
At the end of this article, we have some resources to get you started with mining Monero.
Intel Xeon E5-2600 Monero Mining Performance.
We have a lengthy thread in the STH forums on Monero mining performance. That has a much larger set of benchmarks and instructions to get up and running on your servers within minutes. We wanted to provide a few charts with analysis. We are going to start with the raw hash rates of 18 test cases we are going to present today. In the linked thread we have several other configurations tested but we did want to focus on a few samples.
Intel Xeon Monero CPU Mining Performance Comparison Raw Hashrate.
As you can see, the quad Intel Xeon E7-8870 V3 performed extremely well. Unfortunately, we did not get to test the Dell PowerEdge R930 with 4x E7-8890 V4's we had in the lab using our newest image. As a point of comparison, that system scored 2200H/s on our old image while the quad E7-8870 V3 above scored 1585H/s with that image. Still one can see the main trends here. The 10-14 core dual Xeon E5 systems performed relatively similar to one another.
The next question is how well these systems performed with regards to the number of cores, threads, and L3 cache. Here is a summary of what that looks like. As you can see, the single Intel Xeon E5-2630L V3 system was an outlier. Coincidentally, it is also the lowest power system of the 18 we tested.
Intel Xeon Monero CPU Mining Performance Comparison Summary.
We are going to keep all of these charts in the same order (by descending total hash rate from left to right) since we are presenting a lot of data. In the first deep-dive slide we are going to look at the L3 cache impact on mining performance.
Intel Xeon Monero CPU Mining Performance Comparison L3 Cache.
As you can see, this seems to be the best indicator in terms of performance and why the Monero CPU mining community often uses L3 cache / 2 as the number of threads. We actually tested all 18 configurations with different recommended thread counts and L3 cache MB / 2 was the optimal solution for each system. The standard deviation on the figures here was the lowest of our three deep dive slices at 1.66 with an average/ median of 16.3/ 16.1 respectively.
Intel Xeon Monero CPU Mining Performance Comparison Base Clocks.
As you can see, several of the lower-power chips performed well in this comparison because the low power Intel Xeon chips tend to have low base clocks. The Xeon D family is hindered by the lower L3 cache per core.
We also wanted to provide a look at the H/s figures based on Turbo clocks. We are using the max single core turbo speeds here not the all core turbo speeds, however, there is usually a correlation in terms of the number of clock speed increments.
Intel Xeon Monero CPU Mining Performance Comparison Turbo Clocks.
As you can see, the low power chips again proved fairly excellent. We did see the impact of clock speeds on mining, however, the biggest differentiator was the L3 cache size.
In terms of power consumption, here are a few data points. The 4x E7-8870 V3 machine pulled 988W on our 208V circuit. The dual E5-2628L V4 system in a 4N / 2U chassis were around 180W each and the E5-2630L V4 machine was 205W in a 1U chassis. The Xeon D-1587 node was 118w while the single E6-2630L V3 was a paltry 98w in their 1U chassis. Unfortunately, we were looking for raw performance figures rather than absolute power consumption numbers.
Resources and How To Get Started.
If you want to get started easily, we have very simple resources that we have been working on, including Docker CPU and GPU mining images.
Here are a few relevant threads in the STH forums:
We are using Docker as we found a negligible performance impact (0.1% or so) with the ability to utilize orchestration to push the images over a Docker Swarm.
As an example, if you want to start with a Docker node immediately, you can simply:
Sign up at Minergate for an account (remember the e-mail you use, we are going to assume [email protected]) Run the following command (use your Minergate email and you can change -it to -d if you do not want to see output):
docker run -it -e username=[email protected] servethehome/monero_cpu_minergate.
That will download and compile the popular CPU miner, determine the best thread count and start mining directly to the Minergate pool. We are using Minergate as it had better performance than several other pools we tried. In the forums we have several images already using different mining pools. We also already have images for using nvidia-docker and mining on NVIDIA GPUs.
We are going to have several more guides on getting Monero mining online easily on your server clusters. In the past few weeks, this setup has already mined around 100 XMR (or $1300+) worth of Monero just using spare CPU cycles and power in our data center lab.
If you wanted a great reason to join the STH Forums community, the threads linked above are a great place to start and this is a fun hobby that can earn some significant money to offset data center costs if you already have the hardware. We would not recommend buying hardware solely for Monero mining, however it is a fun way to learn key concepts for Docker and utilize excess capacity.