I just picked up a new RTX 3080 Founders Edition that I am using to mine Ravencoin using the KAWPOW algorithm. Here are my results in case you are wondering what the RTX 3080 Kawpow hashrate is.

I do want to mention I made some adjustments to my RTX 3080 FE card to add some more cooling. See this link for the heatsink I added.

Hardware

Hardware specs on my system are as follows in case you were wondering

• Motherboard – Gigabyte AX370 Gaming
• CPU – Ryzen 7 1700
• RAM – 32 GB
• GPU – RTX 3080 Founders Edition
• Power Supply – EVGA 1000 GQ (A little overkill I know.)

Software

While I usually use the Kawpow miner on my desktop. When I tried it with the RTX 3080FE it would not recognize it. So I went ahead and did this testing using the TREX v0.19.12 miner.  I used the Cuda 11 version.

Hash – vs – Noise – vs – Heat

One thing to mention. My main goal is to keep the card somewhat quiet as its in my office PC and I do not want to listen to the noise. So far I have added some extra heat sinks and an additional pci slot fan cooler blowing at the card.   Both of these changes has helped bring down the temp and fan speed. Although not as much as I had hoped. Wanting to bring down the GPU Memory Junction temps which run high on these cards, I also ordered some new Thermal pads.  ( Currently waiting for them to show up). I will update the post once I get the thermal pads.

Here is a picture of my current setup.

Results

Here are the results I am seeing. They do slightly vary as when I use the my desktop the hash rate does seem to drop 1-3 MH/s as it is my only video card on the system.  The results are from running it while not using the PC. Also I had the memory and CPU at a slight overclock. The fan speed is what the fan was running at while mining. I think 55% is as much as i can handle in my office. My goal is to get it under 50%.

Summary

So far I am pretty happy so far with the RTX 3080 Kawpow hashrate and fan speed at 55%. I hope the thermal pad mod will bring down the temps and fan speed even more. As I mentioned before I will do a post on the thermal pads with some pictures and temps once they show up. As for Eth, I have tried it, but the fan really cranks up and gets to noisy for me. So I plan to do my testing on that after the pad mod. But even then, I will probably still mine Ravencoin as I really enjoy the project. You can check out more information on Ravencoin at the foundation link here.

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RTX 2060 KO ULTRA GAMING vs RTX 2060 KO GAMING

The EVGA RTX2060 KO comes in a couple different models.

The RTX 2060 KO GAMING ( 06G-P4-2066-KR) and the RTX 2060 KO ULTRA GAMING (06G-P4-2068-KR). I am reviewing the second model the “ULTRA GAMING” .  The difference between them seems to be that for the extra 20 dollars you get a 1755Mhz Boost clock on the Ultra Gaming as opposed to the 1680 MHz Boost clock on the slightly cheaper Gaming Model. Both cards suggest a 500 watt power supply and state they draw 160 Watts. Both cards have a metal backplate. One nice feature was at the time the card came with a free copy of the game Death Stranding which I gave to my son. The price I paid for the card was 329.99

RTX2060KO Hashrate

I benchmarked the RTX 2060 KO Ultra Gaming using 80% power, +50 Core clock and +300 on memory. This was using the MSI afterburner software. This is the same settings I used on the GTX 1060 which I added for a side by side comparison.

 Power

While the RTX2060KO is listed as needing a slightly larger power supply (500Watt) vs the  GTX1060 I tested with which listed the needed power supply as 400W. Both needed the 8 pin supplementary power connector. I will hook up my wattmeter and update this with the power used by each card under load. I did try running the RTX2060KO with full power on my dell which has a 480Watt power supply and it did crash is. So they are correct when stating at least 500Watt or higher if you get the RTX2060KO.

SUMMARY

As you can see in the table above. The RTX2060 KO Ultra Gaming is a dramatic improvement over the older GTX1060. So far there is a lot I love about this card. Its a win for me with the price (329.00). It also came with a decent free game which at the time of purchase was 59.99 on steam. The card feels solid and I have had no issues with it so far.  Plus I do like EVGAs warranty and customer service which I have used in the past.

The downsides. What I would change on this card is the heatsink and fans. They just seem a little small for the card as I do hear some Fan noise when ramped up during mining. Its not horrible or anything, just not as quiet as the GTX1060 (By a noticeable amount). For most miners i do not think this would be an issue. For most gamers I doubt it would bother them if it ramped up a little during a game. But if you want a super silent card for a HTPC i would look at a different solution. Also if your case does not have adequate venting you may want a different card as the fans will probably stay ramped up more to keep it cool.

As a side note, After doing the testing I noticed the RTX2060KO Hashrate is more in line with my GTX 1070ti I am using when running the KawPow Algorithm. I will do a full benchmark on my GTX1070TI and add it to the table soon as well in this post, or just do a RTX2060KO vs GTX1070ti post. I think that might be a better comparison of what you are getting for this price range.

If you want some specific information on mining Kawpow with a GTX1060 you can see this post here. And here is the link to the EVGA website for full specs for the RTX2060KO Ultra Gaming I reviewed in this post.

The post EVGA RTX2060KO Hashrate appeared first on MyRandomTechBlog.com.

This happened to be with using Kawpowminer 1.2.3 and the latest Nvidia Game ready driver.

I had no problems with my 10 series Nvidia cards and the 1660 series when mining, just this RTX 2060.

Insufficient CUDA driver 10010

CUDA Error : Insufficient CUDA driver 10010

Error: No usable mining devices found

Solution

The solution for me was pretty simple.  I wanted to share as I did search a bit to find the answer. Instead of running the game ready driver, I went ahead and downloaded the “NVIDIA Studio Driver” form the Nvidia website HERE. After installing the latest version of the Nvidia Studio driver I no longer had the issue. I hope this helps.

The Studio driver  I installed to fix this was :

NVIDIA STUDIO DRIVER
Driver Version:451.77
Release Date:Thu Jul 16, 2020
Operating System:Windows 10 64-bit
Language:English (US)
File Size:562.03 MB

If you were seeing the same Cuda error I hope that helps.

If you found your way to this site you may also be a Ravencoin fan.  Here is a fun Ravencoin project  post I did for making a Raspberry Pi Ravencoin clock / price ticker HERE.

The post Cuda Error Insufficient CUDA driver 10010 appeared first on MyRandomTechBlog.com.

I just did some tests mining Ravencoin with a GTX 1060 mining the new Kawpow algorithm. I wanted to share my GTX1060 hashrate mining Kawpow in case anyone else wanted to give it a try, along with the amount of Ravencoin mined in that time.

Ravencoin recently switched to a new algorithm called KawPow which is a GPU friendly. Since I do have a PC that runs 24/7 as it is used as a HD DVR (BlueIris software) along with being a Bitcoin and Ravencoin full node. I thought I might as well try mining Ravencoin with the GTX1060 mining KawPow.

Hardware

For reference this PC is a little old, but suits the purpose of running my HD DVR and full nodes just fine. Here are the specs in case you were wondering.

• CPU – Intel i5 4570
• Ram – 8Gb
• HD – 500G ssd, and 2 Tb mechanical to record the videos.
• Video card MSI GTX 1060 6GB Armor

For mining you don’t need much CPU power, just a decent video card. The GTX 1060 was pretty much not being used in the system as Blue Iris mainly uses the CPU for recording the incoming video streams.

SOFTWARE

For the mining software I chose to use the KAWPOW miner as it is open source and for Nvidia cards. ( But as a precaution do not have a wallet with lots of funds on the PC just in case I run anything malicious). I got the Kawpow miner form the GitHub location here . KawPow has a version for both Linux and Windows. I was using the version for Windows.

• Kawpowminer version 1.2.3

For the mining pool I decided to use Minermore.com as I like there layout and have used them before.

RESULTS

Here are the results from 2 separate 24 hour test runs showing how much Ravencoin I can mine with a GTX1060. For the first run I was just using standard settings, then for the second run I did lower my power settings to 89% and adjusted the core clock +38 using the MSI afterburner software. But I think the pool was just luckier for the second run as well.

(Single GTX1060 mining KawPow)

Time	        RVN Mined	BTC Value *	  USD Value *
24 Hours	19.43277627	0.00004489 BTC	  $0.42 
24 Hours	22.27659249	0.00004923 BTC	  $0.46

Here are the GTX1060 hashrates mining KawPow from both 24 hour tests.

5 Min	        1 Hour	        6 hour	        12 Hour	        24 Hour
9.9 Mh/s	8.58 Mh/s	9.58 Mh/s	9.53 Mh/s	9.22 Mh/s
9.92 Mh/s	8.82 Mh/s	9.8 Mh/s	9.56 Mh/s	9.33 Mh/s

SUMMARY

With the new KawPow algorithm change, it seems that Ravencoin is much more profitable to mine again. Since I leave this PC running 24/7.  I think I might just use it to mine all the time as well. Even though the hashrate from an older single NVIDIA GTX1060 card is not that much. I may just try it as solo mining and see if I can win a block reward even if the chance is low. Or just leave it mining in a shared pool and help offset some power costs. ~12 dollars a month for a single GTX1060 doesn’t seem to bad.

I will go ahead and get some power readings soon and post that as well. Just to see what the difference is between leaving the PC on without mining Ravencoin, compared to actually mining Ravencoin.

If your interested in more Ravencoin  posts, here is one I did on making a Ravencoin price clock on a Raspberry Pi POST.

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The short TLDR; version is I used Raspbian and the open source platform Magic Mirror 2 to accomplish this with a third party module.

Disclaimer:  I am not responsible for any damage or issues that may arise if you try this. Follow your own procedures for checking software for viruses, safety etc.. This post is for entertainment purposes only.

While i added links in here for reference, and show the commands i used, you will want to doublecheck installation instructions as they may change as software is upgraded. 

Lets get started with the Raspberry Pi Ravencoin clock project.

Parts Needed

• Raspberry Pi – (I used a model 3, but models 2 & 4 are also supported for this)
• Micro SD card for the Raspberry Pi OS. (I think an 8Gb – 32 Gb is fine. I used a spare 64Gb I had.)
• Raspberry pi power supply.
• Raspberry Pi screen for your model. (I chose a 5 inch model w/ frame from Amazon.)
• I did need a small Philips head screwdriver to put together the frame.

Getting Started

Install Raspbian

First you need to get you Raspberry Pi up and running. Here are the steps I used.

Download and install Raspbian from raspberrypi.org LINK

I chose the full version “Raspbian Buster with desktop and recommended software”

Follow their installation instructions. The only issue I had was that since I was using a 64GB microSD card, I needed to use a special program to format it to FAT32. If you use a smaller card this should not be a problem. They do mention this in the installation instructions.

Once you have the image written onto your MicroSD card, go ahead and plug it into your Raspberry and hook up a monitor and mouse and boot it up.

FYI – When booting the first time I did see stuff on the screen then it went blank for about 5 – 10 minutes while it finished up the process.

Once you get a desktop screen the wizard will pop up. I assigned a new password and followed the setup instructions.

You are done with the Raspbian install.

Install Magic Mirror 2

Here is a link to the Magic Mirror 2 site : https://magicmirror.builders/ 

To install Magic Mirror 2, I used the instructions found on their site, but instead of the manual install I used the automated install they mentioned from this github link – https://github.com/sdetweil/MagicMirror_scripts 

Basically you can follow their detailed steps, but here is an outline of what I did.

Open a terminal program and entered the following command.

bash -c "$(curl -sL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/sdetweil/MagicMirror_scripts/master/raspberry.sh)"

A couple questions popped up asking for PM2 for autostarting I chose Yes, and Disable Screensaver I chose Yes.

Once it was installed and started you need to know a few commands.

To stop Magic Mirror click ALT key. This will open a menu at the top where you can quit.

You can also minimize Magic Mirror with the CTRL + M keys.

To stop Magic Mirror pm2 process or restart it you can run the following commands in the terminal window.

pm2 stop MagicMirror

pm2 start MagicMirror

Installing the Module

To be able to display the Ravencoin price I needed to install a third party module. They have a list of them on the MagicMirror main site I posted above. I used the MMM-CoinMarketCap 3rd party module.  The nice thing abou tit was no API is needed to display currencies. A big thanks to glitch452 for making this awesome module. Here is a link to the 3rd party modules LINK.

Basically to install the module go to the GitHub HERE and follow the instructions. It was two commands for me. But I suggest checking the git to make sure nothing has changed with any updates.

cd ~/MagicMirror/modules

git clone https://github.com/glitch452/MMM-CoinMarketCap.git

He has very detailed instructions on how to configure the module. Basically you are going into you RPi and modifying a config.js file with a text editor. The config.js file you need to modify is located in /home/pi/MagicMirror/config

Here is what I added to the config.js file to get the Ravencoin price to display like the image below this. ( I also removed some of the sample models and moved the clock to the bottom in the config.js file)

		{
			module: 'MMM-CoinMarketCap',
			position: "top_left",
			config: {
			currencies: [{ name: 'Ravencoin', logoSize: 'x-large', logoColored: false, fontSize: 'x-large', percentChangeColored: true, significantDigits: 0, decimalPlaces: 5 }],
			showColumnHeaders: false,
			columns: [ 'logo', 'price' ],
			significantDigits: 3,
			decimalPlaces: 3,
			conversion: 'USD',
			graphSize: 'small',
			updateInterval: 5,
			graphRange: 7,
			}
		},

Installing the Frame.

This will vary depending on which screen and frame you get. But for me here are the parts that showed up. It was just a little time consuming to remove the brown plastic film. But it went together pretty easy.

Once i had the pieces together I could just attach my Pi to the screen header.

Luckily it went without a hitch and worked perfect. I have not bothered to turn on the touch controls yet, but may do that in the future. Here are a couple photos of the finished product.

Here it in from the front, I like the simplicity of black and white.

Another shot where I added Bitcoin and Raven together with a graph and price change along with color.

Summary

Well that’s pretty much it for the Raspberry Pi Ravencoin Clock Project. I want to thank the MagicMirror community as they made this possible with their opensource software and modules. Also to glitch452 to making such a cool and versatile module for cryptocurrency. Basically I did nothing special here, besides load up some software they developed. They made it super easy to follow along and was a fun easy project to complete.

Side note: Afterword’s I did notice my screensaver was still coming on.

To resolve this I installed xscreensaver and disabled it. Here are the command I used:

sudo apt-get install xscreensaver

sudo reboot

Once rebooted I opened the desktop start menu

Go to Preferences > Screensaver 

In the mode dropdown menu, choose Disable screensaver

If your interested in adding a view only address to your Ravencoin QT wallet you can see this post here.

The post Build a Raspberry Pi Ravencoin clock appeared first on MyRandomTechBlog.com.

I just tried out mining x16Rv2 on Ravencoin testnet in advance of the fork that is scheduled  for Oct 1st to see my x16rv2 hashrate. My Rig is a mix of Nvidia GTX cards but thought I would share my hashrates in case anyone finds it handy. I did not run it very long, was mainly just making sure I was ready.

If you have not heard of x16Rv2, this is a new algorithm that Ravencoin will be switching to on Oct 1st. This was a response to seeing ASICs had become available for the x16r algorithm. The change is they added a new algorithm called Tiger in front of 3 existing algo’s.

There are a few miners that are being built to support his change and one of them is T-Rex Beta version 14.2 which you can find the links for on thier discord.

Here is a screen shot after a few minutes.

You can see I appear to be getting a little less then the normal 24 hour average we are used to seeing on x16R, but again I only ran it a short amount of time to see the x16rv2 hashrate.

x16rv2 hashrate compared to x16r

This is my normal 24 hour rates I see with x16R along with my quick sample of x16Rv2

The mining program I was using for testing was T-Rex Version 14.2 that supports x16Rv2 for Nvidia cards, but I see they just released T-Rex miner version 14.4. I will get that loaded and give it a try soon.  For testing I was using the Minermore.com raven testnet pool. You can see it hitting the tiger algo in the picture below.

Just for reference here is the string in my .bat file I used to run the miner on the testnet if you want to give it a try.

t-rex -r 0 -a x16rv2 -o stratum+tcp://rvnt.minermore.com:4505 -u yourtestnetaddress.worker -d 0,1,2,3,4,5 -p x

One other thing to keep in mind is there is you will need to update your wallet to be on the new chain. For the Ravencoin QT wallet you want to be on version 2.5.X or above.

If you want to see how to add a view only address to your QT wallet you can see this post here. I like to have a view only on my mining rig as I like to run the QT as a full node, but do not want access to my coins. but want to see the balance.

The post Ravencoin x16rv2 hashrate appeared first on MyRandomTechBlog.com.

I was recently looking for a way to back up my seed words for my Bitcoin and other crypto with something more permanent then paper. So I started looking into metal cold wallets. One of the ones I saw that I really like was the ColdTi Titanium Recovery seed backup wallet. The kit comes with two titanium plates and screws to hold them together along with some tamper proof labels.

Disclaimer: This post is for entertainment purposes only. I am not responsible if you damage your equipment or injure yourself. Also this site uses affiliate links. This means I may make a small amount of money at no cost to you if you buy something after clicking a link on this site.

Here are a few advantages I found for the ColdTi titanium wallet.

Titanium has a melting point of 3,034°F.  While a quick search of google told me the average house fire gets up to 1,100°F.

The second feature was the low price. (I saw some wallets that allow you to place individual letters into the wallet and seal them. But with the ColdTi being just a metal plate I stamp they were able to keep the price down. Since I was going to be looking for a few backups, this worked out better for me.)

Here is what I ordered to get started, including the ColdTi titanium plates and a stamping block and stamping kit.

• 3mm lowercase kit
• 2mm lowercase kit
• ColdTi titanium recovery seed wallet.
• Steel Stamping block.

(I already had a decent heavy hammer, and think most any hammer will work.) But  I do see they make stamping hammers like this.

Stamping the ColdTi titanium wallet

I started by ordering 3mm stamping kit and then realized that i might be better off using something smaller, so I also ordered the 2mm so I would be able to compare and use the best option.  I think the 3mm would work, but it would be a tight fit. I ended up using the 2mm. Here you can see the size difference.

Stamping was pretty easy. I used some painters tape to keep the words in a straight line, I just would touch the stamp to the plate and slide it down until I felt the bottom of the letter hit the tape. and also made some marks on the tape to help with the spacing.

Then I just gave it a single hard WHACK! It went pretty easy, the only issue being that my family didn’t like the noise as I was in the kitchen. So I ended up waiting until they were asleep. (lol, just kidding) It was pretty noisy, so ended up doing it in a different room.

So how does it look!

Here you can see i did the top btc letters with the 2mm stamp kit.  I did the lower btc with the 3mm kit. Both looked great and I dont think i would have any trouble reading them in the future. The stamping was clear and deep. The first hit I made was the upper b with the 2mm, and you can see that one was not as hard. I adjusted after that to put a little more power in my tap.

ColdTi titanium wallet summary

Unfortunatly i am not able to show you the final product as I dont want to share my seed words :-).  But overall I am really happy with how these turned out. Plus it is a nice relief to know I dont have to 100% rely on my encrypted USB backups, and paper with my seeds. I give the ColdTi Titanium Wallet two big thumbs up!

If you are looking for a good opensource project to get involved with you may want to check out Ravencoin. It is something that you can mine with a simple gaming pc. Here is a link in case your interested in checking it out.

The post ColdTi titanium wallet review. appeared first on MyRandomTechBlog.com.

I just wanted to do a quick post of a beginners guide on how to mine Ravencoin. Ravencoin has a great community with a lot of helpful people. You can mine Ravencoin on a standard PC with a single video card, or a specialized mining rig. I am currently doing both so I will run through both of my setups below. If you would like more info on the Ravencoin project you can find it at ravencoin.org

Disclaimer: This article is not financial advice, or instructions on how you should do anything, it is for entertainment purposes only. 

These are the 3 basic steps to mine Ravencoin. (These steps also pertain to other coins you might mine)

1. Download a wallet to store your coins, and this way you will have an address to mine to.
2. Get a PC with a somewhat decent video card, or a specialized mining rig. (I will go over both options)
3. Download some mining software to run on your machine to start mining, and add you address and pool info.

That’s it, its really simple to get started at a basic level. To keep this brief I will not go into details such as encrypting and backing up your wallet and private keys. But I do recommend you do this. A lot of people have lost their coins due to no backup, or being stolen by someone getting their private key. Remember to keep them safe.

So lets get started….

Step 1. Getting a wallet.

There are a few options for wallets, But I prefer to use the official wallet from the Ravencoin.org website (The Ravencoin QT wallet). Once on the Ravencoin.org homepage,scroll down until you see the download links and click on download Binaries. This will take you to the Ravenproject GitHub. Then download the wallet for your operating system.

In my case I downloaded the Win64 setup version. Once downloaded I ran it and went through the installation process. When you run it and sync up the first time, you will notice it will take a few hours to fully sync. This is normal when you first run it. Once sync’d up you can get your receiving address by going into FILE-> Receiving addresses

Click on the New button at the bottom to get a new receiving address. You can add a label as well if you like.

You will then get a new receiving address. This is your public receiving address to put into your mining software.  You can go ahead and copy the address and paste it into notepad for future use. I blocked out part of my address below in the picture, but since it was a public receiving address showing it to someone would not allow them to get my coins. It would just allow them to see my balance and transactions. This is the address you will put into your mining software so the coins you mine will go into your wallet.

Ok, That’s it, we got a Ravencoin address.  Now we can move onto Step 2.

Step 2. Your PC or Mining Rig.

For a mining ravencoin you have a couple choices. I started with just mining on one of my Desktop PCs and my son on his desktop pc when he wasn’t gaming. Then after a while I decided to build a small mining rig. For the record I have not had any issues yet with failing video cards or PC components due to mining, but as with anything this is a possibility.

Mining also uses electricity and generates some good heat as your PC is running hard to solve those algorithms to get those coins. People tend to mine 24/7 so it does generate heat and increase your power bill.  For this reason I would not recommend using a laptop to mine as they tend to run warm anyways and not sure if the heat might harm it.

Choosing a GPU

I think the biggest factor in mining Ravencoin is the video card (GPU). Basically the better the GPU, the more coins per day you can mine. (also it seems the better the GPU the more power it uses). Right now Nvidia cards seem to be better at mining Ravencoin then AMD, but they both will work. You can get a rough estimate of how many coins you can mine per day by GPU type if you visit sites like  whattomine.com  and ravencalc.xyz.

Just remember this rate they show you is not a guarantee, and as more people mine the coin and the difficulty changes we can assume you will end up mining less and less coins over time. I think most people are hoping that the value of the coins increase over time as well. I think one of the best cards right now for Ravencoin is the GTX 1080ti from the stats I have seen.

PC desktop option –

This is the easiest option and how I started. To get started I just tried out the mining software on my existing desktop PC to see how it ran. No extra equipment was needed. I had a GTX1060 which was reasonably priced card and very good for raven mining ( They run ~$230 to $330 new, but I have seen them for as cheap as $120 used locally for the 6GB model if your on a budget). But you can use lower end video cards as well. In this example I am using an old GTX 750ti in an old desktop I had. So if you have a PC and you just want to test it mining your done… You can just go to step 3 and get the mining software and try it out.

Mining Rig option –

Basically this is just a PC that has multiple Video cards (GPUs) on it. Different motherboards can handle different amounts of video cards. You use what’s called a riser cable to add additional video cards to your PCIe slots. The usually are set up in an open air frame. Here is a list of my mining rig parts I am using right now. One thing to note is that the more GPUs you use the bigger power supply you will need. I am using a 1,000 watt power supply for the 6 GPU’s below. My mining rig runs around 60 MH/s with the cards listed and consumes around 600 watts with most cards running at %65 power.

PARTS LIST:

Here is my parts list for my dedicated mining rig in case you were interested:

ASUS Prime Z270-A
WD Blue 3D NAND 250GB PC SSD – SATA III 6 Gb/s M.2 2280 Solid State Drive – WDS250G2B0B
Intel BX80662G4400 Pentium Processor G4400 3.3 GHz FCLGA1151
Patriot Memory DDR4 4GB 2133MHz – PVE44G213C4GY (I have two sticks)
Warmstor 2 Pack 2 Pin SW PC Desktop Power Cable on/off Push Button ATX Computer Switch Wire 60cm
Ubit 12-PCS PCI-E Riser I only bought 6 of these, not a 12 pack.
EVGA 1000 GQ, 80+ GOLD 1000W, Semi Modular, EVGA ECO Mode, 5 Year Warranty, Power Supply 210-GQ-1000-V1

Video cards:
EVGA GeForce GTX 1060 6GB SSC GAMING Graphics Card 06G-P4-6267-KR
EVGA GeForce GTX 1070 SC GAMING Graphics Card 08G-P4-6173-KR
EVGA GeForce GTX 1070 Ti SC GAMING 08G-P4-5671-KR
EVGA GeForce GTX 1060 SC 3GB 03G-P4-6162-KR
MSI Gaming GeForce GTX 1060 6GB (GTX 1060 ARMOR 6G OCV1)
EVGA 750ti (A very old card 🙂 Averaging around 2,500 MH/s but can spike to 3,300 MH/s

Frame and Fans:
AAAwave The PAN 6-8GPU compact mining frame
AAAwave silent 120mm fans

STEP 3 . Mining software

The mining software you choose will be dependent on which type of video card (AMD or NVIDIA) and your operating system you are using. I am using Windows for all my PC’s so I will go through those options. But they also have versions for Linux.

Currently I am using Windows 10 as the OS for all my PC’s and my mining rig. You have a choice of quite a few different mining software programs. Ravencoin uses the X16r algorithm so you want to make sure you use mining software that supports this. Some software is open source and some is not. I have tried the following versions of mining software below recently.

Due to my fear of closed source software and not knowing what is going on. I only use the closed source software on my mining rig which has no personal info and does not have my wallet loaded on it. For my PC I chose to use open source software. I do not know if any of the software below is malicious or not, but wanted to mention that aspect. I find that a lot of mining software triggers my antivirus software so use at your own risk.

Mining software I have tried recently:

T REX 0.6.3 – Nvidia miner – Closed source software. It seems to give me great rates, appears to be slightly better then zenemy 1.17 but I haven’t ran it as long to be sure. Also it did crash on me once, not sure if it is as stable a zenemey which has never crashed on me. Has a 1% dev fee. But the downside is it is closed source. I got the download link from the bitcoin talk website here for testing. I am currently still testing this on my mining rig.

Zenemy 1.17 – Nvidia miner – Closed Source. Has 1% dev fee.  Z enemy was very stable and I got a great rate. I got the download link from the bitcoin talk website here for testing. But again, downside is its closed source.

Nevermore v0.2.3 – Nvidia Miner – Open Source – I use this one on my PC right now. 1% dev fee, but you can compile it yourself and remove that if you want. I downloaded it from GitHub here.

Avermore v1.4.1 – AMD miner – Open source. – I used this when mining with my RX570. It worked great and was very stable. Not a lot of options at the time when I was looking for AMD x16r miners. You can get download info here from bitcointalk, or directly from Github here.

Download and configure

Once you download the mining program you will need to add your wallet address and mining pool information into the config.

First you need to chose a mining pool that you will mine on. This is because you only get paid when you solve a block. With so many people mining you might not find a block for a LONG time. So people mine in a pool together so when one person finds a block the group shares the reward. There are different ways of sharing and I will post another article on that later. But for now you need to pick a mining pool.

Here are the stats on pools and what there combined hashrate is from their miners in case your interested  https://ravencoin.network/pools most pools will have a section called getting started that will show you how to configure your miner.

For a pool I use ravenminer.com ,  So In this example I will show you how I set up my pc with the nevermore miner using the ravenminer.com mining pool.

Config example:

When you go to the ravenminer.com homepage they will give you an example of how to set up your configuration in your miner. It will look like this. You will need to modify it with your information. I will show how I did this below.

Example:
“-o stratum+tcp://us.ravenminer.com:4567 -u <WALLET_ADDRESS> -p worker1”

In the folder I downloaded the Nevermore software,  I need to create a bat file.  Basically this is just a text file that I save in notepad with the file extension of .bat When I run this .bat file it will start up the miner.  I named my file START.bat , Nevermore also includes an example of what it should look like.

This is what my START.bat file contains. (That is not really my raven address, just an example as I changed some digits So please don’t send any coins as a donation or anything to the address, not that anyone would, but who knows 🙂  )

:: See the README.txt for additional flags
ccminer -a x16r -o stratum+tcp://us.ravenminer.com:4567 -u RN4h3yChXaiHFDHSFHDGWKDFHEFUHGyVz -p SUPERDUPER -i 19

FIELD Examples

Let me clarify a few fields. You can view the software README file for better detail.

-u = username, your ravencoin address is used here for ravenminer.com

-p = password for mining server, raven miner uses this to identify your worker on their website.

-i = intensity , This is GPU intensity, you can raise or lower this. I use 21 for my 1060s, and 1070s, but in this example its 19 as I am using my very old GTX750ti video card.

Here you can see my file and contents.

Starting up the program

So I started up the miner program on my PC by double clicking the START.bat file. The following nevermore miner window will open. This will show me that its running and solving blocks. It will show the current hashrate of the card and power along with temp.

Once I have the miner running I can also go to the Ravenminer.com website and click on the wallet tab up top. Then enter my ravencoin receiving address I used, and I can see the stats for my miner along with payout information.

Once I accumulate enough coins for a payout it will be sent to my ravencoin wallet from the pool. Ravenminer is currently paying out once you reach 5 coins every 3 hours per the website.  And at least once a week for balances over .5 raven.

That’s it! Your mining Ravencoin!

For a mining rig it is basically the same process but you specify how many cards to use in the config. Its really pretty simple.

One extra tip. I also use MSI Afterburner which is a free program for overclocking and power settings. With Ravencoin I don’t really need to overclock, but I do like to reduce the power settings. I run all my nvidia  GTX 1060, and GTX 1070’s at 65% to 70% power. I do not see much loss in hashrate or ravencoins earned, but it does save a lot on power.

Here are a couple more posts I have made on Ravencoin in case your interested.

Mining Ravencoin with Nvidia video cards (my mining rig)
Mining Ravencoin with a GTX 750 ti
How to add a view only address to your Ravencoin QT wallet

I hope that helps.  Also here is a link to the Bitcoin talk forum on ravencoin that has a ton of extra info.

The post How to mine Ravencoin appeared first on MyRandomTechBlog.com.

Disclaimer: This blog is for entertainment purposes only. This blog does not supply financial advice. I am not responsible if you follow anything on this website and incur any loss or damages. 

I started with a new install of the Ravencoin QT wallet that had no coins in it. This is what it looks like. Notice it only shows RVN balances in the Overview.

To add an existing public key as view only, you will need the public address key you are adding. You do NOT need the private key. Then you go into the Debug window by choosing HELP-> DEBUG window.

Once in the debug window, go to the second tab which is the Console tab. In the console tab you can type the command ” help importaddress ” and see the details of what the command does.

You can see that it explains how to use this command,  and you can use this command to add an address that can be watched, but not used to spend. This is exactly what I was looking for.  Next I typed the command “importaddress [mypublickKey]” using my public address that I wanted to view.  Like below.

Once the command is entered you will see that it starts to rescan again to find the funds for that address. This only took a few minutes.  Also you can see that a new column showed up in the overview called “Watch-only”

Once the scan was complete, I now can view the public address I added in a watch only mode.  Not much in this one as it was a test address. You can also go to the transactions tab to see all the transactions for the key you imported.

That about sums it up. I hope you find this post helpful.

The post How to add a view only address to Ravencoin QT wallet. appeared first on MyRandomTechBlog.com.