I wanted to do a quick post on Mining Ravencoin with Nvidia Video cards. My mining rig consists of a combo of GTX 1070ti, GTX 1070, GTX 1060 and GTX 750ti cards. I will also include the hashrates I am getting along with the power usage.
Disclaimer: This article is not financial advice, or instructions on how you should do anything, it is for entertainment purposes only.
First a little bit about Ravencoin as their goal is a little different then some other crypto currencies.
RAVENCOIN
Ravenscoin main goal seems to be based on using the blockchain for documenting ownership and transfer of assets. You can go to ravencoin.org to read the whitepaper. But to summarizesome of it, Ravencoin is based on a fork of the Bitcoin code. Ravencoin is free and opensource, so while it does have a community backing and some people developing it. My understanding is there is no CEO, and no person actually “In charge” of the project. There appears to be no Pre Mine, ICO involved which is a plus. If your interested in the project I suggest you visit the website.
COIN Details
Distribution – 21,000,000,000
Block time – 1 minute
Block Reward – 5000 RVN
Algorithm – X16R
x16r Algorithm
Ravencoin is mined using the x16r Algorithm which is one of the things that first caught my interest with this coin. The x16r algorithm (I will just say x16r for short now) is being used as it is currently more asic resistant then some other algorithms being used by other coins. The reasoning for going with an algorithm that is more asic resistant, is to be more decentralized. What is really cool about x16r is that it actually consists of 16 other algorithms operating in a chain fashion with a random order being used based on the last 8 bytes of the hash of the previous block.
The algorithms being used by x16r are the following.
| 0=blake | 4=keccak | 8=shavite | C=fugue |
| 1=bmw | 5=skein | 9=simd | D=shabal |
| 2=groestl | 6=luffa | A=echo | E=whirlpool |
| 3=jh | 7=cubehash | B=hamsi | F=sha512 |
So far the x16r seems to be more efficient on NVIDIA video cards. Which also caught my attention as my mining rig consists of Nvidia cards.
My mining Rig GPU configuration.
- 1 QTY – EVGA GTX 1070ti SC Gaming = 08G-P4-5671-KR (Memory Micron)
- 1 QTY – EVGA GTX 1070 SC Gaming = 08G-P4-6173-KR (Memory Micron)
- 1 QTY – EVGA GTX 1060 SSC = 06G-P4-6264-KB (Memory Micron)
- 2 QTY – EVGA GTX 750ti’s (Both Samsung Memory)
Card Settings
| GTX 1070ti Power limit 65% / Core +99 / Mem -300 |
| GTX 1070 Power limit 70% / Core +99 / Mem -300 |
| GTX 1060 Power limit 65% / Core +99 / Mem -300 |
| GTX 750ti Power limit 100% / Core +0 / Mem +0 |
For stability reasons I have left my GTX 750ti’s at stock settings. I also had some issues with my GTX 1070 at 65% power so it is currently at 70%. I also had some issues when I adjusted my core clocks to high, so for now they are all at +99 (with the exception of the 750ti’s)
NVIDIA Hashrates for Ravencoin
Here is an approximate hash rates I am seeing for these cards. Its a little harder to figure out as the algorithm is changing randomly. But I would my average is in this ballpark.
| GTX 1070ti 10-13 Mh/s |
| GTX 1070 9-11 Mh/s |
| GTX 1060 6gb 5-6 Mh/s |
| GTX 750ti 1.5-2.5 Mh/s |
Looking at my mining rig in the mining pool right now, I can see it is currently averaging around 30.9 Mh/s. But is has fluctuated a lot higher and lower depending on which algorithm they are on. (In the chart below I also have a Gigabit GTX 1060 and a Sapphire RX570 8Gb I am testing. But those are not included in any stats for this article)
As you can see in the summary, the mining software I am currently using is nevermore 0.2.3 for my Nvidia cards.
Power Costs
This is for my mining rig only, and does not include the RX570 or Gigabyte card in the screenshot above as they are in separate computers.
Here is an example of running the rig for the ~5 days on Raven. You can see the wattage does fluctuate a lot as it switches algorithms. But it usually stayed in the range of 480-500 Watts. (The chart below is 1 minute sample rates)
Here is a chart for Average monthly KWh. Looks to be trending around 350KWh Avg per month.
Basically you would just take your average KWh per month and multiply it by what your electric company charges per KWh. Then you get your monthly cost. I can just plug in my cost per KWh (.12) and my meter calculates it for me. So as you can see below it will cost me about $42. a month to run the mining rig. (BTW, this is a great power meter that can even keep track of your costs as you accrue it, You can check out my review on it here. You can find the meters used for under $30 bucks like I did. )
Is mining Ravencoin profitable?
OK, now that we know the costs of mining Ravencoin with my RIG, how many coins will I make? There are a few calculators for calculating this on the web. I tend to use whattomine or ravencalc which you can find online. But with the current difficulty it appears I will make about ~150 coins a day. Now the difficulty can go up and down so this is just a rough estimate. With Raven at about .03 per coin that would be around $4.5 USD a day. So if it stayed at that price I would be making approx. $135 a month if I keep mining it, then subtract $42 for power costs. Which would end up leaving about $93 a month if nothing changed. Then you have tax implications for what you earn depending on where you live. The price of the coin could go up or down, GPUs can break, The coin could turn out to be worth nothing leaving me with just power bills to pay and taxes. So none of this is financial advice on if you should mine or not. This is just a fun hobby for me and wanted to share my experiences. If you decide to buy hardware to mine with, I suggest you also figure in the fact that the difficulty will probably keep rising and the amount of coins you make could be less then what the online mining calculators show as time increases.
My mining Rig
I just wanted to share the configuration of my mining rig for reference and it includes links if you want to check it out.
Here is my parts list for my rig :
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
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 750ti (These were old video cards I had sitting around, why not put them to use 🙂
AAAwave Sluice 8GPU mining frame
LEDdess Wireless RF COntrol RGB LED 120mm fans
Mining software
Currently I am using Windows 10 as the OS.
Afterburner for the overclocking and power settings.
Nevermore 0.2.3 for the mining software (Can be found on GitHub)
I plan to do a getting started in mining article soon. But if your new to mining, check out the ravencoin.org website and you could get started by downloading a wallet. This will give you an address to mine to. Then you would need to download a program to start mining. I suggest googling ravencoin miners as there are few out there. (I am using Nevermore). Then you need to find a mining pool to start mining on. (This also gets added to your mining software config) Some mining pools have a getting started section to help out. The pool I am currently mining on is ravenminer.com
I hope you found this helpful. Happy mining everyone.
