| Captain_Yuri said: Alright, I am going to post some observations that I experienced while mining with my Strix 3080. Now I know that mining isn't very well liked but if you are one of those people who are desperate to get a new GPU and are going to pay the scalping price, mining may be the only way to recoup that cost. So here are some things that I found interesting after mining for 3-4 months during work days and making 2-3x that I paid for my Strix 3080 during the crypto boom before the June heatwave. If you want to get started with mining, Linus tech tips has a good starter tutorial on it. 1) Do not start mining without using mining software that will adjust your GPU configurations such as Nicehash quickminer. Now there are plenty of ways to mine. You can load up a mining script that you got from a mining pool, you can use nicehash and plenty of other ways. The issue with mining is that it's put a lot of load on your GPUs VRAM. Most GPUs however such as my 3080 Strix are not configured to spin it's fans based on VRAM temps. So by default and if you aren't paying attention, your VRAM temps can shoot up to 110C and start throttling or worse. Instead if you use Nicehash quickminer + lite optimization, it will configure your GPU to focus on VRAM temps as well as your Core clock Temps. So when your VRAM temps goes up the fans will spin to lower it. The lite optimization will also undervolt/underclock your GPU and overclock your VRAM automatically. You can change these manually however. 2) Room temperature matters a lot When you are mining, the VRAM temps will traditionally sit around 94C on my Strix 3080 with variable fan speeds. Now technically I can lower it with the software even more but 94C is technically with in spec and the fans would probably die sooner spinning at 100% than the VRAM would. It's when you get to 100C or above is when issues start to occur. In my experience, 25C room temp or lower are the best times to mine (least with the Strix 3080). If your room temp is above 25C, then the fans will be at 100% all the time. And once you go above 30C, the cooling can no longer keep up with the VRAM temps no matter how much airflow there may be. At that point, you would need to replace the thermal pads with more efficient ones or go liquid cooling or get an AC for your room. But I wouldn't do any of those as you are trying to save money. 3) Mine as much as you can until you hit the minimum pay out When you start mining, you should monitor to make sure your GPU is performing as it should. Core temps should be 50-60C, VRAM temps can be 94C, fans can start at 100% but eventually go down to 50-60% and then vary depending on the load. Once that happens, I suggest mining with your GPU as much as possible until you hit the minimum payout. For Nicehash, it's 0.001 BTC which with a Strix 3080, takes about a week of running continuously. The reason is crypto market can change at any point and the last thing you want is to not get paid. Once you hit that minimum payout, then you can do whatever you want. It may not sound like a good idea to run at 100% load but remember that these GPUs have a 3-5 year warranty depending on the manufacturer and most of them are scalping you anyway. I may post some additional stuff some other time. |
Mining back in Bogota (or Spain during Winter) would've been viable... here in Medellin... not so much... unless I leave my rig outdoors. Either that or using the AC and that kind of kills the point.
