Click here for the previous post in this series.
Pool switching:
04-Jul-18:
11:38: I waited until Flypool balance increased over a payout threshold (unpaid balance + immature balance modulo 0.01 = low amount), then switched over to the smaller NanoPool to try them out again, this time with port 16666 rather than 666 to see if that works better.
Still no luck with NanoPool, I'm getting a very high reject rate. I left it running for 25mins after switching to eu2 server on 16666.
12:25: Gave up on NanoPool, no wins, tonnes of rejects, switching over to Slush Pool for now, just while I figure out something else. Poolin.com seems to be the new kid on the block and has about 20% of the hash rate today. F2Pool is PPS only which pays out less overall I'm told so not for me.
Hmm, looks like I'm getting a high reject rate on Slush Pool too now.
Well, as FlyPool is down to only 25% of hash rate today I'll go back there. It's the only pool that has worked for me so far.
SlushPool are only making around 1 block every day which split over all the workers is a lot less than FlyPool were earning me.
Back to FlyPool...
12:48: I set up the EU, US and ASIA FlyPool servers as my pools, no point in having backups that dont work, even if the primary has gone down.
12:55: Well, there is 1hr 10mins of mining I'll never get back. Time to Overclock to 750M.
Z9 Mini Overclocking efficiency data update:
05-Jul-18:
Reached 1.0 ZEC in total payouts! 🍾
Forecast update
06-Jul-18:
Totalling up my investment in mining so far:
3x Z9 Mini, 1x PSU, 2x PCI-e splitters, 1x long ethernet cable =
GBP 3,054.36
USD 4,110.53
BTC 0.48377487
ZEC 16.10151013
So, rounded up, ZEC 16.11 is my official breakeven target, excluding cost of energy which I will have to continually add on over time.
In answer the question I set out to answer, "Would it have been better just to buy ZCash and hold it?", ZEC 16.11 is what I count as the amount I could have bought for my money, and will have to exceed in order to deem this project smart.
Stats update:
Time: 10 days
Energy: 65 kWh
Reward: 1.2 ZEC
Mining profitability calculator results: 06-Jul-2018:
- ZECUSD: $171.25
- ZECBTC: ฿0.0259800
- BTCUSD: $6689.71
- Difficulty: 9,317,985.95639568
- Electricity: £0.1615 kWh = $0.21 kWh (I neglected to add VAT of 5% on previously)
- Daily income: ZEC 0.54330855 (USD 94.43)
- Days to generate one block mining solo: 18.41 Day(s)
- Breakeven horizon: 46.97 days
| Time Frame | ZEC Coins | BTC (ZEC/BTC at 0.02598000) | USD (BTC at $6,689.71) | Power Cost (in USD) | Pool Fees (in USD) | Profit (in USD) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Hourly | 0.02263786 | 0.00058813 | $3.93 | $0.25 | $0.04 | $3.65 |
| Daily | 0.54330855 | 0.01411516 | $94.43 | $5.97 | $0.94 | $87.51 |
| Weekly | 3.80315984 | 0.09880609 | $660.98 | $41.81 | $6.61 | $612.57 |
| Monthly | 16.29925644 | 0.42345468 | $2,832.79 | $179.17 | $28.33 | $2,625.29 |
| Annually | 198.3076201 | 5.15203197 | $34,465.60 | $2,179.93 | $344.66 | $31,941.02 |
The boost in numbers comes from me increasing hash rate from 30k to 48k based on the overclocking and (so far) quite forgiving difficulty adjustments. Sadly I am so far only running one of the three Z9 minis so in reality breakeven is a lot further off.
Next post: Progress update, in part 5.
Good stuff man, keep it up! This hashrate (48Ksol) is from 3 z9-s I presume you haven't managed to OC 1 to x4-x5 times... yes?)
Best!
Vlad
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Sadly that's correct, 48k is my assumption that 3x Z9 Minis will collectively produce 3x 16kSol/s = 48kSols/s
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I completely agree. It's an arms race to be first. This latest $850 batch (to start shipping 8/24) will add several thousand more Z9 Mini's and will cause difficulty to explode at least 50% (is there a linear ratio between units put online and difficulty? I'm assuming that's the case), especially when combined with other manufacturers. Oops, also forgot the massive supply of Z9 'Maxi' units that deliver 40k (probably 60k when overclocked) that will hit in Sept.
Congrats on being nearly first. You should recover your investment and come out ahead (but you'll never make 400% ROI, with the massive difficulty increases coming soon). I was considering buying 1 or 2 Z9 Mini's, but it's gotta be too late now. I'd be one of the last to receive it (probably mid to end of Sept) and the difficulty will be at least 25-50% greater at that time.
Unlike other mining algos, with Equihash ZEC is the only 'real' coin that you can mine. ZenCash became unplayable once it suffered the dreaded '51% attack' - that coin can never be trusted again unless it hard forks to shut out ASICs. BTG forked to shut out ASICs, so HUSH is the only alternative and just 1 or 2 miners could completely take that one over making that coin unusable.
Bitmain can never be trusted. They secretly mine for weeks with new hardware to rake in the $, then finally dump them on the public once they cannibalize themselves. I don't believe a word they say when they attempt to deny 'secret mining' on their blog. As you stated, they dump thousands at a time at once, so unless you're first, you lose.
Kinda like the stock market - last one in loses. :-)
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Thanks for the feedback @bookmdanno. Let me know if you do decide to jump in. I think personally I wouldn't do it at this stage if I were you. Even though ASICs are low maintenance compared to GPUs, they are way more hard work than just buying coins. I have had to build a sound proof box. Will update about that in the next blog post. You could buy some second hand Batch 1 Z9 minis on ebay or your local equivalent (gumtree?). I've seen some around at reasonable prices which you could pick up and plug in same day. I haven't run the calculations on how hash rate affects difficulty but yes the relationship will be linear... double the aggregate hashing power, double the difficulty. This in fact is one of the only draw backs of entering the ASIC phase early, is that you get the fastest difficulty rises. Bitcoin is a very mature ASIC market so the curve is mainly being pushed up by the increasing supply of units rather than advances in efficiency.
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Just wanted to drop by and drop a helpful link for anybody who needs it. This is regarding the most recent batch of Z9 minis being locked from overclocking. Cheers!
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Nice one Morgan. That is prob the best tutorial on overclocking the Batch 2 Z9 Minis out there. Thanks,
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