I'm Making $2.44 Per Day By Dual Mining Ethereum and Siacoin, and I'm NOT HAPPY YET!

26 December, 2017 | Crypto | 10 seen

This is a quick follow up post after previous and initial I'm Making $0.98 Per Day By Mining Ethereum and Siacoin, and I want MORE!. It has been first 24 hours since my core mining rig have been set up and running.

Well, more precisely, yesterday I finally received details ordered from Amazon at the start of December - motherboard, processor, power block, graphics card and other, see: Building a 12 GPU Ethereum Mining Rig From Scratch - Part 1: Ordering Details

By now all mining operations are run from my living room (instead of office) on a separate mining rig. The total investment as of day: $1,147.00 (not counting in transportation and customs tax, which is about $200).

As of writing this, the total time of ROI is 468 days, which is the reason I'm not happy yet with the results. 468 days is more than one year. And that makes me worried as we don't know what will be the future for gpu mining in next 6 months, no to speak 12 months or 468 days. Right now this seems a bit of gambling to me.

On the other hand, currently mining operations are performed by just two graphics cards:

• Radeon RX 560 4GB card, producing about 10.67MH/s for Ethereum and 85.74MH/s for Siacoin dual - mining.
• EVGA GeForce GTX 1060 6GB , producing just 15.67 MH/s for Ethereum and about86 MH/s for Siacoin

When I purchased EVGA GeForce GTX 1060 6GB I believed it will have a hashing power of about 22.5 MH/s - having just 15.67 MH/s or about 3/4 from the expected leads me to think either I haven't configured my mining rig right or maybe 15.67 MH/s is the most this card can get. 

See: Top 14 Best Selling GPU Cards 2018

I haven't performed any optimization yet, the numbers are straight out of the box, but I believe there is a room for about 10% improvement by overclocking BIOS.

For mining, I decided to use Simple Mining OS, run from a USB stick. SimpleMining comes with a cost - $2/mo per mining rig. Which is fair IMHO. In coming days I will make an article on how to mine ether on Simple Mining OS.

It should be noted that Simple Mining OS officially doesn't support mixing AMD and Nvidia cards on the same rig, but I managed to get both mixed version up and running on the same rig, which probably is the reason I'm getting lower hashrate for NVIDIA card right now. 

Now I believe I will read a lot of online tutorials, watch dozens of YouTube video and try to optimize existing rig for better performance, before ordering new graphics card from Amazon and hopefully extending rig by at leat one more card in January 2018.

Thanasis - Cretan Taverna in Stavros

24 December, 2017 | Restaurant reviews | 54 seen

Thanasis is a typical Cretan taverna located in the town of Stavros. We visited this place during our stay at Kavos beach apartment in June 2017.

Friendly staff, amazing food, affordable prices and amazing sunset views.

Outdoor deck at Thanasis taverna

While waiting for our Cretan cuisine to be served made some HDR sunset photography here:

Sunset photography

One of the rare handheld HDR's

Octopus

Dolma

Contact info Taverna Thanasis Cafe bar in Stavros, Crete

Works of Georgian Painter Nino Jikia

23 December, 2017 | Living in Georgia | 15 seen

Nino is a friend, we have been in friends with Nino for about a year. We actually met her as a cat sitter during our 10 days trip to New York City at the end of 2016

She has cat- sitted several more times since then. In case you are looking for cat minder here in Tbilisi - without hesitation - Nino is one of the best - our boys just adore her. I know that Nino is busy with a cat sitting for many other expats in Tbilisi, and in fact, she has about 15 cats at home - she just can't let little kitties alone on the street and takes them home - helping and taking care. 

Nino is a Tbilisi Academy of Art graduate and in free time still paints and performs restoration works. She asked could I help her out and take photos of her works, without thinking I agreed - it was agreed that Nino will take some of her works to our apartment and on a Friday afternoon sipping tea and eating cake we made a lovely photo session of her works.

Poppy fields in Svaneti by Nino Jikia

This painting we actually bought from Nino and gave as a gift to my mom, while she was visiting me here in Georgia at the end of November. Now, this painting is in Riga, Latvia.

Now for today's photo project -a sturdy tripod, long exposure and little post-processing in Adobe Lightroom.

It all starts like this:

Paintings by Nino Jikia on our coach

I wanted to make a lovely comp and frame Nino in the middle, but she refused :)

Painting of mountain by Nino Jikia

When asked is it some particular mountain - Nino said, nope it's not. Just her imagination.

Painting of trees

Still Life by Nino Jikia

Still Life by Nino Jikia

Painting of Ananuri complex in Georgia by Nino Jikia

See my review here: Ananuri Castle Complex On The Aragvi River, Georgia

Water reflections

Truly amazing, as a huge fan of HDR photography I would love to capture something similar, when asked where in Georgia we could find such landscape, she replied - nowhere - it's just the imagination of her. Pretty awesome!

Clouds and flower fields by Nino Jikia

The rock

Again a nice commentary from Mrs. Nino Jikia

I doubt there grow fir-trees on such rocks, but she decided to incorporate some.

How amazing is that? I believe it is cool being a creative artist - you can make everything happen.

Shatili village in Georgia by Nino Jikia

Another painting of Ananuri (framed)

You can order both unframed and framed painting. 

Still Life

Water reflections

Seems there is more common to photographers and painters - we both love landscapes, reflections e.t.c

Kavos Beach Apartments & Studios Review in Stavros, Crete

22 December, 2017 | Hotel reviews | 13 seen

Kavos beach apartments are among one of my favorite hotels discovered in Crete. We stayed here for a couple of nights in June 2017, during about a month long trip to Crete.

Stavros is a village and a popular beach destination located close to the Chania town in Crete, Greece. The beach and surroundings were the place where in 1964 Michael Cacoyannis partly made the popular Greek movie "Zorba the Greek" starring Anthony Quinn.

Top Hotels and Apartments in Stavros, Crete

Set amidst landscaped gardens, all apartments and studios at Kavos are air-conditioned and have a spacious balcony or terrace. They are fitted with an LCD TV, kitchenette and fridge, and enjoy free Internet access.

Kavos beach apartments in Crete

I was so impressed with the landscape here that decided to make a couple of HDR's

Rocky bay near Kavos beach

At a quiet and beautiful location on the coast of Kavos, Kavos Beach Apartments & Studios boasts views over the Cretan Sea. It offers well-designed accommodation and a large outdoor pool with sun terrace.

Outdoor pool at Kavos beach apartments

We took a lovely night swim here. Amazing way to look at the stars.

During the day made this panoramic photo

Outdoor pool at Kavos beach apartments

Now, when speaking about rooms - kind of nothing special, just the bare minimum - a bed, TV Set, shower e.t.c

Our room at Kavos beach apartments in Crete

Regarding landscape - some really cool features around Kavos hotel, interesting for photography:

Landscape near Kavos beach hotel

Fresh Portakalada and Donner somewhere near Kandanos in Crete

19 December, 2017 | Restaurant reviews | 6 seen

There are times Google Maps doesn't help (in fact there are dozen of such times) - this time Google Maps street view didn't help either - after about 6 months since we returned from Crete, I'm still postprocessing a lot of photos, reviewing places (tourist attractions, hotels, and restaurants).

It was in the morning, we left Palaiochóra and headed towards Heraklion in our rental car. 

Somewhere near Kandanos we found this lovely roadside cafeteria serving Donner and Portokalada (I mistakenly thought it will be freshly squeezed orange juice, but it turned out local lemonade)

Portakalada lemonade in Crete

Additionally ordered some Donner

Donner

Sadly I cannot remember the place name and can't find this place on Google maps to add a pin.

Mining with SAPPHIRE PULSE Radeon™ RX 560 4GD5 Review

17 December, 2017 | Servers | 46 seen

This Sapphire Pulse Radeon RX 560 4GB graphics card is the first I've put on test for mining ethereum.

Bought it at about $190 at local Tbilisi electronics shop, but you could get this card from Amazon for about $130.

Out of the box, I was able to get 10.72MH/s for Ether and 85.74 MH/s for dual mining Siacoin, on average by mining with this card only I'm able to make about $0.98 daily, which gives about 190 days for ROI. See: I'm Making $0.98 Per Day By Mining Ethereum and Siacoin, and I want MORE!

Cat waiting for the first mining rig to be built

Currently, this card is installed on a desktop PC (single graphics card mining) and while it was in closed tower noticed following measurements for temperature and fan speed

• 75 Celsius
• 48% Fan speed

As I was not happy with +75 Celsius, I decided to remove the cover and shortly temperature and fan speed dropped:

• 67 Celsius
• 27% Fan speed

Now, I believe lower temperatures and slower fan speed will extend the total lifetime of for this card. And that's great. 

I haven't yet performed optimization for this card (overclocking) but I believe it's possible to get about 10% improvement for it.

I'm Making $0.98 Per Day By Mining Ethereum and Siacoin, and I want MORE!

16 December, 2017 | Crypto | 18 seen

The fans are spinning and graphics cards are heating, it has been 24 hours since I started mining Ethereum and Siacoin. And in these 24 hours, I've made $0.96.

Ok, in fact, there is just one fan spinning and just one RadeonRX 560 card, which I bought a couple of days ago in Tbilisi, and decided to test the mining process at one of our spare office computers, before details for my 12 GPU mining rig arrives.

I feel glad I was so impatient and rushed to perform a test, as while doing test setup I discovered a few bottlenecks and faced some issue, also I accidentally damaged one HDD while installing Graphics card on the motherboard.

My total investment for this experiment was about $187 for purchasing the graphics card, I didn't have to pay for other items, as I already had a free system to install this card on. I believe it could take up to 190 days or little more than 6 months to get my initial investment back.

The graphics card used for this setup is a cheap Radeon RX 560 4GB card, producing about 10.67MH/s for Ethereum and 85.74MH/s for Siacoin dual - mining. I haven't performed any optimization yet, the numbers are straight out of the box, but I believe there is a room for about 10% improvement by overclocking BIOS.

For mining, I decided to use Simple Mining OS, run from a USB stick. SimpleMining comes with a cost - $2/mo per mining rig. Which is fair IMHO. In coming days I will make an article on how to mine ether on Simple Mining OS.

Now, as for 2017, I've been actively investing in stocks, peer to peer lending and of course in cryptocurrencies, mining ether seems second most profitable investment option after buying coins directly from exchanges. 

So far, peer to peer lending generates me a passive income of about $1.5 per day,  dividend payments in 2017 have generated on average about $0.82 per day in 2017. If combined all together it would make about $3.3 daily. Not bad. But here is one but:

My current (2017) stock dividend yield is ~5%, peer to peer lending ~ 8%, now when speaking about mining - I can see a yield of 50-100% in a year. Am, I happy with 5% dividend yield with stocks? Sure dude, anything above 3% seems more than inflation, 8% at peer to peer lending? Amazing, wish we could have such interest rates at savings accounts. 50-100%? Too good to be true, but I'm in!

As I'm still waiting for equipment for 12 GPU mining rig to arrive (in fact there should arrive one graphics card at about 22MH/s - next week) - I'm looking to increase daily and monthly return for mining to about $3 per day by the end of 2017.

If things will turn out bright - average daily revenue from mining operations should produce the highest daily average income from my investments portfolio.

Is It Profitable Mining Siacoin (SC) in 2018?

15 December, 2017 | Crypto | 12 seen

Sia is a new approach to cloud storage platforms. Instead of all datacenters being owned and operated by a single company, Sia opens the floodgates and allows anyone to make money by renting out their hard drive. Data integrity is protected using redundancy and cryptography.

Sia uses a cryptocurrency, Siacoin, to enable decentralized payments via file contracts. All payments on the network happen in Siacoin, which is a critical component of our cryptographic SLAs. Siacoin allows us to do things that would not be possible with Bitcoin or traditional online payments. See: 8 Things Every Crypto Investor Should Know About SIACOIN

I hold a couple of thousands of Siacoins (3,374), which I've gained via my swing trade activities. The current price (Middle December) is about $0.01 per Siacoin. I keep buying and holding a bunch of crypto coins, and I should note that 2017 has been a crazy in terms of returns. Currently, my Crypto portfolio has gained a total value of 268.47%, which is the highest return I've ever seen (compared to stocks or peer to peer lending, for example, where I can get about 10% annually)

Affiliate link here: If you are just planning to acquire your first bitcoin, ethereum or litecoin, consider to register at coinbase.com with this link, once you buy or sell $100 (€85) of digital currency or more, we will both get $10 (€8) of free bitcoin.

Remember your capital is at risk, never invest capital you cannot afford to lose!

Now it was at the start of December when I decided to build my first GPU mining rig, I decided to go with a 12 GPU rig and ordered goodies from Amazon, while still waiting for items to arrive I purchased a cheap Radeon graphics card (Top 14 Best Selling GPU Cards 2018) and put it in one of the spare office computers. I made some calculations and find that mining probably could be profitable in 2018, see:  To Mine or Buy Ethereum/Zcash/Monero in 2018

Now once I successfully installed this card on PC I decided to mine with Simple Mining OS.

I was pleasantly surprised to learn that I could dual-mine two coins without affecting total performance for ethereum mining. I chose to dual-mine and ethereum and siacoin.

Mining Ethereum and Siacoin with Simple Mining OS

I got following hashrates from this Radeon RX 560 graphics card:

• ETH - 10.7 MH/s
• SC - 85.64 MH/s

Now using online calculator I got following return per month (results are after 1% pool fee, and $5.8 electricity fee)

• ETH - $33.58
• SC - $0.84

Without doubts, mining ethereum seems logical, but hey in terms of mined coins the return is completely different:

• ETH - 0.0493084
• SC - 80.95

Imagine if Siacoin would go up in value from $0.01 to $0.5, for example (I'm not saying it will happen, but it could happen), 80 siacoins would be worth $40.

Well, sure it doesn't sound realistic (yet), but in 2017 we have already seen even greater breakouts, ripple for example (see: Why I Rushed to Buy Ripple (XRP) Cryptocurrency at $0.19) .

With Siacoin ranked 42 and Ripple #3, it's probably not right to draw parallels, but any gains, even a $0.01 would mean a 100% profit.

How to Install Drupal 8 with Nginx, PHP-FPM, MySQL, phpMyAdmin on Ubuntu 16.04 - Linode Guide

14 December, 2017 | Servers | 40 seen

In this article, you will learn how to set up a Drupal 8 with Nginx, PHP-FPM, MySQL and phpMyAdmin.

This article might not be complete, but you will find a lot of useful information

Update: How to Install Drupal 8 with Nginx, PHP-FPM 7.2, MySQL, phpMyAdmin on Ubuntu 18.04 - Linode Guide

Prerequisites

• Ubuntu 16.04 - 64bit version.
• Root privileges.

You can get a cheap VPS for $10/mo from Linode. As I've few test Linodes already purchased I'm going to use one of them

Follow basic security guide, see: Securing Your Server

I will use Putty for Windows to access SSH

Secure your server

Create the user, replacing example_user with your desired username. You’ll then be asked to assign the user a password:

Add the user to the sudo group so you’ll have administrative privileges:

Disallow root logins over SSH. This requires all SSH connections be by non-root users. Once a limited user account is connected, administrative privileges are accessible either by using sudo or changing to a root shell using su -.

Under # Authetification section change to

Update the Ubuntu system

sudo apt-get update

Install Nginx and PHP-FPM

Install Nginx with the following apt command:

Next, install php7.0-fpm with php-gd extension that is required by Drupal core:

Configure Nginx and PHP-FPM

In this step, we will configure Nginx to use php-fpm to serve HTTP requests for PHP pages. Go to the php-fpm directory "/etc/php/7.0/fpm" and edit the "php.ini" file:

Un-comment the cgi.fix_pathinfo line and change the value to "0"

When using nano command you can use CTRL+W to locate that line. Once changed press CTRL+O to save changes and CTRL+X to exit from nano editor

Now we should modify the default Nginx virtual host configuration. Edit the "default" file and enable the php-fpm directive.

Un-comment  location ~ \.php$ section, so it look like this

CTRL+O and CTRL+X

Then test the Nginx configuration with the command "nginx -t" to ensure that it is valid:

If there is no error, restart nginx and the php-fpm service:

PHP Info file (Optional)

Next, test that php-fpm is working properly with nginx by creating new php info file in the web directory "/var/www/html"

Visit the info.php file at the server IP  in a web browser. The result should be similar to the screenshot below.

PHP Version Info log

Configure the VirtualHost for Drupal

We will install Drupal 8 in the directory "/srv/www/reinisfischer.com". Please replace my domain name in your installation with the domain name of the website that you want to use this Drupal installation for. So let's create the directory:

Paste the Nginx configuration for Drupal 8:

CTRL+O and CTRL + X

The Drupal virtual host file has been created, now we have to activate it by creating a symlink to the file in the "sites-enabled" directory:

Test the Nginx configuration and if there is no errors restart Nginx:

Install MySQL

Install phpMyAdmin

Hit ESC when the installation prompts you for auto-configuration, because there is no option for Nginx.

Make an easy accessible symlink

​

Install and Configure Drupal

Enter the directory that we created earlier and download Drupal with wget. I'm using the latest Drupal 8.2.7. release as of March 23, 2017, make sure you are downloading latest version by visiting Drupal 8 download page and writing down the last numbers (version)

Now visit your Drupal site in the web Browser, you should see following screen

Drupal 8 welcome screen

Now, it's just time to connect database and set up your Drupal 8 website

Buying Graphic Cards (GPU) and Computer Parts in Tbilisi, Georgia

13 December, 2017 | Living in Georgia | 81 seen

It should be noted that buying GPU's in Tbilisi is not a very cost-effective option, better use Amazon.com and service like usa2georgia.com to deliver your goodies to Georgia.

But if you are in rush, as I was today, and you are desperate to have a GPU right now, while in Tbilisi - there are several electronic stores I could recommend.

While I was still waiting for goodies from the US to be shipped to Georgia, I decided to buy an additional cheap GPU and put in on test at one of our spare office computers. Doing my due diligence I found Sapphire Pulse X560 4GB GDDR5 card at pshop.ge for GEL 499 (USD 187), unfortunately, I was not able to find this card on Amazon store, and I believe this card is sold in European and CIS markets.

Cat waiting for the first mining rig to be built

Another option was Asus ROG Strix GeForce GTX 1050 Ti OC Edition 4GB GDDR5  card sold at AltaOk store for GEL 779 (USD 292). This card though is sold on Amazon for just ~ $190. The savings are huge. I was able to track down this card at MetroMart store in Tbilisi for GEL 699 (USD 262)

See: Top 14 Best Selling GPU Cards 2018

As both cards promise a similar mining power (~11-14 MH/s), with GeForce version being a slightly better in most of the benchmarks, I still decided to stick with cheaper Sapphire Pulse X560 4GB GDDR5,  probably by saving a $100 I made a fatal error, who knows. I'm planning to put this card to test soon and will share the results. Not sure yet, but planning to mine ethereum, zcash and monero, see: To Mine or Buy Ethereum/Zcash/Monero in 2018

There is a great comparison video on YouTube for both cards, see it here: Sapphire RX 560 Pulse OC 4GB Review vs. GTX 1050 & More

From my personal experience dealing with buying computers and computer parts, I would recommend following stores - AltaOk, MetroMart, PC shop.

How to Check Motherboard Model on Windows 10

12 December, 2017 | Servers | 27 seen

Recently I ordered goodies for my first 12 GPU mining rig, including the motherboard. As I have got a few other PC's I decided to explore, are they optimal for GPU mining, for doing that, I had to learn the motherboard model and version.

Luckily, there is a simple command line to run from CMD. 

Open up the command prompt in Windows via either the run dialog (Windows+R) or by searching for “cmd” on the Start menu. At the command line, type the following text (noting that there are no spaces between the modifiers—just commas), and then hit Enter:

​

Command Prompt

The information returned checks out for the motherboard we’re using: the Manufacturer is ASUSTeK COMPUTER INC , the board is the X550MD, the serial number is BSN12345678901234567 and the version 1.0. Well I did this test on my Asus notebook, on which I'm not actually planning to add any GPU cards

To Mine or Buy Ethereum/Zcash/Monero in 2018

10 December, 2017 | Crypto | 84 seen

Since the beginning of the second half of 2017, I call myself a proud crypto investor - currently investing in the 4 major cryptocurrencies - bitcoin, ethreum, litecoin and ripple.

Starting July 2017, using dollar cost averaging I keep buying crypto coins once in the month. So far, the total crypto portfolio shows an awesome 132.98% year to date value growth.

Update, lately I've been playing with bitcoin cloud mining contracts from HashFlare, see Should You Invest in Hashflare Ethereum Cloud Mining Contract or Build Your Own GPU Mining Rig

HashFlare.io (Affiliate link here - if you will click, register and decide to invest, I might earn 10% commission from that)

A couple of days ago I decided to give it a try and set up a 12 GPU ethreuem mining rig, for that I headed to Amazon.com and ordered goodies (motherboard, graphics card, risers, processor and so on)

Now, in total, I spent $960 for a bare minimum, just one GPU, which I'm planning to extend during 2018, by adding a new card once in the month. 

I decided to compare/forecast/predict - should I rather had invested $960 directly purchasing ethereum, zcash or monero, instead of building a mining rig.

From money invested in mining rig ($960), I could buy  2.03 ETH.

By knowing approximate hashing power (22.5MH/s) and electric costs ($0.08) I calculated how much I could earn with just 1 GPU in one year. The result is not at all impressive - just 1.23 ETH.

Apparently, if you are deciding to invest in mining rig - one GPU might be too short to get back your investment in a foreseen future.

Ethreuem calculator

As I'm planning to run a full 12 GPU Ethreum mining rig, the cost for it would be, if all parts bought at once - $3,880.93.

For that money, I could buy 8.21 ETH. 

Let's see how much ETH a 12 GPU mining rig could theoretically produce in a year: 

Ethereum calculator for 12 GPU

14.73 ETH - Now, that already seems as a nice result. If converted back to the USD using today's ETH pricing (which is wrong, as we have no clue what will be the price for ETH at the end of 2018) we could get $6959.33, or profit at $3,079. Nice.

These calculations are just for the illustration as we don't have any clue what will be the ETH price in a year - it could go to the moon or it could dip.

It's still like a gambling to me. Also, there is a huge possibility Ethereum switching from Proof of Work to Proof of Stake, putting miners in unclear future. 

On the other hand, there are other coins we could mine with GPU in 2018, Zcash or Monero for example.

Let's apply the same maths for Monero (XMR)

• 1 GPU $960 = 3.77XMR
• Mined in a year = 1.57 XMR

Monero Calculator 1 GPU

Let's see what happens with 12 GPU Monero mining rig:

• 12 GPU $3,880.93 = 15.26 XMR
• Mined in a year: 18.89 XMR

​

Monero calculator 12 GPU

Profitable, but not as lucrative as mining ether. Mining Monero would break even after a year of operations.

Zcash (ZEC)

• 1 GPU $960 = 3.09 ZEC
• Mined in a year = 1.6 ZEC

​

Zcash calculator 1 GPU

Again, let's calculate 12 GPU Zcash mining rig

• 12 GPU $3,880.93 = 12.51 ZEC
• Mined in a year: 19.24 ZEC

Zcash 12 GPU calculator

Now, better than Monero, but worse than Ethereum. Well, it's clear where most GPU power will go in case Ethereum implements  PoS protocol in 2018/

Red Cafe Tbilisi (Near Marjanishvili Theatre)

9 December, 2017 | Restaurant reviews | 35 seen

Red Cafe Tbilisi is another interesting place to visit if you are looking for an all-day brunch menu. It seems that lately, brunch menus have been very popular across Tbilisi restaurants.

Stylish, elegant. Pretty interesting menu items. One of the rare places not serving Turkish coffee, even when I asked to make one especially for me. Instead of Turkish coffee, you can get here some Ethiopian, as I'm not a coffee geek I don't care is it Ethiopian, Colombian or Arabica. But yes, for those of you looking for a place where to enjoy an Ethiopian coffee in Tbilisi - think Red Cafe.

It's hard to understand why this pace is named Red, as I didn't find much red in exterior or interior. And that's good - I would probably avoid visiting a place with red walls or ceiling (not good for vestibular apparatus).

Interior at Red Cafe

Now, what I was really surprised was the food items on the brunch menu. A typical burger with Georgian spices and seasoning. I did dare to order such, and  - well - burgers are burgers, it's not advisable to experiment with them. It was OK, but I wouldn't try it again. Instead of a juicy meatball  - a chicken with garlic sauce. Well - at least it was said it will be a Georgian style burger. I did get what I ordered. 

Georgian style burger at Red Cafe

French fries seasoned with Tkemali, instead of ketchup. Well, original no doubts. Does it taste good? Sure! Does it tastes like a burger with french fries? No!

Lobio in pot with cornbread and jonjoli.

Well, a typical Georgian cuisine. Delicious.

Building a 12 GPU Ethereum Mining Rig From Scratch - Part 1: Ordering Details

8 December, 2017 | Servers | 44 seen

I love testing ideas and even more than just testing new ideas I love testing them using Minimum viable product approach.  

I've been in a crypto craze for a while already - started with buy and hold, added little speculative trades, tried an ICO and now even considering to start mining. Totally insane? Well, I can only agree!

In fact, that doesn't even sound like me - you see, I like buying and holding, I even enjoy doing a few swing trades once in a while, but to run a mining rig? Totally not me. It sounds like a lot of hassle to me. 

But still - starting a mining - is the latest crazy idea I've been thinking lately. And here you go, just ordered some goodies from Amazon.

Inspiration for ordering these goodies comes from these two great articles (make sure to read them out)

• Affordable 12 GPU Mining Rig: Monero, Vertcoin, Bitcoin Gold & Ethereum
• Silent Ethereum Mining On EVGA GeForce GTX 1060 at 22 MH/s

In short, when looking for most affordable options for GPU mining rig I was worried about two positions, motherboard and graphics cards.

Luckily there is a great motherboard priced just a little bit above $200 with up to 13 GPU - ASRock H110 Pro BTC+ 13GPU Mining Motherboard CryptoCurrency 

When speaking about graphics cards I was struck between EVGA GeForce GTX 1060  6GB GDDR5 and ZOTAC GeForce GTX 1070 Mini 8GB GDDR5 

After a brief rethinking I decided to stick with the cheaper EVGA GeForce GTX 1060  6GB GDDR5 card:

So here comes my shopping list:

A quick note: Items listed below contains affiliate links to Amazon.com, by clicking on links on this page and by making a purchase on Amazon site, I will earn an affiliate income at no cost to you

• Kingston Technology KVR21N15S8/4 ValueRAM 4GB 2133MHz DDR4 Computer Internal Memory ($49.99)
• EVGA GeForce GTX 1060 SC GAMING, ACX 2.0 (Single Fan), 6GB GDDR5, DX12 OSD Support (PXOC), Only 6.8 Inches Graphics Card 06G-P4-6163-KR ($274.99)
• ASRock H110 Pro BTC+ 13GPU Mining Motherboard CryptoCurrency ($219.95)
• Kingston Digital, Inc. 120GB A400 SATA 3 2.5 Solid State Drive SA400S37/120G 2.5" SA400S37/120G ($49.99)
• MintCell 6-Pack PCIe 4-Pin MOLEX PCI-E 16x to 1x Powered Riser Adapter Card w/ 60cm USB 3.0 Extension Cable & MOLEX to SATA Power Cable - GPU Riser Adapter Ethereum Mining ETH + 2 MintCell Cable Ties ($45.95)
• EVGA 1000 GQ, 80+ GOLD 1000W, Semi Modular, EVGA ECO Mode, 5 Year Warranty, Power Supply 210-GQ-1000-V1 ($169.99)
• Intel CPU BX80662G3900 Celeron G3900 2.80Ghz 2M LGA1151 2C/2T Skylake Retail ($45.18)

Total: $856.04

Apparently, I purchased two 120GB SSD. As in total, I paid $ 906.  Well, not a big issue as there are never too few SSD. I will put this SSD in one of our office PCs as a backup drive. 

Now, as you can see I've paid about $850 for the bare minimum with just one EVGA Geoforce GTX 1060 6GB card. I didn't order more cards - as I was looking for a minimum viable product approach, purchasing just the bare minimum to setup and run a mining rig, at the start with just one GPU. Later, if things will turn out good, I plan to add a new GPU once per month, kind of dollar cost averaging, the same approach I'm using to buy coins once in a month, see: Dollar-Cost Averaging as part of Cryptocurrency Portfolio . This time instead of buying more coins I plan to buy more graphics cards.  Sounds crazy? Probably it is!

If you would purchase 12 GPU all at once, such mining rig would cost you $3,880.93. Yikes, a pretty huge investment in a hobby experiment. 

Now, as I have access to "cheap" electricity here in Georgia, at about $0,06 per kWh, I did simple calculations, assuming 22 MH/S per GPU

As of writting this - Mining metrics are calculated based on a network hash rate of 113,391 GH/s and using a ETH - USD exchange rate of 1 ETH = $ 421.43. These figures vary based on the total network hash rate and on the ETH to USD conversion rate. Block reward is fixed at 3 ETH and future block reward reductions are not taken into account. The average block time used in the calculation is 15 seconds. The electricity price used in generating these metrics is $ 0.06 per kWh.

It would ask me about 22 months just to get my investment back on this mining rig if I would decide to stick with just one GPU.

As I'm planning to add at least one more new GPU to the rig per month I can see that with more GPU's connected mining ethereum seems really tempting. Getting back an investment in just 8 and a half months (with 12 GPU) to me sounds like a 50% profit in a year. 

Lenovo Ideapad 320-15ISK (Intel Core i3) Laptop Review

7 December, 2017 | Gadget Reviews | 38 seen

Bought this Lenovo Idepad laptop for the use at our Tbilisi office.

As recently we bought a few Desktop PC's with Intel Core i3 processors for transcription projects, for me it was important to have an office laptop with the same or similar parameters.

Top 20 Budget Class (Intel Core 3) Laptops / Notebooks

Ideapad 320 series comes with up to top-of-the-line 7th Gen Intel® Core™ i7 processing, plus up to 16 GB DDR4 (for this model Intel Core i3 and 4 GB DDR) memory, guarantee lightning-fast responsiveness and reliable performance. Run multiple programs simultaneously, and transition seamlessly between web tabs — you'll be able to multitask with ease.

Lenovo Ideapad 320-15ISK

Everything about the IdeaPad 320 is designed to simplify your life. It will handle any task with ease, thanks to powerful processing and discrete graphics options. Preloaded with Windows 10 Home, you'll have the personal assistance of Cortana, designed to help open apps and answer your questions — whether typed or spoken. From the new streamlined design to a cleaner desktop interface, you'll enjoy the simplicity that IdeaPad 320 offers.

Unfortunately, the model I bought at Tbilisi Alta Ok shop, the laptop comes with a Free DOS and I had to install Windows 10 separate.

Lenovo Ideapad 320-15ISK with Windows 10 Installed

Technical details: