I decided to go off-topic a bit and write on my own experience about a question I ask myself when started with Ethereum, how to mine Ethereum using a GPU.
For me, it toke me some time to read several guides till I manage to do it, so I decided to create a full easy to use guide about this, and to publish in on my site. Happy reading.
How to mine Ethereum what you need to start:
Today, to mine Ethereum you need to have at least one strong GPU card installed on your system. For the needs on this guide I will use AMD Radeon RX 570 4GB graphic card.
Please note that there are some RX 570 GPU cards, I am using the Asus STRIX RADEON RX570 Gaming OC, its a 4GB card. There are other card you can use but for this guide I am talking about the card I have.
We are goin to use Nano Pool as our pool source for Ethereum mining, I will show you how to do this latter on.
List of stuff you need and I will talk about:
- Windows 10: This is the system I works on. I have it with 16GB memory but 4GB will be enough for this to work.
- GPU: For this guide I will use my RX 570, for me the rx 570 hashrate Ethereum is 22.5 Mh/s.
- Ethereum wallet: We need this to store the Ethereum coins we get for mining Ethereum.
- Claymores: This is the software we use to actually mine Ethereum .
- Nanopool.org Website: This is the site that contain the pool we are using to mine. Once the miner start to mine you will be able to see data related to your Ethereum mining.
Windows 10:
I am adding information on windows 10 as I am using windows 10 for my mining machine. The second reasonis the drivers, after assembling the card into the main board and start my computer Windows 10 installed a driver for that GPU and it looks great, but when I start mining I got a low hashrate of only 15 Mh/h.
You need to download a driver update for your GPU to get a better hashrate result. In my case I use the following driver Radeon Software Crimson ReLive Edition Beta for Blockchain Compute Driver for Windows and my hash rate climb to 22.5 Mh/h. Cool!
The Radeon RX 570 GPU:
It is not the best GPU to use but, this is what I have so I am talking about it. If you search for the best GPU for mining Ethereum you will find a list of recommended card. The main issue with the card is that Ethereum mining hardware is not cheap. GPU cards that good for mining are more expensive then others mainly from that reason even if they are older card.
You might find one of Amazon or eBay at a reasonable price.
As mention before this is a how to mine Ethereum using a GPU, CPU is not good enough today for Ethereum mining and this is the GPU i have.
Important to know in GPU is not only its price, its hash rate is important and also the amount of power it take (Kwat), you do not want to hate up losing money due to expensive electricity bill! Keep this in mine when buying a mining GPU.
Ethereum wallet:
I use my ether wallet as my wallet, you are free to use any other wallet you want, the important things are to safe your data, in this web site after you create a wallet you need to save into a text, word or excel file the following information:
- KeyPass: a long string of numbers with A till F letters.
- The wallet address: String that start with 0xD.
- Password: The one you use to create your KeyPass (it encrypts your private key).
Once you have this, you can go to the next step, the software we use to mine.
Claymores miner software:
Please download the Claymores software from there GitHub website, you will have to update a file name start.bat to be able to use your info to start it (the file might be with another name in new version of the software like: start_only_etc.bat).
If you have a list of setx in the bat file, this is great.
If not, please add the following lines to the bat file:
setx GPU_FORCE_64BIT_PTR 0
setx GPU_MAX_HEAP_SIZE 100
setx GPU_USE_SYNC_OBJECTS 1
setx GPU_MAX_ALLOC_PERCENT 100
setx GPU_SINGLE_ALLOC_PERCENT 100
EthDcrMiner64.exe -epool etc-eu1.nanopool.org:19999 -ewal YOUR_WALLET_ADDRESS/YOUR_WORKER/YOUR_EMAIL -epsw x -mode 1 -ftime 10
This is the line from my start.bat file, please note I remove the full of the wallet address and my email.
EthDcrMiner64.exe -epool eth-eu1.nanopool.org:9999 -ewal 0xdWALLET.EthWMine1/email@email.com -epsw x -mode 1 -ftime 10
Please pay attention for the following:
- Your wallet is the string that start with 0xd.
- There is a dot (.) between your wallet and your miner name.
- The miner name can be any name you want.
- There is a slash ( / ) between your miner and your email.
- I try to use it without an email and it did not work!
Every thing is ready to start mining, you can run your bat file, or open the command prompt to run it from there.
Here is how:
- Windows Key +R
- Type CMD and press enter.
- Navigate to the Claymores folder
- type start.bat and press enter.
If you have a firewall, installed or n your modem/router you may need to open the port that Claymores is using.
The Nanopool.org Website:
Now that your miner is ready and running, you want to see that there is a progress and that you have your Ethereum coin in your wallet. You need to go into the nanopool site into your wallet to see the progress.
The link for that is https://eth.nanopool.org/account/YOUR WALLET ADDRESS (start with 0xd)
Open this page and wait for your result, please note that you need to wait till the first share to see some results.
I hope this unofficial guide regarding how to mine Ethereum with GPU on Window 10 helps you, and now it is your time to start mining and share this guide, if you like it.