Welcome back to Confessions of a Crypto Miner… my bi-weekly column about a crypto miner from 2013 trying to get caught up with the latest standards. I'm presently mining and reporting to you from a dual GTX 1080 based rig mining zCash.

In the last entry, I got my hardware & software set up and started mining. If you were monitoring the miner via the stats link, you may have noticed a few offline moments 2-3 days ago. This was due to me installing a nice new power monitoring setup and taking some measurements at different settings, all with the goal of finding the most efficient way to run the miner long term, to maximize profits. We now have all the data on hand and can now draw conclusions from it. There are two things I'd like to investigate with this article: 240 VAC's impact on power draw, and how the graphics card power limit setting affects profit margins.

Maingear, an award-winning PC system integrator of custom gaming desktops, is partnering with popular eSports brand Unikrn to bring UnikoinGold (UKG) crypto-mining capable PCs to life. The new family of PCs currently consists of two models: the Maingear ACM (Advanced Crypto Miner) and the Maingear ACM PRO. Although Maingear hasn't officially disclosed the technical specifications, the product page gives us a glimpse of the upcoming PCs. The systems are housed inside a spectacular cube-shaped chassis with unique MARC II artwork and gorgeous automotive paint finishes. The ACM model can support up to six graphics cards. Additionally, the ACM PRO model provides additional options for expansion and comes in a rack mountable chassis. Although the systems are designed to mine UnikoinGold, they can be employed to mine Ethereum as well. Both models will be available later this year.

Apart from the new partnership with Unikrn, Maingear also announced that they now accept UnikoinGold as a payment option for their products. From this point forward, their products will come with an option to connect to Unikrn Connekt where gamers can earn UnikoinGold for playing ranked matches while also tracking their statistics and progress in their favorite games.

As I have mentioned on the forums here at TechPowerUp a few times, I was an active crypto-miner during one of the most tumultuous times in crypto history: The period between 2013 and 2015. Rather than tell you a long and sad story, I will say just this: I ended up with a net loss by the end of this era, and it wasn't a good time to be an investor if you didn't like roller coaster rides. The reasons I lost money are many, but I think I can attribute them to primarily a lack of experience, a lack of written records, and really, a complete lack of a plan.

My New Plan
Yes, I'm planning on mining again. I've always been drawn to the tech, and I am in a much better position to do so now. Ironically, this time around, I'm not really in it for the money. I've already been there, done that, and it's too stressful for me. Having no end goal of riches doesn't set me up for failure. I think it is a more realistic mindset for taking on this project. It also gives me a chance to document my endeavor to the world, and to you, dear reader. I hope we all learn something here.

The Meltdown and Spectre vulnerabilities have been making many headlines lately. So far, security researchers have identified three variants. Variant 1 (CVE-2017-5753) and Variant 2 (CVE-2017-5715) are Spectre, while Variant 3 (CVE-2017-5754) is Meltdown. According to their security bulletin, NVIDIA has no reason to believe that their display driver is affected by Variant 3. In order to strengthen security against Variant 1 and 2, the company released their GeForce 390.65 driver earlier today, so NVIDIA graphics card owners can sleep better at night.

Experience tells us that some software patches come with performance hits, whether we like it or not. We were more than eager to find out if this was the case with NVIDIA's latest GeForce 390.65 driver. Therefore, we took to the task of benchmarking this revision against the previous GeForce 388.71 driver in 21 different games at the 1080p, 1440p, and 4K resolutions. We even threw in an Ethereum mining test for good measure. Our test system is powered by an Intel Core i7-8700K processor overclocked to 4.8 GHz, paired with G.Skill Trident-Z 3866 MHz 16 GB memory on an ASUS Maximus X Hero motherboard. We're running the latest BIOS, which includes fixes for Spectre, and Windows 10 64-bit with Fall Creators Update, fully updated, which includes the KB4056891 Meltdown Fix.

M&A Technology continues to innovate with the latest technology and is shipping its Manda Miner which can be configured as an Ethereum or ZCash mining server. The Manda Miner is available now. The Manda Miner is a purpose built, application specific server solution for the cryptocurrency market. It performs at ~200MH/s for Ethereum or ~2400H/s for ZCash. The system designed by experienced cryptocurrency systems engineers is assembled at an ISO certified factory in Texas with the highest quality materials available.

The Manda Miner is a data center ready, performance optimized cool and quiet running cryptocurrency mining server. The Manda Miner is FCC B verified and housed in a 4U chassis specifically for crypto-mining purposes functional as a standalone unit or as a data center cabinet rack-mountable unit. The system's eight high performance graphics cards are optimized to interface with a standard motherboard for manageability and high quality performance. The system utilizes a highly efficient power supply and cooling fans designed to ensure operational efficiency and reliability.

INNO3D, a leading manufacturer of awesome high-end multimedia components and various innovations enriching your life, introduces its new P104-100 Crypto-Mining Accelerator. The new range will be available in TWIN X2 edition. The P104-100 has been designed with no less than 40% more mining power than its predecessor allowing the miner to enhance ETH, ZEC, etc. number crunching to levels, that have never been seen before. The freshly forged radical comes packed with 11 Gbps GDDR5X memory, and 4GB memory for optimizing cryptocurrency calculations. By deploying the INNO3D P104-100, miners now enjoy the ultimate power and utilize best-in-class hash rate today.

Well, after users think they've closed their browsers, more specifically. Researchers form anti-malware provider Malwarebytes have discovered a new form of web-based cryptocurrency mining that has a stealth-like approach to running mining code, which might cause less attentive users' machines to keep mining even after their web browsers have been closed. This is done via an utterly simple method, really: upon opening a malicious web page that has been coded to make users' machines mine cryptocurrency, the web page opens a pop-up window that is minimized behind the Windows Taskbar's clock. It's ingeniously simple - but could be surprisingly hard to detect, and could mean that the mining process will actually keep on using CPU cycles and mining crypto indefinitely until the next system reboot.

BIOSTAR announces the availability of its Radeon RX Vega 64 VAVAT5VM88 graphics card in selected regions. The BIOSTAR RX Vega 64 epitomizes the best in high-end graphics with high resolutions, high frame rates and exceptional power efficiency with the all new Vega architecture. Building the ultimate gaming system with the recently introduced BIOSTAR RACING Z370GT6 motherboard for the new 8th generation Intel Core processors, makes these the perfect compliment.

BIOSTAR RADEON RX VEGA 64 (Air Cooling)
The Vega 64 is one of AMD's newest and most powerful graphics cards today featuring 8GB HBM2, the latest in graphics memory technology, with a 2048-bit memory interface and 4096 stream processors. It delivers smooth extreme gaming performance in the newest DirectX 12 and Vulkan games making it perfect for gaming and also for professional content creation. The Vega 64 also offers some of the highest hash rates in crypto mining, thanks to its powerful yet power efficient usage.

We've previously covered The Pirate Bay's usage of a web-based miner on users' machines without their knowledge or consent. We've even done a pretty extensive editorial on whether or not this could be the revenue model of the future. At the time, we came away with the conclusion that the problem isn't with the technology per se, but with the fact it's implemented by humans (and most problems do have their root cause in us humans after all, don't they?).

This seems to be such a case, since The Pirate Bay has now resumed their web-based mining activities with no Opt-out or, better yet, opt-in business model. Now, however, the code isn't being run in the site's core code, but is instead embedded on an advertisement script (yes, advertisements are still running parallel on The Pirate Bay). The most popular adblockers should be enough to stop this miner from ever running, anyway, but yes, there are still users who surf the web absent of any ad-blocking capabilities - and these should see some added processing spikes on their CPUs.

So, yes, the headline is accurate. We all know that cryptocurrency mining has now reached an all time high, which has affected availability and pricing of most graphics cards from both AMD and NVIDIA. Who doesn't want to make a quick buck here and there? So long as it's profitable, right?

Well, that kind of thinking has already brought the global mining power consumption to unprecedented levels (some might also say demented.) The two top cryptocurrencies right now (by market-cap), Bitcoin and Ethereum, are each responsible for 14.54 TWh and 4.69 TWh power consumption figures. As of now, Ethereum consumes almost as much power as the 120th most power-consuming country, Moldova, which has a population of around 3 million. Bitcoin, on the other hand, stands at 81st on the list, in-between Mozambique and Turkmenistan, the latter of which has a population estimated at 5.17 million people. Combined, Ethereum and Bitcoin consume more power than Syria, which had an estimated 2014 population above 17 million.

Quite a few motherboard manufacturers are designing boards for crypto-currency mining rigs. The idea behind these boards is to serve up as many PCI-Express add-on card slots as possible, so miners can wire those slots out through risers, and drive way more than 7 GPU/ASIC cards. This makes for a better investment than building additional machines for more than 7 cards. Crypto-currency mining isn't bandwidth-heavy, and so even PCI-Express x1 provides sufficient connectivity for mining cards. The H81A-BTC V20 from Colorful is a socket LGA1150 motherboard, which takes in old "Haswell" and "Broadwell" CPUs, a pair of DDR3 memory modules, and puts out seven PCI-Express slots, of which one is x16, and the rest x1. The board draws power from 6-pin PCIe and 4-pin Molex, besides 8-pin EPS and 24-pin ATX, to cope with add-on cards that don't have their own power sources.

Ah mining. The revival of an old craze. Who doesn't want to make their room's temperature increase to insane levels over the summer in order to cash in on the mining wagon? Who doesn't want to pull their hardware by the ankles and wrists, stretching it in utilization so as to maintain the PoW (proof of Work) cryptographic security in cryptocurrencies? Apparently, a not insignificant number of users and would-be miners does want that. That has, in turn, placed a whole lot of pressure on the graphics card market from both AMD and NVIDIA, with prices climbing and skyrocketing for graphics cards in the $200-$400 price ranges, as you know. It remains to be seen whether the flow of new miners decreases somewhat now, considering the recent market correction (read: dip) in the cryptocurrency market value (down around 42% from the all-time high of 357€ [~$400] of June 12th.)

After ASUS, it would seem like it's Sapphire's time to try and sway miners from their consumer-oriented, gaming graphics cards, through the launch of five different graphics cards models especially geared for mining. These are currently available for pre-order on Overclockers UK, and there are five different products in total, one based of RX 560 silicon, and four different takes on the RX 470 silicon (no, that's not a typo; it really is the 400 series.)