We have almost completely switched from Minergate and nanopool to NiceHash.  Minergate has a nice interface but their software just does not produce good hash rates and is windows based.  Mining XMR sgminer produces double the hash rate that Minergate software produces.  Windows based software tends to be much less stable than linux based systems and one thing you want for your mining operation is stability and performance.  So from Minergate we shifted to nanopool XMR.  Running sgminer there was alright but you have to mine 1 full XMR to see any payout.  At this point in the operation my miners are profitable but until we get a little bigger a more frequent payout is desirable.  So this brings us to Nicehash.  Great thing is you get paid in bitcoin regardless of what currency you are mining and payouts are every .001-.002 bitcoin to my external wallet.  So far the only real issue again is their software is windows based.  Running on windows 10 was horrible because its constantly updating…rebooting and screwing up the video drivers.  After a while of this nasty behavior we switched back to 7 and disabled updates….why not do that on 10 you ask?  Try disabling windows update on 10.  We even tested with an unregistered install and could not get it to stop updating…so without hacking windows update….its just easier to use 7 for the RX 550 and RX 560.  The RX 460 are happily mining on Ubuntu 16.04….yes a little more difficult to get up and running…but once they are…they just run.  Last night I switched the equihash mining over from sgminer at a hash rate of about 70-75sol/s per gpu to claymore zcash miner 12.6 because its producing 125-130sol/s per card so yes its worth paying his dev fee of 1%.

Supposedly the RX 5xx series does work with the linux drivers now so we will be revisiting that in the near future.  I am thinking there are a couple of steps that AMD left out of the instructions in the newer versions was my problem…but we shall see.

We’ll be revisiting this topic because I just discovered that the wolf miner apparently is no longer or has been absorbed into something else.  So here’s another quick way to get started.  XMRIG has both support for linux and windows.  I’m using this primarily on ubuntu machines.

Download

• Binary releases: https://github.com/xmrig/xmrig/releases
• Git tree: https://github.com/xmrig/xmrig.git
  • Clone with git clone https://github.com/xmrig/xmrig.git 🔨 Build instructions.

Usage

Basic example

xmrig.exe -o pool.monero.hashvault.pro:5555 -u YOUR_WALLET -p x -k

Failover

xmrig.exe -o pool.monero.hashvault.pro:5555 -u YOUR_WALLET1 -p x -k -o pool.supportxmr.com:5555 -u YOUR_WALLET2 -p x -k

For failover you can add multiple pools, maximum count not limited.

Options

  -a, --algo=ALGO          cryptonight (default) or cryptonight-lite
  -o, --url=URL            URL of mining server
  -O, --userpass=U:P       username:password pair for mining server
  -u, --user=USERNAME      username for mining server
  -p, --pass=PASSWORD      password for mining server
  -t, --threads=N          number of miner threads
  -v, --av=N               algorithm variation, 0 auto select
  -k, --keepalive          send keepalived for prevent timeout (need pool support)
  -r, --retries=N          number of times to retry before switch to backup server (default: 5)
  -R, --retry-pause=N      time to pause between retries (default: 5)
      --cpu-affinity       set process affinity to CPU core(s), mask 0x3 for cores 0 and 1
      --cpu-priority       set process priority (0 idle, 2 normal to 5 highest)
      --no-huge-pages      disable huge pages support
      --no-color           disable colored output
      --donate-level=N     donate level, default 5% (5 minutes in 100 minutes)
      --user-agent         set custom user-agent string for pool
  -B, --background         run the miner in the background
  -c, --config=FILE        load a JSON-format configuration file
  -l, --log-file=FILE      log all output to a file
      --max-cpu-usage=N    maximum CPU usage for automatic threads mode (default 75)
      --safe               safe adjust threads and av settings for current CPU
      --nicehash           enable nicehash/xmrig-proxy support
      --print-time=N       print hashrate report every N seconds
      --api-port=N         port for the miner API
      --api-access-token=T access token for API
      --api-worker-id=ID   custom worker-id for API
  -h, --help               display this help and exit
  -V, --version            output version information and exit

Also you can use configuration via config file, default config.json. You can load multiple config files and combine it with command line options.

Algorithm variations

Since version 0.8.0.

• --av=1 For CPUs with hardware AES.
• --av=2 Lower power mode (double hash) of 1.
• --av=3 Software AES implementation.
• --av=4 Lower power mode (double hash) of 3.

Common Issues

HUGE PAGES unavailable

• Run XMRig as Administrator.
• Since version 0.8.0 XMRig automatically enables SeLockMemoryPrivilege for current user, but reboot or sign out still required. Manual instruction.

Other information

• No HTTP support, only stratum protocol support.
• No TLS support.
• Default donation 5% (5 minutes in 100 minutes) can be reduced to 1% via command line option --donate-level.

CPU mining performance

• Intel i7-7700 – 307 H/s (4 threads)
• AMD Ryzen 7 1700X – 560 H/s (8 threads)

Please note performance is highly dependent on system load. The numbers above are obtained on an idle system. Tasks heavily using a processor cache, such as video playback, can greatly degrade hashrate. Optimal number of threads depends on the size of the L3 cache of a processor, 1 thread requires 2 MB of cache.

Maximum performance checklist

• Idle operating system.
• Do not exceed optimal thread count.
• Use modern CPUs with AES-NI instruction set.
• Try setup optimal cpu affinity.
• Enable fast memory (Large/Huge pages).

We currently have one full time miner that is running windows 10.  While I much prefer a Linux system to mine with. Until I get the device drivers for the RX 550 and RX 560 to work I’m stuck with windows.  The windows 10 miner in question currently has 3 RX 550 and 1 RX 560 mining with SG Miner 5.5.5.  With its current settings its averaging 1.15x H/s.  I think there is probably still some room for improvement without overclocking/flashing bios etc.  Using Minergate software to mine with it worked but was pretty unstable.  Every few hours would randomly drop a GPU sometimes two.  Yes a reboot brought everything back.  Its the lost productivity I have a problem with and that’s where we switched over to SG Miner 5.5.5.  It is more stable but doesn’t seem like its going to be as stable as the linux systems have been thus far.  On another note on some GPUs I have observed that Minergate while very easy to get going may only hash at half the rate I get with SG Miner on a linux system.