Hey Jingles,

Well, some of what you asked is in the first post and READMEs. But quickly:

Zadig: is the only driver you can use. Windows chooses the wrong one.

Pools: this is a hobby. You aren't likely ever to make any money on sticks. However, if you mine solo, you *may* hit the jackpot and get 12.5 BTC for yourself. The odds are weak, but (and I haven't checked this) probably better than Lotto or Big Ball and trillions have been "invested" into that. If you mine mmpool, for example, and someone hits, it's small so you may make a bit of money there, too. Some (many, most?) of the stickminers point to mmpool.org for the fun and camaraderie.  Overall, run the numbers or read around, stick mining is just for fun and to learn. In my case, my nephew has stickminers pointed to mmpool and an old S3+ pointed to ckpool.

If you can use the word "marginally" as you did in your post, you can truly learn how small a margin can be with stick miners. HA! Similarly, you mentioned "significance" "worthwhile", and "productivity"; the most honest answer is that they aren't significant, worthwhile, or productive unless you enjoy them as a hobby that may, someday, make you a few bucks. Hell, donate whatever dust you make to the sidehack's friend's medical bills: https://www.gofundme.com/lauras-eating-disorder-recovery and along with generating some heat for your home this winter, you've done a good thing. Your best bet for "optimal" is to get the sticks tuned so that they run as efficiently as possible as at high a frequency as possible at as low a voltage as possible without throwing many hardware errors.

Frequency: First post. For example:


See that tag at the end? There is a chart, in the first post under expected performance, Vcore/Freq. that will give you some idea what you can do.

Work Reports: I don't have time to explain, but that miner isn't likely set up correctly.

Gotta go, but seriously, read the first post carefully, skipping all the linux stuff and the README in detail.

Best of luck!