Quote from: greasycajun on March 05, 2018, 02:45:35 AM

I am new to the mining arena. I am having my mining rig delivered in a few days. I'm starting with 2x MSI RX580 8GB. It is amazing how complex this environment is. It definitely isn't build a PC, install software and you're off to the races.

I would really appreciate any help/tips/advice that anyone is willing to provide. I don't even know if I'm asking the right questions, but I'll try my best.

I think I am going to go with Windows, even though I'm a UNIX/Linux guy by trade and heart. I simply see more R&D and support with the Windows drivers and bios. I really couldn't find overclocking and other options on Ubuntu or other flavors. Please correct me if I'm wrong. (Both OS's are free to me, as I work in the IT industry)

Should I join a pool or do solo mining. I have read the cons, and I believe I should go with a pool like Nanopool or Ethermine. I see that there are different rates, but these two seem to be very popular.

All of this research and I haven't even gotten to the wallet and software.

Regarding the wallet, I planned on using Metamask or one of my exchange wallets. The reason I am thinking exchange, is so I can trade profits.

Software seems to range everywhere. Nicehash, Claymore Dual miner, ethminer, and I even have the choice to pay $2 per month for SMOS. I have even seen Neoscrypt Claymore.

Can someone simply help me narrow down some of these choices? I have been researching for quite a while and am getting quite overwhelmed.

Thanks in advance,

Hi greasycajun, welcome to mining community. I'm would like to go step-by-step through all your concerns.
I think you could start with window first, it's quite easy on setting everything. Actually, I have worked on UNIX for a while, some of my rigs are running in Ubuntu, it could give a bit better hashrate and stable. But it's not friendly for my friend who sometime need to check the rigs in our mini farm.

I suggest you join a pool, for ETH, I think Nanopool and Ethermine are the most popular pools: https://ethermine.org/ and https://eth.nanopool.org/

About the wallet: Metamask, Myetherwallet, hardware wallet or even exchange wallet, all are ok, for me I'm using hardware wallet because I mined ETH for holding in long term.

About software: I think Claymore miner should be the best. You may think about Neoscrypt or other algorithms which have dedicated miner, but RX580 should do best on Ethas algo. For Claymore miner, you could find it here: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1433925.0

Also, if you're going with Window OS, you may think about some below settings:

- Window Power options: Never put computer to sleep - High performance plan
- Window update: I turn it off.
- Virtual memory: I set innitial size = 3Gb, maximum = 16 Gb
- Miner startup: Create miner shortcut, then put it to Window startup folder which you could find by tying: Shell:startup
- Reduce CPU wastage (optional): turn off microsoft software protection platform service

You may try to start, build it simple, and ask here, I think you will figure out a lot of interesting things Cheesy

And you may take some references in this channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/BitsBeTrippin/videos