6 ms·

Nobody has used a GPU to mine Bitcoin in a decade now.

by RL_Quine 4y ago

sumy23 4y ago
GPUs are used for eth. There is clearly a broad downturn in the mining sector.
- RL_Quine 4y ago
  Ethereum is mostly mined using custom hardware, it's not graphics cards really, certainly nothing you could re-sell to anybody who expects to play Bioshock or whatever. Very small operations are people buying and using actual consumer GPUs, but they tend to be absolutely destroyed by the process and then sold to unwitting buyers. I've sorted through literal milk crates of GPUs before to find a single one which could reliably display a video output after they had been used in a mining operation.
  - latchkey 4y ago
    > Ethereum is mostly mined using custom hardware Very large ETH miner here, we use GPUs. Mostly 4-5 year old tech too. Unlike BTC, ETH does not require the latest hardware because the algo, ethash, is memory bound. This is a great explainer [1]. You may be implying that the majority of the network is custom ASICs. I doubt it is more than about 30%, if that. Come august, all the ones with 5gb of ram will also disappear off the network because of DAG growth. GPUs are also not destroyed by using them. I've got GPUs sitting in the worst possible conditions, running just fine for many years now. We have started to change the thermal paste on the hot ones though... it dries out. I don't know what you were dealing with, but that sounds like something else caused the failures as the chips themselves don't wear out like that. [1] https://www.vijaypradeep.com/blog/2017-04-28-ethereums-memory-hardness-explained https://www.vijaypradeep.com/blog/2017-04-28-ethereums-memor...
    - RL_Quine 4y ago
      It does absolutely destroy the hardware through, even very early mining farms had the sole issue of the fans in the cards burning through their bearings. A local electronics recycler had an entire crate of burned out ATX PSUs from some local mining operation, every single one of them had the fan melted off the hub. It's worth being aware that all silicon chips are temporary anyway, they all die to electron migration eventually.
      - latchkey 4y ago
        I don't have fans on my cards. PSUs are generally shit (hand soldered) and that's not what we are talking about here.
        dropnerd 4y ago
        do most miners choose to run cards without fans because of known issues?
        latchkey 4y ago
        The smart ones do. Fans are moving parts and require electricity. We also put 12 cards in a case instead of the usual 8 or 9. This means fewer other parts too... psus, mobos, ram, ssd, case fans... all of which use power.
  - razemio 4y ago
    That is not true. I have 2 1060s and 2 580RX running 24/7 since 2 years. I recently used one to compensate for my broken gaming GPU. Everything works no issues so far. Guess it always depends but it is not like 2 years of mining will render a GPU useless.
    - RL_Quine 4y ago
      You're within the "small miners" part of my comment.
      - razemio 4y ago
        You wrote they get "absolutely destroyed by the process". I do not understand, why you wrote this. It is not true. The stress on the gpu might even be higher while gaming, depending how the gpu is tuned.
        latchkey 4y ago
        I agree with you, he's totally wrong. In fact, smart miners overclock/undervolt their gpus... so they are running faster, but with less power. Power is what creates heat and heat is what hurts things. Except it really doesn't. Fans certainly die out though... we go through a lot of those on our cases. PSUs are also generally failure prone since they tend to be hand soldered on the insides.
  - viraptor 4y ago
    > using actual consumer GPUs, but they tend to be absolutely destroyed by the process and then sold to unwitting buyers This is such an urban legend. There's been quite a few tech people testing this and there's countless articles on the topic. In short - I have not seen a single one which actually found real significant issues with the hardware, even if some are listed in theory. If this was common at least one of them would buy a severely degraded batch, or we'd see some proven report about this.
bradknowles 4y ago
Not in bulk, no. But I'm sure there's at least a few people playing around with it on GPUs.
- latchkey 4y ago
  That's like saying people mine BTC with pencil and paper [1]. [1] http://www.righto.com/2014/09/mining-bitcoin-with-pencil-and-paper.html http://www.righto.com/2014/09/mining-bitcoin-with-pencil-and...
  - bradknowles 4y ago
    Not at all. It's people who want to play around with the technology, but can't afford FPGAs or ASICS to do the job. Or maybe they could afford FPGAs or ASICS, but they want to be able to see more of what's going on behind the curtain. Not a huge number of people, no. But then a lot of services on the Internet have a long tail.
    - thaumasiotes 4y ago
      But from what you describe, it's an open question whether anyone has used a GPU to mine bitcoin in the last ten years, as opposed to just setting a GPU to work on the kinds of problems involved in mining bitcoin. If you never mine any bitcoin, are your tools being used to mine bitcoin?
      - bradknowles 4y ago
        The bitcoin market is big enough, and there are enough places where power is free and the hardware is already paid for, that I am quite certain there's at least a few people still mining bitcoin today on GPUs. Then there's the educational market, where it's less important that people mine bitcoin to earn money, and more about learning how bitcoin works by actually running the code. So, no -- I don't think that's actually an open question at all. I don't have any proof, but then neither do you. And all I'd have to do to create my proof would be to spin up my own machine with a GPU and use it to mine bitcoin for a while. Maybe on a free AWS account or something. Not that I'd actually do that, but it would be possible.
_0w8t 4y ago
In Norway until recently the electricity was cheap. So many apartments and even houses in suburbs use resistive heating as installing heat pumps was not profitable. But then in winter one can just mine crypto coins on GPU for free to heat the home. Granted the wast majority of miners work on alt coins but some do try their luck with bitcoins.
- TomSwirly 4y ago
  Stealing from society and burning fossil fuels in order to profit yourself. It's disgusting.
  - rag-hav 4y ago
    How are they stealing from soceity?
  - icoder 4y ago
    This is achtually the nichest of niches where mining bitcoin is not stealing from Society: the existing alternative resisting heating, would produce as much heat per watt as mining bitcoin would. Sure, there's the question of using the hardware for this purpose, and possibly this dampens the transition to heat pumps, but it's the 'least immoral' mining situation I've heard of so far.
  - kzrdude 4y ago
    Norwegian power production is to 90%+ hydro power. Norway is under the NO column in this table. https://www.statnett.no/en/for-stakeholders-in-the-power-industry/data-from-the-power-system/#nordic-power-balance https://www.statnett.no/en/for-stakeholders-in-the-power-ind...
  - mahkeiro 4y ago
    It's not in Norway that they are burning fuel to produce electricity…
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]

Nobody has used a GPU to mine Bitcoin in a decade now.

sumy23 4y ago

GPUs are used for eth. There is clearly a broad downturn in the mining sector.

RL_Quine 4y ago
Ethereum is mostly mined using custom hardware, it's not graphics cards really, certainly nothing you could re-sell to anybody who expects to play Bioshock or whatever. Very small operations are people buying and using actual consumer GPUs, but they tend to be absolutely destroyed by the process and then sold to unwitting buyers. I've sorted through literal milk crates of GPUs before to find a single one which could reliably display a video output after they had been used in a mining operation.
- latchkey 4y ago
  > Ethereum is mostly mined using custom hardware Very large ETH miner here, we use GPUs. Mostly 4-5 year old tech too. Unlike BTC, ETH does not require the latest hardware because the algo, ethash, is memory bound. This is a great explainer [1]. You may be implying that the majority of the network is custom ASICs. I doubt it is more than about 30%, if that. Come august, all the ones with 5gb of ram will also disappear off the network because of DAG growth. GPUs are also not destroyed by using them. I've got GPUs sitting in the worst possible conditions, running just fine for many years now. We have started to change the thermal paste on the hot ones though... it dries out. I don't know what you were dealing with, but that sounds like something else caused the failures as the chips themselves don't wear out like that. [1] https://www.vijaypradeep.com/blog/2017-04-28-ethereums-memory-hardness-explained https://www.vijaypradeep.com/blog/2017-04-28-ethereums-memor...
  - RL_Quine 4y ago
    It does absolutely destroy the hardware through, even very early mining farms had the sole issue of the fans in the cards burning through their bearings. A local electronics recycler had an entire crate of burned out ATX PSUs from some local mining operation, every single one of them had the fan melted off the hub. It's worth being aware that all silicon chips are temporary anyway, they all die to electron migration eventually.
    - latchkey 4y ago
      I don't have fans on my cards. PSUs are generally shit (hand soldered) and that's not what we are talking about here.
      - dropnerd 4y ago
        do most miners choose to run cards without fans because of known issues?
        latchkey 4y ago
        The smart ones do. Fans are moving parts and require electricity. We also put 12 cards in a case instead of the usual 8 or 9. This means fewer other parts too... psus, mobos, ram, ssd, case fans... all of which use power.
- razemio 4y ago
  That is not true. I have 2 1060s and 2 580RX running 24/7 since 2 years. I recently used one to compensate for my broken gaming GPU. Everything works no issues so far. Guess it always depends but it is not like 2 years of mining will render a GPU useless.
  - RL_Quine 4y ago
    You're within the "small miners" part of my comment.
    - razemio 4y ago
      You wrote they get "absolutely destroyed by the process". I do not understand, why you wrote this. It is not true. The stress on the gpu might even be higher while gaming, depending how the gpu is tuned.
      - latchkey 4y ago
        I agree with you, he's totally wrong. In fact, smart miners overclock/undervolt their gpus... so they are running faster, but with less power. Power is what creates heat and heat is what hurts things. Except it really doesn't. Fans certainly die out though... we go through a lot of those on our cases. PSUs are also generally failure prone since they tend to be hand soldered on the insides.
- viraptor 4y ago
  > using actual consumer GPUs, but they tend to be absolutely destroyed by the process and then sold to unwitting buyers This is such an urban legend. There's been quite a few tech people testing this and there's countless articles on the topic. In short - I have not seen a single one which actually found real significant issues with the hardware, even if some are listed in theory. If this was common at least one of them would buy a severely degraded batch, or we'd see some proven report about this.

bradknowles 4y ago

Not in bulk, no. But I'm sure there's at least a few people playing around with it on GPUs.

latchkey 4y ago
That's like saying people mine BTC with pencil and paper [1]. [1] http://www.righto.com/2014/09/mining-bitcoin-with-pencil-and-paper.html http://www.righto.com/2014/09/mining-bitcoin-with-pencil-and...
- bradknowles 4y ago
  Not at all. It's people who want to play around with the technology, but can't afford FPGAs or ASICS to do the job. Or maybe they could afford FPGAs or ASICS, but they want to be able to see more of what's going on behind the curtain. Not a huge number of people, no. But then a lot of services on the Internet have a long tail.
  - thaumasiotes 4y ago
    But from what you describe, it's an open question whether anyone has used a GPU to mine bitcoin in the last ten years, as opposed to just setting a GPU to work on the kinds of problems involved in mining bitcoin. If you never mine any bitcoin, are your tools being used to mine bitcoin?
    - bradknowles 4y ago
      The bitcoin market is big enough, and there are enough places where power is free and the hardware is already paid for, that I am quite certain there's at least a few people still mining bitcoin today on GPUs. Then there's the educational market, where it's less important that people mine bitcoin to earn money, and more about learning how bitcoin works by actually running the code. So, no -- I don't think that's actually an open question at all. I don't have any proof, but then neither do you. And all I'd have to do to create my proof would be to spin up my own machine with a GPU and use it to mine bitcoin for a while. Maybe on a free AWS account or something. Not that I'd actually do that, but it would be possible.

_0w8t 4y ago

In Norway until recently the electricity was cheap. So many apartments and even houses in suburbs use resistive heating as installing heat pumps was not profitable. But then in winter one can just mine crypto coins on GPU for free to heat the home. Granted the wast majority of miners work on alt coins but some do try their luck with bitcoins.

TomSwirly 4y ago
Stealing from society and burning fossil fuels in order to profit yourself. It's disgusting.
- rag-hav 4y ago
  How are they stealing from soceity?
- icoder 4y ago
  This is achtually the nichest of niches where mining bitcoin is not stealing from Society: the existing alternative resisting heating, would produce as much heat per watt as mining bitcoin would. Sure, there's the question of using the hardware for this purpose, and possibly this dampens the transition to heat pumps, but it's the 'least immoral' mining situation I've heard of so far.
- kzrdude 4y ago
  Norwegian power production is to 90%+ hydro power. Norway is under the NO column in this table. https://www.statnett.no/en/for-stakeholders-in-the-power-industry/data-from-the-power-system/#nordic-power-balance https://www.statnett.no/en/for-stakeholders-in-the-power-ind...
- mahkeiro 4y ago
  It's not in Norway that they are burning fuel to produce electricity…
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]