Ethereum Mining Guide

AMD GPUs - Windows Cryptocurrency

Mining Guide
 Disclaimer

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regarding investment.
 Table of Contents

1. Introduction: Windows 10 Ethereum Mining Guide for AMD GPUs

2. Motherboard
3. Windows 10 Pro
4. GPU drivers
5. BIOS mod
6. How to flash the new BIOS?
7. GPU Miner
8. Claymore 10.2
9. Overclock/Undervolt
10. Starting to mine at Windows startup
11. Managing mining rigs
 1. Introduction: Windows 10 Ethereum Mining Guide for AMD
GPUs (12 GPU supported)

I’m mining Ethereum for quite some time now. I have written this guide
to help you setup your own GPU for mining purposes. This is a collection of
my experiences with fixing various mining problems.

Please follow all the steps described in this guide by their order!
 2. Motherboard

What motherboard to use?

 For the 6 GPU mining rigs the best, cheapest and most reliable
motherboard is a H81 pro BTC 2.0. It works better than most very
expensive gaming motherboards like Z170 and Z270 Pro series.

 For the 12/13 GPU mining rigs, the best motherboard to use is a
ASRock H110 Pro BTC. Windows can only support 12 AMD GPUs at the
same time, you can combine 12 AMD + 6 Nvidia GPUs but it’s not worth it.
There are some 19+ Motherboards, however from personal experience
you may have problems with them, so it’s better to stick to 6 or 12 GPU
mining rigs.

IMPORTANT: You must have the latest motherboard BIOS installed. You
can check your motherboard BIOS update history to see what was changed
from your BIOS version till the latest available one. If there are no major
changes, then you can skip this step. Chipset, PCI-E, GPU support changes are
the most important ones and you need to upgrade your motherboard BIOS if
they came out.

What are common motherboard problems?

 Each Motherboard has a FIXED MAX PCI-E support. For example,

an H81 pro btc has 7, that means you can’t have more than 7 GPUs
connected on that motherboard (Integrated GPU on the motherboard + 6
GPUs = 7 GPUs total).
  Remember that Integrated GPU counts as 1 GPU. Maybe you can
get 1 more GPU per motherboard if you had the integrated GPU disabled,
but that is not recommended.

 ALWAYS have your Motherboard’s Integrated GPU as your main

video output or target display. That way you will remove the stress of
mining GPUs to produce a video output. In the BIOS settings, it should be
under the Chipset option, and will you need to set the PCI-E to IGFX
(integrated graphics adapter).

 Don’t use PCI-E splitters because it won’t probably work. The

main reason for this is that the motherboard caps to the GPUs (PCI-E lanes
used) are connected. Some motherboards can handle 8 GPUs without
integrated GPU enabled, but that can cause instability and it’s not worth
the risk.

 If your motherboard has additional SATA or Molex PSU

connectors, you will have to connect them to the PSU. For example, an
H81 pro btc has 2 additional Molex connectors, and they must be enabled
if you plan to have 4 or more GPUs connected so that your PCI-E lanes can
get enough power to run stable.

 Some motherboards like the Z170 which are used for gaming have
6 PCI-E inputs, but if you connect all 6 of them and have an Integrated
GPU enabled on your rig, it probably won’t start or it will give you a poor
performance. That is an error on your motherboard, and you have to
disable the Integrated GPU to make the rig work. That is not a good
option, which can cause problems.
 How to setup your motherboard?

 First you will need to connect your motherboard with just a CPU,
RAM and the Disk. DO NOT use any of the GPUs until the end of this setup.

 Connect your video display to the integrated GPU on the

motherboard.

 Turn on the PC and go into the BIOS:

1. set the Chipset’s primary video display to an Integrated GPU

(IGFX)

2. Set the PCI-E to Auto

3. Disable the audio

4. Activate above 4G if you have that option available under

your motherboard. That is specially option for some motherboards
used to optimize your PC if it has 4 or more GPUs connected. Mostly
Z270 motherboards have this option (h81 pro btc does not have this
option, it has it already by default.

5. Set the power loss options to “Always on” – so that your PC

turns on immediately after you connect it to its power source.

What are other PC parts?

IMPORTANT– never use WiFi to connect your mining rigs. From my

experiences, that can cause big trouble such as; higher ping, random
disconnects, Wifi freezing at start of mining, shares rejected and so on. For
example, my Wifi adapter would stop working if it was directly connected to
the mining rig. However, if I was using a USB extender so I could place Wifi
adapter away from the rig (1-2m), then it worked. If you want to use Wifi, use
the 5G. The more mining rigs you have, the more trouble with Wifi you will
get.

RAM

 4gb of any RAM is enough for 6 GPU rigs.

 8gb of any RAM is used only for 12/13 GPU rigs.

 RAM is not so important so that the 1333MHz cheap memory is

OK

CPU

 Any CPU that fits the socket of your motherboard (1150 for H81
pro btc) is OK

 Or 1151 lga CPU for H110 Pro BTC Motherboard

 For 12/13 GPU rigs get a slightly better CPU (60$-100$) cause it
will be a bit faster when working on the rig, especially when changing
GPUs from Graphics to Compute mode in AMD Settings and using
streaming software such as Team Viewer or Splashtop.

PSU

 Get 80+gold or 80+platinum certified PSUs ONLY. From my own

experiences, I have heard many times that the cheap PSUs caught on fire
or even have melted. thus making serious damage to the motherboard.
  DON’T overload your PSU! For example, an 1000W gold PSU
should NEVER be forced over the 800W power draw for max efficiency.
You may end up destroying it. Don’t buy cheap PSUs for running your
mining rig 24/7. If you run PSU at 100% a lot of bad things can happen. If
you already have expensive components, the worst thing would be saving
money on your PSU.

 NEVER have more than 2 GPU Risers connected to the SAME

PSU Molex/Sata cable. This is very important because, it could melt the
cable or burn the PSU!!

 80 PLUS certificate tells you how much extra power the PSU will
draw to power your components. Let’s say you have 8 GPUs and they use
with your motherboard and other parts exact 1000W (let’s say it’s 50%
PSU load). 80+ Platinum will use 1060W total (it will lose 60W extra),
80+ Gold will use 1080W, 80+ Silver will use 1100W, 80+ Bronze will use
1120W and a PSU without certificate will use 1150W or more. The power
draw of each PC part is the same, the only thing that changes is the extra
power the PSU needs to power your rig (in our example our PC will
always use 1000W but the PSU needs extra to generate that flow). PSU
maximum efficiency is stated in its manual, mostly it’s 50-80% of its load,
the ones I used in this example. At higher PSU loads the efficiency drops
by additional 2-4%. Higher grade certificate is expensive and most of
them have 5-10 years warranty. It’s very important to get top grade and
high quality PSU with long warranty because that reduces the RISK.
Expensive PSUs have gone trough a lot of tests, that’s why they are
expensive. If you already spend so much on your mining rig, there is no
point to save some small $ on a very important component, and you will
save power in a longer run that will increase your ROI.

Risers

 They are responsible for most of the trouble with your GPUs, so if
you have a problem with one of your GPUs for example, and you don’t see
it or you can’t flash the BIOS, try to replace the riser.

 Try to get high quality risers or latest release, they are very
important parts of your mining rig and you don’t want them to be
problematic, 60cm cable length is fine.

Disk (SSD)

 For 6 GPU mining rigs get 64GB SSD

 For 12 GPU mining rigs get 128GB SSD

 3. Windows 10 Pro

You can get Windows 10 Pro for free at their official website. You can
download their Windows tool for making a bootable USB stick (If you are
doing this on a PC that has Original Windows already on it). You can also
download the Windows 10 ISO from their site and make yourself a bootable
USB, then install Windows on your SSD. Still don’t connect any GPUs to your
mining rig! Because the first thing we want is to optimize Windows for our
own mining purposes.

Why Windows instead of Linux?

Most people think that Linux is a more stable operating system or

because it’s so lightweight, it runs better, it can have more GPU support
(Windows 10 supports 12 GPU now) and should be a better option for 24/7
mining. It would seem logical, but it is not, because Linux has various
problems, such as:

 drivers for GPUs under Linux are OUTDATED and they have poor
support

 overclock tools for Linux are hard to get, and they most likely
won’t work on all of the GPUs properly (especially the undervolt part,
which is the most important).

 it’s hard to tell if one GPU produces memory errors or if it’s

something bad with the GPU, that would cause it to break in the longer
run (Windows has strong tools like HWinfo64 that can tell you precise if
your GPU is working properly or if it’s unstable)

 POWER DRAW – yes, under Linux your GPUs will use about 5%
more power than on Windows, with the exact same settings for
overclock/undervolt.

 HASH RATE – as described before, Linux is not efficient and you

will not get the same hash rate as on Windows. For example, the exact
same settings on a GPU on Linux would give you 28.8 MH/s and on
Windows you will get 29.3 MH/s.

 Linux is not more stable than Windows 10, if Windows is setup

properly, it can run for months without the need of a reboot, most people
don’t know that.

 Tools like SMOS or EthOS are very expensive. Their tools for
overclock and undervolt are not working properly. Those Linux based OS
cannot have the same Overclock/Undervolt settings as on Windows, or
they will crash because of poor driver support (800mV on Memory works
on most GPUs under Windows, but almost none on Linux).

 You can monitor your rigs on Windows almost the same way as
on SMOS or EthOS, I will explain how to do that later in the guide.

Here’s how to optimize Windows.

Windows Updates
 If you have downloaded Windows 10 from the official Microsoft website
then your Windows 10 pro is almost up to date.

 Go to the Control Center

 Go to Updates and Security

 Go to Windows Update

 Check for updates and install the latest ones

Drivers and Software

Download latest .NET Framework 3.5 Offline Installer – it is required to

run Polaris 1.6 and OverdriveNtool. Windows 10 Comes with 4.x Framework,
but that one will not work with Polaris and OverdriveNtool. You need to
install the .NET 3.5 manually. Insert the Windows 10 USB stick into the PC
(the one you used to install Windows) and set the USB Disc Drive as the
Source for installing the .NET 3.5. .NET Framework 3.5 Offline Installer is the
Guide how to do it, it’s very simple.

Download latest Drivers for your motherboard, especially latest Chipset

driver. This is very important.

Windows 10 Registry Tweaks For Mining

 Once windows is fully installed and has booted for the first time,
you will have to run the Windows 10 Registry tweaks for
mining.bat file. Using this tweak disables everything that is not important
for mining on Windows. Disable everything from this tool.

 Run it in administrator mode

Windows Registry Tweaks

 Once everything is applied, restart the rig

Stop Windows Update

 Open RUN and type in it “services.msc“, the services page will be

opened

 Search for “Windows Update“

 Click “Stop” if the status is “Live” or “Checking/Running“

 Select “Disabled” on “Startup type“

  Apply & Restart

 Do it again and make sure that it is disabled

Services Tweaks

Increase Virtual Memory

 Open up search and type in “This PC“, right click on it and choose
“Properties“

 Then click on “Advanced System Settings“

 On “Advanced” tab where it says “Performance” click on

“Settings“

 Click “Advanced” tab

 At the bottom you will see the “Virtual memory“ option, click on
“Change“
  Uncheck “Automatically manage paging file size for all
drives“

 Check “Custom size“

 Now depending on how many GPUs you have you will need
to increase the virtual memory. In general, for each GPU you need to
have 3GB Virtual Memory (because the DAG file used for hashing
Ethereum is above 2GB and going to 3 GB this year). So if you have 6
GPU you need to have 6x3GB Virtual Memory = 18GB

 In the “Initial size (MB)” type: 2000MB x GPU Count

(12000MB for 6 GPU mining rig, 24000MB for 12 GPU)

 In the “Maximum size (MB)” type: 3000MB x GPU Count

(18000MB for 6 GPU mining rig, 36000MB for 12 GPU)

 Click “Set” , then “OK” and “Apply“

 Restart the rig

 Windows Advanced Settings

Changing Virtual Memory

Power Plan and Options

 Open up search and type in: “Power Options“

 Click on “Show additional plans“

  Select “High Performance” plan

 Then while still on the “High Performance” plan, click on

“Change plan settings“

 Select “Never” on all four selections for “Turn off the display”
and “Put the computer to sleep“

 Click “Change advanced power settings” and look for “PCI

Express” -> “Link State Power Management“, make sure it is set to
“OFF“, usually it is, but better to check on that

 Restart the rig

Change Power Options

Change Power Plan
 4. GPU drivers

Now after Windows is setup properly, download a tool called DDU. That
tool will uninstall your current driver (even your integrated GPU) and block
Windows from automatically installing GPU drivers. That’s important so that
Windows does not install an outdated driver. It will ask you to run in “safe
mode” but that is not necessary. When you run the program just click on
“Clean and restart”. We want to manually download and install the right
drivers.

Block Windows Automatic Driver Installation

 Now turn off your PC and connect only ONE GPU.

What driver is the best?

IMPORTANT – From AMD Crimson 17.10 driver and all drivers

released after that, they have added the mining mode in the driver and
enabled up to 12 AMD GPUs to be able to run on Windows 10.

AMD released Radeon Software Adrenaline Edition, download latest

version of it. It will improve hashrate on some cards, and in general, will give
you best possible hashrate on all RX 4xx and 5xx cards.

Sometimes, it’s possible that you get better results with the Beta
Blockchain Driver , but that driver only supports 8 AMD GPUs and please try
first the Adrenaline edition. In the Blockchain driver you will not need to
change GPUs to Compute mode, it’s there as default.

If Adrenaline or Blockchain driver is not working, your last hope is

latest Crimson ReLive Driver release (you need to change in Radeon Settings
to compute mode for each GPU).

At the beginning of the install process go to CUSTOM instead of Express

and ONLY select “AMD Display Driver” and “AMD Settings”. During
install SKIP the installing of ReLive, because we won’t need it.

Optional fix for RX 470 and RX 570

 After you have installed the driver, restart your PC. If you’ve already
modified your GPUs before, there might be a possibility that you don’t be able
to see them anymore. That is most likely a problem with the RX 570 series and
it’s very rare with some RX 580 models. The problem comes from the BIOS
mod, because it changes how the GPU work. You will need to Patch your
drivers to make them work properly or the driver will just end up disabling or
hiding GPUs (Error 43). This is only needed if you can’t see your BIOS
modified GPUs in the Windows Device Manager. Download the Pixel Clock
Patcher.

Pixel Clock Patcher for RX470/570 GPU

Installing all other GPUs

 Once you successfully installed the driver with just one GPU, shut down
your PC and plug in all of the other GPUs. After that, when you turn the PC
back on, it should automatically detect each of them and it will install the
drivers for all of them. Just remember that it will take some time (about 5-10
minutes) for all of the GPUs to be detected properly. You can open up the
Device manager, to see if all of the GPUs are listed there. Just turn the PC on
and wait 5-10 minutes before doing anything, Windows will do its job.

Mining (Compute) Driver Mode

Now after you have all of your GPUs under the right driver, there is one
more important step to make.

1. Open up Radeon Settings

Radeon Settings

2. Then click on “Gaming”

 Radeon Settings Gaming

3. After that click on “Global Settings”

Global Radeon Settings

4. Now all of your GPU settings are displayed. We will need to

change each GPU to be in MINING (Compute) mode. By default, each GPU
 is in graphics mode, and to enable proper mining (high hashrate due to
DAG fix) we will need to change each GPUs “Global Graphics” “GPU
Workload” to COMPUTE from Graphics. Each time you change one of the
GPUs to COMPUTE, it will ask you to restart the AMD Settings, which will
take some time. It’s also possible that even if you’ve changed it to
Compute, the GPU still displays “Graphics” instead of it. To fix this, try to
restart your PC and see if the value was stored properly after that.

Change GPU Workload to Compute

 5. BIOS mod

Each GPU has its own BIOS, which specifies how it should work. There
are four different memory types that you will encounter on your GPU: Hynix,
Elpida, Micron, Samsung.

During mining Ethereum, you will only be using memory of the GPU,
That means the higher quality of the memory is, the better hashrate you can
get. While testing all of the memory types, I’ve found out that Samsung and
Hynix are a little bit better than Elpida and Micron, but the difference is small.

Hynix and Samsung Graphic cards:

 all RX 580 8gb cards

 most of RX 570 8gb cards (there is a chance of getting micron

memory)

Elpida Graphic cards:

 most of RX 580 4gb cards (there is a smaller possibility of getting

micron and very rare hynix/samsung)

 most of RX 570 4gb cards (there is a smaller possibility of getting

micron and very rare hynix/samsung)

Micron Graphic cards:

 they are the rarest memory type and you can found them mostly
on RX 570 8gb cards (they can appear on every RX series but it’s very
rare)
 What memory are my cards and how to export the BIOS?

Download a tool called GPU-Z.

This tool allows you to see what memory type your card has as you can
see in this picture.

GPU-Z BIOS Exporting

 On the Green selection you can see the “Memory Type”. In this example,
it’s Elpida. If you bought your GPUs all at once, and they are the same card
type, and if you see they all have the same Memory Type, that means that they
all CAN USE THE SAME BIOS. Exporting GPU BIOS can be done with clicking
on the Red circle as displayed in the picture above, under the “BIOS Version”.
Now you have your original BIOS exported, make a backup before going to the
next step.

How to BIOS MOD yourself in one click?

What do you need to know about BIOS mod?

There are various guides and tutorials how to BIOS mod your GPU and
they are all very confusing and risky to use, especially if you accidentally use a
BIOS that is not made for your GPU. In BIOS we need only to change Memory
Timings. There are many reasons to do it that way, because GPUs don’t behave
identical even if they are the same GPU; they can give much different results.

For example if you have Sapphire RX 570 4gb, Elpida memory cards,
they are all exact the same and the results you get from them:

 some GPU can handle only 1950 MHz on memory

 some GPU can handle 2125 MHz on memory

 some GPU can run at 800mV on memory voltage

 some GPU can run at 875mV on memory voltage

 As you notice, there is a wide range of possible GPU settings, even if they
are the same GPU. It would be very dangerous to put voltage values and
memory clock values in the BIOS, because one of the GPUs could not handle it
properly and you could even brick your card. It makes no sense to do it if you
have software like OverdriveNtool which gives you full access to GPU and its
voltages and clock rates. There are no universal GPU settings, please follow
the overclock chapter in my Ethereum Mining Guide for the only right way to
overclock and under-volt your GPUs. Never change voltage and clock rates in
BIOS.

Anorak BIOSes have only memory timings replaced and the power
save BIOSes have:

 voltage on memory reduced to 900mV because they can’t know if

your GPU can run at 850mV or even 800mV, the reason is explained above
(for most BIOSes this has no effect, your GPU driver will restore it to
default settings).

 GPU core clock rate reduced to 1100-1200 MHz

 TDP(W) reduced by about 20% (it has no effect if you use

software for Overclock/Undervolt)

Those settings from anorak BIOSes are trying to be as general as

possible and they are way over the actual limit of your GPU. The GPU core
voltage should never be touched (in BIOS), people like to change the dynamic
voltage to static ones (direct mV values) and that can cause GPU to get bricked
if your PC freezes or you get random power outage.
 Memory Timings?

Memory timings are the only part in the GPU BIOS that you need to
change. Your miner software is using the memory of the GPU to make the
calculations (hashrate you see in Claymore). In the GPU BIOS it is described
how the GPU Memory should behave on specific clock rates. By changing how
your memory behaves at higher clock rates (increase tick rate of timings) we
can make the GPU calculate its operations faster.

By changing memory timings, we can increase the hashrate, depending

how fast the new timings are. There is nothing else you need to change.

How to BIOS mod properly with one click?

Now after you know the basics of BIOS mod, you really don’t need to
know anything else because we will only replace the Memory Timings in the
GPU BIOS. Overclock and undervolt can be done through software and
we NEVER change those values in the BIOS, because it can brick your cards if
you do. It’s as simple as that.

Download Polaris 1.6.5. This software recently got a database of almost

all memory timings and allows you to change your GPU Memory timings in
one click. It auto detects and replaces them.

BIOS mod steps:

 Export your original BIOS with GPU-Z as explained in chapter

“BIOS MOD”.
 Open Polaris 1.6.5.

Polaris BIOS Editor 1.6

 Open your original exported BIOS from GPU-Z

 Original BIOS

 Click on: ONE CLICK TIMING PATCH

One Click BIOS Mod

  Click Ok (depending on your memory type it will patch 1 or 2
different memory timings)

Upgraded Memory Timings

 Save your new BIOS

Save New BIOS

 That’s it, you have proper BIOS mod without making any unnecessary
risks to your GPU. With OverdriveNtool you can adjust properly voltages and
clock rates of your GPU individually to get maximum hahsrate for minimum
power draw without risking stability or GPU’s lifetime.

IMPORTANT – Always work with the original BIOS of your cards, don’t
download random BIOS online cause you can’t be sure they are made for your
card type. Even if they are the same model, it does not mean they have the
same BIOS. It’s very important to work with the original card BIOS to reduce
the unnecessary risk to the minimum.
 6. How to flash the new BIOS?

First you will need to download a tool for flashing the BIOS
called ATIFlash.

With this tool you can put the custom BIOS over your current one.
Always make a backup for your current BIOS and store it somewhere safe, you
can never know when you are going to need it.

IMPORTANT – be careful what BIOS you are going to flash on what GPU.
I would recommend you to never have different card types plugged in when
you are going to flash, so you don’t flash, by accident, a wrong BIOS to a wrong
card. However, it is almost impossible, because if you use the AtiFlash
properly as explained in this guide, it should give you a warning that you can’t
flash the specific BIOS, because it’s a different type than your original card.

1. Put the custom BIOS that you are going to flash in the AtiFlash
folder, for example “upgrade.rom”.
 Upgraded BIOS, Part 1

2. Copy the file path location to the AtiFlash folder like shown in the
picture

Upgraded BIOS, Part 2

 3. Press Windows Key + S, then type CMD, after that the first result
will be “Command Prompt”, right click on it and press “Run as
Administrator”.

Run CMD as Administrator

 4. Now in the console window, type “cd ” and copy the path to the
AtiFlash directory as you did in “Step 2”, and it should look like in the
picture (except your PC username is different than mine of course).

Change Directory to AtiWinFlash

5. Now type in the console “AtiFlash -f -p 0 upgrade.rom” where

each word represents the following:

 AtiFlash -> the name of the execution file.

 -f -> forces the flash of a GPU.

 -p 0 -> the GPU at position 0 will be flashed (GPU orders are

as displayed in GPU-Z or Device Manager).

 upgrade.rom -> that is the name of the BIOS that you want
to flash to the GPU

Command to Flash GPU BIOS

BIOS flash problems

  you may get the error that the IDs mismatched; that means you
want to flash the wrong BIOS on your GPU

 you may get the error that the ROM file could not be read; for that
you will need to replace the Riser your GPU is connected to, or connect
that GPU directly to the motherboard or use a DDU to reinstall the current
driver and install the driver back on. If it does not work, try to download
Atiflash 2.74 Version and try using this instead.

 you may get the error on 4000 or 8000 bytes wrong size; that
means you want to flash the wrong BIOS. Some older cards have a 512kb
BIOS; exact same new version of cards use a 256kb BIOS, which means
you wanted to flash the older BIOS to the new type and of course you got
rejected. You need to always be careful about what BIOS you are flashing.

 after flashing your GPU and restarting the PC, if you don’t see the
GPU anymore, means you didn’t install the “Pixel Patcher”. Please go to
the GPU Driver section and read it again.
 7. GPU Miner

Now after all your GPUs are flashed with the right upgraded BIOS, we
can move on to the most important step, the mining software part. There are a
couple of different common mining programs, depending on the algorithm
they are working with, the most common ones are:

 Ethash (Ethereum, Ubiq, Ethereum classic) can be mined with the

same mining software, because they all work under the same algorithm
(ethash) and the best miner is Claymore 10.2

 CryptoNight (Monero, Electroneum) are also mined with the

same software

 EquiHash (Zcash, Zclassic, Bitcoin Gold) are also mined with the
same software

This guide is focused on the Ethash algorithm mining, so the settings

and the tutorials from this guide are not optimized for the other mining
algorithms like CryptoNight.
 8. Claymore 10.2

Claymore 10.2 is currently the best miner for Ethereum, and it comes
with a nice option of dual mining with some other altcoins (Decred, Sia… ).
That can boost your profit by around 20-30% for 20% more power draw.
Even if you have expensive electricity, the bonus profit is probably worth it.

Is Claymore’s developer fee a right thing?

Claymore software has a fixed fee of 1% when you are mining Ethereum
or 2% fee when you are mining Decred. There are various problems that can
happen due to the way the Fee is working. The fee works in a way that each
hour you will be disconnected from your mining process and for about 1-2
minutes, you will mine for the Claymore developers. After that it will connect
you again to your pool and start the mining again. By constant disconnecting
and reconnecting each hour, your GPU cools down and then heats up again,
and by doing that you are risking the life of your GPUs. I heard from many
people that after some time one of the GPUs would reset to the default clock
settings because of the constant disconnecting/reconnecting. It would also
“hang” and crash the miner or cause it to recreate the DAG file, and you end up
losing valuable time with that. Claymore is a really cool software and I think
there could be a better way to support the developers, rather than risking our
own miner stability. By using the official Claymore, I lost about 3% of my
shares compared to using the Claymore without the Developer Fee, everyone
can try it for themselves and see the difference.

Claymore 10.2 without Developer Fee?

 On the bitcointalk forum, there are always releases for Claymore with
the developer fee removed. Recently there was a 10.2 version released and
confirmed to work (Claymore developers wrote that if you use a “hack” that
would remove the developer fee from the program, it would autodetect it and
give you a much lower hashrate as a punishment, but that was confirmed to
be false).

You can download the Claymore with the developer fee

removed: Claymore 10.2 NoFee Version

How to setup Claymore?

Claymore runs through its “start.bat” file. In the “start.bat” (you can
open it with the notepad) you just need to write the following (no setx
commands before that):

EthDcrMiner64.exe -epool yourMiningPool -ewal yourEthAddress -

epsw x -dcri 6

Ethereum Mining Pool

-epool is the mining pool you can use, it’s just a personal
preference. Some people like to use nanopool, some like dwarfpool or
ethermine. You can use any pool you like. Be careful what pool you are using;
it should be based on your location. It would make no sense to mine on a
European pool if you are in America. Always use the pool that is close to you.
Nanopool, dwarfpool, ethermine and others have mostly location specific
pools, you can’t miss them; they mostly start with EU, US or Asia. After that
you can write your own Ethereum address which is used to collect your
Ethereum shares. You can view statistics on the mining pool by searching it
with your address, for example if you are using nanopool you can see your
current active statistics.
with: https://eth.nanopool.org/yourEthereumAddress. For example
using Nanopool:

EthDcrMiner64.exe -epool eth-eu1.nanopool.org:9999 -ewal

yourEthAddress -epsw x -dcri 6

Do not add “SETX” commands at start, they are not needed.

I use nanopool to mine Ethereum, you can use ethermine or dwarfpool

also. Ethermine gives you most reliable statistics. Read following chapters to
see why I use nanopool.

Ethereum Wallet Address

-ewall is your Ethereum address. Be careful, because you will always

need to write only an Ethereum wallet address, not a Bitcoin or any other
addresses. Most easy way to create an Ethereum wallet and keep it safe is to
use the exchange sites like Coinbase, Bitfinex or Bittrex. They offer you high
security and you can use the Two Factor Authentication which makes it very
secure. For big amounts I would recommend to use offline wallets like Trezor
Bitcoin Wallet.

How to setup dual mining?

Ethereum is mined just by using the memory of your GPU, so the GPUs
core is almost not affected by the Ethereum mining at all. This gives a
possibility to utilize the GPU core for mining some other coins in the same
time as you mine Ethereum without affecting its hashrate. Of course if you
would mine the dual coin at full potencial, it would affect Ethereum hashrate,
that’s why we will need to optimize the intensity of the dual coin; lowering it
at such degree that it’s not affecting Ethereum hashrate.

Dual mining claymore start.bat config:

EthDcrMiner64.exe -epool yourMiningPool -ewal yourEthAddress -epsw x

-dpool dualCoinMiningPool -dwal dualCoinWalletAddress -dpsw x -dcri 25

The part before the -dwal is the same as for the solo Ethereum mining
described above. The -dwal has the same representation as -ewal, it just is the
mining pool of the dual coin. I would recommend to mine ONLY Decred as a
dual coin, because it has the highest efficiency of all of them. As described
above, Dual coin uses the GPUs core for mining and not all dual coins give the
same results. For RX 5xx cards, the best way is to go with Decred. I use
the Supernova Decred mining pool. You need to create an account there, and
the account name will serve you as a Decred mining pool address. This way, it
gives you one more security improvement, because you don’t show people
your address, instead just your account name. On your account, you will need
to create a worker and give it a name for example: worker1, and leave it’s
password as it is (“password”). Now to connect properly to the Decred mining
pool you would need to put

“-dwal supernovaAccountName.supernovaWorkerName”
 How to mine Decred?

You can create a Decred wallet at Bittrex. It’s a very good trading site
featuring a lot of altcoins including Decred. You can cash out your Decred at
your account page in supernova, under “My Account” -> “Edit Account” ->
“Payment Address” and you need to type your Bittrex address there. And now
you just need to set “Automatic Payout Threshold” to your desired value, I use
0.5 as my payout cap. You can convert your mined Decred to Ethereum at
Bittrex exchange site, and store the value that way. It’s safe if you use a 2FA
authenticator.

Important Dual Mining Information:

As you can see in the dual mining configuration, the last part is “-dcri
25”. It means that the dual coin is set to mine intensively, and it shows how
much GPU core is assigned for that task. Yes, it’s needed for solo mining too,
and needs to be set to 6. This is a very important part because
it’s DEPENDANT ON THE GPU SERIES. The only noticeable difference
between the RX 570 and RX 580 series is their GPU Core. The memory (used
for Ethereum mining) is almost the same on those cards, so there is basically
no difference in Ethereum hashrate, but the big difference comes in the GPU
Core. The RX 580 series can handle around -dcri 25, don’t go above that
because it can reduce your Ethereum hashrate. For RX 570 series the optimal -
dcri is around 19-22. For some cards even lower as 13, this needs to be tested
by yourself. The proper way would be to start with -dcri 10. Then using your
keyboard press “+” or “-”, that way you can increase or decrease -dcri by 1, as
you will see on the claymore miner. By going up you will see the dual coin
hash rate going up, repeat that until you can start to see the Ethereum
hashrate decrease, then, after you find that spot reduce -dcri by 3, so you are
not pushing the GPU to the limit. On the RX 570 series, it’s possible to get a
higher hashrate on Ethereum with dual mining rather than just solo
mining. Optimal for RX 570 is around -dcri 19 , optimal for RX 580 series is
around -dcri 25. For some cards, it’s possible to go even further, but it’s not
worth it to stress the GPU too much.
 9. Overclock/Undervolt

This is the most important part of this guide, it’s very important for you
to learn the right way of overclocking and undervolting to optimize the GPU as
much as possible.

1. STEP – Delete all the overclock tools that you have installed,
especially MSI Afterburner because it can interfere with the proper way of
overclocking and undervolting.

2. STEP – Remove any overclock and undervolt from

Claymore “start.bat” file if you were using those commands before (-
cclock, -mclock, -cvddc, -mvddc) , even -tt and any other option. Claymore
overclock and undervolt tools are terrible and have various problems:

 GPUs sometimes randomly reset to a default stock hashrate

even if you see the GPU is at its desirable clock rates

 GPUs get random hashrate drops, for example it shows

29.5MH/s, but sometimes it will randomly drop to 20 MH/s for no
reason in the logs, and that happens very often. The way Claymore
software tries to force your GPUs to stay at those clock rates is
terrible, and it will not work properly if a new Driver from AMD
comes out.

 You don’t have full access to the overclock tools in claymore

and it’s a mess configuring each GPU individually

 Overclock or undervolt sometimes don’t apply properly.

Often you will need to start it again 2 times or even restart the PC to
have proper Overclock values applied
 3. STEP – Reset your GPUs to the default clock rate settings if you
have overclocked them before

4. STEP – Download a tool called OverdriveNtool. This is

the BEST and most RELIABLE overclock/undervolt tool for AMD graphic
cards.

What is OverdriveNtool?

Now after your GPUs are at their default settings, we’ll be using
OverdriveNtool to handle the overclocking,target the GPUs temperature and
its undervolting. There is no other tool where you can have full control of your
GPU and the ability to quickly optimize GPUs. You can’t be 100% sure the
overclock/undervolt settings are working properly. This is a special software
that gives you FULL access to your AMD GPUs and it’s very easy to use once
you know the basics.

How to use OverdriveNtool?

This software may seem confusing or complicated at first, but it’s very
easy to understand. I will explain it through the following picture:
 OverdriveNtool Default Settings

GREEN – this is the target temperature of your GPU. OverdriveNtool will

automatically keep your GPUs at their desired temperature by
increasing/decreasing the fan speed, as it’s needed to stay at those
temperatures. The optimal value would be 60C. You can check this during the
mining in Claymore, by seeing how much the current fan speed is in
percentage. If the fan’s speed goes over 70% increase the target temperature
to 65C, but that can only happen if you have a high room temperature,
probably because of no cooling or weak air flow.
 PROFILES – This serves to save current overclock settings for further
use. For example, after you turn on your PC, you can automatically load all the
overclock settings to the desired GPUs. We will have 1 profile per GPU on your
mining rig. First make a new .txt file in the folder in which you have
OverdriveNtool.

Create .txt File

After that, go to “Save As” and change the “Save as type” to “All Files”
and then name the script “overclock.bat”. That way you will create a Batch file
the same type as Claymores “start.bat” and it will work in very similar way.
 Now after that open the overclock.bat file with notepad and write in the
following:

OverdriveNTool.exe -r1 -p1″GPU1″ -r2 -p2″GPU2″ -r3 -p3″GPU3″ -r4 -

p4″GPU4″ -r5 -p5″GPU5″ -r6 -p6″GPU6″

As you can see in the following picture:

Overclock Script for OverdriveNtool

This will make a batch script that will run the OverdriveNtool.exe and
set each GPU (-p) to a predefined profile (“profileName”).

1. -r1 ->resets the GPU 1 to default settings, it’s important to always

reset GPU before testing new clock settings

2. -p1”GPU1“ ->set the GPU 1 values to the profile called “GPU1”

 List of AMD GPUs

Be careful, as you can see in the displayed image in my case, there are 7
GPUs enabled on this mining rig. The first one is an integrated GPU and its ID
is -p0, all others are mining GPUs (p1,…p6). So if you have your integrated
GPU disabled or for some reason you use a motherboard that does not have it,
then your mining GPU ID starts from p0. You can see the GPUs order as
displayed in the picture below. The GPUs order in OverdriveNtool is
the same as in the GPU-Z and Claymore 10.2.

Now make 6 “New” profiles and name them GPU1, GPU2… GPU6 and
each profile will represent the GPU it’s attached to. For example, we are using
“-p1” GPU to the profile “GPU1” and so on. You need to make so many profiles
as you have mining GPUs (all GPUs except the integrated one).

RED – this part shows you the real GPU core clock rates and its voltages.
In other overclocking tools, you will only see the last one, in this case 1340
MHz. As you noticed, there are 8 of them (P0, P1….P7) and that are the GPUs
core states. This means the GPU switches automatically to default between
those states, depending on how much you use the GPU. From all those 8 states,
we don’t want the GPU to switch between them, we want it to run stable at the
fixed clock rates we put it on. To do that, we will need to disable all the GPUs
states except the last one (P7). You can disable every state from P0 till P7
simply by double clicking on its name. For example, with the mouse go over
“P0” and double click on it. You will know if you are successful when that state
changes color.

GPU CORE OVERCLOCK/UNDERVOLT – we need to do two things to

the GPU core. First, we will need to set P7 clock rate and its voltage. You need
to remember that the GPUs core is not used to mine Ethereum a lot, it just
helps the memory to do the hashrate. GPU core generates the most heat on the
GPU and uses the most power, so our intention is to push the GPU core down
as much as possible to save power and lower the temperature on the GPU
without losing Ethereum hashrate, or lose some hashrate because we save
more on the power cost reduction than the small Ethereum hashrate drop. It
is recommended to have Wattmeter to make your own calculations to see
what’s more worth for you. In general most optimal clock rates for most GPUs
is around 1150 MHz. Some RX 570 can even work at around 1100 MHz
without losing any, or very low hashrate reduction on Ethereum. That will
reduce the power draw drastically. Some RX 580 need 1200MHz to have the
optimum hashrate, but most of them work best at 1150MHz. In general, never
go above 1200MHz because it will start to use much more power, and you can
check that with your Wattmeter. For the Voltage part, it’s best to keep them
at 850mV. You can try to reduce the voltage to 825mV or 800mV if you are
going to keep GPUs at 1100MHz, but it is possible to get a freeze or crash. The
best way for you is to test your hashrate with those values described and see
what effect it has for your GPU to run it at 1100MHz, 1150MHz, 1200MHz
with 850mV voltage in all cases. Then compare the power draw with the
hashrate and calculate what’s more profitable for you. In most
cases 1150MHz/ 850mV is optimal.

MEMORY – This works identically as the GPU core, except it’s for the
memory. This is the Holy Grail, this is the most important part of GPU mining
and it’s very RANDOM. There is no set values that work 100% on your GPU.
There is just one proper way of doing it without risking any problems; we
need to disable P0 and P1 by double clicking on them.

How to Set OVERDRIVENTool Properly?

We will need to repeat the process for each GPU individually. It’s very
important to test it that way, so if you end up getting a crash or reset, you will
know exactly at what part that happened so that you can reverse the crashing
settings.

First we will need to test the first mining GPU only, not all at once:

1. Set the GPU target temperature to 60C

 2. Set the GPU core as explained in the RED part of the guide (GPU
Core) to 1150MHz/850mV, and disable all of the previous states.

3. Set the Memory to 1800MHz/900mV and disable all of the

previous states.

4. Apply settings to the GPU.

5. From Profiles find the “GPU1” profile and click Save.

Overclocked and Undervolted Template

As you can see in the picture, you will need to have values set exactly
the way it’s shown. Apply settings first, then click on the “Save” button near
the profile or else the profile settings won’t be applied properly. You have
your first GPU all set and ready to make the final step.

Overclock Properly

This is the most important question people want to have an answer for
and it’s the trickiest one. There are no optimal or universal values, because on
the identical GPUs, the same Overclock/Undervolt settings don’t work the
same way. Each GPU is unique and requires individual testing to optimize it
properly.

Download a tool called HWinfo64.

Install it and run it in “Sensors only” mode as displayed in this picture:

Sensors only mode for HWinfo64

After that scroll all the way down till you see your GPUs, they are
located at the end. Now after you found the GPUs, select all sensors except
“Memory Errors” and HIDE them (right click on the sensors and press “hide”).
After that, you will have something similar to the image below:
Memory Errors in HWinfo64
 In my case there are 6 AMD GPUs and I have disabled all other sensors
because they are not interesting to me. We only want to have GPU Memory
Errors displayed, this will tell you if your GPU is overclocked too much. Now
this is the way we will test your GPUs optimal settings.

1. Start mining with the current base settings as we did for first GPU
(1150MHz/850mV on GPU core and 1800MHz/900mV) on the Memory,
the target temperature is 60C.

2. If you see no memory errors then the current setting is working

properly, you will need about 2 minutes to see if they start to show or not.

3. Now change the memory to 1850MHz, then click apply, after that
click save on the profile.

4. Now start the overclock.bat script, it will reset the GPU to its
default settings, and after that you will need to apply new 1850MHz
memory settings.

5. Start mining and see if you get any memory errors after 2-3
minutes.

6. If you don’t get any memory errors, that means your GPU is
having no problems running at those clock rate. Now we will try to
increase memory clock rate by 50MHz increments, and each time you
increase memory repeat step 4 and 5. If you see no difference in hashrate
after changing memory clock rate, you need to restart your PC. Sometimes
if you change overclock/undervolt a lot, it will stop making change. We
want to repeat that process till you start to see memory errors, depending
on them do the following:
  If you get few memory errors after some time, go back to
25MHz and test it again.

 If you get millions of errors, that’s the HARD CAP of the GPU
and you can’t push it above that, reduce the clock rate by 50 MHz.

 If you get 1-2 errors each couple of seconds, it is fine and

you can keep it like it is.

Now after you have found the optimal value for your GPU, you can do
the following:

 Set the GPU core to 1100 MHz and then to 1200 MHz, don’t forget
to apply, save profile and then run the overclock.bat, to see the difference
in hashrate and the power draw from the wall. If you see no difference in
hashrate after changing GPU core clock rate, you need to restart your PC;
sometimes if you change overclock/undervolt a lot, it will stop making
changes.

 Set memory voltage to 850mV and then to 800mV, always look

into HWinfo64, because the reduction of voltage on the memory can cause
errors. So don’t go below 800mV. Reduction in the memory voltage can
also cause the GPU to stop working (0 mh/s) or cause the rig to freeze or
blue screen. Don’t worry about that just change the settings.

After you done all that for the FIRST GPU, you can repeat the process for
each other GPUs. Always keep an eye in HWinfo64 for memory errors; that
way you will have a stable rig. The rig can work with a bunch of memory
errors but that can cause:

 real hashrate to drop

  rejected shares

 seeing random hashrate drops in claymore

 it can cause serious damage to the GPU

If all of your GPUs on the rig are the same, you can try to apply the
profile settings that worked for the first GPU to the next GPU and test if it
works. After that, try to adjust the small settings to reduce memory errors if
you get them. It’s possible that the same GPU with the same settings causes
the PC to crash or freeze, that’s why you test one GPU at a time.

Average Optimum GPU Settings

This is a list of different GPUs and their average optimum settings, so

that you can have a clear picture of what your GPU should look like:

RX 570 Series:

 Micron Memory

 GPU core: 1150MHz / 850mV

 memory: 2050MHz / 850mV

 Hynix Memory

 GPU core 1150MHz / 850mV

 memory: 2175MHz / 800mV

 Samsung Memory

 GPU core 1150MHz / 850m

 memory: 2200MHz / 800mV

  Elpida Memory

 GPU core 1150MHz / 850mV

 memory 2100MHz / 850mV

RX 580 Series:

 Micron Memory

 GPU core: 1150MHz / 850mV

 memory: 2050MHz / 850mV

 Hynix Memory

 GPU core 1200MHz / 850m

 memory: 2250MHz / 850mV

 Samsung Memory

 GPU core 1200MHz / 850mV

 memory: 2250MHz / 850mV

 Elpida Memory

 GPU core 1150MHz / 850mV

 memory 2100MHz / 850mV

 10. Starting to mine at Windows startup

After you’ve managed to setup all of the GPUs profiles and have tested
them with no or minimum errors, you want to make sure that your mining rig
works automatically.

1. Create a shortcut to Claymores “start.bat”

2. Create a shortcut to OverdrivenTools “overclock.bat”

3. Press Windows Key + S

4. Type “Run” and press Enter

5. Type in: “shell:startup”

6. A folder will pop up

7. Drag OverdriveNtool and Claymore shortcuts to that folder

Windows Startup Folder

 Mining and Overclocking Scripts Starting With Windows

Now try to restart your PC, it should overclock and start mining
automatically.
 11. Managing mining rigs

There are many ways of managing your rigs and a lot of software to do
that. I like the simplest one, and that works great for me.

1. NANOPOOL – I use this pool to mine Ethereum, and to monitor

my rigs. For –ewall, after your Ethereum address, you can put
“yourEthWallet.yourRigName/yourReportingEmailAddress”. That way,
nanopool will send you an email if one of your rigs goes offline. Also at
nanopool website you can check your current hashrate of your rigs. If you
see one rig reporting lower hashrate than it should you know something
is wrong. Nanopool works very well as a monitoring tool.

2. SPLASHTOP – If nanopool finds a problem, the best way to fix the

issue is using remote desktop software to access your rigs. Instead of
Splashtop you can use Teamviwer they do the same job. And as your Main
GPU is integrated one, the streaming software will not have big impact on
the hashrate or stability of the rig.

3. SMART PLUG – If the rig is frozen and cannot be accessed with

remote desktop, then we need to restart it. I use smart plugs for that. You
can monitor your power draw and restart your rigs with it by switching
power off and back on.
 And that’s it, you’ve optimized your Mining Rig the proper way.

Hope you’ve learned a lot and this guide helped you to achieve a better
and efficient mining.

Good luck!

Links to the sites:

.NET Framework 3.5 https://www.techgainer.com/tools/net-framework-3-5-

Offline Installer offline-installer-windows-10-8-x/

Windows 10 Registry https://mega.nz/#!8gZzjQaa!Dt4wE0WEo8nZkui_-

tweaks for mining.bat cAAXL4mb4YlO6CJgFZTXKq9pnQ

DDU https://www.guru3d.com/files-details/display-driver-
uninstaller-download.html

Radeon Software https://www.amd.com/en/support

Adrenaline Edition

Beta Blockchain Driver https://www.amd.com/en/support/kb/release-notes/rn-

rad-win-blockchain-beta

Crimson ReLive Driver https://www.amd.com/en/support

Pixel Clock Patcher https://www.monitortests.com/forum/Thread-AMD-ATI-

Pixel-Clock-Patcher

GPU-Z https://www.techpowerup.com/download/techpowerup-
gpu-z/

ATIFlash https://www.techpowerup.com/download/ati-atiflash/
Claymore 10.2 NoFee https://mega.nz/#!h2A0GYJL!OwPnxMRxE-
Version zODBBg9caUFG0Si8Z-AUbUhmoxQhzz990

Bittrex https://bittrex.com

OverdriveNtool https://forums.guru3d.com/threads/overdriventool-tool-
for-amd-gpus.416116/

HWinfo64 https://www.hwinfo.com/download/