Best video cards for mining 2022 Cointrade CX blog

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The mining process is a specialized automated calculation for which the user or miner is paid. That is, in essence, the miner is rewarded for the work his or her mining equipment has done.

Despite the fact that today there are several ways to mine cryptocurrencies, the most popular because of its reliability is mining with video cards.

Video cards have been mining since 2010. It’s easy to guess what the first cryptocurrency that was mined on video cards was – of course, Bitcoin.

The more powerful and high-quality a video card is, the more stable the mining process is. The payback of quality video cards for mining will not be long in coming.

Moreover, with a competent use of overclocking graphics card performance and power processors can be significantly increased.

Video cards for mining – this is, first of all, the equipment used to produce funds. That is, by purchasing a video card, you are not only buying a universal component of the user’s computer, which is useful in games, in graphics, for mining, but also a means of making money, which in the long run is a very profitable investment.

Let’s find out what a video card is, how to choose one, where to buy it and what are the ways to overclock it.

What is a video card for mining

As a rule, gaming video cards are used for mining, because they have sufficient power and processing power. A video card’s work in mining is a process similar to calculating textures in video games or rendering them, nothing specific is required of the cards in mining.

Gaming cards are improved primarily for gaming needs, but with the development of their for the gaming sphere increases the power of cards for cryptocurrency mining.

The most popular video cards that can be used for mining include those made by AMD and Nvidia.

Mining on AMD graphics cards

This video card is great for mining cryptocurrency Etherium.

With this card began mining during the first cryptocurrency boom – that is, from 2015 to 2018.

Mining on Nvidia graphics cards

NVIDIA cards have great energy efficiency, which is why it is valued by gamers around the world. The manufacturer’s green logo symbolizes optimal power consumption and is associated with sustainability.

Some versions of NVIDIA cards have much more performance power compared to AMD cards.

Why cryptocurrency mining on cards remains popular?

First, ASIC farms for mining cryptocurrencies are quite expensive, and they also require a separate space – preferably a separate room, because the farm takes a lot of space. A videocard farm can be assembled by yourself, and it does not take up much space. Moreover, it is quite mobile not only in terms of space, but also in its ability to work with different cryptocurrencies. Moreover, if you use the cards carefully, you can resell them in the future.

Second, graphics cards are universal soldiers for mining cryptocurrencies. New cryptocurrencies appear literally every day, manufacturers simply do not have time to produce specialized ASIC farms for each cryptocurrency. In this regard, video cards definitely take the lead from the farms.

Third, excellent performance, power consumption and card cooling. Gaming video cards are designed for intensive use by gamers, so they are usually equipped with vaporizers and special steam chambers, so that there is no overheating of equipment. Of course, this affects the performance of the cards.

Fourth, graphics cards are much quieter than ASIC farms.

All these advantages are strong arguments in favor of choosing video cards for mining.

Advantages and disadvantages of video card mining

Mining on video cards, like any method of mining, has its advantages and disadvantages.

Benefits:

Video card mining can be a great way to make money, provided you have an initial investment, patience, and the time you are willing to wait for the card to pay off and bring in a net profit.

First of all, video card mining is a great way to generate passive income. If you connect not one, but several video cards, thereby increasing its performance, you can get a stable passive income every day.

Mining on video cards requires a minimum of your time. Card-based mining does not involve constantly checking the equipment during the mining process, it is enough to periodically check the performance of equipment and monitor the temperature, so that the card does not get too hot.

The variety of cryptocurrencies that can be mined. Cryptocurrencies for mining on cards today are not limited to bitcoin. This is a definite plus, because you can mine several cryptocurrencies in parallel, which is very profitable.

Moreover, graphics cards, unlike ASIC farms, produce much less noise and have a long warranty period. Videocards are intended for a wide variety of uses – cryptocurrency, graphics, video games. And if you even want to get rid of it, you can resell the card on the secondary market. Powerful graphics cards in good condition are in no less demand on the secondary market than the ones packed from the assembly line.

Disadvantages:

In order to build and run a video card mining farm, it is necessary not only to invest financially, but also to assemble it correctly. In addition, it is necessary to periodically stop mining for preventive purposes and to maintain the equipment.

Despite the fact that video card-based mining farms make much less noise, it is not easy to sleep in the same room as a working farm. Still, it is better to allocate a separate space for this, in which you do not sleep. In addition, the equipment can significantly overheat and require additional cooling during the warm season.

The eternal problem of mining cryptocurrencies is the instability of the Internet and power outages. If the problem with electricity can be solved by putting an uninterruptible power supply, a battery or a generator, the problems with the Internet depend on your provider.

In order to mine efficiently, you need a powerful, relatively new computer. There is no point in the most functional and expensive video cards if you have weak iron.

To avoid problems with equipment overheating, it is necessary to install air conditioners or fans in the room where the equipment for mining stands.

Main criteria for selecting cards

Consider the key characteristics of video cards, which should be paid attention to when choosing:

1. Memory. If you need a video card in the long term, you should choose a video card for mining with a large amount of memory. The fact is that some cryptocurrencies require at least 5 GB of memory for mining.

2. Card cooling system. Graphics cards with 2 or 3 fans can extend the life of the device and less susceptible to wear and tear during round-the-clock operation. However, you shouldn’t buy cards with turbines either because of their noise production.

3. bus. A graphics card’s 256 bit bus is more efficient than a 128 bit bus. The most powerful and expensive models have buses with even higher bandwidth.

4. Power consumption. Some AMD cards consume more power to run, which makes them not quite profitable, even despite their good performance.

5. Overclocking. The ability to speed up a video card is one of the important conditions for mining. Videocards with Samsung memory have the best overclocking capability. However, unfortunately, when choosing a card this characteristic is not specified in the parameters of the goods, so the choice of video card in this regard is like a lottery.

Keep these parameters in mind when choosing the best video card for mining.

Top graphics cards

The most popular video cards for mining are made by NVIDIA and AMD. Here is a list of mining graphics cards you should look at:

1. the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2070 SUPER. The release of this video card model was expected by most of the mining community. This model is more powerful than its predecessor and in some cryptocurrency algorithms its results are 80-160 percent higher. This card perfectly holds overclocking, as well as you can increase the frequency of the core and memory and even adjust the consumption limits.

2. AMD Radeon RX 5700. These graphics cards are equipped with a powerful cooling system with copper tubes, fans and aluminum radiator. It is possible to overclock the graphics card using the OverdriveNTool program. The best compatibility with programs for cryptocurrency mining on the algorithm Ethash Claymore’s Miner and PhoenixMiner.

3. the Radeon RX 580 from AMD. It is in good demand among gamers and miners all over the world. The card is perfect for those who want to build a powerful farm with optimal power consumption. The graphics card has a good overclocking potential and CPU characteristics.

4. the Radeon VII Radeon. From the pluses: high bandwidth and 16 GB memory, as well as a powerful computing core, which allows to show high hashrate. From the disadvantages: a high price.

5. RX 6900 XT/6800 XT. Appeared on the market relatively recently, cards from AMD have loudly announced themselves. 16 GB of memory and high overclocking speed, works on 256-bit bus. In addition, it has a good cooling system.

6. Radeon Vega. The card has excellent bandwidth and with proper overclocking on Monero gives good ether mining timings.

7. the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050 Ti 1050 Ti. At the moment it is the most affordable and common video card. With its small price, the card’s payback may not be fast, and the income from it is not very big. However, if the rate of Etherium will grow steadily, even taking into account the cost of electricity, it will be possible to make some money on the video card. This video card is popular among those who assemble cryptocurrency farms, because the video card provides good performance thanks to special chips running on Pascal. At one time, the demand for this particular card increased dramatically with the rise in cryptocurrency prices.

8. NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650. Quite productive and powerful card, but, alas, not suitable for ethereum because of its small memory.

9. the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 Ti. The most expensive and the most productive card in the manufacturer’s lineup. The performance of this card is twice as high as GTX 1070.

Specialized cards for mining

Such cards include models P104-100 and P102-100 from NVIDIA. These cards do not have great performance and memory capacity, but they were still popular a couple of years ago during the cryptomining craze. Moreover, these cards are not suitable for the secondary market, which means that there is not much profit to be made from them by selling them either.

Since there are currently two manufacturers of video cards, leading the market and competing with each other, we present to you the top cards from each

Where to Buy Cards

Buying a video card for mining is not an easy thing to do. You need to know where to buy a really good video card. It is best to buy where video cards are sold by people, not through intermediaries and stores, because there is a risk of large markups.

When buying a video card, it is worth bearing in mind that its cost affects the payback period of the card. The card is considered to have paid for itself when you have earned the amount of money you spent on mining to buy the video card. Anything you earn after that point is your net profit from mining.

There are several common places where video cards are purchased.

Profile cryptocurrency or mviner forums. On them, miners often resell their hardware. Look for the goods in the specialized headings: for example, sale of iron or flea market.

Electronics stores. For example, DNS. The quality assurance in such places is certainly higher, the card is new, and well packaged. However, the price for such a card will be much higher.

Online stores. You can buy, again, at online stores, which are represented by outlets in the city. Prices in the online store are lower than in retail outlets. However, you should beware of dubious online stores, so as not to run into a fake.

To buy a video card is also purchased on secondary sale services – Avito, Yula and so on. In such places the prices for any category of goods are much lower than even in the online stores, and there is also the possibility to bargain. However, there is the same risk as with the dubious online stores – they may send a low-quality product. So you should buy only from sellers with a good rating and reviews, and preferably from sellers with a long registration period on the platform. Beware of sellers who offer to switch to other messengers to discuss the details of the purchase and close the deal.

If you order through online services, it is worth ordering through those sites and services that have their own delivery. In this case, when you receive the goods at the post office, you can issue a refund and get your money back if you are confused about something in the product.

In addition, there are ways to purchase the card outside of the CIS.

For example, on major shopping services such as Amazon, eBay and AliExpress.

However, such services should also follow the reputation of sellers and reviews, so as not to run into unscrupulous and not to lose your money.

Choose the video card purchase method that you like and are most comfortable with. In which you are most confident.

Ways to overclock a card

You have purchased a video card and started mining cryptocurrency. At first, you think that the process of mining brings enough money that the equipment will soon pay for itself. However, after a while you will want to increase your profits. To increase your profits, you need to either lower your farm costs or increase their profitability.

The ways of multiplying profits include:

– growth in the number of farms;

– changing video cards and buying more performance cards;

– placement of farms in places with low electricity costs;

– forced overclocking of video cards.

Overclocking a graphics card is artificially increasing the technical characteristics of the equipment in order to increase its performance and efficiency. Overclocking a graphics card includes improving the memory and graphics processor.

It is worth noting that in the process of forced overclocking the video card increases the power consumption of the part.

For better video card efficiency and performance, a combination of methods should be used. The most profitable combination is overclocking the video card and increasing the number of farms.

Overclocking video card depends primarily on the model of the card itself and the cryptocurrency that you mine on it.

Parameters to consider for overclocking

Graphics cards are quite a complex device that performs computational operations. The device includes RAM, a cooling system, and graphics processors.

The card has a set of performance parameters that are important to consider when overclocking:

– core voltage from the power supply;

– the power the card consumes to run and its limit;

– temperature mode of operation and its permissible limit;

– kernel frequency;

– frequency of RAM operation;

– the speed of the cooling system.

Different models of video cards use their power in different ways. Moreover, different cryptocurrencies require very different features from a video card for their mining. You need to consider the specifics of your video card in order to maximize the efficiency from overclocking. And also consider the needs of the cryptocurrency you are mining.

Overclocking video card for mining

In order to overclock your graphics card you need to install MSI Afterburner. Please note that you should only download it from the manufacturer’s official site.

Increasing the performance of RAM

In order to increase the video card performance for some cryptocurrencies, it is necessary to increase the card memory frequency. To do this, the program provides a special RAM slider. The best way to overclock RAM manufactured by Samsung, because this type of RAM works even with powerful overclocking with the program. In order to start increasing the frequency of memory, you need to start the process of mining the cryptocurrency. After that, you should carefully and gradually move the RAM slider to the right. This should be done slowly and carefully in order to monitor the stability of the mining and how the program affects performance. If you move the slider sharply to the right, there is a risk of overloading the card. Nothing bad is likely to happen. The program will simply reset the card to the standard settings, the video card itself will be suspended.

So try to increase the capacity of RAM gradually, then you have a better chance of successfully improving the performance.

Reducing card power consumption

Many AMD cards do not use graphics cores to their maximum during the mining process. Therefore, it is possible to reduce the frequency of the core without affecting the card performance. In this way you can save power.

In order to reduce the power consumption, you need to move the slider of the core operation to the left, that is, in the direction of reducing the indicators. This should also be done carefully and slowly to reduce gradually, observing what figure is enough to save enough electricity while not damaging the performance of the card. Keep in mind that the processing power of the video card can also decrease, which is why you need to monitor the process to reduce the core power without ruining the processing power of the video card.

In addition, if you reduce the frequency of the core not on a single card, but on the whole farm, the power savings will be more noticeable. In order to further reduce power consumption, you can also tweak the core supply voltage. This will reduce the power consumption by a few more watts, but it will be enough to save a good amount of power at home.

Optimizing ventilation performance

If you have adjusted the power consumption parameters, automatically reduced, the heating of the device, due to the reduced load. This means that the ventilation system can also work less intensively, for this purpose you can reduce the rotation speed of the fans in the settings.

MSI Afterburner program allows you to set not so much a specific fan speed, but to make a full flexible adjustment by marking the dependence of the fan speed on the temperature of the graphics card heating. To do this, go to the cooler section and line up the points on the graph so that they form the desired curve of dependence.

Setting up the cooling

Setting the optimal fan speed is kind of a compromise between the intensity of the cooler, the noise it makes, and the temperature of the graphics card it reaches when running.

With intensive video card operation, the fan bearing can get pretty worn out and fail fairly quickly, but if the fan speed is insufficient, the video card will overheat, leading to rapid video card failure.

In this case it is easier to fix the cooler than the graphics card itself. Keep this fact in mind when searching for the optimal fan speed.

As for the noise, it will not disappear at all, no matter how slow the cooler is.

Once you have optimized all the settings and made sure the video card is stable, you need to save the settings using the floppy button on the right side of the program interface.

Program autorun

The last step of the video card overclocking setup is to configure the program autorun when the farm is turned on. You can also do this in the program settings in the item “Run with Windows”. Activate this button with automatic overclocking of your video card to improve its performance and efficiency.

Another way to overclock

In addition to overclocking with the program, you can overclock your graphics card by flashing the card BIOS.

This method can even be used in combination with the program and thereby increase the performance of the card in an even higher percentage – was and became.

The only disadvantage of the reflashing method is that using it automatically voids your video card warranty. In addition, there are risks associated with reflashing the card. If something goes wrong, you will be left without the card and the money you invested in it.

If you have purchased a fresh video card with a warranty from the store, it is not recommended to overclock the bios in the first months of the card for overclocking.

In this case it is better to use the program and then very carefully. After the video card has paid off on mining, you can try to re-flash the BIOS or use it together with the program.

Also, this method is suitable for cards purchased out of hand, that is, without a warranty period.

These methods of video card overclocking are the most popular. Remember that any overclocking method should be used with caution and you should monitor your graphics card to make sure you don’t break it inadvertently. With the right settings overclocking gives really good results and increases the efficiency of your graphics card by up to ten percent.

Conclusion

In 2021, the list of video cards that are suitable for mining has greatly expanded. In order to successfully mine, it is best to buy a newer video card model with higher performance and better specifications. However, you will have to be patient, because the equipment will not pay for itself immediately, but for the long-term prospect of earning video cards are perfect.

Selling video cards on the secondary market, while difficult, is possible. Cryptocurrency mining on video cards is not only a source of passive income, but also a long-term investment. When you buy a video card, you are, first of all, buying the means to produce crypto-assets.

Moreover, with the right use, a competent mining strategy and the use of overclocking means video card, its payback will not make itself long to wait, and the net profit will bring a long-term stable income.

Now is probably the best time to buy a video card and start mining cryptocurrencies. Etherium forecasts for the next year are encouraging for miners and investors, which means it’s time to invest in crypto!

Best video cards for mining 2022