MoneroStuff

This is a pretty common question on the MoneroMining subreddit , so I wanted to make a post to answer it. In this post I'll show you how to calculate the expected hashrate for a CPU. First, go to this URL:  https://xmrig.com/benchmark It doesn't matter if you're using XMR-STAK instead, but you should probably switch to XMRig because XMR-STAK hasn't been updated in like a year. The same results will still apply to you but the hashrate from XMR-STAK might be slightly worse because it's just not as good. You should be able to search the page with Ctrl + F or "Find on page" or similar in a mobile browser. Search for your CPU. You'll see the top result there for hashrate on that CPU. That's what you're aiming for. You can click on the CPU and go to a page showing all results from other people who tested that CPU, along with other details like the number of threads used. If your CPU is not on that website then you can try this one instead:  https://m...

In this post I'm going to show you how you can calculate how much monero you'll get for mining on your current computer. Monero is only really worth mining on a CPU, so forget about your GPU for now. It would get probably 10% or less of what the CPU does, while using a lot more power. See here for a full explanation. We'll just calculate for the CPU. Also, forget about the hashrate you get with mining on other coins. Monero uses a different algorithm so the hashrate on other coins is completely irrelevant. First go to this website and search for your CPU. If you can't find it on that website, try to find another CPU from the same generation with the same number of cores. Once you've found your CPU, copy the hashrate. Keep in mind that often the hashrate shown will be with the CPU highly overclocked and with fast & very expensive RAM. With a normal setup you'll get about 70% of that figure. Obviously this varies, and if you're using a laptop then it wil...

Here is a list of requirements for good mining performance from the RandomX repo on GitHub : 64-bit architecture IEEE 754 compliant floating point unit Hardware AES support (AES-NI extension for x86, Cryptography extensions for ARMv8) 16 KiB of L1 cache, 256 KiB of L2 cache and 2 MiB of L3 cache per mining thread Support for large memory pages At least 2.5 GiB of free RAM per NUMA node Multiple memory channels may be required: DDR3 memory is limited to about 1500-2000 H/s per channel (depending on frequency and timings) DDR4 memory is limited to about 4000-6000 H/s per channel (depending on frequency and timings) Let's look at the most important ones. I will ignore some things because pretty much any modern CPU will already have it. Cache Having adequate cache is pretty important. Most CPUs have multithreading these days, which means there are two threads for each core. If the CPU does not have enough cache, it will only mine on as many threads as there is enough cache for. For exa...

This blog post assumes that you're looking to make a profit by mining monero. If you have other motivations such as supporting monero, doing it for fun, or obtaining monero anonymously, then the conclusions of this post might not be relevant to you. Should you build a computer to mine Monero? Short answer: Probably not. Returns from mining monero are very low. Unless you have free or almost free electricity, you won't earn back what you spent on the computer. Monero is not a get rich quick scheme - far from it. Mining monero will get you pennies a day on most computers. Let's take an example. One of the best CPUs you can get right now, in terms of high hashrate for the price and energy usage, is the AMD Ryzen 9 3900X. Let's estimate some prices: Motherboard: $100 RAM: 2x8 GB 3600 MHz RAM - $100 CPU: AMD Ryzen 9 3900X: $500 Power supply: $70 GPU: Just any cheap one for display output - $50 Case: Generic cheap case - $40 SSD: Generic cheap SSD - $30 Total: $890 I will use...

 Short answer - yes. But for 95% of people it's not a good idea. Monero uses an algorithm called RandomX that is optimised to work best on CPUs. Mining with a GPU will get about 10% of the hashrate of a CPU, while still using the full power of the GPU. For most people it will cost a lot more for the electricity than you'll earn. And even if you have free electricity, you'll earn so little that it's not worth spending even $30 on a GPU for mining. There are lots of old guides that advise mining with a GPU. There are from before monero switched to the RandomX algorithm so they no longer apply. HOWEVER, there are some pools with automatic algorithm switching that let you mine a coin your GPU would be more profitable on. The pool converts it and pays you in monero. See here for a full guide on selecting a pool. Assuming you're not using one of the algorithm switching pools, who should mine monero with a GPU? If you have free electricity. If you were going to use an el...

What you should consider: 1. Fees. Choose a pool with low fees. The higher the fee, the less Monero you get. If you can, look at the fees as a percentage of earnings AND payout fees. 2. Size of pool (not too big) It is better for Monero if you choose a pool that is not in the top few pools by hashrate. This is to avoid one single pool having more than half of the total hashrate. If one pool controls more than half the hashrate, it could control which transactions are accepted. This would remove a key part of why people use cryptocurrencies - decentralisation. If one pool can decide to block transactions then Monero would no longer be a decentralised currency.  In short, avoid picking one of the top 3 pools by hashrate. Particularly, avoid MineXMR (at the time of writing they are by far the biggest pool, yet also have a high fee compared to others). 3. Size of pool (not too small) Conversely, you likely don't want to pick a pool that's too small (low in hashrate) because it will...