Mac Pro 2,1 mining crypto

[Omnius]

i have a Mac Pro 2,1 at home that I’m really not using much anymore. I have an office with electricity included in my rent and obnoxiously freezing cold air conditioning.

Would it make much sense to mine a crypto currency of one kind or another?

 

[orph]

go to a crypto currency website that has hash rate math on, work out the potential hash rate of your computer (and any GPU you may need to get) and it will give you a good idea of what you will get.

free power helps a lot 😀

i think it's all done on GPU's almost

 

[DearthnVader]

i have a Mac Pro 2,1 at home that I’m really not using much anymore. I have an office with electricity included in my rent and obnoxiously freezing cold air conditioning.

Would it make much sense to mine a crypto currency of one kind or another?

Should make an OK mining rig, but you'll want to reduce the cores in use down to one. I'd assume you're going to run Linux as the OS, and there should be a way to turn off SMP, or just compile the kernel without SMP.

Also booting from a USB flash drive and removing all the spinners will save you some power.

The other consideration is the internal power connectors for the graphics cards. I assume the 2,1 has the same dual mini 6 pin as my 3,1. So really, if you want to run 3 cards you'll have to do pixals mod.

I'm assuming you're not going to go all out and build a full open air mining rig with PCI risers and 4 GFX cards out of just the logic board.

Here's the setup I would go with,

Two of these: GIGABYTE Radeon RX 580 DirectX 12 GV-RX580GAMING-8GD 8GB 256-Bit GDDR5 PCI Express 3.0 x16 ATX Video Card.

https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814125962

I have this card and use it from time to time with EthOS mining. In testing the card draws near 230w, however my card with a custom bios lowering Vcore and overclocking the card is always below 150w. This would allow you to run two, each with it's own 6 pin connector. Tho the card has a 8 pin connector, you can plug a 6 pin into it and it runs just fine, I ran it for 65 days mining at 30MH/s with not trouble what so ever.

Out of the box each card will only do 25MH/s mining ether in the ethOS, however a mod here and there gets you 25% more, while consuming about 66% of TPD.

 

[orph]

or a second PSU to run the GPU's depends how much you want to invest also may be worth waiting for the new GPU's to drop for new ones or old ones on sale

 

[Macschrauber]

if your landlord checks the electricity bill the days of included electricity will be counted 🙂 Think about it before investing in mining.

 

[AidenShaw]

if your landlord checks the electricity bill the days of included electricity will be counted 🙂 Think about it before investing in mining.

And think about the carbon. Just because you don't have to pay by the kwh - doesn't make it free. And if your landlord raises the rent because of extra electricity cost for computers and the air conditioning to keep them running - you will pay for the kwh.

The MP2,1 is a bit of a power hog, even before you fill it with GPUs,.

 

[ssgbryan]

If you replace the CPUs with a pair of low power quad core Clovertowns (5335), a 2,1 is no longer a power hog.

 

[yuzgen]

Don't bother using cMP's for mining unless someone else is paying the electricity bills. cMP's are power hungry beasts.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201796

 

[Omnius]

Don't bother using cMP's for mining unless someone else is paying the electricity bills. cMP's are power hungry beasts.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201796

Well that was kind of the point. the electricity is built into my existing office rent.

 

[yuzgen]

Well that was kind of the point. the electricity is built into my existing office rent.

Soz I missed that part. Then build multiple multi-GPU rigs maybe. 😉

 

[Omnius]

Soz I missed that part. Then build multiple multi-GPU rigs maybe. 😉

I'm a newbie with the concept of crypto. How would one even get started mining on a Mac? everything I look at flags as malware.

 

[yuzgen]

You mean software?

You can get started if you can find a cheap used GTX 1070 right away, or an RX 580. As long as your electricity is free and you find a cheap strong GPU, it will be a safe experiment.

 

[orph]

did a google and found this
https://www.lifewire.com/cryptocoin-mining-for-beginners-2483064

iv not touched cripto apart from trying to mine bitcoin on a G5 back in the day 😱 why did i not keep going.

you may need to run windows or linux for best returns.

there are apps that will mine more than one coin, that's a safer bet and do note that some coins are GPU some CPU some even HD based so you have to look in to what you need for each coin up to a point.

and you will want more than say a GT120 you need a GPU that is some what ok for most coins

(dont try bitcoin XD no hope there without a super computer now, the more people mine a coin the harder it gets to mine so newer coins are a better bet but at the same time lots of trash coins too)