Configuring Windows 10 with 6 NVidia GTX 1070 video cards for mining ethereum.
Step 1: Configure BIOS to start computer after power loss
The first step is very important. When first powering on your rig, as soon as it comes on, hit F-9 (on most motherboards, if not yours, see your manual) to enter the bios setup. What you want to do, is look for a setting that determines what your computer will do after a power loss. What this means is that if your rig is up and running and the power goes out, causing your rig to power off, what will it do after the power is restored. You want your rig to automatically turn back on, so change the "Restore AC Power Loss " to Power On.
While you're installing Windows 10 and then updating Windows 10 on your rig, I suggest going to your motherboards manufacturers website and download the Windows 10 drivers that you will need to install once Windows 10 is up and running. The primary ones being the chipset and network card drivers (in case Windows doesn't recognize the network card). You can install the audio and other drivers if you like, but they are not needed. Put them on a thumb drive so you have them ready once your rig is updated.
Step 2: Install Windows updates
So now you installed Windows 10 and you're at the desktop for the first time. The very first thing that you're going to want to do is install any and all Windows updates. In the search bar at the bottom, type in "Check for updates". You will see the option at the top, launch Windows update and check for and install updates. After the first round is installed, run check for updates again and repeat until it says that your computer is up to date.
Step 3: Disable sleep mode
The next step we are going to do, is to tell Windows to not go to sleep due to inactivity. The last thing you want while your rig is mining, is for it to go to sleep :)
In the search bar in the lower right, type in "power settings". Then click on the "power & sleep settings" bar. In the "Screen" and "Sleep" drop downs, choose never. You can change the screen setting to your own preference, my preference is to set it to never.
Step 4: Configure Windows to automatically log in
The next step is going to be to set your Windows profile to automatically log in. We've already set up the bios to power on in the event of a power outage. So now we want it to automatically log into Windows, so it's not sitting there waiting for a password to be entered before loading windows.
To do so, in the search bar, type "netplwiz" and click on the bar at the top that says netplwiz run command. Uncheck the box that says "Users must enter a user name and password to use this computer". Then click apply and enter your password. Now your rig will reboot and log into Windows automatically.
Step 5: Disable automatic updates
Next, we will turn off automatic updates so you don't have updates installed and have your rig reboot in the middle of the night, day, etc... Rather than detail the steps, I'm going to refer you to a well documented web page with various methods. I recommend using the How to prevent automatic updates using the Local Group Policy Editor if you're using professional or enterprise edition.
Step 6: Install video card drivers
The next step will be to download and install the Windows 10 drivers for your video cards. You can can download the NVidia drivers here: NVidia video card driver download.
Once the drivers are downloaded, install and reboot your computer.
Step 7: Download Ethminer and MSI Afterburner
Okay, so now we have the basics in Windows configured and we can get to the fun stuff :)
You will need to download two pieces of software.
- Ethminer - Cuda optimized for Windows 10 - Please note that I found this package when doing my research and it's what I am currently using. It's a package on cryptoming blog that has the necessary additional files included in the folder.
- Then download and install MSI Afterburner - this is the utility that you will use to over clock your video cards.
Launch afterburner and the first thing we are going to do is set Afterburner to launch with Windows. So click the square under "Startup", so that it launches with Windows. Any settings you make or use, will be discarded if afterburner is closed. You want to keep Afterburner open/minimized while mining. This will start up Afterburner with the last used settings in the event the rig loses power or you reboot.
Now there are two primary settings that you will use in Afterburner to over clock your video cards. The first is Power Limit and the second is Memory Clock.
Power limit is the power supplied to the video cards. You use this to reduce the power being used, which in returns, reduces the overall power usage by your rig.
Memory clock increased your video cards memory clock, thus increasing your hash rate.
I spent a lot of time researching and testing these settings and found for my rig, the best settings are running the Power Limit at 80 and the Memory Clock at +665.
You can test and tweak these setting to find the best setting for you, but if you're using a similar setup, these will work great. Using these settings, I was able to produce a 190+ MH rate on etherpool, which is my primary ethereum mining pool.
A lot of people recommend a 70/650 setting, but I found by increasing my power a bit, I was able to increase my memory clock to 665 and keep it stable. Any lower on the power and one or more of my video cards would crash, requiring a reboot. Any higher on the memory clock and the same results. The combination of 80/+665 result in a steady, high hash rate for me.
Once you find your ideal settings, save the profile so you won't have to manually adjust the settings. To do so, click the save icon to the right of the number 5 under "Profile". Numbers 1-5 should begin to flash red. Click the number where you would like to save it and you're done. This allows you to save 5 profiles, so you can switch between if you're testing or find better settings with a different miner when you switch coins.
Step 9: Configure ethminer
The first thing we need to do here is enable hidden file extensions. This will allow you to create a batch file easily.
In the search bar, type "file extensions" and then click on the "Show or hide file extensions" bar.
Choose the "Show hidden files, folders or drives" radio button. Uncheck the 3 hide boxes as shown above. Then click apply and okay.
You can define your folder structure how you like, but for an example, I created a folder called mining on the root of C: and then will create a different sub directory for each coin I mine.
Either way, using Windows Explorer, go to the folder where you have the ethminer files. It should the same as the image below. In there, you are going to right click on a blank space and choose "New text document". When it creates the document, you are going to name it "miner.bat". Make sure you remove the .txt! The name should be "Whateveryouwant.bat". The .bat defines it as a batch file.
In the screenshot, you can see my miner.bat and the "new text document" I created to give you an example, that you will use to create your batch file.
Once you created the miner.bat file, right click on it and choose edit. Once it's open in Notepad, create the following entry.
You will change the "us1.ethermine.org:4444" to the address of the pool you have chosen to mine. Again, I am using ethermine.org, so that's their closest address to my location. Most pools have their server listings on the main page. Next, change the "0xXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX" to your ethermine wallet address.
Once that is done, click file, save and then close the window.
Step 10: Add ethminer batch file to the startup folder
We're going to do two things in this step. Create a shortcut on the desktop and also in the startup folder. At this point, you should still have Windows Explorer open. Right click on the miner.bat file you created and choose copy. Then go to a blank area of your desktop, right click and choose "paste shortcut". This will place a shortcut on your desktop to easily launch ethminer.
Now, navigate to the following folder in Windows Explorer: C:\Users\Yourprofilename\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\Startup. Right click on the blank area and choose "Create shortcut" again. This will place a shortcut to your ethminer in the startup folder so when Windows starts, it will automatically launch ethminer for you. Neat, huh? With the changes we've made... if your rig looses power, when the power is restored, your computer will power on, Windows will automatically log in and then launch ethminer for you!
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