So for anyone who wants to mine, I'll make a basic GPU mining guide.
1) Make sure it is worth it. Really. Because you will be stressing your card. This site:
Is how much you could make....if you did not give an EVERLIVING SHIT about your card. Remember that when looking at those dollar signs, a 3060 Ti can go for $800 or 900 now, the price of a fucking 3080. You cannot afford to destroy your card.
If you are ADAMANT about doing it and your card is no longer under warranty, open your card up, get 100% isopropyl Alcohol and some kim-wipes. Clean off the thermal paste, buy expensive new paste. replace the thermal pads with new ones. Put it back together. Do this and buy a custom cooler for $100. It'll set you back probably, $150. But if your run your card at max with low temps, you can make that money back.
If you aren't sure, DO NOT RISK IT. GPUs cannot be replaced cheaply in this market.
2) Before you mine, I suggest investigating your state and country's crypto laws. In my state, it is probably the absolute worst state to deal in crypto. I've got like 3 options and I have to give a government ID and my first born to register at them. Your first step is finding a wallet. And this, is a bitch.
I recommend something simple, with low fees to transfer into your local currency. Converting from one crypto to another they're going to take chunks out of you. So figure all that shit out, whether its taxable, how you can get the money. Do all this before you even start to mine. Then once you have all that figured out, where to actually you know, get paid, start looking at sites. Make sure you read reviews and they're not trash. Because a lot of them are shady as fuck. I use Coinbase. Which is basically a crypto exchange for boomers because its like the one of three that is allowed to operate in my state.
MAKE SURE YOU COUNT YOUR GAINS AS INCOME. Its all taxable. If you don't want to register for anything, you can buy a hardware wallet and mine directly to it. These will run you about $50, depending. In my state there's no point.
So find a good, nice, non-shady wallet and/or exchange you can get paid. Now comes more annoying shit.
3) Now once you are ready to mine, there are a LOT of options out there. A. lot. I was lazy and just did Nicehash, because my state fucking sucks with crypto. I just wanted the easiest thing available to me and the least painful. So you might be better looking at your options. Because some coins my state you can't trade (Like fucking BAT, all I can do is fucking stare menacingly at it in my browser). Pretty much everything except for Bitcoin is GPU mineable (you can only mine Bitcoin with ASCI miners as its too complicated for GPUs. And that is basically a business, where you need cheap land, a cheap building and cheap electricity, which is why China will beat you).
So, let me explain how nice-hash works.
Nicehash rents your PC out like a whore for the most profitable currency. You're basically mining for degenerate gamblers and they pay you for it. However...they only pay you in Bitcoin. So all of your earnings are tied to BTC, which is then tied to the most profitable coin on the market currently.. That's its downside. If you want some other coin, you're going to have to convert it. I'm completely uninterested in playing the crypto market, so Bitcoin to USD is fine for me. If you want anything else, there's a whole forum for it (the bidness). I just do Nicehash to Coinbase to my bank account.
There's also solo mining and pool mining. Just do pool mining. Its more profitable. Just make sure they're not raping you over the cut they take from it.
4) Ok, so you've got your wallet, your algo, now you just start mining, right?
Fucking wrong. You've got more shit to do. If you just start mining, the algo is going to fucking eat your card alive and spit it out. If you don't give a shit then I don't, but if you care, here's what I did.
The 3090 is a fucking beast and my case is a fucking hotbox of glass with no cooling. However, it has a door I can open and close. You MIGHT have to take the side of your case off if your case sucks and doesn't have proper airflow. Very few cases have magnetic doors you can open and close. So make sure your card has decent airflow.
Next, you're going to want to get: MSI Afterburner, HWiNFO (For GPU temps), CoreTemp (For your CPU Temps) and a benchmarking program.
Set up mining profiles on MSI Afterburner and your gaming profiles too. Pin this to your desktop. This program is how you're going to save your card from fucking melting. Under-volting is complicated, so look up a guide, I'm not gonna be responsible. But the basic profile for mining if you don't want to bother under-volting: Turn your fucking core clock to 0. You do not need core clock. Pump your memory overclock as far as it will go until it crashes your system. Set it just short of that. Adjust your power limit for thermals and profit.
For the ideal life of your card and not replacing anything: GPU temps 60 and Below. Fan Speed at around 60. VRAM depends on your card model. It'll thermal limit differently. Don't let it thermal limit and email the manufacturer if you are super curious. Just remember VRAM temp is going to be higher than even the hot-spot temp (the highest temperature a sensor picks up on your card) because its measured in the silicon. Oh, and not all cards support measuring VRAM temps. Some manufactures don't bother monitoring it and let it throttle on its own.
If you can't measure VRAM, your card is at 56 degrees and your fans are at 100% without you touching anything? Probably a sign your memory is getting throttled. You can also see if your hash rate plummets. High temperature will nuke your hash rate (the amount of time your card takes to solve a problem, IE: how quick you earn money).
Realistically, right now, my card is at 60 degrees, VRAM is 102 and the Hot Spot is 73. My hash rate is 113 (about average) and my profit is around $10 USD a day. The 3090 is supposed to get a hash rate of about 120. I'm not killing my hardware for an extra dollar or two. Also remember your surrounding environment will influence your temps. If you can't be bothered, take your side panel off and just buy a fucking fan and point it inside the case. Or buy a portable air conditioner or something. Good room ventilation affects these temps.
Once a week, benchmark your card. Record scores to see if performance is degenerating. If performance is steadily going down, check temps, your card, what have you. Always keep in mind what profile you have on. Because you will be wondering why is your room suddenly five degrees hotter when you're mining? Oops, left your gaming profile on while your miner is going. Why is my overclock suddenly crashing and my game is shitting the bed when I move the camera two inches? Because you left your mining profile on and your core clock is 1440 Mhz. Which is what mine is right now lol. Memory is overclocked to 10k Mhz. Ballin'.
Also, power supply. Make sure, make fucking SURE, you have a name brand power supply of gold or better. Basically, the bronze, silver, gold, platinum and titanium are how efficient your power supply is. Meaning how much of those 800 Watts or 600 Watts you're actually getting and isn't getting lost. The higher the rating, the more efficient and the less your electricity costs. Realistically, you should be set already with a name-brand Gold Power supply if you're gaming. If you cheaped out on your power supply...well, you just don't fucking do that. Gold is fine, you don't need higher if you're mining unless you're running a GPU farm and you need to squeeze every last cent from it or you are a power user and want to get every last bit from your components. I just got a platinum because the EVGA gold supply I bought doesn't mesh well with the 3090. And it was on sale and made by Germans, so I can trust it. Its a BeQuiet! Brand.
That said, it is not important that you make the most profit. It is incredibly important to preserve your card. Because my old 1080 is going for nearly a fucking grand, Not a 1080 Ti, a 1080. These are dark times. So if you don't want to risk it, I really recommend you don't.
It is bad dude. Really fucking bad. Because tariffs, scalpers jacked up the prices and you're just going to have to point an air condition at it and run the 3090 on a test bench at max everything if you want to even get your money back.
Just be cogent that mining and doing literally anything else is a fucking pain in the ass. My recommendation? Pin CPU-Z, HW.INFO, MSI Afterburner and NiceHash to your task bad. It literally happened to me again when I was playing a game in VR desktop. Like a fucking retard I was like, "Why is my headset lagging and VR Desktop crashing?" Its because I left my underclocked, undervolted mining profile on like a fucking mongoloid.
I'm not even getting the maximum amount of money I could be getting. If I went all in and did not give a shit about my card, I could make $12-15 a day. But I under volt and purposefully underpower my card, because you know, a replacement if fucking 2 grand over MSRP and a grand over what I paid.
Looking at prices...yeah, a dollar a day. Not even worth it for you my friend.
I mean, realistically its bad for everyone on the planet. I just go....lucky? I mean, $2,500 for a 3090 now looks like a fucking steal, which is pathetic. Considering it was supposed to be what, $1,500? Hahah, an article from September said a 'whopping $1,500'. Talk about shit that aged fucking poorly.
Dude, don't feel bad. Here's a meme to make you feel better:
Its also kind of hysterical to see PC hardware channels just attempting to review these things. "Yeah, you won't be able to buy this for this generation, but they sent me this shit and are paying me, so I fucking have to."
By the by, your 1660? Its $500. The price of a 3060 Ti. That's how fucked this market is.
