Mining Guide for tweaking Windows 10 to disable windows update, bitdefender and many more tips. There is a lot of things you need to configure to get Windows 10 to a point where you can set and forget it. I will provide you with a .bat file that you just run and it will do most of it for you, you can choose yes or no to each option. These tweaks should mostly work for windows 7 and 8 also. I created this guide also for my friends so they stop bugging me :).
I was going to blog about multi GPU rigs but I have had more feedback about configuration and tweaking and I have a few tools that make life easier for GPU mining in windows and specifically windows 10. This will be a pre multi GPU blog that will get your ready for building your first multi GPU rig.
If you are mining on Nvidia hardware you almost certainly want to be using windows as it has so much more support and is easy to tweak with MSI afterburner. You can use ETHOS too as it now has support for Nvidia but I don't recommend starting out on this especially if you are not technical.
To build a rig from scratch you can use pretty much any old motherboard as long as it supports i3, i5 or i7 or similar CPU's. If you have an old CPU such as a core 2 duo it might be ok for two cards but beyond that it may degrade the performance.
You want the motherboard to have at least 1-2 PCI-e x16 slots the large full size slots. The second slot can be any speed it doesn't matter. And if it also has the smaller PCI-e x1 slots you want at least a total of 3-5. These small slots can be used for mining with an adapter.
Different types of slots.
Riser card that convert the small slot to the large slot.
Once everything is installed and running create an image of the windows install with for example acronis or other image creating software. Now for every rig you setup you can just install this image and be up and running in minutes. You will likely need to use similar motherboards for this to work but it can work on any. If your rig ever dies you have a full backup you can restore in minutes. Will usually be around 16 GB.
The whole process probably only takes an hour or longer and I recommend a fresh install every time if hardware changes drastically it is up to you.
4x GPU rig 95% complete.
-Disable UAC (user account control) Press windows key and type user account control. You can turn it back on after you have finished configuring but this will stop all those annoying messages.
This is a MUST it auto configures about 30 things for you. Download and run this batch file from here. http://1stminingrig.com/best-windows-setup-configuration-tweaks-for-mining/ I had my own bat file configured but this one covers everything off with a nice yes no script which is perfect for beginners. I personally don't disable everything he does and I have extras but this is a great starting point and you can see how to modify it for your own purposes. You will need to RIGHT CLICK and choose RUN AS ADMINISTRATOR or most of them will not work.**
Manually set power scheme to high performance.
Select “High Performance” plan
Then still on “High Performance” plan, click “Change plan settings“
Select “Never” on all four selections for “Turn off the display” and “Put the computer to sleep“
Click “Change advanced power settings” and look for “PCI Express” -> “Link State Power Management“, make sure it is set to “OFF“, usually it is but better to check on that
Restart the rig
I also run this bat file. (create your own bat or copy another one and rename then edit it, again run as ADMIN). You can remove the words REM if you want it to disable standby and stop disks sleeping. You may not want to stop this as you might have a second HDD in your computer you want to sleep.
@ECHO OFF
REM powercfg -change -monitor-timeout-ac 0
powercfg -change -standby-timeout-ac 0
REM powercfg -change -disk-timeout-ac 0
powercfg -change -hibernate-timeout-ac 0
pause
start /wait /b powershell -command "Set-ItemProperty -Path 'registry::HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Memory Management' -Name 'PagingFiles' -Value 'c:\pagefile.sys 16000 16000'"
pause
-Security/Antivirus - no anti virus required as long as you run all files through your main computer that does have anti virus installed. You wont be putting anything else on this PC so you should be fine, totally up to you though. (I take no responsibility).
-Leave the firewall on but if any of the programs you install ask make sure you let them through.
-Windows Defender. So the bat file would have disable windows defender but it is still running. To disable right click on task bar and select task manager then click start-up tab.
-Windows 10 is more annoying and requires more more fiddling than windows 7. But once you run the .bat file they are pretty much the same. I havn't yet automated everything but I use all similar hardware so I only had to do this once then create an image file I use for all my rigs.
This needs its own dedication section because it can be tricky.
-TPD or power settings. 60-85% depending on heat and how much the coin you are mining is worth. This is universal for pretty much every card. Anything over 85% starts to really burn power for not much performance increase. To work out the absolute sweet spot for you card you will need a power meter on your plug. Start your miner and record the Watts. Take four or 5 readings at different levels to get an idea where the sweet spot is for your card. Otherwise just sit between 65-75%. Some miners will give you the efficiency rating as you are mining which is another way you can do it.
-Temp Limit. Set this to 65 or 70C. If something every happens like a fan dies or whatever this setting will automatically under power the card to keep the temp down.
-Core Clock. This setting will generally always increase mining hash. most cards will safely do +50 safely other cards that are not already overclocked can sometimes go upto 200 or more. Google your card to find what other people are using.
-Memory clock. most cards will be ok with 100-200 increase a lot will do upto 700. Again google to find the setting. But some miners will not benefit from increasing this setting others will. ETH mining benefits greatly Zec mining doesn't.
For example Eth.
-Fan speed. You can leave this on auto if you like but this will generally run your cards pretty hot as by default these cards run pretty hot when gaming (around 75C). For mining and if you have several cards in one room you want to keep the temp under 70C max and ideally under 60C. Manually set the fan speed to around 60-80% or whatever you need it on to keep the temp down. Some run their fans at 100% during summer.
-Use skin MSI Cyborg Red By Drerex. Enable settings in the settings menu. You need this skin for multi GPU's. You can link the settings together if the cards are identical but I prefer to manually set for each card and save the profile.
-You can set the settings to automatically apply at startup by clicking the windows logo by the words startup (bottom left on afterburner)
I have put loads of work into this guide so I appreciate any upvotes, and I hope you enjoy the layout as I made an effort to make this guide alot cleaner and clearer than my previous ones.
I can help in the comments section is needed. The only work that is not my own is the bat file which I linked as his scripting was better than mine for newbies so I went with his instead.
All content was created by me and are my own personal instructions I wrote for myself and my own use. I have linked any outside creators work so they get visitors to their page.
Sneak Peak of next guide #4 How to build your own multi GPU rig.
If you have the above setup and running. Adding more GPU's is pretty simple but there is a bunch of gotchas and some serious mistakes some newbies make which could end up frying their gear. I should have it up 3-5 days.
