hey everyone and welcome back to another mining chamber video in this video i'm going
to be reviewing the rtx 3060. we're going to cover everything from the availability
profitability overclocking for mining as well as this driver's issue that
it's having with the nerf so after this video you will know the potential of the rtx 3060
as well as its shortcomings now let's go ahead and get into it right after the intro
the rtx 3060 that i was able to get my hands on is the evga xc model now this gpu comes with 12
gigabyte of gtd r6 and avga in general is a pretty good company to buy gpus from this gpu has a
dual fan for cooling and it also only takes in a single 8 pin for power which is as always really
convenient when you want to power a bunch of them but unfortunately the 3060 has some complexity
with it so we will talk about that later on so now before we talk about the nerfing issue
as well as the drivers and everything you need to know when you're inserting a couple of these gpus
i want to first cover the availability and where did i buy it from as well as the profitability of
this gpu right after i tell you about our sponsor this video is sponsored by crypto mining simulator
crypto mining simulator is a game that simulates the process of getting into cryptocurrency mining
in an entertaining and educating way if you have never put a rig together then this would be the
perfect opportunity for you to test it out and see how it's like this is a good way to get a
test run without destroying thousands of dollars worth of hardware and not to mention you can
also find rtx 3000 series cards there unlike the real world now other than building the rigs you
can collect the money buy different hardware and then build pcs and fill in orders for different
customers and all that good stuff this game is still very new and it's releasing the week this
video is being posted so do expect many changes and futures that will be added by the developers
once it is released you can find it on steam for 9.99 and if you have any feedback or suggestions
to the devs then feel free to reach out to stainless law dev on steam the links
will be in the descriptions below now back to the video so the msrp for the rtx 3060 is around 329
but the msrp is really irrelevant and even if you want to buy it directly from newegg and all these
different stores you will most likely find it for a high markup so now let's go ahead and ignore the
msrp and then let's check the rtx 3060 on amazon on amazon you are able to find multiple different
options here so if you do see all buying options you'll see that they're for around 150 that is
pretty expensive for the rtx 3060 so i don't recommend buying it off of here now i will tell
you where i bought it from but first let me tell you where you should be looking so the best way to
find any of the rtx 3000 gpus is from newegg and just waiting for drops in general now the drops
are hard to catch up with because they sell out super quickly but nueck has this cool thing called
new work shuffle where you can sign up for it and you might get lucky and you'll be selected to buy
any of the gpus for a decent price but this only works for people in the us so if you are in us
and you're looking for rtx 3000 series cards then this is one good way to get them now before you
buy the rtx 3060 just wait until the end of the video so i can give you guys my conclusion and
then you can do some further digging and decide for yourself so now other than amazon and newegg
i personally got mine from facebook marketplace now i did pay over msrp so i had to pay around
1200 canadian which comes at around 950 usd so it still was pretty expensive but i just wanted
to buy it so i could test out the gpu and make a video on it as well now you will find a bunch
of these rtx 360s whether it's on marketplace or different local stores around you so if you ever
decide on buying this gpu for your personal pc or anything like that then check out the different
stores around you so now as for the different brands all the brands are completely fine the rtx
3060 does not take that much power so overheating won't be a problem and you'll get going with any
of these brands just fine so now that is it for the cost and availability let's go ahead and talk
about how much money this gpu will make you just a quick reminder you guys will be able to find all
this information on miningchamber.com i will have this article linked in the description below where
you can come here and find the overclocks as well as the most up-to-date information so if anything
changes from the date of posting this video i will be updating it in the article so make sure that
you bookmark miningchamber.com and then you'll have all this information at your disposal so
now for profitability as of the date i'm recording this on april 23rd 2021 this gpu can mine ethereum
at 49 hash rate if it's configured properly with the drivers and that will make you around 5.57
cents a day so it's pretty good if you multiply that by 30 you'll be making around 150 to 160
every day without electricity now with electricity it won't cost you that much because this gpu does
not take too much power so the profitability is not bad at all but let's say you don't want
to configure it properly for mining and you're stuck at 25 megahertz then you will be making
around half the amount of money so now this is for ethereum and that is the most profitable coin to
mine for this gpu as of now so to get a good idea we can go to what to mine.com and then here we can
go ahead and place in 1360 ti even though it's not the same but the values will remain very similar
and then you just need to go ahead and change your ethash to 49 rather than 58 and you can
keep the wattage the same all the other algorithms will be very similar because the 3060 is nerfed
specifically in eth and not the other ones so now we can go ahead and do calculate and then now we
can see a list of different options now i did tell you guys that ethereum will be the most profitable
coin to mine for this gpu but as you can see here there is another currency that's named the rio
currency and that is because this cryptocurrency has had a huge pump recently and it and it went
up really high in the price so therefore when the price went up pretty high the profitability of it
also went up pretty high now i can assure you that this will stay like this forever it will
definitely crash back down or at least correct a little bit in the price so the profitability of
this coin won't be taken in consideration because it is not reliable as of now therefore we will
just focus on ethereum for mining on this gpu and then you can also take a look at the other options
below it so what you can do is if you don't want to mine ethereum you can look into mining
these two different coins now i don't have a guide for them but i will eventually be making one so in
a general look the 3060 looks like it's going to be able to mine on multiple different algorithms
fairly well which is really good especially when ethereum moves on to proof of stake
now to do some quick math for breaking even let's say i mined 30 days then that would be 167 dollars
and i did buy this gpu for around 950 dollars so 950 will be divided by 167 and then that will
give me around six months to break even on this gpu which is not bad at all especially for how
hard nvidia tried to make this gpu not usable for miners with their quote-unquote unhackable drivers
so that wraps up the profitability as well as the availability now we can go ahead and talk about
this pcie lane issue and what you need to know in general when you're running the 3060s so this part
can get pretty confusing but i will try my best to make it as crystal clear as possible but first
i want to give a huge shout out to brandon coin because he is the one that showed us how to do
this and i learned a lot from him about this topic so i will leave his channel in the descriptions
below make sure to check him out he has a lot of videos regarding to this topic so if there's
anything that i didn't cover properly you'll definitely find it there now the first thing you
want to make sure that you do right is installing the gpu directly into your x16 slot now that is
because your gpu needs to run at time 8 or time 16 lanes to be able to get the maximum hash rate now
there is complexity to this when you're planning on using more than one gpu but i will cover that
right after we finish the basics for just one gpu now installing it into a time 16 slot means you
can't use the times 1 riser which we usually use for mining but you can use the ribbon risers which
has a time 16 to a time 16. i will leave a link for a couple of those in the descriptions below
now after that step you also want to make sure you plug in the hdmi directly to the gpu so turn off
your integrated graphics and make sure that your graphics come from the gpu and then plug into with
hdmi now in some scenarios you can also use hdmi dummies preferably the 4k ones so you can go ahead
and grab a couple of these and try to use them and they should work for you and then you also want
to make sure that you set your motherboard's pcie lane gen speeds to gen 3. now if you set it to gen
2 or gen 1 you won't be able to get the maximum hash rate it will drop back down to 25 mega hash
and then the last thing is you want to make sure that you use the 470.05 developer drivers which i
will leave the link for in the descriptions below now these drivers only work on windows as of now
so you will have to be doing all this on windows hive os and these other mining operating systems
still don't support this so just please keep that in mind now that's the checklist for just using a
single gpu now if you're planning on using more than one gpu it can get a bit complicated now
since i told you guys you want to plug the gpu directly in a time 16 slot let's say you have a
motherboard with four of these slots it doesn't mean that you'll necessarily be able to run four
of these gpus there now the reason being is that for example these motherboards might be
able to run one or two slots at time 16 or times 8 speed and then the other ones they'll be running
at times 4 or times 1 speed so you want to make sure that you get a motherboard that's able to
run enough slots at times 8 speed or more and then you'll be able to use those for the rtx 3060s now
i will leave in the descriptions below a couple of options with their cpus so you can feel free
to grab them if you're planning on using a couple of rtx 3060s and also don't forget that all the
gpus will need the hdmi dummies which i will also leave in the descriptions below so now that is the
checklist now to review it super quickly you first want to make sure you have it plugged into the 16
slot you want to use hdmi dummies or plug in the hdmi into the gpu and then you want to set your
motherboard pcie gen speed to 3 and only use time 16 risers the ribbon risers not the regular risers
and make sure that you use the 470.05 developer drivers as well as finding the proper motherboards
so feel free to grab a screenshot of this so you can revise it whenever you want so now here i got
my gpu all set up in the test bench we're first going to mine without the drivers and i'll show
you guys what's the hash rate that i'm getting and then after that i'm going to mine with the proper
drivers as well as the proper overclocks so the first test will be with the latest nvidia drivers
which are limited for mining and then we're just going to run trx miner later on you're going to
see us use phoenix miner and it's completely fine you can use either or t-rex is better for nvidia
so you can use t-rex for your nvidia cards if you want so now with the stock overclock settings and
the limited drivers we're getting around 22 mega hash and we are pulling around 153 watts
off of the wall now the system power draw is 30 watts and the gpu power draw is 123 to 125 watts
now it's not that much power at all but for the hashtag you're getting it's not really good
at all now that is why i don't recommend mining with this gpu if you're not planning on changing
the drivers and then going through that checklist that i mentioned earlier so now after going
through the checklist and then uninstalling the current drivers that you have and then installing
the developer drivers that i mentioned earlier you will be able to unlock that hash rate restriction
just make sure that you install them properly you might need to use ddu to completely uninstall the
older drivers and then install the developer ones from there to use ddu all you want to do is just
boot into safe mode you can look that up it's pretty simple and then from there you just want
to go ahead and run ddu and install your drivers completely and within the driver's installation
process you want to make sure you click on custom installation and then you want to do perform a
clean installation you can leave the rest of the things the way they are and then continue and
after that you're good to go so after installing the right drivers and going through that checklist
you want to go ahead and apply your overclocks now for the overclocks you guys will be able
to find that on miningchamber.com as well so for the power limit we're going to be doing 65 for the
core clock we're going to do negative 200 memory clock will be plus 1300 and then your fan speed
will be up to your temperatures generally leaving it at sixty or seventy percent is completely fine
so with these overclocks you'll be getting around 48 mega hash and you will be pulling around 147 to
150 watts which means just the gpu is pulling 120 watts for almost 50 megahertz which is not bad at
all so now since we finished testing it let's go ahead and talk about the conclusion and tell
you guys my opinion on this gpu and whether you should be getting it for mining or not so for the
conclusion i honestly think this gpu is a bit too much to get for mining especially that you have
to go through getting the right motherboard the proper cpu for it and all these steps that you
need to keep an eye on as well as you never know what will happen in the future there might be more
limitations or anything that can turn up to hinder its mining performance now some things you want to
keep an eye on is your windows automatic updates they might update your drivers automatically so
definitely be careful for that you'll just have to do the driver step again if it ever resets
now getting a couple of these for mining if you find them for msrp is a good option but
if you're planning on paying at least nine hundred dollars on them then i would just suggest paying
a little bit more for a 3060 ti but in general buying gpus at these prices is kind of a hard
thing to do right now the 360ti 3070 and 3080 so far they don't have any limitations with drivers
although i've seen a couple of scenarios where if you update the latest drivers you might be nerfed
a bit with mining so you can just always use older drivers and you'll be fine now if you have just
one of these gpus and it's in your main pc and you want to start mining with it then this can be a
little bit tricky because you never know if these drivers will perform well with games and anything
like that so you can give it a try and you can game with it and if it does give you any troubles
just go back to the newer drivers and you can try to mine with the newer drivers at 24 megahash or
alternatively you can just do another ssd drive with a different windows installation and then
you can use that one for mining and then you can use your main ssd windows installation for your
gaming or anything you want to do on the computer so that's just my opinion on it you guys are free
to do whatever you like i hope this video gave you some information that will help you out and like
i said all the links will be in the descriptions below so now that is it for this video thank you
guys so much for watching if you enjoyed it please leave a thumbs up and if you have any questions
make sure to leave them in the comments below and if you're new here make sure to hit that subscribe
button there will be new videos weekly so thank you guys again and i hope you have a wonderful day
you