R9 280X overclocking guide
Hi everyone, a lot of people has been asking me how I get 230-240h/s with my 280x.
I will show you how I got to these hash rates with minimal adjustments of the voltages.
This guide is mainly focused on overclocking to get the best hash performance, this is not for extreme overclocking.
Before you start
- IMPORTANT: Adjusting voltage may cause damage to your computer if not handled carefully. Always monitor temperatures, if the temperature is too high it may damage your components.
- Learn how to stress test (if you're mining you can use this as stress test)
- You need a good PSU that will be able to handle the extra power demand. Here's a wattage recommendation site.
This is the software you need to overclock, monitor and stress test your graphics card.
- Overclocking software, choose one of these (they are ranked 1-3 of my taste): 1. MSI Afterburner, 2. Asus GPU Tweak, 3. Sapphire Trixx
- Stress test software: FurMark, UNIGINE
- Monitoring software (I use both of these): HWiNFO and GPU-Z
Setting up MSI Afterburner
This is what my MSI Afterburner looks like:
These are my settings (you can choose which GPU to overclock by choosing GPU in the scroll list at the top)
This is my fan curve, you can adjust it how you want as long as your GPU doesn't get overheated.
HWiNFO and GPU-Z
This is how GPU-monitoring in HWiNFO looks like:
Note: The voltages in HWiNFO isn't always showing the correct value. That's why you also use GPU-Z.
GPU-Z Monitoring:
Overclocking
Always keep your 280x under 90c. Don't go over 1.3v core voltage, I would recommend staying around 1.2-1.25.
You might get blue screens when overclocking, your drivers will definitely crash and your computer might just restart itself. This is normal.
In this guide you will not learn how to adjust memory voltage, normally this voltage is locked at 1.6v for 280x.
- Adjust your Core Clock with 50MHz and your Memory Clock with 100MHz in MSI Afterburner.
- Stress test with either FurMark or start mining. Remember to keep an eye at temperatures when stress testing!
- If it crashes, adjust your voltage with +10mV. If it doesn't crash, adjust your Core Clock with +50MHz.
- Stress test again.
- If it crashes adjust your voltage with +10mV until it's stable
- If it's stable, adjust your Core Clock with +25Mhz.
- Repeat until you're at 1200mV VDDC (Core Voltage).
- At this voltage you should higher your core clock until you crash, then lower the core clock until your graphic card is stable.
- When you have 1200mV VDDC and a stable core clock it's time to adjust memory clock. Adjust your memory clock with +50MHz until it crashes. Then adjust memory clock with -10MHZ until stable.
- Congratulations, you now have a stable overclock at 1200mV core voltage, probably a core clock at around 1150-1175 and a memory clock at around 1725-1750.
Here are my current clocks on Asus R9 280X Directu II v2 (GPU #0) and Sapphire R9 280X Toxic (GPU #1) Asus uses GDDR5 (Hynix) and Sapphire GDDR5 (Elpida)
GPU #0
GPU #1
The most important part of overclocking is to never increase voltage too much and to always monitor the temperatures. If your GPU runs hot (93c is the limit for most R9 280x) it will take damage, if your voltage is too high it will fry your GPU.
With this method I got my Asus R9 280x Directu II V2 to 235-240H/s while mining Zcash. Here's a guide to set up your mining rig for Equihash-currencies (Zcash, ZCL etc...) SparkIt's Equihash Mining Guide
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Thanks for the nice review
It's all my pleasure!
I want people with a low budget to be able to mine too, increasing hash rate with 10% without risking the lifespan of a GPU too much is the way to do that!
I heard that card is really good for mining.
Yeah they're very good! I bought both my 280x's for $50 each and with 230H/s they have a ROI of ~~40 days (electricity excluded)
Has the hash rate for 280X increased durinf the past year? I tried mining with mine in January 2018 and get ~280h/s on Equihash. Settings is -20% power limit, 1000Mhz core, 1500Mhz memory.
Hello, yes kind of. The miners are better now which gives you more hashrate:)
You got any tips for minning burstcoin
Thanks for the post
Unfortunately not, I'm interested though. I'll read up on it and post a guide later on :)
Thanks i would love the hear what you find
All the best
As I understand it, speed of the harddrive doesn't matter a lot. Only the size of it.
http://burstcoin.biz/calculator
Here's a profitability calculator, seems like 1TB gives about $0.04/day.
The $/TB for a new hardrive is about $40/TB, $/TB for a used one is about $20-25/TB
Though if you can buy A LOT of hard drives at a cheap price this could be profitable :)
Yeah iv been trying to source some from china but unbelievably i can get them cheaper here in Australia lol i thank around 80 Australian dollars for good brands for 1tb or 2tb on sale .i have noticed there is no great veriation in price around the world, there all about the same ,thats strange.
Cheers mate
Yeah I think the only thing that differ is taxes etc.
Cheers!
This is a great informative article.
UV & Followed!!
Thank you! :)
Merry Xmas!
And a VERY VERY MERRY Xmas to you and all those near and dear to you!
Thanks for sharing this awesome informative post!
I enjoyed reading it. Followed and upvoted.
The pleasure is all mine!
Thank you!
Merry Xmas!
I used to have about 10 of these back in the day for mining:)
Yeah I had something like that too!
Or well I think it was 6 or 7 280x then 7970s plus some 290s etc. Good times!
Yes. The good old days of mining it seems like an eternity ago when ASICs were still only theoretical and there were about 10 coins in total!
Exactly, I actually dropped out mid-2014 just when scrypt-ASICs been on the market for a few months if even that. It was still profitable to mine Scrypt with GPU even though people had ASIC's...
Yes but I still think I would have been better off spending the same amount of money on buying BTC and just using it to buy altcoins on the exchanges when they were cheap.
I mined BTC back in 2010 but quit cuz my cousin told me I'd get fucked yada yada yada, I was 15 and stupid as fuck. Then I started out with 0.1BTC in October 2013, traded my way up to like 3-4 280x in November. In late December I had earned maybe 10-12 BTC.
I'm trying to do the same right now but it's impossible nowadays since people are getting scammed by devs all the time :/
Yes I think it is a lot harder to make money now! I wish I had just saved my bitcoins from early in the day instead of putting them in all kinds of crap. Live and learn I suppose!
Steemit is the way to go imo, right now my active post is a bit slow but hopefully it will wake up later haha
I pulled all my assets out from cryptos mid 14's, I burnt them - fast. I could have bought decent cars, furniture and rent a good place but nah I wasted it haha