Thread by @NickADobos

I’ve been mining $ETH on my new M1 Max MacBook Pro!

Science time! 🔬🥼 Here’s how it went!

And the answer to the question you all want to know!

Am I going to be rich!?!?!?

https://twitter.com/nickadobos/status/1453917785189408768

If you want to set this up for yourself here is how

Way easier than I expected!

https://twitter.com/nickadobos/status/1454326354644586501

I ran two experiments

One mining session for ~3 hours last night and then another about ~10 hours today while I was working

Computer used was the brand new 2021, top of the line 16’’ M1 Pro Max.

Everything fully maxed, except hard drive space. 4TB was enough for me!

Took about 15 minutes to setup and then just ticked away!

Unsurprisingly GPUs went nuts

Pretty easy to tell when I started lol

Screenshot from iStatMenus

First thing I noticed, Macbook doesn’t seem to totally register it

While mining it didn’t even show up as using significant energy…

Battery estimate time was completely off too

Quoted me at 14:50 remaining but then ticked down by 10 minutes about every 2-3 mins

As mentioned in the how to

It got hot fast. Top left keyboard area was hot enough I didn’t want to leave my hand on. At that point I shut it off

Unfortunately iStat menus doesn’t seem to show all temp sensors for the new MacBook yet

But here you can see it spike to ~90c

My old MacBook had way more sensors, like ~30

So I found a different fan app to track it
crystalidea.com/macs-fan-contr…

Which had more sensors available, but still not as many as before. Might just be less in new laptops.

Curiously the fans didn’t seem to kick in very much. Couldn’t even hear it.

Not sure if miner was dodging it?

Here is a readout after about 5 mins of mining. Notably it does not seem like the GPUs even have temp sensors

At one point the AC/DC supply (near the top left hot zone) was at ~95 Celsius!!!

I have no idea what the new chips limits are, but I didn’t want to risk melting it

So I cranked the fans manually to around 4500-4750. Which brought it closer to a reasonable 55c max

Even cranked that high it was quieter than my work laptop, a 2019 macbook struggling to build Xcode

LOL 😂

Compared to some games
Total War: Warhammer II
Totally accurate battle simulator
(Not the most intense games,

and those did spike up to ~80c

Couldn’t hear the fans for them either!

Seems like it needs to hit ~75c to even turn on?!! MacBooks might just be a beast now!

So how well did the MacBook Pro do for mining!?

10.3 Mh/s hashrate!!

Comparing to M1 Air’s, google results show reports of folks getting ~2-2.2Mh/s

5x better!!

PROOOOOOO Max!

But…

My uncle runs a pretty intense mining setup, and his cards range from 29-54 Mh/s

EACH

So in comparisons to dedicated setup, not great… at all

Here are some pics he sent me

I made the mistake of assuming this was his only rack lol

Apparently he runs enough to make his basement 98 degrees!

Here is the hash rate chart from etherminer. Unfortunately the front got cropped a little

Some slow ramp ups as it setup the DAG. First session was much slower

Curiously the hash rate fluctuated a lot even though my local logs didn’t

Website says that’s normal 🤷‍♀️

Finally the moment you’ve been waiting for!

How much did I make!? Enough to retire and buy an island!?!?

After mining for a total of ~13 hours

I made 0.00010 $ETH

Or at current ETH prices $0.45

Not spectacular LOL

Monthly estimated earnings on the site put it at ~$20 a month

So I can pay off the $5330.60 I spent on the computer in only 22 years!! 😱

That’s not even counting gas fees for withdrawing! 🤦‍♂️

That estimate uses a 24hr hash average. Since I was only mining for 13 of those, and also ramping up for 2-3 hours

Optimistically it might be closer to $50-60 a month if I want to go 24/7

Which might cut it down to 7 years!!

Ka ching baby

You can check out my full stats page here:

ethermine.org/miners/A3c9967…

In summary
Is it the best crypto mining rig?
Hell no

You can certainly get better rigs for way less

But hey, if you bought a laptop to use for other things and want to earn a few extra bucks leaving it on overnight?

Why not!!?

Lingering question:

How much energy does this use?
I bought a meter so I can test, waiting for it to ship!

Tap that follow button @NickADobos for updates!

If you liked this, check out some of my other #ship30for30 October writing!

https://twitter.com/nickadobos/status/1450291887911305218

Or some of my threads on NFTs

https://twitter.com/nickadobos/status/1446943725297405954