Novacoin mining

Firstly, I have to warn you that Novacoin is considered to be a scam by many people, this due to pre-mined coins by it’s creator which he can sell at any time to make profit. However, the Novacoin exchange rate is higher then Litecoin making Novacoin more profitable to mine under some circumstances. As long as you exchange your Novacoin to Bitcoin there is no big risk. I disadvise you to keep large numbers of NVC due to the risk of the value dropping fast.
This guide will show you how to get started with Novacoin GPU mining. If anything is unclear in this guide please leave a comment about it. If you are looking for the most efficient card to mine with then you’ll want to get a AMD Radeon 7950. When looking at the hash to watt ratio this is currently the most efficient card on the market.
You’ll want to start with pooled mining as solo mining is not very viable anymore. The difficulty of the network is too high to effectively solo mine with a single computer. It’ll take a very long time to get a single block of 50 NVC. I suggest you skip to step 2 for pooled mining. However, for people with access to many computers I’ll leave the basics of solo mining in this guide and you can continue reading.

NVC GPU mining

Step 1: Novacoin wallet

If you want to do solo-mining you’ll need to have the Novacoin client installed and configured. You can download the Novacoin client here, if you are running windows look for the latest .exe file as this is the easiest way to install the client.
After you installed the Novacoin client it will have to catch up with the network first before you can start mining as you can see in the image below.

Once the client is done synchronizing with the network (this can take some time) you’ll have to setup the Novacoin client.
In order for the Novacoin client to support mining you’ll have to create an ini file in the %appdata%\novacoin folder. To get to this folder click your start button (start->run for Windows XP) and type in %appdata%\novacoin

Now right click in the folder (not on a file or directory) and goto New->Text Document

Rename it to novacoin.conf

Now you should get this pop-up as you’re trying to change the extension of a .txt file to .conf. Click Yes.

If you don’t get the above pop-up you’ll have to switch off “Hide extensions for known file types”. In Vista/Windows7 you can find this by pressing ALT once and then going to the Tools->Folder options menu. In Windows XP this menu should be visible without pressing ALT.

After this, remove the .txt from the filename so the full name becomes novacoin.conf.
Now open novacoin.conf and insert this information:

You should change the username and password for safety, even though you’re only allowing the localhost here trojans and mallware ect. could easily access your wallet if you have the standard username/password.

Step 2: NVC mining software, cgminer and guiminer-scrypt

Currently I advise you to use cgminer as guiminer-scrypt is still very unstable. Cgminer is command line software and a bit harder to set up but if you follow this guide it should be no problem as we also create shortcuts on your desktop to start the mining. I won’t be covering the Reaper miner here since it is less stable than cgminer and doesn’t have any performance advantages.
Cgminer for windows, linux and the source are available here.
Guiminer can be found here. This one is not recommended but you can try it if you like.
Now not all graphic cards support mining but if you purchased a medium range or better one the last 1-3 years you should be able to mine. If you have an ATI/AMD card you’ll need the AMD-APP-SDK, which can download here. Also make sure your ATI/AMD drivers are up to date.
Extract the cgminer zipfile (to make it easier to launch I extracted the files to c:\)

Step 3: Setting up the mining pool

If you are solo mining you can skip this and proceed to step 4.
In order to mine with a pool you’ll have to register an account. I will be using the khore mining pool in this guide.
Go to http://nvc.khore.org/register

Now log in with your newly created account at http://nvc.khore.org/
Next, go to your username and review your worker, there is no need to make one as on is created by default.

Here you should see that a default worker is already created, in this case with the username Cryptocur.1 and the password being x.

Step 4: Starting with mining

Now you’ll have to determine the optimum settings.
-I
Intensity, this you can set anywhere from 0 to 18 where at 18 your computer becomes unusable and might even freeze. For me the optimum setting is 12 when I’m at my computer and -16 when I’m not working on my computer. You’ll have to see what works best for you. The difference in hashrate is quite big, at 10 I only get 80Kh/s while at 16 I reach nearly 250Kh/s
--thread-concurrency
You can try any of the thread concurrencies within these ranges but it has to be a multiple of 64. Make sure you use the concurrency that fits your card model.
57xx cards: 2368-4096 (3200 is common)
58xx cards: 4096-8192 (5600, 7168, and 8000 are common)
5970 card: 4096-8192 (5632 or 8000 are common)
67xx cards: 2368-4096 (3200 is common)
68xx cards: 3008-6720 (4800 is common)
69xx cards: 4096-8192 (5600, 7168, and 8000 are common)
6990 card: 4096-8192 (5632 or 8000 are common)
7xxx cards 64 * bus_width_of_card_in_bits. So, for a 7950, that would be 64 * 384 = 24576; ideal values are 21712 or 24000. Find your bus width here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_Islands_(GPU_family)
--temp-cutoff
You can set a maximum temperature if you run into problems, the default is 95 which is ok for most cards.
I prefer to run it from cmd so I can see any error might it occur. Replace -u and -p with your own username and password.
For pooled mining you would use: c:\cgminer-2.11.3-win32\cgminer --scrypt -o http://pool-nvc.khore.org:9332 -u Cryptocur.1 -p x --thread-concurrency 8192 -I 10 -g 1 -w 256
For solo mining you have to connect to your own novacoin wallet: c:\cgminer-2.11.3-win32\cgminer --scrypt -o http://127.0.0.1:7332 -u username -p password --thread-concurrency 8192 -I 10 -g 1 -w 256

This is the result with intensity 10:

This is the result with intensity 16:

Guiminer-scrypt can be setup like this, it has some default values also but you’ll want to tweak to get the right settings. Note that guidminer-scrypt gets very different results with the same settings, I find it harder to get good hashrates with guiminer-scrypt.

If everything is running smoothly with cgminer you can create shortcuts on your desktop by just right clicking your desktop and going to New->Shortcut

Now just paste the commands in there and create the shortcut

Now you should easily be able to start mining with your gpu from your desktop.

You should be mining by now! Anything missing or any questions? Leave a comment below.

NVC CPU mining

1.Dowload miner
The fastest cpu miner out there is currently pooler’s cpu miner, you can download the appropriate version from one of the links below.
Windows 32 bits Version 2.23
Windows 64 bitsVersion 2.22
Linux 32 bits Version 2.2.3
Linux 64 bits Version 2.2.3
Macintosh 32 bits Version 2.1.2
Macintosh 64 bits Version 2.2.2
Extracting the zip file should give you the following files:

(to make it easier to launch I extracted the files to c:\novacoin\)

Step 2: Setting up the mining pool

Now log in with your newly created account at http://nvc.khore.org/
Next, go to your username and review your worker, there is no need to make one as on is created by default.

Here you should see that a default worker is already created, in this case with the username Cryptocur.1 and the password being x.

Step 3: Starting with mining

To start mining you have to use the following command, I prefer to run it from cmd so I can see any error might it occur. The number after -t stands for the amount of threads, I advise to set one for each core your cpu has, if it has hyperthreading you can see the virtual cores as normal ones also, there will be a small performance gain. The miner is set to low priority by default so it shouldn’t slowdown your computer.
For pooled mining: c:\nvcminer\minerd -a scrypt -r 1 -t 4 -s 6 -o http://pool-nvc.khore.org:9332 -O Cryptocur.1:x
For solo mining: c:\nvcminer\minerd -a scrypt -r 1 -t 4 -s 6 -o http://127.0.0.1:7332 -O username:password
For solo mining, if you have more computers, just follow step 2 and replace the ip (127.0.0.1) with the ip of your computer in the command to the computer running the novacoin client. This way you can connect a whole network of computers to mine on your wallet. Also make sure to change rpcallowip in your novacoin.conf file to allow the other computers in your network. This can be 192.168.1.0 for example to allow all computers in the 192.168.1.x range.

Here you can see the miner running, it shows the performance per thread, in this case 4 and the total hashrate when your first work is accepted. Here I’m mining at 34.17 khash/s.
If everything is running smoothly you can create shortcuts on your desktop by just right clicking your desktop and going to New->Shortcut

Now just paste the commands in there and create the shortcut

Now you should easily be able to start mining with your cpu from your desktop.

You should be mining by now! Anything missing or any questions? Leave a comment below.

Novacoin mining pools

There’s currently a few pools out there for Novacoin, here are the links:

Coinotron used to support Novacoin but stopped to do so after continuing DDOS attacks due to supporting it.

Novacoin Exchanges

At this moment it can only be traded at BTC-e

[Donate me !]

World Mining Guide Blog

Pages

NVC Minning