April 20th, 2013 
CryptoBadger 
By now you’ve probably seen our Linux Litecoin mining setup guide (and hopefully the hardware guide that preceded it). Perhaps you’ve decided that Linux just doesn’t seem like your cup of tea. If Windows is more your thing, you’re in luck—this guide is for you.
Let me just reiterate that for most people, Linux is likely the better choice. With Linux, you can use a $5 USB stick instead of a $50 harddrive, and you save yourself the cost of a Windows license as well. The actual mining performance will be the same on either platform, so the cost savings of Linux would seem to make it a no-brainer as long as you’re comfortable with the slightly more complex setup (although our guide makes it simple!).
However, if you have GPUs that aren’t voltage-locked (such as the MSI 7950s that we recommend in our hardware guide), and you plan to take advantage of that feature to undervolt your cards (we’ll show you how), Windows might become the better long-term option for you, depending on how much electricity costs in your area (edit 10/2013: easy undervolting in linux is now possible, too).
So with that in mind, if Windows sounds like it’s the right choice for you, read on for our setup guide!
Build a Litecoin Mining Rig, part 3: Windows Setup
I’m not going to go into quite as much detail as I did with our Linux setup guide, as most of you are probably already quite comfortable with basic Windows tasks. The steps outlined below should be adequate for the average Windows user, but feel free to leave comments if anything is unclear or missing.
Step 1: Configure BIOS Settings
Before we even get to Windows, make sure your mining computer’s BIOS settings are in order. Power on your computer, and press the “delete” key a few times immediately after power on. You should end up in the BIOS configuration area. Do the following, then save & exit:
- Change power options so that the computer automatically turns itself on whenever power is restored. The reason for this is two-fold: first, it’ll make sure that your miner automatically starts up after a power outage. Second, it makes powering the computer on much easier if you don’t happen to have a power switch connected to the motherboard.
- Disable all components that you don’t plan to use. This will save a little bit of power, and since your miner will likely be running 24/7, it’ll add up. For me, that meant disabling onboard audio, the USB 3.0 ports (I only had a 2.0 USB stick), the Firewire port, and the serial port.
Step 2: Install Windows 7
Any 64-bit edition of Windows 7 should work fine (32-bit installations should work too, but may require tweaking the settings that I provide). Windows 8 should work as well, although I have not tested it myself. Feel free to use the cheapest SATA hard drive that you can find, as it won’t impact mining performance.
I’m going to assume that everyone reading this is capable of installing a fresh copy of Windows 7. Complete the installation and boot into the Windows desktop before proceeding to the next step. If necessary, also install the LAN/Ethernet driver that came with your motherboard so that you can get online.
Step 3: Install Windows security updates
While this step isn’t strictly necessary in order to get you mining, it is strongly recommended.
- Click Start Menu -> Control Panel -> System & Security -> Windows Update -> Check for Updates
- Install all of the critical updates
Repeat the above two steps until there are no more updates to install. Depending on how old your Windows installation media is, this process could take quite awhile.
Step 4: Configure automatic login
We want our mining rigs to boot up and start mining without any intervention on our part. We’ll need to enable auto-login for that to happen.
- Click on the Start Menu and type “netplwiz” (without the quotes) into the search box, and click on it when it appears in the programs list.
- Uncheck the box that says “Users must enter a user name and password to use this computer”.
- Click “Apply”. You’ll be prompted to enter your password to confirm the change.
Step 5: Change power settings to prevent sleep
By default, Windows will go to sleep after 30 minutes without user interaction. Obviously, we don’t want that behavior on our mining rigs. To disable it:
- Click Start Menu -> Control Panel -> System & Security -> Power Options.
- “Balanced” should be selected. Click on “Change plan settings” next to it.
- Under “Plugged in”, change “Put the computer to sleep” to “Never”, then click “Save changes”.
Step 6: Install Catalyst GPU drivers & SDK
The latest version of the Catalyst drivers (13.x) are known to cause issues when mining. Version 12.8 and 12.10 are generally regarded as the best mining options (I’ve opted for 12.8). Some versions of the SDK can cause issues as well (I’m using 2.7, as the 2.8 SDK is known to be buggy with cgminer).
Note that these drivers are for Radeon 7xxx series GPUs (like the 7950 that I recommend in part 1 of this guide). If you’re using another GPU, you’ll need to go to the AMD site and get appropriate drivers.
- Download v12.8 of the Catalyst display drivers (the link is to the 64-bit version, here are the 32-bit drivers if you need those instead—although I highly recommend a 64-bit installation if possible).
- When the download is complete, install the display drivers. Make sure to do a custom install and deselect everything except the actual drivers (eg: don’t install the 2.8 SDK!). You’ll need to reboot to complete the installation.
- Download v2.7 of the Catalyst App SDK (again, this is 64-bit, the 32-bit version is here).
- When the download is complete, install the SDK.
Important: you may need to have something plugged into each GPU to prevent the OS from idling it. You can plug 3 monitors into your 3 GPUs, but that isn’t very practical. The easiest option is to create 3 dummy plugs, and leave them attached to your GPUs. They’ll “trick” the OS into believing that a monitor is attached, which will prevent the hardware from being idled. Check out how to create your own dummy plugs.
Step 7: Install cgminer
Cgminer is the mining software we’ll be using.
- Download the cgminer archive (if this link is broken, check the cgminer website for the latest version and download that).
- Extract the downloaded archive into a folder on your mining computer (you may need 7-zip to extract it).
- Open the folder where you extracted cgminer, and create a new text file called “mine_litecoins.bat” (you can use notepad for this).
- Enter the following text into your mine_litecoins.bat file (make sure to substitute your own pool user name and password—see note below):
timeout /t 30 setx GPU_MAX_ALLOC_PERCENT 100 setx GPU_USE_SYNC_OBJECTS 1 cgminer --scrypt -I 19 --thread-concurrency 21712 -o stratum+tcp://coinotron.com:3334 -u [USER] -p [PASS]
Note that the cgminer settings we’re using in our mine_litecoins.bat script correspond to a good starting point for Radeon 7950 series GPUs. If you followed our hardware guide, these settings will give you good hashrates. If you’re using another type of GPU, you’ll want to use Google to find optimal cgminer settings for it.
Also note that you’ll need to create an account at one of the litecoin mining pools, and plug your username and password into the script (the -u and -p parameters). I have Coinotron in there as an example, but there are quite a few to choose from.
Step 8: Configure cgminer to start automatically
We want cgminer to automatically start mining whenever the rig is powered on. That way, we keep mining losses to a minimum whenever a power outage occurs, and we don’t have to worry about manually starting it back up in other situations.
- In your cgminer folder, right-click on your new mine_litecoins.bat file, and click “Copy”.
- Now, click on the Start Menu, then right-click on “All Programs”. Finally click on “Open All Users”.
- Double-click “Programs”, then double-click “Startup”. Right-click anywhere on the empty background of the Startup folder and select “Paste shortcut”.
You should see a shortcut to your mine_litecoins.bat batch file appear in the startup folder. Windows should automatically execute it upon bootup.
At this point, we’re done with the essentials. If you’ve done everything correctly, you should be able to reboot and watch your rig automatically start mining shortly after the Windows desktop loads. There are a couple more steps that may be important to you, though.
Step 9 (optional): Configure MSI Afterburner & GPU undervolting
If you have GPUs that aren’t voltage-locked, like the cards I recommended in our hardware guide, then this is the main advantage Windows has over Linux. Unfortunately, the AMD ADL for Linux imposes some artificial limits on voltage settings that aren’t present in Windows. Thus, in Windows, it’s possible to lower the voltage on certain GPUs, which will result in a significant power savings—without negatively affecting performance!
Disclaimer: changing the factory voltage settings on your GPU can result in system instability, crashes, and/or damage. Proceed at your own risk!
- Download MSI Afterburner.
- When the download is complete, extract the archive and install Afterburner.
- After installation, open Afterburner (you may be prompted to reboot—do so if asked). Click the “settings” button in the lower right, and enable every option on the “general” tab, except auto-update (the last one). Close the settings.
- Now you should be able to change the voltage settings on your GPUs, assuming your card supports it. If you’re using the MSI 7950 from our hardware guide, 1087 mV is a good place to start.
- Click the “auto apply overclock settings on startup” button, and minimize Afterburner.
MSI Afterburner will auto-start at bootup, and your voltage settings will be applied automatically. For me, running a rig with our recommended hardware, using Afterburner to undervolt GPUs resulted in a ~150w reduction in power usage. Pretty significant considering the rig runs 24/7!
Step 10 (optional): Configure remote administration
Configuring remote administration will allow you to disconnect the monitor, keyboard, and mouse from your mining rig and manage it from another computer—even over the internet, if you wish. The Windows built-in Remote Desktop Administration feature unfortunately isn’t a great option, as it messes with the GPU driver and will prevent cgminer from reading temperature information properly.
Fortunately there are a host of other options available. I recommend TightVNC or Google Chrome Remote Desktop. Both are lightweight, simple, and free. Here are the basic setup instructions for TightVNC:
- Download TightVNC.
- Install TightVNC on your mining rig. Choose a custom installation and make only the server portion of the application available.
- Now install TightVNC on the other computer(s) that you plan to manage your rig with. Choose a custom installation and make only the client portion of the application available.
- If you plan to manage your miner across the internet, forward port 5900 on your router to your mining rig (make sure you choose a strong password if you do this!).
That’s it—you’re done! You’ll probably want to test everything now. The easiest way to do that is to power down your miner. Turn it back on and the following should happen:
- Windows should boot up as usual.
- You should see a 30 second countdown to cgminer’s launch shortly after the Windows desktop appears.
- MSI Afterburner will load minimized (if you installed it in step 9) at some point, and undervolt your GPUs.
- After the 30 second countdown, cgminer will launch, and your GPUs should start mining. You’ll probably hear your GPU fans spin up a few seconds after this occurs.
- You should be able to VNC into your rig at any point after the desktop loads to monitor cgminer’s progress and GPU temperatures.
- If you ever need to start cgminer manually (because you quit out of it, or killed it, etc), simply double-click your mine_litecoins.bat file, located in your cgminer folder.
If all went well, you should see something like this in your cgminer window!
Congratulations—you have your own headless windows litecoin miner!
The screenshot above shows 3x 7950 GPUs getting nearly 1.9 Mh/sec, which is pretty good. These cards are slightly overclocked (but still undervolted!)—I show you how to achieve even higher speeds in the next section of this guide.
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Greta tutorial m8, however I have weird problem 🙁 I setting my custom voltage in Msi afterburner to let say 1.087 and its works fine until I start Cgminer.When cgminer starts woltage goes back to 1.25 or so … Any clues how to resolve? Thanks
just write the voltage you found on the bat file, there is a command that sets de gpu voltage, I dont remember but you cna find it in the readme, or n the readme.gpu
I was going to build a second rig, but with the rate of difficulty increase just over the past week, I don’t think mining litecoins is going to be profitable.
As long as the price stays where it is at or goes higher, it will be profitable, unless you pay a ton for electricity.
Dave
Its fine now that its winter (this rig is my heater), but when summer comes and difficulty is probably gonna be though the roof and my AZ a/c is gonna pump, I don’t see this venture paying for more than my hardware …unless lirtecoin value really jumps and I have my doubts that it will. Plan is to sell off extra video cards and convert the rest to a media server – break even is the hope. It’s been fun, but I believe this ship has sailed for anyone just starting out. Sorry yall.
I agree. It’s too late now. The difficulty keeps going up. If you want to build a rig on the belief that the value will go up, it’s better to just buy low and sell high. It’s doable if you already have a rig up and running RIGHT NOW….maybe…
Never know when the US or EU will ban crypto currency like China did. If you’re gonna spend 2k on a rig. Just wait til ltc is near $20 and buy 100 ltc, wait until it goes up to $30, sell for 1k profit, repeat.
Just built my rig with 2 R9 280Xs, Win 7 x64, SDK 2.7, and Catalyst 12.8. The best hash rates I could achieve were ~500 kH/s. Updated the catalyst drivers to the latest (13.11 Beta 9.5) and hash rate went up to ~735 kH/s. Just thought I would put this out there in case anyone else has the same issues.
Would you give us the link to 13.11? I only have up to 13.10. I tried to update from computer and it’s indicating that it’s latest. I went to AMD site for 13.11 and tried to install it. It came out an error message that OS is not the correct version. hum…
AMD wont allow links from outside their website. Here is the process to get the drivers:
1. go to http://www.amd.com
2. Mouse over DRIVERS + SUPPORT in the upper right
3. Select Windows 8/Windows 7 (64-bit)
4. Click on Latest Beta Driver and download will begin
I hope this helps, Dave.
Hi Dave,
Would you mind posting your cgminer settings. Im trying to get above 599kh/s on my msi r9 280x and I cant seem to get it.
Thanks!
here are my settings:
Batch file:
del *.bin
color 02
cgminer –scrypt -o http://ltc.give-me-coins.com:3333 -u xxx -p xxx –shaders 2048 –intensity 13 –worksize 256 -g 2 –no-submit-stale
Config file:
{
“pools” : [
{
“url” : “http://ltc.give-me-coins.com:3333”,
“user” : “xxx”,
“pass” : “x”
}
]
,
“intensity” : “13,13”,
“vectors” : “1,1”,
“worksize” : “256,256”,
“kernel” : “scrypt,scrypt”,
“lookup-gap” : “0,0”,
“thread-concurrency” : “0,0”,
“shaders” : “2048,2048”,
“gpu-engine” : “0-0,0-0”,
“gpu-fan” : “0-85,0-85”,
“gpu-memclock” : “0,0”,
“gpu-memdiff” : “0,0”,
“gpu-powertune” : “0,0”,
“gpu-vddc” : “0.000,0.000”,
“temp-cutoff” : “95,95”,
“temp-overheat” : “85,85”,
“temp-target” : “75,75”,
“api-mcast-port” : “4028”,
“api-port” : “4028”,
“expiry” : “120”,
“gpu-dyninterval” : “7”,
“gpu-platform” : “0”,
“gpu-threads” : “2”,
“hotplug” : “5”,
“log” : “5”,
“no-pool-disable” : true,
“no-submit-stale” : true,
“queue” : “1”,
“scan-time” : “30”,
“scrypt” : true,
“temp-hysteresis” : “3”,
“shares” : “0”,
“kernel-path” : “/usr/local/bin”
}
Thanks Dave, much appreciated!
Ill try it tonight and see what happens.
I just got my first rig and I have a problem.
I have 3x 6870’s and it have been working stable, until once I restarted my rig and GPU1 is mining about 30kh/s and the other two are mining 310kh/s. I fixed this by deleting old drivers and installing them again, but this issue came back and wont go away even tho I reinstalled drivers.
What do I do?
Would a 32GB usb flash drive be large enough to run windows 7 for my mining rig?
After a little research I found the answer to my question is NO it won’t. Apparently the usb 2.0 speeds while fast enough for linux don’t play as nice with Windows. http://www.tomshardware.com/answers/id-1624152/32gb-thumb-drive-work-32gb-ssd.html. I’ll just have to look for that old hard drive I’ve got laying around somewhere:)
I just downloaded the ati 12.8 drivers like the guide said but bfgimer/cgminer crashes
The same problem here. Even if I ran cgminer 3.2.2 the hash rate is 50khash with 4 280x cards… Could any body help?
Has anyone been using Catalyst 13.9 and/or the AMD SDK 2.9 with cgminer without issues, or does the advice of this excellent guide to use the previous versions still apply?
I keep getting no device detected… anyway to fix this ?
I have the same issue. “no device detected” Three computers all with the same issue 1 running windows 8 64 and 2 running windows 7 64. The windows 8 computer has a radeon 7870hd xfx, the others have a radeon 7700hd. I have been working on this for days now and can’t seem to get anywhere. So stuck and confused. Thank you for your help.
Hey there…learned a lot from this site…THANKS!
I was wondering if you might address the relation of Max hash to Utility (U:) in CGminer when pool mining. I’ve read a couple of posts that claim you can have a high hash rate but you should really be tuning for Utility when pool mining. Is this true?
Hello everyone, I am lost, im working on litecoin installation mining from 3 days.
I offer 1 Litecoin for installation of mining on my computer by teamviewer.
My skype : benaboush28
Thank you
Sorry for my english im from Paris
I have build my first rig mostly following this guide
only have one problem I can’t figure out
whenever system restarts and autosstarts cgminer 3.7.2
I have to manually set the fan speed again in cgminer as they
don’t seem to save this info somehow, can anybody tell me how I can
fix this issue
Thanks alot
PLEASE HELP
Hi guys
My setup
Gigabyte Mobo
2 x 7970
1000 watt psu
AMD SDK 2.7
CCC 12.8
SO I start up CGminer
Many shares accepted
SUDDENLY it stops accepting shares after 2 minutes
Then the card goes sick.
DEfinatley not a PSU issue
Not a RAM issue
Maybe I need to do something on the BIOS?
PLEASE HELP
Ain’t working. mine_litecoins.bat shuts down after countdown. Why it does so? 🙁
Put a pause at the end of the .bat file and see what the error is.
put a pause at the end of the .bat file to see why the miner is shutting down.
This is what happens when the noobs flow in, drop 2 grand and cant get the thing running 😛 ! To get good hashes, while running stable takes skill. Every computer is different and might need different tweaks. Many of you will burn up powersupplys, cards, and computers. My advice is to get a smoke detector by your rigs, atleast give warning to your neighbors in complexes to get there shit and head to the hills, ole boys miner is going south! The biggest thing is making sure you have 12.8 and 2.7 for 7XXX series. Make sure your miner recognizes that version.
The people now a days do not even read the READMEs, thats all the information they need, it is all in there. CyrptoBadger simplied the process while giving it to you straight. If any of you use this guide and do end up mining, give some credit to him something like this takes a good chunk of time. Kudos Cyrpto!
What options are available for remote viewing/administration via CLI for Windows? Ideally there would be a way to start the cgminer session in a screen session like linux. Then I could attach the session from a linux machine from anywhere I could ssh to the host. Some of this functionality may be available with freesshd and powershell. Do you guys have any ideas on this? This would be really awesome to figure out. You would likely not be able to tweak Afterburner via CLI (is there an api?), but at least you could view the output of your miner and tweak the cgminer settings as usual.
In case I didn’t mention in my earlier post, you did a fantastic job on this right up. Thanks for taking the time to do it.
Another question w/r catalyst drivers: do you see problems mixing the 7950s with later generation R9 290s? I can confirm the later catalyst beta 13.11 drivers work fine with a 7990 and 7950 in Win 7, but I appear to be having problems on a different older dell t3500 mobo mixing R9 290s, a 7950 with the same drivers on Win 8. The R9 290 works awesome by itself Maybe I need a dummy plug to add the 7950 on this older generation mobo? Or maybe there is simply too much draw on the mobo itself with this new card and I need a powered riser. The board is from a couple of year old Dell T3500 with a replaced 750W PSU, so it may also be a power problem – but I wouldn’t think that would be the case until the whole system just powers off (which has not happened).
Thanks in advance.
This question is to much to be answered at this site. If you are not willing to find this answer for yourself then you should just quit now. I have no desire to be rude just being honest. There is a amount of learning required to make this happen and this being a fundamental item of the whole process the rest will set you off even more.
Sorry that was intended for Hunter.
whats next after setting up the rig?? how do I get paid in terms of BITCOINS and LITECOINS ??
Just need little more clarity on this.
Thank you
This question is to much to be answered at this site. If you are not willing to find this answer for yourself then you should just quit now. I have no desire to be rude just being honest. There is a amount of learning required to make this happen and this being a fundamental item of the whole process the rest will set you off even more.
Everything is working with one GPU also I have checked different slots on my motherboard but when I insert the second GPU card and run cgminer computer simply turns off. My PSU is 1000 W. What should I do? Is this driver or hardware issue?
On the Asus xtreme 970 mobo, has anyone noticed a lower hashrate on the pcie 1x slots. I’ve only got 2 cards on 1x-16x powered risers running at the moment cos I’m waiting for 16x16x risers. I have one in the first slot, pcie1x and one in the second slot, pcie16x. I’ve swapped them around, and the cables, and I’ve even added the a1-b17 short but always, on the pcie1x slot, the hashrate is 25-35 kh/s slower. The cards are the same and the same settings although I’ve played around with the settings aswell. I’m getting roughly 621 and 651 respectively. Any ideas?
try lowering intensity on the primary slot if you’re scrypt mining. I read somewhere that doing this sometimes stabilizes the hash rates
[…] following this tutorial for mining Litecoins, and I’m having a little hard time finding the optimal cgminer settings […]
[…] http://www.cryptobadger.com/2013/04/build-a-litecoin-mining-rig-windows/ […]
Thanks for your elaborate tutorials, they helped me a lot.
One question about this one. I’m trying to run cgminer on startup the way you described. The problem is that cgminer starts before the computer has connected to the internet (takes 30 seconds or so).
Because of this cgminer complains it can’t connect to any pool and does nothing after that.
Did you experience this as well, and how did you get around it?
Put this in your batch file before your cgminer execution.
Timeout 60
you can increase the amount of time needed if you need to by increasing the number (you can lower it as well.
Great, works well. Thanks!
Hi there, im setting up my gpu miner for litecoin, i currently have a msi 7970 twin frozr iii, should i make sure all my other cards are the same or can i mix and match with 7950’s?
If i can mix and match how do i set the optimized config for each gpu?
Will I be able to under volt sapphire r9 290 using msi after burner?
Say, I’m in Windows running the AMD Control Center software, with “high performance” power settings turned on, but when I attempt to adjust the memory-clock, it’s “stuck” at 150Mhz and won’t budge. No matter what I do: try to change it in cgminer, use TurboAssist, or use AMD control center, it’s completely stuck at 150Mhz. Any idea what causes that? I’ve searched all the blogs I could find, and lots of folks have this problem, but many solve it by changing their performance preferences to “high”, and rebooting, but that didn’t work for me. The board is a Gigabyte R9 290, with the latest (non-beta) catalyst drivers.
Is it possible that the board is limiting itself based on the available wattage from the PSU?
What’s really odd is that if I put the same board in my other Ubuntu rig, it changes the memory-clock no problem – – – which tells me it’s some sort of Windows 8.1/Catalyst/cgminer issue.