Minerstat OS: tutorial & review. Profit switching: a game changer?
You may know Minerstat for its profitability calculator, but the company also offers a complete operating system for running mining rigs. In this video (in French), we take a tour of Minerstat OS and test its flagship feature: profit switching, which automatically changes cryptocurrency according to profitability. A real alternative to HiveOS?
Video from 2022, recorded shortly before Ethereum moved to proof of stake: the prices and examples below date from that time. See "What about today?" at the end of the article.
What is Minerstat OS?
Minerstat OS is a Linux-based mining system that works on the same principle as HiveOS. Installation is identical: you flash the ISO file onto a USB stick or an SSD, then copy your identification key into a small configuration file (config.js) so that the rig is recognised at startup. It handles NVIDIA and AMD cards and around forty mining programs (T-Rex, lolMiner, etc.).
Wallets, pools, templates and overclocking
When you first log in, a dashboard shows market information and data on your workers. You then save your wallets (with a name, for example "Flux wallet") and your pools, and create templates, the equivalent of HiveOS flight sheets: a template links a coin, a pool and a wallet.
Overclocking profiles (ClockTune) set the core, the memory and the fans, whose automatic mode (minimum and maximum) is built into the profile. A single value applies to all GPUs, or you can enter one value per GPU separated by commas. Minerstat also offers a database of profiles by card model, but without saying which algorithm they are meant for, whereas HiveOS lets you choose the algorithm and the model for finer tuning.
Workers, benchmarks and alerts
A worker's page shows daily revenue, the number of GPUs, the maximum temperature, the coin and mining software currently running (T-Rex in our case) and each card's hashrate. From there you can change the overclock, switch templates on the fly, restart the miner or the machine, and set temperature thresholds and the number of GPUs expected. As in HiveOS, an interactive shell lets you connect to the rig remotely, and the miners command displays the logs.
- Benchmarks: a feature that, as far as we know, HiveOS does not have. You choose a worker, a duration (two minutes in our test) and a list of combinations of algorithm, software and overclocking profile. We used it to compare several profiles on Autolykos2.
- Alerts: free by email (temperature, worker offline), and via Telegram in the paid version.
- Triggers: conditional rules, for example "if an NVIDIA GPU goes above 80 °C, stop mining".
Profit switching, the flagship feature
The principle: you define a list of coins and the rig automatically switches to the most profitable one. An example: a rise in Ethereum Classic put it ahead of Ethereum for a few days; with profit switching, the rig would have mined ETC for two or three days before going back to ETH. The setup:
- Choose your set of coins, with the pool, wallet, pool fee (often 1%) and mining software for each one (automatic or fixed, such as miniZ for Flux). Avoid small, low-volume coins: they are too speculative, and some don't pay out for a whole day.
- Enter the expected hashrate and power consumption for each algorithm (15 to 20 minutes the first time; benchmarks give more reliable values).
- Assign an overclocking profile to each algorithm, because the right settings change from one coin to another.
- Turn on automatic updating of the values with the hashrate and consumption actually measured: we recommend it.
- Enter your electricity price, for example €0.15 per kWh.
- Set the minimum difference: at 5%, the rig only switches if another coin is at least 5% more profitable (from 1% upwards).
- Set the calculation interval, from 10 minutes to 24 hours. Switching too often is counterproductive; a calculation over a day or more is more useful.
All that remains is to enable profit switching in the worker's configuration (it is off by default): a countdown shows the next calculation and a table displays the estimated profitability of each coin. For us, it is a game changer: without Ethereum, the most profitable coin was going to change more often. And unlike NiceHash, which converts everything into bitcoin, you mine the coins of your choice directly.
Price and verdict
There is a free version, with limits. The paid version starts at €1.80 per month per rig, with sliding discounts (10%, 15%, then 20%), which comes to about €1.50 per rig per month on a yearly plan. HiveOS at the time became paid beyond two rigs, at about $3 per month per rig: potentially twice as expensive. The paid version adds Telegram alerts, a "control room" for mining farms and a task manager, among other things. A mobile app also lets you manage your rigs from your phone.
Our verdict: Minerstat OS is as complete as HiveOS, if not more so, it seems very stable and the hashrates are just as good. The choice mainly comes down to the interface you prefer, but native profit switching makes the difference.
What about today?
Since Ethereum moved to proof of stake on 15 September 2022, ETH can no longer be mined with graphics cards and GPU mining income has collapsed. The Minerstat and HiveOS prices quoted here may have changed since. Finally, profit switching mainly concerns GPUs: an ASIC is designed for a single algorithm.
To compare systems, read our big mining OS comparison and find our other guides on the tutorials page. To mine today, discover our ASIC miners, or contact us for advice.