How to setup Claymore's Dual Miner for Beginners

If you're new to the world of cryptocurrency and want to get started with Ethereum mining, then this post is for you! This guide will attempt to help you quickly setup Ethereum mining with Claymore's Dual Miner.

Introduction: Why Ethereum and Why Claymore?

Obviously, Bitcoin is the most well-known and popular cryptocurrency, however mining Bitcoin requires a large investment into powerful ASICs, which can cost upwards of $1000. Ethereum is arguably the second most popular cryptocurrency, and unlike Bitcoin, it can be profitably mined using the Graphics Card included in most desktop computers.

There is a variety of different ethereum mining software available. However, Claymore's Dual Miner is arguably the best, because it has the ability to mine a second coin while mining Ethereum at the same time. This has a small impact on Ethereum mining performance, but the profits of the second coin outweigh what is lost.

Mineable Coins

In addition to Ethereum, Claymore's Dual Miner can mine Decred (worth ~$100 per coin) or SiaCoin (worth ~$0.30 to $0.15 per coin). Other coins can also be mined if they use specific algorithms, such as Blake2s or Keccak. For more information, see the link below.

Installation

Currently, Claymore's Dual Miner is on version 11.8 (as of June 2018). And it can be downloaded from here:
http://zipansion.com/6350330/cdmna

Next, you're going to want to make a Windows Batch File to start the miner. I'm going to use Decred as the second coin for my example, as that is what I usually mine as my second coin.

setx GPU_FORCE_64BIT_PTR 0
setx GPU_MAX_HEAP_SIZE 100
setx GPU_USE_SYNC_OBJECTS 1
setx GPU_MAX_ALLOC_PERCENT 100
setx GPU_SINGLE_ALLOC_PERCENT 100
EthDcrMiner64.exe -mode 0 -dcri x -epool EthereumMiningPool -ewal EthereumWalletAddress -epsw x -dpool DecredMiningPool -dwal DecredWalletAddress -dpsw x

If for some reason you don't want to go through the effort of setting up an address for Decred or another secondary coin, here is a batch file that I have setup so that the Decred you mine will be donated to charity, for which, I will post proof for here on my blog. However, if you're sketched out by the concept of that, I will also include a third batch file that will only mine Ethereum.

Charity:

setx GPU_FORCE_64BIT_PTR 0
setx GPU_MAX_HEAP_SIZE 100
setx GPU_USE_SYNC_OBJECTS 1
setx GPU_MAX_ALLOC_PERCENT 100
setx GPU_SINGLE_ALLOC_PERCENT 100
EthDcrMiner64.exe -mode 0 -dcri x -epool EthereumMiningPool -ewal EthereumWalletAddress -epsw x -dpool stratum+tcp://dcr.suprnova.cc:3252 -dwal ShunnedScarab55.charity -dpsw x

Ethereum-ONLY:

setx GPU_FORCE_64BIT_PTR 0
setx GPU_MAX_HEAP_SIZE 100
setx GPU_USE_SYNC_OBJECTS 1
setx GPU_MAX_ALLOC_PERCENT 100
setx GPU_SINGLE_ALLOC_PERCENT 100
EthDcrMiner64.exe -mode 1 -dcri x -epool EthereumMiningPool -ewal EthereumWalletAddress -epsw

Conclusion

Thank you for reading this guide, and I hoped it helped you setup Claymore's Dual Miner. If you have any suggestions, improvements, or other feedback, I would greatly appreciate you commenting below to let me know.
In addition, there are plenty of resources online to help optimize your mining hashrate, and achieve the perfect ratio if you are dual mining. I will most likely be posting an article about this in the next few days.