Ethereum Scrypt Hardware Opinion

[zerokul]

Hello,

Long time lurker, first time poster here.
I've been using JtR and Hashcat for a while, but the current task is stumping me.

I have an Ethereum wallet, V3 scrypt 262144*8*1. The one which is impossible to get going with a gpu.
It is my only option to result to using CPUs.

I have three rigs that I used in the past for other hashes, but this one seems very slow.
Rig 1 AMDFX8320 8 core 3.5 - does 6 H/s
Rig 2 I7 6700k 4 core 4.0 ghz - does 15 H/s
Rig 3 I5 750 2.67 ghz - 4 H/s

I'm looking to maximize the hashrate per watt and $$
Which CPU can outperform the i76700k or possibly any other setup that is still not going to break the bank ?

[philsmd]

For CPUs it's normally quite easy to decide which hardware performs better and is more cost efficient. You could actually just have a look at some benchmark sites and choose a OpenCL-compatible CPU that is worth its price (e.g. from benchmarks from cpuboss.com or cpubenchmark.net or any other benchmark site).
I think that only modern high-end Intel CPUs are currently recommended if we look at the performance (modern AMD CPUs, as far as I know, do not even support a modern instruction set like AVX2 or even OpenCL as good as Intel CPUs do).
The problem is that the most recent version of Intel CPUs are quite expensive (i9 etc), but of course they would also be much faster (see benchmarks to make sure about the individual performance and how much the speed increase is).

I think with a good/modern Intel CPU (yes even Xeon, if it is compatible with a "cheap" motherboard, and worth the price) you can't be wrong (even if they have some serious security bugs see meltdown or spectre).

Unfortunately, if we look at GPUs instead, with -m 15700 you currently could use only something like a very high-end Nvidia 1080ti GPU (at the time of this writing) and the performance might be only slighlty better than a mid range CPU (or in some cases even slower, because of the high memory requirements and therefore high tmto values and multiple memory allocations needed, because of restriction on how much memory can be allocated at once). I'm not sure what the current performance of -m 15700 is with a 1080 ti, but you could just test it or look for benchmarks.

Anyways, scrypt is known to be GPU-unfriendly and therefore a modern OpenCL-compatible CPU will be a good idea to crack a 15700 hash (what might be even better is to have a good strategy on how to attack the hash: a plan to generate/use the most likely password candidates... a "small" set of candidates of course, because scrypt is slow... but this is of course a different topic).

[g-t]

It's obviously not the answer for you question but I've been doing the same for last 2 weeks so I know the pain you're suffering. I'm trying to crack 262144*8*1 on Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-6700HQ CPU @ 2.60GHz (10 H/s).

My 6xRX580 mining rig hangs when hashcat starts so the only option is CPU + some good dictoinary and hashcat rules.
I've found dictionary that consists of leaked gmail / yandex.ru / mail.ru passwords so if want to give it a try just let me know - I can share it with you.


On my cpu (without any additional rules) it'll take 11 days (4% complete).

Code:

Session..........: gmailyandexleak
Status...........: Running
Hash.Type........: Ethereum Wallet, SCRYPT
Hash.Target......: $ethereum$s*262144*8*1*1ebc...477a9...0a88df
Time.Started.....: Thu Jan 11 10:27:09 2018 (5 hours, 8 mins)
Time.Estimated...: Tue Jan 23 04:23:37 2018 (11 days, 12 hours)
Guess.Base.......: File (dict/gmail_yandex.ru_mail.ru_wordlist_bezpieka.org.txt)
Guess.Queue......: 1/1 (100.00%)
Speed.Dev.#1.....:       10 H/s (767.49ms)
Recovered........: 0/1 (0.00%) Digests, 0/1 (0.00%) Salts
Progress.........: 461728/10841215 (4.26%)
Rejected.........: 0/461728 (0.00%)
Restore.Point....: 461728/10841215 (4.26%)
Candidates.#1....: 100292911202 -> 100292h
HWMon.Dev.#1.....: N/A

[zerokul]

I think that only modern high-end Intel CPUs are currently recommended if we look at the performance (modern AMD CPUs, as far as I know, do not even support a modern instruction set like AVX2 or even OpenCL as good as Intel CPUs do).

Thanks, I'm looking at a used octa core/16 threads E5 2667 v3. It has SSE, AVX, AVX2, FMA3. I can grab it for $300 CAD.
Problem with that is the LGA 2011 x99 motherboards and DDR4 ram is hella expensive. Total would be about 560 CAD.

Either that or I can grab a full refurb rig with i7 4790 for $340. Knowing more about the instruction sets required for the -m 15700, would you say that the 75% price increase of the xeon setup would be equal to a similar improvement in performance over the 4790 ? The cpuboss comparison is here: 2667 vs 4790

I don't have a 4790, but based on my experience with 6700k, I can expect around 15 h/s. The octa xeon hopefully does 22+

Unfortunately, if we look at GPUs instead, with -m 15700 you currently could use only something like a very high-end Nvidia 1080ti GPU (at the time of this writing) and the performance might be only slighlty better than a mid range CPU

I have a 1070ti with 8gb and could not load the kernel without failures. If anyone knows how to operate the options to get it to work, I would be very grateful.

[zerokul]

It's obviously not the answer for you question but I've been doing the same for last 2 weeks so I know the pain you're suffering. I'm trying to crack 262144*8*1 on Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-6700HQ CPU @ 2.60GHz (10 H/s).

That is still fairly good. Your 6700HQ doing 767ms with 10 h/s is much better than my octa core fx8320 at 1200ms and 6 h/s.

Thanks for the offer regarding the passwords, but  I am fairly familiar with the candidate words for this wallet so public passwords will not help.

[JimBob]

Hey Zerokul, in the same boat as you.  Here is a 44 core system I'm putting together.

Dual CPU motherboard Z10PE-D16 WS  $567.00 CAD

https://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.as...-_-Product

2x INTEL XEON 22 CORE PROCESSOR E5-2699V4 2.2GHZ  - $1000 to $5000 on Ebay.

Still researching if I should go with the cheaper "Engineering Samples" also known identified as "Intel Confidential" or the legit retail versions.

[Chick3nman]

Don't buy high end Xeons for SCrypt. Counter-intuitively, the more powerful CPUs may not scale in performance as much as you might thing. For this, you are far better off with many smaller CPUs than with 1 or two high power CPUs.

[zerokul]

Hey Zerokul, in the same boat as you.  Here is a 44 core system I'm putting together.

Dual CPU motherboard Z10PE-D16 WS  $567.00 CAD

https://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.as...-_-Product

2x INTEL XEON 22 CORE PROCESSOR E5-2699V4 2.2GHZ  - $1000 to $5000 on Ebay.

Still researching if I should go with the cheaper "Engineering Samples" also known identified as "Intel Confidential" or the legit retail versions.

That's a lot of horsepower.

Since I want to sell these rigs once I am done, I'd like to do this with consumer grade equipment as well.

For the moment, I'm opting for multi-rig over one expensive rig to be honest. I hope it will be easier to offload at the end.


I just purchased 2 off-lease, refurbished rigs just for this as a start.
An i7 4790 for $330 CAD, doing 13 H/s and a second rig Xeon 1220 V3 for $180. So, so far I'm at $500 doing 21 H/s.
This setup is already working for me while I build the next rig with old xeons. The problem with purpose built rigs is that it will be harder to sell to an enthusiast and the price will drop. So I think I need to stick with old depreciated Xeons.

LGA 1366 has no AVX CPUs and only SSE, but all parts are cheap.
Once you step up to LGA2011 and you can get AVX CPUs, but the motherboards are rare and insanely expensive.

I know that both JtR and probably hashcat will take advantage of AVX, but I do not know the ratio of
performance improvement per dollar spent on AVX compatible motherboards.

I found a few local shops that have cheap, LGA2011 V1 xeons like E5-2640 6 core, 12 threads for $70 each and similar LGA1366 Xeons as well. No shops stock motherboards that I could find yet.

If I snap up 2 of these and a dual socket motherboard at $100, it will be a 12 core/24 thread at about $250.

Anyway, keep at it and let me know what you find

[zerokul]

So to close the loop on this, I have settled on using 3 separate rigs for this.
1. i7 4790, 4 core 8 threads total, cracking rate of 13 H/s, cost of $330
2. Xeon 1220 V3, 4 core 4 threads total, cracking rate of 8 H/s, cost of $180
3. Xeon 2667 V3, 8 core 16 threads, cracking rate of 21 H/s, cost of $560.

I tested JtR and hashcat on all of them. JtR does better on i7 4790 and on the Xeon 1220 under Linux. The difference
was between 10 - 20 percent.

Hashcat on Windows did better than JtR on the Xeon 2667. The difference was much bigger, at about 25%.

Altogether, I have 2 instances of JtR on Linux and 1 instance of Hashcat on Windows doing about 42 H/s.

The other rigs( FX8320 and I5 750) were not cost effective to use.

[qweasd21]

zero: what linux u use? I tried with ethos and The-Distribution-Which-Does-Not-Handle-OpenCL-Well (Kali) with i73840qm but with -m15700 benchmark mode i see opencl errors... its linux drivers fault and should i try with windows? or this cpu is too low ?