Zcash (ZEC) has launched officially a bit earlier today and things have literally gone crazy, just as expected with all the user interest before the launch and all the hype surrounding the new altcoin. Mining has started as well, though it is apparently still a bit of a problem for people where to mine and what miner to use, so I figured out that I can share some experience and tips based on my experience so far. Hopefully this will help you get started mining properly, but don't forget that Zcash (ZEC) has implemented a slow start and currently the block reward is still pretty small. The block reward will need 34 days to linearly reach the regular level of 12.5 ZEC, so the first day just about 100 ZEC coins will be mined in total. Speculations and really high prices for selling very small amounts of ZEC are already on the exchanges that listed the coin already such as Poloniex and Kraken. I have already written more details about the slow start and the block rewards here - Ready to Mine Zcash (ZEC), But Are You Aware of the Initial Block Rewards
Where to mine with CPU and Nvidia CUDA GPUs
The best place to mine Zcash with CPU or Nvidia CUDA GPUs at the moment seems to be Flypool, a stratum mining pool that supports a number of stratum-enabled miners for the Equihash algorithm used by Zcash (ZEC). The pool seems to be the best place for CPU and Nvidia miners for the moment, the pool lists Genoil's OpenCL miner as supported as well, but that particular miner is still quite problematic to run and I'm having issues making it work as well, so you might not want to bother with it for the moment. The pool currently has a zero mining fee.
Where to mine with AMD OpenCL GPUs
The best place for the moment with a properly working OpenCL miner for most people seems to be the Coinsforall mining pool that has a working OpenCL/CUDA miner available. This pool does not use stratum and their own miner is currently not compatible with other pools as they are pretty much all using the stratum protocol. Do note that currently this pool has a pretty high mining fee of 4%, though it is the only viable option for OpenCL mining, so not much of a choice.
Alternatively you can also try selling your hashrate on NiceHash, the rate is pretty high at the moment, though it can vary a lot and the profit might not be as big as directly mining and selling when you get at least 0.01 ZEC available to withdraw from the pool and sell it on an exchange. Mining directly to an exchange address can be helpful if you want to mine and sell directly in order to get high profit with the initial scarcity of Zcash coins and the big demand for them that is currently present.
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