How it started
"From where ideas came: I believe that ideas doesn't came from nothing, it's a combination of external stimulation, experience and a special need."
Everything started because we are searching for a new house. the problem is that it's never a full package, there is always something that is not according our wishes. As it's being a long search for the perfect house we decided to change our approach and evaluate what we can change or adapt ourselves to fit in the available options.
A part of the basic housing needs we want also an extra room to setup an office/lab/workshop.
We found a house that is not a house, but an apartment with a garden and an extra building with 20 square meters. That will be perfect for the office, but it's electrical heated.
Here is the problem: This may exceed our budget for monthly fees.
The idea
Here came the idea: I remember to see somewhere that big data companies are installing servers in houses in order to reduce the cooling cost. Plus another memory that crypto currency mining require a lot of computational power and it generate heat, a lot of heat.
Bingo, why not put a mining rig to heat and get some money back to cover the electricity costs.
Then I started to research a little about mining and discovered that I'm already late, very late...
Maybe I will not make a lot of money, but at least I can cover some heating costs.
Let's the game begin
It narrow to that: The cheapest you can get on the market for the computer with the most powerful GPU you can afford.
To learn how mining works, I started to run some mining application on my laptop that have a Nvidia GTX 1050Ti and it was achieving ~11MH/s on Ethereum.
Choosing the best rig for the purpose
There are many comparative charts in the web that helped me to take the decision.
I selected a Radeon RX 580 8GB that seems a good compromise between power vs costs, the higher memory was due to some people are saying that soon 4GB Will not be enough for the work. This card should achieve ~24MH/s. Let's see what I will get.
On the computer side I took a little better configuration because I want to replace my old NAS Netgear Stora by a server. As I have many data sitting in a hard disk for backup purpose this disk will be in the computer.
Basically it's a home server that will heat a room and in the idle time will be mining....
- GPU - Sapphire Radeon RX 580 Nitro Special Edition 8GB GDDR5
- CPU - Intel Pentium G4620 3,70ghz LGA1151 3MB Cache, I know is more than needed, let's say I paid 60 more..
- Mainboard - MSI (Z170A GAMING M5) Z170A GAMING M5
- SSD - SANDISK SanDisk SSD Plus 120GB SATA III 2.5 inch
- Memory - Corsair CMK8GX4M2B3600C18 Vengeance LPX 8 GB
- Cooler - ARCTIC Alpine 11 GT Rev.2 - Super Silent Intel CPU cooler for Mini PCs
- Power meter - Elegiant AC 100 A Digital AC Current Meter Tester Power LED Voltmeter Ammeter
- Power supply - have an old 700W that still functional
- Cabinet - Cooler Master HAF XB EVO ATX
- Extra storage - I have some 1TB hdd that will do the work
Order was placed on 24th August and parts should arrive until 11th September.
Keep following to know more about this adventure in the mining world, @Acustico.
Update on September, 1st 2017
So far I'm still waiting the components arrival. Almost all parts are on the way, only the motherboard, CPU and graphics cards are still waiting something. humm....
My feeling is that they sell the part and then try to found it somewhere, I will not be surprise if close to the deadline they came out and say that the order is cancelled.
Let's see