This tutorial is for making a mining rig, which can be spendy! If this is not for you and you still want the mining experience, head over to
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Setting up a mining rig may seem some what " scary " to the average beginner when it comes to Crypto Currencies, When in reality, it is actually quite easy to do!
A mining rig is basically a giant calculator, it is made to crack hashes. These hashes are what a coins " Algorithm " would be. SHA-256 is Bitcoins Algo, This and along
with the Scrypt Algo, are both being mined on ASIC miners. ( Application Specific Integrated Circuit ) is made to just mine that specific Algo it is manufactured for. Bitcoin
ASIC's, like the Bitmain Antminer series are your best bet when it comes to mining Bitcoins. Now, some may agree with what I am about to say here, but these miners are actually
very unpredictable. What i mean is, if the coin tanks you are left with an ASIC, you cannot mine anything else but whatever Algo the ASIC is made for. This is where my rig comes
into play.
GPU Clustering For Mining Alt-Coins
GPU Clustering refers to using ( Graphic Processing Units ) Which allow a great amount of paralell processes to take place because of the amount of Cores there are on the card
along with the VRAM ( Video Random Access Memory ) Which allows for a much faster hashrate then the traditional CPU mining ( Central Processing Unit )
Now, for the big question.. " How do i begin to build an affordable but profitable GPU mining rig Wolf"?
This question, is one I see a lot all over the place! So, I will be building a mining rig with you guys right here! Lets get started!
Setting Up The Mining Rig
Now, what the most important part about this rig is going to be, is the GPUs i referred to back in the last section, without these you are pretty much left with onboard video
AKA a Potato..
We need a very fast GPU to start this build, and we will need a few of them. Now when choosing a GPU, AMD Video Cards ( another name for GPU ) is the best way to go.
The card used the most back in the day and still to this day is the AMD R9 280X. The reason this card is one of the best cards for mining is because it hash a rock solid
hashrate for any Algo and its POWER DRAW is low. Power draw is key!
The card we will use for this build will be the AMD series because of its faster core speeds and also the opensource sdk makes the card perform a lot faster than the normal
Nvidia GPU
The best place to pick up a used R9 280X is ebay, this way we can get the best hashrate for the lowest cost.
The reason this card is good is because of the price, $160 for 21MH/s is an amazing deal, try to find similar ones like this, but do not pay more than $190 for any 280x.
Now the next part, once you have 6 GPUs you need a Motherboard that will handle it, this is where the build is fun and Amazon can do the work for us!
We are going with the Asrock H97 ANNIVERSARY - https://www.amazon.com/ASRock-DDR3-Motherboard-H97-ANNIVERSARY/dp/B00N9399TS/ref=pd_sim_147_24?ie=UTF8&dpID=51wkRkot9iL&dpSrc=sims&preST=AC_UL160_SR160%2C160&psc=1&refRID=RDRFQ5M6WEJCEXFWHJSD
If you can, try to find an Asrock H81 Pro BTC, Amazon usually has them and it is where i got mine, however there were none at the time of making this guide.
Now we need a CPU, We will go with a Intel Pentium Processor G3240 -https://www.amazon.com/Intel-Pentium-Processor-G3240-BX80646G3240/dp/B00J2LIECO/ref=pd_sim_147_32?ie=UTF8&dpID=51dLqAHyk2L&dpSrc=sims&preST=AC_UL160_SR127%2C160&psc=1&refRID=D6556APYGZG2WHDW6CVH
Next up we need the RAM for the board! We will use just one module of 4gb DDR3 - https://www.amazon.com/Crucial-Ballistix-PC3-12800-240-Pin-BLS8G3D1609DS1S00/dp/B006YG9E7O/ref=pd_sim_147_96?ie=UTF8&dpID=41dMM2nH3mL&dpSrc=sims&preST=AC_UL160_SR160%2C160&psc=1&refRID=D6556APYGZG2WHDW6CVH
We are getting very close now! we need a power supply that can power this giant Calculator
We are going with the all mighty famous EVGA SuperNOVA 1600 G2 80+ GOLD - https://www.amazon.com/EVGA-SuperNOVA-Crossfire-Warranty-120-G2-1600-X1/dp/B00MMLUIE8/ref=pd_sim_147_39?ie=UTF8&dpID=51jnIyFyaTL&dpSrc=sims&preST=AC_UL160_SR160%2C160&psc=1&refRID=HRNK533EAVXD69BPJNV8
Now, for the PCI riser's, these little guys allow for the cards to be farther apart from each other for heat dissapation, for every 1-5 CM of space, the card gain a reduced temperature of 5-10C
We are going to buy 6 of these, which can be found here - https://www.amazon.com/Electop-Express-Riser-Extender-Supply/dp/B014ZTVZB4/ref=pd_sim_147_6?ie=UTF8&dpID=41MsVFIH21L&dpSrc=sims&preST=AC_UL160_SR160%2C160&psc=1&refRID=PZTY4SXFX8WXJZQRQQBP
And that is it! your build is not complete, there are multiple ways to build an enclosure which is what you wil need to make these risers do there job as we did not purchase
a full tower case or anything like that. To get a good idea, i will put pictures of my rig and some from google for you guys to see!
Mining rig for Ethereum - https://www.google.ca/search?q=mining+rig+for+ethereum&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiKhrjti9rNAhXmx4MKHTbSBzoQ_AUICigD&biw=1920&bih=971
and here is what my rig I made for testing, it consists of 2 R9 290s with the stock reference cooler, AMD processor with FM2+ Socket, 2 PCI 1x - 16x risers with one on the 16x lane
and the mobo is a Gigabyte F2A88X-D3HP
I am not able to post an image of this rig, but i will allow all questions about the rig! If you guys need help please comment and let me know!
Peace
- Wolf