Building My First Mining Rig - An Epic Newb Adventure, Part 1
Hello, my name is dhouse. I'm a software developer with a wife and a little 9 month old kiddo. I have a lot of hobbies, such as Talmudic study, Russian literature, fantasy baseball, all thing blockchain and crypto (of course), and howling into the void.
I decided to build a GPU mining rig despite the fact that I don't know almost anything about hardware or mining. IF I CAN DO IT, SO CAN YOU! (Actually, that might not really be true, since I do have a lot of familiarity with computers, being a software dev and all...but you probably can. If you are at least a little bit smart, you can reach your dreams! Or at least some of them. Hopefully. GO YOU!)
It's intimidating but so fun. I'm having so much fun just going for it, and not worrying about the fact that I don't know what I'm doing. I can google, I can read, I can learn this stuff. It's an amazing feeling, to realize that I can just do this, all on my own, no permission needed from my boss, from my professor, from my parents - from anyone! (Except my wife of course, lol. I told her, look - if you could build a machine that literally prints money, wouldn't you do it? Hook, line and sinker.)
Well, I haven't done it all yet - but I've started! And if there is anyone who has experience with this stuff and wants to warn me about things, or tell me I'm doing something wrong - GO AWAY MIND YOUR OWN BUSINESS haha just kidding, seriously I would love to learn as much as possible so comment away.
I made one of the most cheap, ghetto DIY 'frames' imaginable - I am basically mounting two small metal wire shelves between two upside-down milk crates, all using zip ties. I mounted the motherboard on the metal wire shelving, with a plastic placemat in between.
Of course, I accidentally bought DDR3 ram and my mobo needs DDR4, so I had to take a break until I can get down to the computer store and pick me up some of the right kind of Ram. But it's a start!
haha, awesome case dude!
I made mine out of wood. Check it out! https://steemit.com/mining/@chronogn/built-a-gpu-miner-gpu
Nice. Yours looks better. I just wanted to quickest cheapest way possible :)
Nice I love the use of the milk crates. Another thing that works great are these cheap racks you can get at lowes or home depot and some wire ties lol and you have plenty of room for expansion
Yep! We use those for storage. For my first rig I wanted to just prove to myself that it works, so I didnt want to buy a big shelving unit.
And I got it built and mining last night, post coming soon :-D
awesome job , great way to use what you have
Could you fit the rig into one of those baskets?:) I'm also building one and I've even funded it by crowd funding on steemit :)
That's awesome - bootstrapping a rig with Steem, brilliant!! Best of luck, and if you have any questions, feel free to ask, I got mine up and running smoothly (although obviously I'm no expert!). I might want to invest with you as well if you have another round or whatever.
Wow, this looks really nice. Maybe i will try to build a similar mining rig soon. Thanks for the great idea's!
Haha I made the same mistake with the ram when I was doing one of my rigs earlier :P
enjoy looks like a great hobby! Wonder how loud it will be?
Thanks! Yeah we'll see how loud, I tried watching youtube videos to get an idea of the sound but it's hard to tell that way.
I'm currently keeping it in the basement, which is half finished with carpeting, and half unfinished - it's in the unfinished area, which is big room we use mostly for storage, and my little office/cave, and the furnace is there also, which is pretty loud when it's going.
what will you concentrate on mining!
trying eth now. just read that claymore miner lets you dual mine eth along with siacoin/decred/a few others, ostensibly without losing any hashpower for eth mining. I'm skeptical, but I might try.
I might try to speculatively mine new coins at some point.
its not loud at all. barely notice it.
Can't wait for your next post. Please report to us your result. How much you got $$$ and your hardware setup.
Yep I'm planning to!
Wow, nice rig! I'd be curious to see how you use a custom build like this to mine. Which coin are you going for? @ironshield
Not sure, I'll probably start with Ethereum, and check coinwarz/whattomine and take it from there.
My plan is to pump some of the profits back into steem and other POS bags to generate even more...
I like STEEM, that it can be 'vested' to increase influence and curation rewards. I don't know of any other coin that can do that! Very few coins actually "do" anything. STEEM is unique in that regard. @ironshield
get that crypto mining! :)
That is so cool that you're starting this all on your own. I would literally have no clue where to start. I look forward to updates.
i had no clue either. just googled and read and googled and read....