The path to freedom. Part 2, My first mining rig (a beginners guide).

My first mining rig, a beginners guide.

I should point out at this stage YOU MUST FACTOR YOUR ELECTRICITY AND HARDWARE COST IN EVERY CALCULATION. Your hardware, once paid for will then generate your income minus electricity. This will take some time, this is not a way to get rich quick or slowly, it is a way to generate passive income. You are probably even better off in spending your cash on a coin and HODLing. I do this my way because of my interest in blockchain tech and I believe in a decentralized future away from our current structures. There are excellent, far more advanced posts on mining and how to work out the best coin for your hardware etc. As I say this is a BEGINNER post. With that in mind I hope you find the information contained to be useful.

Some people to follow for really good detail I would recommend @blockops and @vlemon I will be adding to this list as I explore more on Steemit.

---

I had been using programs like minergate and winminer on a few different P.C's around the office and my home over 2017, the yield was pretty low but this gave me a taste for mining and how to get the best from my mining efforts. I have used Poloniex to trade and lend my way to over $1500 not including the Steem I transferred to Steemit.

SRC: Minergate desktop app

SRC: Winminer desktop app

I will touch on these applications or software in part 3.

---

Src My Poloniex dashboard

But this only drove my interest in mining, the real path to freedom in this world is to have a "passive income". More on that here ===> https://steemit.com/cryptocurrency/@moonunit/a-dummies-guide-on-passive-v-s-active-income-the-path-to-freedom .

---

Back to the mining rig.

The mining rig, like all computers consists of 2 primary components. Hardware and Software.

In this post I will cover hardware. Hardware consists of many components. They are detailed below.

1 Chassis:

This is the box that all the electronics are housed in. Some people call this a case. Mining rigs with Multiple Graphics processor units (GPU) are typically open air and offer very little protection to the electronics within them. They are open air to help with heat reduction. Mining rigs generate heat and heat causes GPU's to run more slowly so the cooler they are the better. After all, we want to generate the best income for €, $, £, ¥ etc spent.

Computer chassis.

Open air or mining rig chassis.

SRC:Google images

---

2 Main board:

This is the board that all the other components plug into. A reasonably basic modern main board will get you started. Most modern mainboards will have 3 - 5 PCI / PCI express slots. This is where your GPU's plug in so the more the merrier.

Standard Main board with 5 circled PCI /PCI express ports -the small ones. (No 1)

SRC:Google images

There are also dedicated mining rig main boards.

Dedicated mining rig mainboard with 13 PCI/ PCI Express ports

SRC:Google images

I have also seen info on upcoming boards with 20 PCI express ports!

As this is a beginners guide and you are probably funding this out of your own pocket you may want to look at the suggestion at the end on saving some of your hard earned moola!

---

3 Central processing unit or (CPU):

In mining rigs the CPU is not the most important part. You can CPU mine certain crypto coins like Monero (XMR). But most of the processing is done on the GPU. Typically miners will recommend a Celeron processor. This Celeron processor is made by Intel and is their "workhorse" processor. It is nowhere near the fastest CPU on the market but they are incredibly reliable.

Celeron processor

SRC: Ebay.com

The CPU plugs into the CPU socket (NO.2) in the main board picture above. There is also a cooling fan required for the CPU as they do get hot.

---

4 Power supply or PSU:

Mining rigs can draw a lot of power, part of what miners will do is to maximise mining speed while minimizing energy usage. Typically this is done by under volting the GPU's. As this is a software configuration issue I will cover this in a later part. For multiple GPU rigs you will need a 1000w PSU minimum. There are a number of PCIe short for PCI express sockets on this one. (which is actually the one I chose for my first rig) Circled in red below. Each of these ports will supply the power for GPU's installed on PCIe risers (I'll detail these later). I would recommend getting nothing lower than 80% efficiency. This is the rate at which the PSU transforms the power at the wall to usable power by the rigs components. The higher the efficiency the lower the cost to run the rig. The power supply connects to the main board in a connector listed as NO.4 in the main board picture.

Be quiet power zone 1000W PSU

SRC BeQuiet.com

---

5 RAM- Random access memory:

RAM is volatile memory (it is wiped when the computer looses power) which means that you can not store information here like on a hard drive (in point 6) Ram connects to the main board in a slot shown in the main board picture as NO.3. System RAM is used by the CPU, information like software and applications are read from the hard drive and stored in RAM for speed of operation. Typical multiple mining GPU rigs will have 8GB of RAM.

Vengeance® — 8GB Dual Channel DDR3

SRC: Corsair.com
This is the RAM I chose for my rig as I had an older mainboard

---

6 Hard Disk Drive - HDD:

The term Hard disk drive originates from when mass storage drives had spinning plates in them and a set of magnets (called heads) on arms, the heads would change the polarity of a sector of the metal plate thus making it a 1 or 0. Computers only think in 1's or 0's, this is called binary. I wont go any further into that as this is about mining rigs. Miners will typically opt for SSD or Solid State Drive, without getting to in-depth in an explanation a SSD is a hard drive built of non volatile RAM so when you power off your computer you don't loose all your hard work. HDD pony and cart compared to an F1 car for SSD.

|:--:|
| SSD V's HDD |
SRC JomSurf.com

---

7 Graphics processing unit - GPU:

GPU's sit on video cards. The GPU is a dedicated processor (like a CPU) that is specifically designed for processing video. They also have their own onboard RAM which is dedicated for the video card and is not shared for system memory. These video cards are where the magic happens so to speak. Specific software access the GPU and Video ram and feeds it sums which the GPU must process. These computations add information to the block chain and also discover new coins. I am keeping the terminology here as simple as possible as I really don't want to loose anyone. There a wealth of in-depth articles on the block chain and how it works. For this article we just need to know that GPU's are the work horse. They come in literally hundreds of options available.

I went for Radeon RX580 with 8GB Ram!

2 x Radeon rx580 Box

Radeon rx580 out of box, 3 nice big fans to keep it cool

I left a pen in the picture so you can get a scale for the Video card.

Extra components:

You will also require a monitor, keyboard and mouse but if you have a PC at home chances are you already have these. You don't need to leave these on the Mining rig once it is complete and can connect remotely to check on the rigs status and health. Again this is some thing I will cover later.

You can buy most of these components in a pre-assembled format on Ebay like this one...

https://goo.gl/ocQ9ba

All you really need to get from there is a decent GPU and once you get into a multi GPU rig a better power supply.

I would advise to get a windows 10 64bit OS (which we'll cover later) on there or minimum windows 8.

Ok so if you have made it all the way here I guess I'd better show you a picture of my rig.

This rig has 2 x Radeon rx580 video cards, intel i5 processor, 120GB SSD, 8 GB DDR3 RAM a 5 PCI / PCIe slot main board and a 1000w PSU. This Chassis also has 3 extra cooling fans built in so I figured it would be a great starter base until I mine enough for an open air rig.

I had an old DVR chassis that I used, and scavenged a Main-board, SSD, RAM and an Intel i5 processor from broken computers. To buy the above server on ebay would have been my own personal next choice.

This series started with my guide on Passive v's active income

• A dummies guide on Passive v's active income, the path to freedom.

LIKE WHAT YOU SEE?