Introduction

Hello. My name is Brandon Bozard and this will be my first blog post on Steemit. On this platform I hope to share my ideas in a constructive way with others. Over the past couple of months, cryprocurrency mining has become a hobby of mine. Specifically, GPU mining. I've learned a lot about it over this short period of time and hope to help others who may be taking on this seemingly daunting task.

 Is GPU mining for you?

Before you jump into the deepend head first, there are a few things to consider. For one, the price of entry can be rather high. There are guides you can see on youtube on building extreme budget rigs costing less than $500. While building such a rig is possible, typically using an old desktop PC found on ebay featuring  a few PCIe slots then throwing a couple old GPUs you can get for cheap and a power supply that just barely dosent blow up, often this isnt a great option for a variety of reasons. For one, with older hardware your hash per watt will be significantly lower then modern hardware. Older architecture GPU's will be fractionally as fast as modern ones and consume much more power further reducing your profit. These old machines are typically only profitable if you have very cheap or free electricity. Speaking of electricity, thats a major factor that should be configured if you are picking up the tab. A typical miner with 6 RX 470 cards will draw about 800 watts from the wall. At a typical electricity cost for the United States of 12 cents per kilowatt hour, this will cost you just over $70 a month to run the machine. The third thing to mention is the reality that you may never get your investment back. Crypto currency is a still infantile market that could crash at any time and become worthless. Also, websites do from time to time get hacked. Ill have another post in the future about protecting yourself as much as possible but there is always that chance that you'll lose it all.

 Getting Started

Ok so you're now aware of the potential risks and downsides to mining and you're ready to get started! Great! But how? Well first you'll need a rig. You can find these on ebay however people often charge far more than the hardware is worth for these systems. This is offset by the ease of use and many come plug and play. Simply put your address in and you're getting paid! I prefer the DIY route and building it yourself for a few reasons. The first is the fact that you can save hundreds or thousands of dollars doing it this way. The second is that you learn a lot about mining systems, how to build and service one, and how to set it up. This information can very helpful if/when you have a problem. If you do decide to build your own, starting with the motherboard is probably the best option. This is the backbone of the rig and your other component choices are dependent on the board. I recommend the Asrock Pro BTC R2.0. This is the second version of the famous Asrock Pro BTC, perhaps the most used board in crypto mining for good reasons. This board is rock solid, is designed from the ground up for mining, and offers 6 GPU support for an affordable price. The second component is the CPU. Typically miners will buy the cheapest chip compatible with their board as CPU mining is far less profitable than GPU mining. To put this in perspective, the best CPU made right now is a 22 core Xeon. This costs thousands of dollars. The mid range RX 470 GPU has just over 2,000 cores and costs about $160. You tell me which would be better. Ram isnt important either. At least 4GB of any DDR3 ram will do. For drives, I prefer SSd's. They are silent, fast, and almost never die. Any SSD 120Gb or more will work. You can also go mechanical if you are on a tight budget. Now we find ourselves having to chose our GPU's. AMD's are typically considered to be king when it comes to mining so ill be focusing on them for now. The best one for the money right now is the RX 470. This card can be as low as $150 USD if you can snag a deal, and will hash at around 240sol/s with current zcash miners and 22MH/s for ETH. This can be increased to over 30 with BIOS modifications. BuriedOne Blockchain on YouTube has guides regarding BIOS mods if you have further questions. You also have the choice of the RX 480 which is slightly faster, but also uses more power and can cost significantly more. Dont bother with the RX 460 as to be blunt, its shit. Picking up as many RX 470 cards as you can fit within your budget is the most cost effective option. Sapphire cards are most highly regarded in the mining community, so id get those. I have a few and they work great. Now comes your PSU choice. This is the part that powers your rig. This is VERY important. Do not cheap out as this can blow up your entire rig and cost you more in power. If you can afford it, go for a gold rated PSU. The ratings refer to the efficiency of the PSU. Higher ratings will use less power and therefor save you money. Gold is prefered, but if you cant afford it bronze works fine too. Thats what I have. Now how much wattage do you need? For a system with two or less 470's a 500 watt is great. For systems with 4 or less, get a 750. For 6 or less, get a 1,000 watt. EVGA is the most popular, but it comes down to personal choice. Now you'll need a frame to support all of you components. I built a frame out of wood, but you can also buy or build metal ones. There are guides to this online if you are curious as to how to do it. IMineBlocks has a nice video about his frame and i built mine using his ideas with my own personal tweaks. Okay, you now have your hardware. Assemble it (most of this is just plugging stuff into the only hole it will fit in) and boot her up. You'll need to install an OS. Create a bootable USB with Win 10, you can find guides for this on youtube its quite simple. Install the OS and the drivers for your GPU's off AMD (or Nvidia's) website. Download the most recent version of a miner (ill talk more about this later) put in the pool you want to mine on, your address, and you're mining!

 Which coin is best to mine?

This depends on many things. If you went Nvidia the answer is simple. Zcash. If you went AMD, you have far more options. Personally, I like Zcash. You can also chose any other coin such as etherum, monero, siacoin, etc. The best coin to mine is always changing and is highly based on opinion. I mine Zcash. Now you have to chose a mining pool. This is a group of many miners who combine their hashing power then share the profits. Youll make far more money this way over solo mining typically. The pool choice dosent really matter, I use flypool. Now you'll need a wallet. I like poloneix as it provides a wallet for all major currencies and you can trade them to make more profit. For ETH and zcash, claymore makes the best miners. You can find the download links on his fourm postings. 

Conclusion

Okay! You now know the basics and are ready to start your own mining endevours. I hope it all goes well for you, if I missed anything major or you have further questions please ask bellow and ill do my best to answer. Also please provide feedback on the post in general and what I can do to improve. Happy mining, Brandon.