What they don't tell you about building a Mining Rig
I recently decided to build myself a small mining rig, and before you tell me about the ROI I will start by saying that I didn´t do it for the ROI, in fact I am quite sure that I will be better off buying and holding, I built the rig as a learning experience and basically because I thought it would be fun (which it turned out to be!). Besides, if mining doesn’t work out I would have a bad ass gaming PC.
Building a mining rig is pretty much like building a PC, probably easier since you don’t have to worry about fitting all the cables into a small computer case. So, let’s start by the components I got and their price:
An Open Case: I got a really cool one from a miner in Buenos Aires that includes 4 fans, the price of 115 USD was quite reasonable too.
H81 PRO BTC Mother Board: 83 USD
Celeron 2.9 Ghz Processor: 59 USD
240gb SSD (Later to find out this was completely unnecessary): 110 USD
8gb Ram (4gb would have done fine, but feck it they were cheap): 86 USD
750 W Sentey Power Supply: 126 USD
Riser Cables: 8 usd each
Power Button: 10 USD
Video Cards: It all really comes down to this basically, since it was my first rig and I wasn’t sure I was going to make it alive I bought one Gigabyte Nvidia 1050 ti 4gb to test things out (it mines at 12.3 MH/s) Price – 165 USD
So I spent a total of 762 USD for a 1 video card rig, the price after that will depend on the video cards I add to it.
Building the beast!
Building the hardware was actually a lot simpler than what I initially thought. Some things you should really be careful with is:
- Making sure you buy a processor that has same chipset as you motherboard.
- Buy a power supply that can power all of your components (In my case, I will probably need to buy another one after I have 3 or more cards).
- Make sure you buy a power button, otherwise the bloody thing will just sit there and laugh at you!
Now the software was a bit trickier. Before I tell you all the hurdles I faced let me just jump right on to the solution: Buy Ethos Distro USB! (price 39 USD).
Well, at first I tried to install Ubuntu like 200 times, it kept giving me this annoying error:
"The installer encountered an error copying files to the hard disk: [Errno 5] Input/output error This is often due to a faulty CD/DVD disk or drive, or a faulty hard disk. It may help to clean the CD/DVD, to burn the CD/DVD at a lower speed, to clean the CD/DVD drive lens (cleaning kits are often available from electronics suppliers), to check whether the hard disk is old and in need of replacement, or to move the system to a cooler environment."
Me: “Come on Linux, I love you!! Why you do this!!
I have no idea why it gave me that error, I tried every possible solution after I finally gave up and installed evil windows 10. After that things went more smoothly, Installed Nvidia drivers, downloaded Claymore miner, set it up and started mining (I love it when things just work!).
However, I have been told that Windows 10 does not support more than one card, I am not sure if this is true but before I encountered more problems I got myself an Ethos USB, which works like a charm, it comes pre-loaded with most cards drivers and you can spare yourself the SSD drive.
What’s next?
Now I buy more cards, go broke and never break even!
What is worse I already feel I am becoming addicted to this little bastard...
I actually tried to build one as well , only problem was that it drains electricity like crazy leaving it on all the time . Decided to just leave it and find another way to become rich
Probably the only perk of living in the third world is cheap electricity, so I dont worry about that lol.
But yeah, Steemit for example is way more profitable! even buying and speculating with coins is better...
what is the average electricity bill where you live? I am not sure about price per volt or anything like that I just know I live in a 1 bedroom apartment in Florida and my average electric bill is between $45-85 USD depending on how much I am home.
3rd world rocks, baby!! :D
I remember having an entire upstairs room full of mining rigs. One day i forgot that my upstairs circuit was close to maxed out and i decided to try and vacuum another room.....BOOM! Smoke and not the kinda smoke you wanna see. Have fun, but be careful
Wow! thats crazy.. well for now I am only on 500w, but I will keep it in mind!
I may try upstairs soon, minus the 'boom' and smoke.
Haha yea, you dont want any of that Boom N Smoke trust me on that
I think more that 2000 W on a socket and your entering the :boom n smoke: zone
You actually don't need a power button, just connect the two pins on the motherboard labelled "power" with a conductive material like the tip of an usb key and it'll start.
As for ubuntu I usually mine on windows, depending on the cards the drivers are usually better there (amd has a blockchain specific driver for instance), never ran into any troubles with that. I suppose that for high gpu builds ethOS might be usefull though.
Would have saved you 49 dollars wooh a third of a second gpu
Hi @chitty, I like the look of the open air case. I may try a case like that after the next round of upgrades to my son's gaming PC. He thinks he needs a new MB and CPU to go with his 1080 Ti.
Looks like your Gigabyte 1050 Ti beats my EVGA by about 0.5 Mh/s. I only get 11.8 Mh/s out of it when I mine ETH.
I've been waiting for someone to share a clear-cut one-stop-shop post about mining rigs!
What coin(s) are you mining?
Ethereum Classic, but it is pretty simple to mine ETH, Monero.. Zcash, etc
Nice. I read that different GPUs will mine different coins at different paces. That's why I was curious. :)
So good, so clear ! Very helpfull ! Good you describe why what to buy. Let us know when you start mining for what and if it works. Thanks
Oh dear Chitty. A jumper works well for on off, the errno5 is because of the uEFI virus added to all bios versions these days (windows needs it). You need a mother board that allows you to disable that bugger. A 'Legacy' option.
Yes rigs are addicting. My friends all laughed when I was burning 4500 per month in 'luz' here in Buenos Aires for only 3 to 6 dollars per day (1 to 2 bitcoins per day ). That was many years ago and now, well. It's not $3 to $6 anymore.
Fun stuff anyways. Best of luck!
Hey, thanks a lot! I will try the legacy option, need to get rid off windows as soon as possible! lol.
Un saludo!!
Depending on what motherboard/bios you have...
You could shrink your windows hard disk, then restart and go to the bios - select "Legacy" or "Legacy first" (over uEFI)
Insert any linux boot CD or USB and you will have a free portion that Linux can be installed to (the space you opened up when shrinking).
If it works, then changing that one option in the bios would have the system booting to Windows or Linux based on uEFI or Legacy.
Tambien tengo risers y muchas placas GPU que quedan si estas en buenos aires. Te los vendo.
That's fascinating :) where are you from. Did you consider electricity expenses etc? Just caught myself on the idea that the whole project is not after ROI.
Well, anyway will be interesting to follow your results :)
Cool article, I like the way you wrote it. Is it noisy?
The fans make a bit of noise but the videocard is pretty silent.
I might have to start my own project soon :)