Newbie Guide to Mining Part 1 - Decision Time

With more and more attention coming into the Cryptocurrency space every day I often see tons of questions on Bitcointalk, Reddit, and other Discord channels. Many of them asking very similar questions about how to build an affordable mining rig that can become profitable. Part two of the question is usually which coin to mine to reach ROI the fastest. There are many decision to make when you start down the road to building your first mining rig. This guide should hopefully make your decisions a little easier and help you along the way. Please feel free to reach out to me at [email protected] with any questions.

Question 1- What is your mining rig going to be built to do?

There are really two paths you can take here, building a machine that is target Ethereum and the Cryptonight algorithm which would use AMD cards or mining other algorithms such Equihash, Groestl, LBRY and NeoScrypt which benefit from using NVIDIA cards.

While you can combine cards in one rig if this is your first mining rig or you are inexperienced with building rigs altogether I advise you to focus on only using one type of card per rig. The easier plug and play choice is using NVIDIA cards. They require little BIOS modification and minimal overclocking to achieve their peak performance, which also using less power. The AMD cards however have proven to reach ROI a little quicker currently due to their ability to mine Cryptonight based coins better, but they do require BIOS modifications to achieve their maximum hashrate. They also draw quite a bit more power than the NVIDIA cards which will up your electricity bill.

For this first build I am going to focus on NVIDIA cards using Windows Operating system as this is a newbie focused series and I want to provide options that are easy to obtain and can get you running quickly.

Question 2- Is your location setup for mining?

The reason I bring this up is many people jump right into rig building but don’t take a few simple questions into account that cause them problems down the line.

Do you know your electricity costs?

This is important to know before you start ordering anything. Depending on where you live you may have cheap or expensive electric. Contact your power company or check your bill to find out what you are paying so you can use that in your calculators before you get started. For instance, I am paying .127 per kilowatt hour which seems to be middle of the road.

Where are you setting up your rig?

This is important to take into consideration, is it a room that is unoccupied, a garage or located in living area. These mining rigs can get hot and quick. Each card runs at about 50-70 degrees Celsius and that can heat a room or floor quickly. This is great in the winter to offset heating costs but if you live in a warm climate it can quickly become unbearable. You also need to consider ventilation in the room as well as potential hazards such as kids or pets. The last thing you want to happen is a fire or some accident because you didn’t plan properly in placing your mining rigs.

Question 3- What is your budget?

It’s important to enter this with a budget in mind as you should expect up to 10 months to break even. It can be faster or slower depending on the market and coin difficulty fluctuations. Do not enter into a mining venture with money you are not afraid to lose. Crypto Currency is a volatile market, and nothing is certain. While we are at an all-time high right now, it could easily all come crashing down at any moment. While you will be able to recover some of your losses by selling your equipment to gamers it will be a grind to break even. Go in with that mindset and avoid the get rich quick thinking, those days are long gone.

Once you have answered those question you are ready to enter phase 2 of the process. Finding the right components for your rig to fit within your budget. In part 2 we will show a few variations of NVIDIA builds that will work best with 3 different budgets in mind. Thanks for reading and please leave a comment or email me with any questions. Please share this with anyone to help introduce them to Altcoin mining.

Check out part two of the guide here that is our NVIDIA build guide and part 3 our AMD version with BIOS here.

If this guide helped you at all and you feel like sending over a tip please feel free as its what keeps this site alive.

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