I am going to use this thread to document the building of my Crypto Mining Rig. Over the past couple of weeks I have done a crapload of research on where to start, what hardware is needed. What I have discovered is there is a ton of nuances to the whole mining thing. What makes it somewhat difficult is the lack of centralized documentation. Everything is scattered across multiple sites and YouTube. However, I have been able to piece together enough to get started.
Here is the motherboard, CPU and hard drive used. There is 8GB of memory. It will support 7 video cards. The goal is to work up to 4 video cards by summer time. At that point I will have to make a open air rig. I currently have another one on order which should be here by the end of March.
The video card is RTX 3060 TI. This is the latest release from Nvidia. This thing is a beast!
The operating system is HiveOS. It is a Linux based OS which is specifically made for mining. The HiveOS web and mobile interface in short is bad ass. I can control and make changes to my rig from my laptop or mobile device.
I officially got it up and running yesterday. I have been playing with the settings and figuring everything else out. So far so good!
If you have a rig yourself please post! I would love to see what everyone else is doing.
Robert
nosce te ipsum
You make your own opportunities in life.
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Keep us updated! As I said in a different thread I've been messing around with nicehash, comes out to a huge 4 dollars a day lol. What platform are you running to mine?
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Always found this subject very interesting, not something I have ever pursued though as I had been lead to believe that it all comes down to electricity price and that it was almost impossible for retail to make money at retail electricity rates. But now that Bitcoin is literally 10x the price it was a year ago, maybe that has all changed.
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Good luck with it all, I've had a blast with mine. I started back last June, something I had always kicked around and finally got into it. I've got 2 rigs running now, a combination of RX480s, 580s and a few 5700xts. Was a huge pain for months, just had to babysit it, continually something would go wrong, it'd run fine for 4 days then have nothing but issues for 3 more, etc. Few months ago I switched from NiceHash to BetterHash and its ran for 3 months straight untouched, love it. It's about as close to printing money with no effort (once set up) as you can get. 2nd rig isn't complete yet, cards became super hard to come by at a decent price obviously the last few months when things took off.
Here's a picture of mine, I've added a few cards to the bottom rig since this and cleaned up the cable situation some.
@lexknight do you include your electricity usage in your profitability? With a rough estimation of the power usage I maybe net a dollar per day while its running.
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Yeah it's worked out well. I guess people shouldn't take "printing money" to mean "getting rich". It's basically paid itself back at this point, and it's nice to just have a flow of ETH into my wallets.
I spent $3,500 CAD (roughly $2.8K USD) approx on everything, over time. I started with 1 card, then 2, 3, etc. It's been about 9 months now in total, but only 2 months running 9 cards total. Most cards I bought used from gamers off craigslist or facebook marketplace. Motherboards, CPUs and power supplies I bought new, ram and cables, risers and the frames I got used also.
For tracking my profit I use the month end price in the month the ETH was mined, and based on that it's returned approximately $3,600 CAD, so I just broke even last month on the rigs, but not bad for 9 months. The last few months have been a huge part of that though, last month was $850 in profit.
If you though just take the current prices today and how much I've accumulated, it's worth $5,600 CAD in total though, and since I've held onto it all that's a more fair price of how much value I've generated, but at the same time the price could drop and that'll fluctuate.
In terms of power, I'm not a stickler with it. Basically I'd say my power bill has gone up $50/month, but that's actually deducted already in the above $3,600 number. Power is relatively cheap here from what I gather compared to various states.
I possibly will set up a 3rd rig once #2 is complete, but depends on prices and if the payback is still reasonable. At a minimum I want to finish rig #2, that one can hold up to 8 cards and only has 3 so far.
Edit: Also I didn't mention but I did bios mod all the cards and overclock and do all of that stuff. I wouldn't say I've got them 100% optimized, but I'm happy with the results and they are stable which is worth my sanity.
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Mining is cyclical, as in many will attempt it when the price is high, creating huge demands for equipment - only to bust at some point and you'll see people selling mining rigs fairly cheap as they can no longer generate a profit. The efficiency of mining also increases rapidly with newer tech, like the launch of the RTX 30xx series gfx cards NVidia did around half a year ago that is still in very high demand and very difficult to acquire. In comparison, one generation doubled the efficiency (new gen releasing roughly every 2-3 years) if you compare a 2080 vs a 3080 its 217% more productive generating $9,43 profit daily (rough guesstimate) while purchasing one realistically will cost you around $1000 despite the recommended retail price being $700ish.
So the required investment is fairly high and somewhat difficult, the tech is short lived, and any profits are completely at the mercy of the volatile crypto prices and electricity prices. If you scale things up, you could hedge power costs with electricity futures if you manage to access a power exchange, though that opens a new can of worms potentially adding losses from the hedging and limiting you to juggling 1Mwh chunks of power per contract (thats 1.000.000 Watts per hour, pretty huge).
From a business perspective it seems like a high risk endeavor not really worth the time and hassle, unless you just want to do it for the fun of it as a hobby or experiment.
"Hey! I've got 10 fresh apples to sell, any hungry buyers out here today?!" "Maybe! Just let me check my moving average and RSI!"
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I thought about creating a thread like "Show you rig", but you were ahead of me
I'm in the process of building a rig too. I've ordered parts which are yet to be delivered. I ordered a Gigabyte GA-H11-D3A with Intel Core i5-7400, 8gb of memory and 850W power supply. I know the power is limited but will add another one when I needed.
I already have 2 3070's, these are running currently in my trading pc and my son's gaming pc (which he likes very much, hehe). I've ordered a 3080 also, but it's not available currently.
I'm mining ETH at Ethermine with lolMiner, approx 10 dollar daily on both cards (120 mh/s).
I'm exchanging the mined ETH for Ravencoin.
I'm planning to run the rig on HiveOS, so looking forward to your experience since it's new to me.
Will post pictures once the rig is complete.
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Nice setup! I see you have a at the wall watt meter. I need to get one of those. Does the one you have work as advertised? How is the heat coming off your rig? If you dont mind me asking what is the MH/s rate for the entire rig?
Robert
nosce te ipsum
You make your own opportunities in life.
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I would agree it is high risk. however, I am in it for a couple of reasons; I love building computers. This is in my wheelhouse of what I am good at. As far at the business model goes, I would say right now its more of a experiment. I dont see myself getting out of it even it becomes unprofitable. The reason is I will be using any money made to buy speculative positions in other crypto. The reality is I only have to be right in one of them. Right now I plan on converting the ETH to Raven. It is supposed to halving in January of 2022. Plus with the EIP 1559 coming in July it could give it a boost.
To your point about it being cyclical, I remember when ETH dropped off last year after the huge run up. Had I been mining then, even at a loss, I would have more than made up for it with the run back up. To me this is a investment. Buy low sell high as the old saying goes.
Robert
nosce te ipsum
You make your own opportunities in life.
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Nice setup! I was going to go with the 3080s but they were out of the price range I wanted to pay for it. I am doing the same thing with ETH and Raven.
Take a look at HiveOS. One of the cool features is they can suggest popular settings for overclocking for your video card. I was able to squeeze another 10% out of the card with their suggested settings. Example is below.
I tried lolminer but had a better hash rate with T-Rex miner.
Keep us updated on your progress!
Robert
nosce te ipsum
You make your own opportunities in life.
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Here are my current numbers for the video card. Ignore the consumption stat. It is not correct. I need to get a at the wall watt meter for a accurate reading.
The RTX 3060 TI hash rate out of the box was 55.75. After testing different overclock settings it is now up to 63.60. I think there is some room to go to the upside. I really need to get a accurate at the wall watt reading to really fine tune it.
One of the nice features with HiveOS is to be able to apply changes to the overclocking remotely and logging in remotely. You can setup overclock templates for the coin your mining and it automatically applies the OC changes when the mining starts. It also allows for changes on the fly. As a test I upped the memory from 2950 to 3000. The hash rate went from 63.41 to 63.60. See second screenshot. It took 30 seconds to make and apply the change.
nosce te ipsum
You make your own opportunities in life.
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Interesting, my RTX 3060 Ti stays around 51.5 MH/s:
GPU1: 67C 66% 182W
GPUs power: 182.4 W Eth: New job #534418bc from etc.2miners.com:1010; diff: 8726MH
Eth speed: 51.429 MH/s, shares: 2/0/0, time: 0:02
Eth speed: 51.468 MH/s, shares: 2/0/0, time: 0:02
Eth: New job #0763c81e from etc.2miners.com:1010; diff: 8726MH
Eth speed: 51.495 MH/s, shares: 2/0/0, time: 0:02
Overclocked things goes faster but weirdly I had few OS crashes, not sure if it's linked but no crash since I'm back to the normal config.
After a couple of weeks mining, only when I was working and when my office was a bit cold, I earned 14 cts... So not worth the additional GPU noise, I've ended my crypto-miner career.
Success requires no deodorant! (Sun Tzu)
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It’s actually quite a hassle.
The ETH is mined to my ETH wallet. I then transfer the funds to Binance (still in ETH), convert it to BTC and then buy the RVN/BTC pair.
If there is an easier way I very much like to know.
Thanks for the info! After doing some research into this it appears the easiest way to do this is to use Ledger. You can directly change from one coin to another using their provider Changelly without the hassle of moving stuff around. Plus your in control of your coins.
Change NOW has similar functionality but does not allow partial shares (like 0.1) of ETH.
Hello!
What do you think about AMD Radeon RX 5700 XT?
I read on videocardz.com that the upcoming GeForce RTX 3060 could hit the market with significant limitations for cryptocurrency mining, it was cited that its hash rate dropped by half.
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Retail electricity rates are what eventually drove us out of mining back in 2014. We were looking at a commercial space to set up mining, but our hardware vendor went belly-up, so that idea ground to a halt.
The most cost effective mining is done near a power plant (hydro is a good candidate), where surplus electricity is cheap, especially in non-peak times.
~vmodus
Enjoy everything!
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I am not an engineer, but there is a ton of thermal exchange that you have to deal with (I am sure @lexknight has noticed the warmth ). You have to do something with that heat, or you are going to shorten the life (and profitability) of your equipment.
One of our solutions with the ASICs we were trying to purchase was going to be a custom liquid cooling solution with a heat exchanger outside the building. I am kind of sad, as I was really looking forward to the challenge of building that solution back in the day (2013-14).
But seriously, it is a lot of heat to deal with. In the picture shared, I would be concerned with the heat shortening the life of the cards based on being so close to the wall. We had our three rigs sitting in the middle of our open floor plan office (~1000 sq ft, 12 foot ceilings) and we did not even need to run the heat in the winter. Shorts in January in the office.... dress code.
One final consideration, with respect to energy cost, is the power supply of the rig. We used 80 Plus Platinum (I don't think Titanium were available... cannot recall) rated power supplies. More efficiency = lower cost. I would use a minimum of a Platinum power supply.
Just my .0000005 BTC from one who has done it....
~vmodus
Enjoy everything!
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Heat is exactly why I usually only mine during the cold Minnesota winters. I call it mining season. It could also be why there is a Cray (super computer) site in Minnesota too. All they would have to do is just open the window and save on heating costs.
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Not who you quoted, but I can speak a little on 5700s.
2 of my cards are 5700's - one is an XT the other not. You can bios mod the non-XT ones to basically make them the same specs as XT. Both of mine get basically the same hash rate after bios modding.
Personally I'm a fan, I'd rather run 1 5700 than 2 580s, frees up a slot and close to the same hash rate. Sucks all cards are basically double the price they were last summer now, really wish I had put more into the rigs at that time.
5700s come in different shapes and sizes, one of mine is a 2 fan MSI one, the other a 3 fan Red Devil and its huge in size, if that's a consideration.
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Definitely throws off some heat, I've got additional fans now not pictured to keep it running cooler and also take advantage of the heat, spread it around the place. Living in Canada it's been a pro all winter for sure. Summer wasn't too bad, just a few windows open. I thought about setting up a few more rigs and the heat is definitely a huge consideration though. The fans also have been something to think about, nice to have them blowing but creates enough noise that it's noticeable and moderately annoying.
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I was in the right place at the right time and scored a 3080 last week. With both cards in the case it was running a little warm. Backed off the 3060 ti and added some fans. I have GPU risers on order. They won’t be here till the end of the week.
The original power supply was not adequate to run both cards. Upgraded to a 1000 watt power supply I had in another pc. This psu should be able to run at least 2 more vid cards.
I am going to Lowe’s to get material to build a open air rig this weekend.
The 3080 puts out roughly a 100 MH/s. Once I get it out in the open I will tweak it.
Robert
2B22BA64-E9A5-4DD2-884C-17CF33D6F41E
CFC717B2-2015-4B5B-B4AE-6280AEDD5681
890BA050-678C-4D1C-B1A9-8D95BD87307B
66EEF673-C9DA-4288-BAC2-4F26DCED880C
nosce te ipsum
You make your own opportunities in life.
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Nice rig. The rack looks similar to the ones I built back in 2014 from aluminum I picked up at Lowes. I'll see if I can dig up pictures and post here. Fun times.
~vmodus
Enjoy everything!
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This is a ASIC miner which is different than a GPU miner. Its specifically made for mining. Instead of using 110v most use 200v to 240v to run. They are very loud (75 db for this one) and run very hot which means you couldnt run this in your living room and watch TV in the middle of summer. Assuming you could find one they will probably cost cost 20 to 30 grand. Scalper price will probably be 30 to 50 grand. It would take 4 to 6 months before you just to break even at retail.
I have looked into these. The voltage requirement price plus heat and noise make them a non starter for me. You really need a commercial property to run multiple of these with proper electricity and ventilation. By then your talking 100 grand or more.
Robert
nosce te ipsum
You make your own opportunities in life.
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Thanks for the update.
I looked at a few videos about ASIC and it seems they do well but are limited to one coin and are a very expensive investment for hardware.
I may try to set up a GPU miner just for fun but from what @sam028 posted, it seems like it may not make enough $ to be worth it.
I'm about to start construction on a new place on the Carribean and I've been checking into using thermal cooling in the house. I wonder if that could be adapted to cooling a mining rig?
It seems like that would be possible but I've never seen anything like that.
Rejoice in the Thunderstorms of Life . . .
Knowing it's not about Clouds or Wind. . .
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I mined for a while in the past and the biggest problem I had was with fan failure. These retail cars are just not designed to be used 247. Also had problems with just straight up failures
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Concluding, the picture [as an assembled structure] is, would you trade 17k rather than hobby w/ETH?
If one will ask me, seems fair to me, I did choose to trade!
meanwhile, please find me a good price on GPU/s [:0)]
AHR20210409 [have a nice day "Einsteinium"]
PS: do you think you are the only one who looked into it? -- you are not alone pal.
[oh, and please ignore my sarcasm, nothing personal -- the market is a quest]
Hey all, wanted to give a quick update: With my current setup of 2 cards I am getting a payout in approx. 2 weeks. Last payout was $221. Total payout has been approx. $445. I have reinvested the money into RVN, Matic, XLM, ADA and NU. Received free shares of COMP, CGLD, UMA and GRT through the Coinbase rewards program. Currently up 14% on all investments.
Pondering the question: should I save up the payouts and purchase another video card at scalper prices
Edit: Life has been crazy busy. Easter, family, weddings, work etc. I have the materials to build a open air rig but have not had time to do it. Hopefully I will have time over the next couple of weeks.
If your interested in earning BTC instead of ETH, you can mine NiceHash using HiveOS. NiceHash automatically converts whatever you mine to BTC. The video below walks you through it. I have tested it and it works.
Robert
nosce te ipsum
You make your own opportunities in life.
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House in the Caribbean! Nice!!! If I may ask, where are you building at? I had family who live St Croix. Loved it down there!
Its a interesting thought on the cooling. I would think you could. I have my rig in my basement with bare floors and bare walls so its very cool down there. You really cant even tell its running other than the noise. In the event I get more video cards where heat will be more of an issue, I have thought about putting duct work along the wall, 3 sides being metal with the 4th side being the wall, and then drawing air along the wall so it naturally cooled by the bare walls. Then have a exhaust above the rig to pull the hot air out the dryer vent hole. Not sure I will ever get there, but have it sketched out just in case.
Robert
nosce te ipsum
You make your own opportunities in life.
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I guess if you want a ready to go rig it’s not terribly overpriced. It would take 8 to 10 months to break even. If you take going price of the 3060 ti on eBay plus other parts you could build it yourself for around 21k to 22k. If you could get the cards at retail (ha ha) then subtract 8k to 10k.
Robert
nosce te ipsum
You make your own opportunities in life.
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). You have to do something with that heat, or you are going to shorten the life (and profitability) of your equipment. 
