Bitcoin Forum

Most mistakes that every new crypto miner makes

1. Ignored the power consumption of the system itself, ( CPU, RAM, MOBO).
2. Also when using multiple PSU's you have to calculate the 80% individually e.g 1000w PSU aim for 800watt only.
3. Buying GPU's for a certain aim for example aiming for 1 ETH and forgetting that network difficulty changes all the time.
4. Not doing some calculations on your power consumption bill.

Buying GPU right now could be the most terrible mistake anyone can make, it's safer to just use the money to buy coins instead of building a rig, I built a few rigs myself already but that's because I'm in this for a long term.

Correct. If ETH merges to PoS in June as planned, those who bought video cards for 2x MSRP will be the bag holders. Miners who buy lots of equipment below MSRP will win in the end, even if another gold rush takes 2 years. I am a long-term miner, too, but I don't like buying GPUs at today's prices.

If you are planning to buy GPU right now don't do it, wait till June gets here first and see what's going on but if you have bought yours let's say 6-7months ago then you already make your ROI and very close to it so whatever you decide to do won't hurt, I advice to keep mining if you get your ROI back already.

If you mine in a private house, then the main mistake of the miner is the incorrect calculation of electricity costs.
Mining golden rule: "99% of your expenses are spent on electricity, and it must be cheap." In 2018, even good IT engineers sold video cards at a big loss. The second most stupid mistake is to buy video cards several times more expensive than the manufacturer's recommended price.

Yes this is a big problem. Many people in germany began mining last year and don´t look at the real electricity usage. They calculate after what hiveos says for example and after they gets their electricity bill in january for the last year - they must sold all rigs absolutly overpriced to cover the bill :D

And for me, i calculate with only 80% of the calculated mining rewards.

There is no way to avoid electricity bills unless you are stealing electricity somehow and I'm sure you will get caught one day, if the electricity bill is high in your country it's better to sell your graphic cards right now because their price goes down in few months more, leave mining to those that have cheaper bills.

you sell crypto or cards because you have no alternative/other sources of income.

better be making one/multiple while money is easy during bull runs.

got busy setting up one lately but hey got a small area designated there for mining expansion hehe.

Mining throughout the years I made tons and tons of mistakes.

1) Keeping wallet.dat files for altcoins on the mining rigs. Ran into so many client wallets which had a virus on them.

2) Using SATA to power the GPU risers.

3) Keeping a motherboard sitting on the cardboard motherboard box, mining for weeks like that.

4) Putting an Antminer outside in the dead of winter. You would think this wouldn’t be an issue however they will crash and when they do, they won’t start mining again until you bring them inside to let thaw out.

5) Keeping a bunch of loud miners in my bedroom and then years later have difficulty sleeping without any fan noise. Need to keep a house fan on inside my room to fall asleep now. If it’s too silent I can’t fall asleep.

6) Instead of using reliable HDD/SSD being cheap and using USB sticks which die a few months later and need to reflash from scratch.

7) Being cheap and instead of getting a proper Network switch I just used old routers and had like 4-5 routers connected in series. Worked fine but tons and tons of CAT5 cable everywhere hanging.

8) First time using a air compressor to clean my fans. I set the compressor at the max PSI, and pointed at a fan to clean out the dust and it spun maybe at like 10000rpm and completely killed the fan bearing.

There are probably tons more. However these just come to memory.

What danger lies with keeping a motherboard on a mobo pack for days? I've been mining like this for some time now what's wrong with this? Anything I should watch out for?

lol. im also sleeping with fan noises. maybe thats why i couldnt sleep in guest house.

I see that in some European countries the prices are 20-40 cents per kilowatt, and with such prices it’s definitely not worth mining. I now pay 3.5 cents per kilowatt. You will not be able to compete with miners who have cheap electricity.

It’s a fire hazard. The motherboard doesn’t really use much power but there are certain chipsets on the motherboard. Called south bridge and north bridge. They are normally cooled by a heatsink. If you put it on a cardboard box the bottom of that chip generates a lot of heat and might catch on fire. Since in a regular computer case there is a gap between the bottom of the motherboard and inner of computer case.

I never had any fire issues however if you touch with your hand in that area you will see there is tons of heat centered in that area. So it’s better to be safe than sorry. At least put a gap between the cardboard box and motherboard like putting 4 corners on something metal so there is some ventilation there.

also makes gear run hotter.

I use plywood. I cut a hole in the plywood under the cpu spot.

I use spacers to lift the mobo about ¾ inch or 20 mm.

Lastly I use a few cut up 2 by 4’s to lift the plywood.

if you do all of the above box fans work well to help cool the rigs a lot .



https://www.amazon.com/Zorveiio-Mounting-Plastic-Standoffs-Motherboard/dp/B09BCPYQYL/ref=sr_1_1_sspa?


above has 100 spacers a mobo uses like 10

so this will do 8 or 9 or 10 mobos. depends on the mobo.

to not mount on plywood with spacers and a hole in the plywood where the cpu is located is a bad build.

the plywood may not need feet as it could rest on a wire shelf.

but the spacers to lift the mobo and a hole 🕳 under the cpu is well worth it.

1: Purchasing mining motherboards, which were unreliable and one even caught on fire
2: Bricking a video card with a failed BIOS flash. I later un-bricked it though
3: Not mining from 2015-2016 and saving the coins
4: Buying a cheap Raidmax power supply, which exploded after mining DOGE with two R9 270's
5: Powering a Radeon RX 470 USB riser with Molex instead of PCIe. The card drew 60-70w from a single 18AWG wire, which burned the wire until it glowed red hot
6: Not monitoring VRAM temperatures. I allowed an XFX Radeon R9 290 to run at 132° C VRAM, which left black spots on the PCB. I fixed the problem by installing tiny heatsinks on the memory chips

You never mentioned the names of the motherboards to avoid how will people know which motherboard you are talking about? I use motherboards from 2012 for crypto mining and they work perfectly I'm going to refuse your number 1 point for now until you drop a bad motherboard name on here.

not throwing defective parts right away...by not doing this, you will waste your time and effort in the near future LOL

Stop running your gpu fans at the highest speed because they will die on you real quick, if your GPU is getting hotter it's the right time to disassemble and change thermal pads and paste.

BioFAIL TB250-BTC PRO

yeah lets see how this holds up .  since you wrote it eth has delayed pos again.

so far this may not be a good guess.

Your point is kinda confusing to me, I won't advice people to get rid of parts because they can be useful in future if thats what you saying then im sorry, I was able to change hear sinks twice because I have them laying around, I was able to change a busted capacitor on my card because I have gpu spare part.

like riser cards and usb cables, you will pick it up and plug it and then remove it again (during troubleshoot)..this makes sense if you have a lot of gear, managing a few is very different in managing a lot of gear.

exceptions are: you have same model of gpu from the farm that is defective, do not throw that away since you can get parts that are "compatible" to the ones that are still running.

Just use a trash bin, once it's in the trash bin you won't accidentally use it.
You can empty the trash bin if you like but it isn't a mistake not to.

Bought an antminer and I caused a surge. Now it's dead. I've also bought GPYUs at 2x MSRP.

I suggest staking your coins for Ethereum. That's what I'm doing. Mine Ethereum and stake it for post-merge.

Here is the reality part:

You troubleshoot, replaced the riser(not the usb cable), but you placed the riser beside the rig because it might be the cable or other stuff(thinking the riser is might not be the problem) then you go out the mining area, look at the pool data or remote view, everything is fine and you don't come back to the mining area...you'll forget that you have a defective riser there, trust me you'll forget that you have a defective riser there and will try to use it again, only to be troubled by that defective part in the future.

The key is, if you know something is defective 100% sure, don't be lazy throw that shit right away.

there are no precise calculations, only estimates can be made, whattomine can give us a hand, however all the total energy consumption like cpu,gpu,mobo must be calculated,PSUs with a higher power than the graphics cards must always be bought because the consumption of the entire system must be added, it is not a good time to buy gpu if eth passes soon to pos the gpus will cost much less

Yeah I made that mistake also. Had defective risers, hard drives , PSUs , etc and instead of labeling them as “BAD” or throwing them out I would tend to reuse them in the future and forget that they were defective in the first place.

Lots of potential revenue was lost because due to those faulty parts the rig would crash overnight and would be down until the next day and sometimes day after. Basically lost lots of revenue this way because I should of put them in the garbage on day one instead of keeping them stored somewhere.