Bitcoin Forum

So, I really want to build a rig that mines altcoins.

But
I'm going to need someone to point me in the right direction for parts..  ???

I've googled and read post after post about how to build a mining rig optimized for altcoins such as ByteCoin.
Just when I think I'm understanding, I realize that no.. no I'm not..

So I say chuck it in the fuck it bucket and move on, maybe I can find a helping hand here?

Also would give me an opportunity to build trust in the community  :)
as I've only made small contributions via image contests & voting - other than general community support!

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The overall goal is not to make a specific ROI based on coins mined per day -- though that would be an added bonus of course.
But rather a good way for me to mine a substantial amount of new and existing coins for speculative investment purposes.
That plan may change if some coin becomes insanely profitable to mine.

Some info:

Mainly looking to mine CryptoNote currencies, but may be moving to other new coins

Max. budget for the build - $2000 US (would be incredible to do it for cheaper but that is the ceiling)

Payment for your help will obviously be discussed, but I was thinking 5% of the rewards for the first 50 days - or a flat fee based on calculations from the first reward


- Cheers!  ;D

The only coin that's profitable these days is ETHEREUM. With $2000 USD you can make 1 ETH a day which is like $12 currently. In the near future that value may increase or decrease. Most likely you will only be able to mine for the next 6 months, then ETHEREUM will switch to POS which is not mineable anymore. Your gear should be paid off by then and you can resell it to gamers or continue mining other coins however most won't be as profitable by then.

You need some basic knowledge of electronics and computers to GPU mine. But there are many videos on Youtube.

Thanks for the pointers! :)

I think I'm aware of the pitfalls of mining or atleast most of them, I've been interested in bitcoin since 2009.. I was a broke teenager at the time with no way of obtain BTC other than faucets (back when gavens faucet gave 0.5 btc <3). Of course being a dumb teen I either sold or broke the laptop that contained the wallet.dat, and been hovering, reading posts, articles and trading coins here & there ever since.

That's why I'm not going for the specified date Return Of Investment strategy, but speculative investment instead.
My overall goal is to mine as many coins as I can and hold onto them. Not to sell right away trying to instantly profit of my little machine (it's more long term holding)

I have more mechanical/hardware knowledge than I do software knowledge.
I can do very little hard coding.
But i can build and solder just fine.

Thanks @op for bringing this up I am more in your situation because I have read but cant seem to understand the coding part. I would just hope someone with the requisite knowledge can explain in simple terms...

Right!?

I'm starting to memorize the command line stuff, but I don't really understand the fundamentals yet so I don't really know what it is I'm typing in other than regurgitated commands that I can only sometimes remember.

Since you are considering a coin for long term holding, you might add monero to your list of possible coins to mine. It has some long term potential.

Thanks! It's definitely on the list :)

Alright I'll help out...So easiest thing is go to whattomine.com and see what coins are profitable.  IF you want to speculate, you can mine the most profitable coin, then sell it and buy the one you want to speculate on.  better than simply mining it.

As for your rig, get 5 or 6 r9 470s/480s and flash the bios on them (get one with a dual bios switch if you are new to this).  there are threads here about that.  and you'll get 26-31mhs per card.  Thats what I would do with 2000$.  although this should cost you less.

Is this a mining only machine? Will you be using it for other things? What do you currently pay for electricity?

awesome! That's a perfect start - will order these asap. What mother boards and cables would you recommend?

alright i
Probably mining only, or crunching for other things (maybe in the future).
Electricity cost is negligible at the moment, as it is fixed in with the rent. There may be a cap that I pay a premium on once hit but haven't hit that cap yet.

you could consider a rig of 1070s also for example, they can mine other stuff if ethereum goes down.  works with claymores dual miner too.  find a motherboard that has 5 or 6 pcie slots, buy 1x to 16x latest generation risers (usb).  you'll need sapphire trixx for example to tweak your cards.  You'll need a gold or better psu, i recommend evga's g2 (example), small SSD (cheap) and an 8g of ram stick (cheap, some say you can get just 4g, but hey at the price ram is selling at...).  I have H97 anniversary, so far works good although I havent tried more than 4 cards yet.  Also if you run out of molex cables, you should get 16awg sata adapters or find more perif cables.  make sure they dont get too hot, these can be a point of failure. 

Best I can recommend you is my standard configuration for each new miner I build, until I test a new one for the next rig I'll build :

-Intel Celeron G1820
-8 Go of RAM
-120 Go SSD
-Lepa MaxBron 1000W (that will be enough, since you won't put more than 4 GPUs with that price)
-ASRock H97 Anniversary
-Risers (that point don't matter that much, as long as they're powered)

To that, add as many 1070 as possible.

Then you have the master setup to mine absolutely all the coins ;) !

I thought Intel was bad for mining?

You mine with the GPUs, not the CPU. You just need a good cheap processor and his suggestion fits the bill nicely.

Awesome, thanks!

Would this be able to handle more than 4 GPUs if needed?

So far it looks like fr4nkthetank and redrose are getting a reward :)
Not sure what's fair payment but just let me know and I'll send it your way!

Most likely going to order these parts off Newegg.
If there are any other suggestions I'd still be happy to hear them, and will still pay some type of compensation for the good ones

Considering your Budget of 2k, I would recommend the following :

Get the ASRock FM2A58+ http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813157517
And couple it with 4gb ddr3, an AMD A4 APU and a cheap 120gb SSD
This combo should set you back by ~$120 and is the cheapest 5-GPU solution I know of

Add to the mix 5 X Sapphire 4gb Rx 470 OC at $200 each or less ( Get this specific version because they have back-plates and inexpensive/run cool).

You will need powered risers and a 750W PSU ( thats all the power you need for the RX 470 and a smaller wattage PSU is easier to sell off later ).
If you are able to find powered risers cheap, you can get them and the PSU for under $100 total.

Build a simple open air frame for the assembly, follow this guide here : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OfE_QidD75M

Install Windows 10 ( free if you dont activate it ) and follow one of the several guides posted on this portal, and you have yourself a functional ETH Miner.
I would recommend ETH because it has long term potential if you plan to hold it, and has been pretty profitable to mine for a while now.

That brings our total cost to about $1250. If you have the system optimized well (read through the forum posts, lots of details on optimizations, ping me if you cant find them), One such machine would consume about ~500W from the wall, and running 24/7 would generate about 24 ETH per month. At current rates of $11.7 that's about $280 per month (although this amount will reduce each month as network difficulty rises).
If you are up for it, you can stretch your budget a little and set up two of these.

Enjoy Mining. Also, per your offer of 5% of the mining reward for the first 50 days, that comes to about 40ETH. Shall I ping you my Wallet Address? :P

This is sounding like a contender! :)

Is this machine designated for ETH or can it be used to mine any coin?

hey fresh, you dont need to pay anything, but if you really want to, send it here :)  Dont forget if you mine ETH, you can point your rig at many different places...it can be hard to decide.  there is dwarfpool (pays so-so but big pool), nicehash (pays less due to fees, but once in a while its good), coinotron (so far payment seems good, but some problems sometimes, ethpool, etc)

1DsDCXMmNVYgv3sxCQfAraNUGaj8hosNq3

This config can be used for any of the several crypto currencies currently mined on computers ( ETH, XMR, LBRY etc ).
For some of them, AMD cards are better, and for others Nvidia cards. But there's hardly any bang-for-buck competition for the AMD RX 470 and that helps profitability/ROI period.
Let me know if you cant find guides to help this setup. I would also recommend http://forum.ethereum.org/ as there's several detailed setup and optimization guides there, including mine.

Do not listen to him. AMD cards sucks anywhere outside Hashimoto and Cryptonight. My 1070 is perfect and do so much better than my R9 380s. It is a also a lot more power efficient.

Thanks for all the info!
You will definitely be getting something :)

Is that an ETH address? ^^



I appreciate everyone who took the time to help me out, but of course I will be going with the best set up that I can! :)

nah that was a btc addy, here is an eth addy
0x43e5d15189208145c3093a91cb5625fe45f078fc

And for nvidia vs amd, yeah its true nvidia does better in other algos.  BUT they are more expensive to buy, so ROI is further out, BUT eth will be POS eventually I guess, etc, etc.  its volatile.

That's true that ROI is longer, but you'll always have something to mine and they do consume a lot (only about 15$ per month for a 1070). Plus, the resale value is much greater and it is also easier to resale it. If you wish to send me something, PM me, and we'll discuss.

What do your GTX 1070 hash at for ETH? Because my $199 RX 470 can Hash at 28MH/s with undervolting/overclocking tweaks, and consume about a 100W each. I have five 5-card rigs drawing a combined of 2.6KW from the wall, and earning me ~4.2 ETH per day.
I believe the GTX 1070's get a maximum of 32MH/s at a 145W power draw. At $399 each ( good luck with finding them at that price ) plus the added power draw demanding a beefier PSU, ( 1000W atleast ) that drives a 5 Card Rig cost up from $1250 to $2300 (Extra $200X5 for the cards, $50 for the PSU). One Rig. For a combined maximum Hash rate of 160.
I do not know about you, but I want my investment to ROI asap and for that I'd anyday take the $1250 140MH/s AMD rig over your version. Not to mention how much easier it is to dispose off of cheaper GPU's/PSU's.
Also ETH is the first time in a while that mining has been profitable enough to put money into a rig, and it will POS soon so you absolutely need to ROI before that day comes.
Anyways that's my two cents. And speaking of cents, here's my ETH Wallet address : 0x60eD77244Ad16CC83c596af10Ee816F5241d2352
You know what to do :P

you are wrong a 1070 can do 31.5MH at 90w not 145w, which is better than your 470, the only drawback is the initial cost, but considering that it can mine at better rate other algo, it's worth it

This is one of the strong selling points for me.


Ok, just to see if I'm not getting mind-fucked here..

Say I had:

2 of the RX 470 rigs.. looks to be around $2500, Power draw being around 1100 watts = This would be a proficient miner for ETH but not as good for other algo.

VS

1 gtx 1070 at around $2000, Power draw around the same 1000 -1100 watts = Not as profitable for ETH but A proficient miner for all altcoins


^ Do I have that right?

No. The 1070 hashes better on Ethereum and consomme less. Add to that you can mine at least 5 other coins that has a profitability near Ethereum's one. Initial problem about 1070 is its entering cost, but then, you're fine for a long time, while with 470, you're doomed when Ethereum switchs to PoS.

man if you can find any 480 x it can do 31MH with custom rom..costs u 200$ each + free game codes for now ....