Just FYI, these rigs are $76 off until 7/4 in celebration of Independence Day!

Hi all,

I posted this in the alternate cryptocurrencies sub-forum a few days ago but was told that this might be a better place for it.

I run cryptobadger.com - some of you are probably familiar with my guide on how to build your own litecoin mining rig. Over the past couple months, I've received a lot of requests to sell pre-assembled rigs from people that don't have the time and/or inclination to build one from scratch. I've sold a few privately to get a feel for the process, and as of last week, I've decided to offer my rigs to the public.

If a pre-built rig appeals to you, you can check out what I'm offering here:

http://www.cryptobadger.com/custom-litecoin-mining-rigs-for-sale/

If you'd like a better sense of exactly what you're getting, you can check out the setup/management guide here.

And of course, if you'd prefer to build your own rig, I have a fairly detailed guide for that, too. =)

I'll try to anticipate some questions here:

Why don't you accept bitcoins/litecoins as payment?

I'm using Paypal for now mainly to give buyers peace-of-mind. Given that cryptocurrency transactions can't be reversed, I'm sure many people would simply assume "scam" if I wanted customers to pay with bitcoin/litecoin. If you'd prefer to pay with cryptocurrency, I'd be happy to accommodate you, of course.

Won't these be destroyed in shipping?

They're packed pretty thoroughly, with about 2" of bubblewrap and packing paper on all sides of the rig. The GPUs are tied down during shipping, just in case the box is inverted. Everything is securely held in place with cable ties, and any empty space is filled with paper or bubble wrap.

What hardware are you using?

It varies from rig to rig, but they'll all be within 5% of 2000 Kh/sec and 780 watts at the wall. Most recently, I've been using Gigabyte WF3s GPUs (undervolted via custom BIOS). All of the PSUs are at least 80 Plus Gold certified (I pretty much only use Seasonic and Corsair units here). I tend to stick to motherboards that have at least 5 PCI-E slots, in case the customer wants to expand later.

But... you're making money on these!!

Yes. I'm sure there will be those that claim the price I'm offering these units at is too high. After all, in my own hardware guide, I show that the hardware required to build one of these yourself costs under $1500!

Keep in mind that there are several hours of work that go into each rig for assembly, configuration, testing, and packaging. That's assuming that everything goes as it should and I don't have any defective hardware - an individual rig can easily turn into a 15 hour project if I have to troubleshoot issues.

I need to stock enough extra parts and hardware to cover me in the event of faulty hardware. Not to mention stocking a whole bunch of plastic crates and packing materials. =)

I need to deal with RMA process headaches when I get defective hardware.

I need to assume the risk that some customers are going to try to scam me via Paypal chargebacks, etc.

I need to drive these things to a UPS hub to ship them (they're not accepted at other drop-off locations because of the insured value).

And I need to deal with the occasional unpleasant customer.

Essentially, I consider the price that I'm offering these units at to be quite fair. If you disagree, then I've already given you all of the information you need to build your own. =)

Thanks for looking and I'd be happy to answer any questions that you guys might have!

Had a question earlier and just thought I'd clarify here: the rigs come pre-configured with your primary mining pool, and as many backup pools as you want, ready to go. You just need to press the power button.

Thanks for the kind words Aragami and R-T-B!

As for possible Paypal fraud, I understand that it is something that I may have to deal with eventually. I document every step of the process with emails between myself and each customer, and the UPS shipment requires an adult signature. I know it'll be a headache if somebody does try to scam me, but I should have enough documentation and history if/when a dispute comes up. Thanks for the warning, though!

Hi all,

I run cryptobadger.com - some of you are probably familiar with my guide on how to build your own litecoin mining rig. Over the past couple months, I've received a lot of requests to sell pre-assembled rigs from people that don't have the time and/or inclination to build one from scratch. I've sold a few privately to get a feel for the process, and as of last week, I've decided to offer my rigs to the public.

If a pre-built rig appeals to you, you can check out what I'm offering here:

http://www.cryptobadger.com/custom-litecoin-mining-rigs-for-sale/

If you'd like a better sense of exactly what you're getting, you can check out the setup/management guide here.

And of course, if you'd prefer to build your own rig, I have a fairly detailed guide for that, too. =)

I'll try to anticipate some questions here:

Why don't you accept bitcoins/litecoins as payment?

I'm using Paypal for now mainly to give buyers peace-of-mind. Given that cryptocurrency transactions can't be reversed, I'm sure many people would simply assume "scam" if I wanted customers to pay with bitcoin/litecoin. If you'd prefer to pay with cryptocurrency, I'd be happy to accommodate you, of course.

Won't these be destroyed in shipping?

They're packed pretty thoroughly, with about 2" of bubblewrap and packing paper on all sides of the rig. The GPUs are tied down during shipping, just in case the box is inverted. Everything is securely held in place with cable ties, and any empty space is filled with paper or bubble wrap.

What hardware are you using?

It varies from rig to rig, but they'll all be within 5% of 2000 Kh/sec and 780 watts at the wall. Most recently, I've been using Gigabyte WF3s GPUs (undervolted via custom BIOS). All of the PSUs are at least 80 Plus Gold certified (I pretty much only use Seasonic and Corsair units here). I tend to stick to motherboards that have at least 5 PCI-E slots, in case the customer wants to expand later.

But... you're making money on these!!

Yes. I'm sure there will be those that claim the price I'm offering these units at is too high. After all, in my own hardware guide, I show that the hardware required to build one of these yourself costs under $1500!

Keep in mind that there are several hours of work that go into each rig for assembly, configuration, testing, and packaging. That's assuming that everything goes as it should and I don't have any defective hardware - an individual rig can easily turn into a 15 hour project if I have to troubleshoot issues.

I need to stock enough extra parts and hardware to cover me in the event of faulty hardware. Not to mention stocking a whole bunch of plastic crates and packing materials. =)

I need to deal with RMA process headaches when I get defective hardware.

I need to assume the risk that some customers are going to try to scam me via Paypal chargebacks, etc.

I need to drive these things to a UPS hub to ship them (they're not accepted at other drop-off locations because of the insured value).

And I need to deal with the occasional unpleasant customer.

Essentially, I consider the price that I'm offering these units at to be quite fair. If you disagree, then I've already given you all of the information you need to build your own. =)

Thanks for looking and I'd be happy to answer any questions that you guys might have!

With 4x 7970 on unpowered risers, I can nearly guarantee that you'll eventually fry your motherboard. It might take a few months, but you're sending far more power through it than it was designed for, unless you're using a board that has four 16x PCI-E slots and explicitly states it it is intended to host a quad-GPU setup (I don't know of any).

If you've been running for more than a few weeks already, you might want to power down and disconnect the motherboard power connector and inspect it for signs of burning.

Spend the $10 for a powered riser or two.

While I won't speculate either way on whether or not these are a good buy, pointing to the likely (much) higher future difficulty is only half of the equation.

A lot of people have already made an absolute killing on bitcoin by mining when others told them they were stupid because it wasn't profitable. A few years ago, when bitcoins cost a couple pennies each, people would run the same numbers and call those that chose to mine incapable of doing basic math.

Don't forget that a lot of people are mining today based on their own assumptions about the future price of cryptocurrency. Sure, the math doesn't look great based on ~$100 per BTC, but what is you assume bitcoin goes mainstream and hits $1000/BTC in a few years? There will only ever be 21 million coins, and it bitcoin becomes say, the internet currency of choice, then $1000 per BTC is quite a low estimate.

Interesting idea, but you should really be a little bit more careful in your FAQ. Just because you put an answer in there does not make it true.

Your answer to the first question obviously can't be true. Everyone who plays over the long term will lose. Claiming that it's "profitable" is like saying that because you might win any particular pull of a slot machine, that gambling is profitable. Or claiming that the Martingale strategy in gambling is profitable because you win the majority of your sessions (it's just that the times you lose are huge in comparison to your much smaller winners).

And the site fits the definition of a pyramid scheme pretty much exactly: it's not sustainable, and the people at the bottom are essentially feeding money to those at the top in the hopes of collecting money from future participants below them. Casino games do not operate under this model and are simple games of chance (albeit with a house edge, obviously).

I run my Gigabyte WF3s at 670 Kh/sec. This is while undervolted to 1056mV (stock is 1250). At the stock voltage, these cards will do over 700 Kh/sec easily.

Edit: I just realized that you wrote mhash, not khash. I haven't tried SHA-256 mining on the Gigabyte cards yet, although I'd be surprised if they were that much worse vs scrypt mining.

Are you running at stock clock speeds? The easiest way to increase your hashrate is to increase your GPU core and memory clock speeds. For example, passing in --gpu-engine 1100 --gpu-memclock 1500 to cgminer will attempt to run your GPU at 1100mhz and your GPU's memory at 1500mhz. Exactly how far you can push your GPU varies from card to card, although you can find good starting points for your particular model via Google or these forums.

A 7950 series GPU is the best choice for mining, IMO. The 7970 has a worse power consumption/hashrate ratio, higher power requirement, runs hotter, and costs more upfront.

I've used the MSI TF3 (old and new revisions), Gigabyte WF3 (old and new revisions), and Sapphire Vapor-X 7950 GPUs. They're all excellent choices for scrypt mining and will get 660+ Kh/sec while undervolted (or ~700 Kh/sec at stock voltages) when properly configured.

Just FYI, the most recent new Gigabyte cards won't allow you to flash the F43 BIOS onto them. You can tell if you have one of these if your current BIOS has "FT0" in it. More info here:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=197871.0

Any reason that you're trying to build your own binary vs just downloading the precompiled linux build from the author?

I have a pretty thorough linux guide here (part 2), if it helps:

http://www.cryptobadger.com/build-your-own-litecoin-mining-rig/

Although I don't compile cgminer from source in my guide; I just use ckolivas's build.

The OS probably isn't as important as the user. =)

I wouldn't keep your wallet (at least, the wallet with the majority of your coins in it) on any computer that is connected to the internet. The best place for your wallet is offline - stored on a few USB keys in multiple locations. I wrote a guide on securing your wallet a few weeks ago:

http://www.cryptobadger.com/2013/05/guide-bitcoin-wallet-security/