Build for $500

[squatz1]

Anyone have a good GPU alt coin mining build for under $500?

Would like to be mining the most profitable coin at the time which I will run a script for.

[1714946716]

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[Sagittarius*]

You might want to consider investing that sum in a coin and holding / trading / stacking instead of mining PoW with a low end machine.

Or wait for zcash...

[bathrobehero]

GPU mining as an investment is pretty linear. The more you invest, the more you earn.

For $500 you're not going to go far and it even might just end up being a learning experience or a waste of time.


I also think you'd be better off spending that money trying to trade some coins - unless you have access to free or very cheap electricity in which case you might want to start mining.

[MarkAz]

I second bathrobehero - trading is probably going to be more profitable.  The challenge is that as a percentage of your build, your base components (CPU, memory, HD, MB, PSU) are going to be a huge percentage - and you'll probably only have enough left over for 1 modern card.  Assuming it's something like an RX 480 and making a bunch of other assumptions, you'll probably only net about $45, so that means it would take 11 months before you ROI'd.  Now, if you had a 6 card rig, although it would cost quite a bit more, your base component cost would be spread across 6 cards, so you'd ROI quite a bit faster. 

So, trade until you have about 4x of that, then mine if you're still motivated - figure ~$2k will get you into a decent 6 card rig.

[QuintLeo]

for $500 assuming you don't have any existing hardware, you can BARELY put together a single-board RX470, RX480, R9 290/390 system.

 Technically, you MIGHT manage a system with a single GTX 1060 but that's pretty close to a money-LOSER even now, unless you have FREE power, as the 1060 isn't a good Ethereum miner and doesn't seem to be very good at mining anything else.

 The 290/390 will get you about 30MH on Ethereum at a fairly high power usage, the RX470/480 closer to 24MH with quite a bit less power draw.

 NONE of those options are going to be particulaly profitable, as the power draw is going to be noticeably higher per hash due to the MB/CPU/RAM power draw.


 On the plus side - if you build it with the right motherboard, you CAN expand it fairly easily later by just adding more GPUs once you have more money to put into it.



 The other thing to keep in mind is that Ethereum profitability has been dropping pretty hard the last couple months, combination of more folks pointing more rigs at it and the INHERENT "DAG file size increase" reduction in hashrate on any given setup.
 
 Achieving ROI on Ethereum for any new build is looking like "if you have FREE power, you might manage it, otherwise probability pretty much ZERO" at this point in time, unless you put together a build you can resell a few months down the line for VERY close to what you paid for it - and somewhat iffy even THEN unless you have VERY VERY cheap power.

[squatz1]

I'll have to say thank you to everyone for the input and I may contact a couple of you for some info and such.


Thanks a ton for helping me out here, I'll continue research and see what I can find. Plus probably add more funds!