My first mining rig: Help me choose the components

[SteinGalen]

I'm in the process of setting up my first (6-card, I think) mining rig, and I'm having a hard time understanding especially how to choose the GPU.

With comparisons where everything seems to be the same: https://www.asus.com/Product-Compare/?products=nrWaZwKol5KpK4Ud,rxhpVSuR74480kni,1zMvS5oNHEGDTh6Q,CMs4PT6WuXXtfMP0&b=0 how would you know which of these four to choose?

Here are two with a $100 price difference. Are these good prices, and why choose the most expensive:

$750: https://www.msi.com/Graphics-card/GeForce-GTX-1080-GAMING-X-8G.html#hero-overview

$850: https://www.msi.com/Graphics-card/GeForce-GTX-1080-SEA-HAWK-X.html#hero-overview

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For PCU I assume two of these will do: https://www.evga.com/Products/Product.aspx?pn=220-G2-0750-XR

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For CPU I'm thinking of buying a high-end one if there are coins that can be mined with CPU. Please advise.

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8 GB RAM is enough for GPU mining, right? Should this be higher if I decide to CPU mine?

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For MOBO I see the Z270 mentioned a lot. My local shop sells 15, ranging from $150 to $350. Anything I need to know before choosing one? 

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Will any old HDD do, or should I choose, say, a 128 GB SSD? I'm planning on using Ubuntu.

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And unless I'm missing something, I need these to complete the rig: http://www.ebay.com/itm/6X-USB-3-0-PCI-E-Express-1xTo16x-GPU-Extender-Riser-Card-Adapter-Power-BTC-Cable-/263070689562

[1714054642]

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[1714054642]

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[Subw]

it's time to sell GPUs not buy them

[Vann]

It's a tough time to be building a rig, with overpriced GPU's and lack of availability ATM. The BTC Bip148 controversy has caused a market retraction that has dragged all other coins with it. I think it would make more sense to hold off until that has been straightened out. Also the Vega release may improve GPU availability.

[HardFireMiner]

Just make a calculation of  what are you giving and what are you receiving - 6 GPU's x800$ = 4800$, motherboard - cpu - ram - PSU = 1000$ (give or take). Assuming that those are 1080, best you can do with them - 680 souls / s on Zcash, 4080 total h/s, that's 473$ per month, at today's prices. So it will take 12 months for you to break even.

And I am not even talking about difficulty increase, new asics, better GPU's...

If the price per MH, soul is big, it is not worth it.

[buzzkillb]

I get 500-550 Sol/s on a 1080. 1080's don't do ETH well right now.

[Ayers]

I get 500-550 Sol/s on a 1080. 1080's don't do ETH well right now.

500 sol is very low for a 1080, i can get 480 sol with a 1070, a 1080 should do 600 or more at least, what are your settings? are yous aving power perhaps?

[Raziel__]

it's time to sell GPUs not buy them

I agree, so many newcomers are buying when they should sell, this is just begging, the next hit will be ETH ice age.

[BennyT]

Buying today I would definitely choose 1070's and mine ethereum. You can't look at the return on investment because crypto currencies are so volatile. If ethereum goes back to $400 everyone will be rushing out to by gpu's. This is no different than the stock market in terms of investing. Time mining coins is more important than trying to time when to buy gpu's and mining only currently profitable coins.

I would also save money on the CPU. Not really worth it in my opinion but do what feels right.

[Raziel__]

I get 500-550 Sol/s on a 1080. 1080's don't do ETH well right now.

500 sol is very low for a 1080, i can get 480 sol with a 1070, a 1080 should do 600 or more at least, what are your settings? are yous aving power perhaps?

1080 is doing 550.

[Raziel__]

Buying today I would definitely choose 1070's and mine ethereum. You can't look at the return on investment because crypto currencies are so volatile. If ethereum goes back to $400 everyone will be rushing out to by gpu's. This is no different than the stock market in terms of investing. Time mining coins is more important than trying to time when to buy gpu's and mining only currently profitable coins.

I would also save money on the CPU. Not really worth it in my opinion but do what feels right.

Buying 1070 for ETH is so unprofitable, paying 500$ for 30MH, and ETH is going to POS at the end of the year, return on investment is the most important thing, because if you can't roi in lets say 4-8 months its over for you, there are going to come new graphics cards that will do better. Whats the point in mining the coin hoping to get some profit when coin rises, its easier for him to just buy the coin then hold till the coin rises again.  BTW don't forget the costs like electricity etc.

[paul4now38]

not ever one has money like that

[Vann]

Buying today I would definitely choose 1070's and mine ethereum. You can't look at the return on investment because crypto currencies are so volatile. If ethereum goes back to $400 everyone will be rushing out to by gpu's. This is no different than the stock market in terms of investing. Time mining coins is more important than trying to time when to buy gpu's and mining only currently profitable coins.

I would also save money on the CPU. Not really worth it in my opinion but do what feels right.

No one knows how the BTC Bip148 fork will play out. If it creates a situation where people with coins on exchanges lose coins due to the fork, it could very well end badly and take a LONG time for investors to recover the loss in confidence. The latest ETH dev meeting yesterday confirmed they have no plans to address the the increase in block times and difficulty due to the programmed ICE AGE before the Metropolis release later this year and are also planning to REDUCE the block rewards before then as well. This means at the current price, ETH will no longer be profitable to mine for most people by the end of August.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hRQg_lHEKl4&t=2520s

[Charloz24]

My advices for a first mining rig:

1) Look out for used videocard (ex. ebay) they will do the job and with the drop in profitability, the risk of loosing money is less in that way

2) Aim for a 4 cards rig, 5 max first. It is much harder to succeed with a 6 gpus rig. Gain some experience first, go easy.

3) Be cheap on the cpu, it will not be usefull at all in mining

4) You can go with 4 gb on mem

5) 2 PSU is a good idea, much cheaper than just a bigger one.

6) Good choice on hard drive, 128 gb is plenty enought. SSD is nice, it will boot faster when you will setup the rig, but once it will be running 24/7 it will be useless, so you can save some $ here (if you have to buy it)

[BitBustah]

768 sols/s with a 1080 Ti

[SteinGalen]

Thanks for all the tips!

For those of you who would not invest in a rig now: What would you do with the money in the crypto scene?

[umine]

I get 500-550 Sol/s on a 1080. 1080's don't do ETH well right now.

500 sol is very low for a 1080, i can get 480 sol with a 1070, a 1080 should do 600 or more at least, what are your settings? are yous aving power perhaps?

GTX1080 Palit Gamerock Premium is about 600 sol/s with 180Watt, Asus Strix OC 1080 only 570 sol/s but power consumption little bit less: 175 W

[Subw]

Thanks for all the tips!

For those of you who would not invest in a rig now: What would you do with the money in the crypto scene?

Buy one GPU and put it into your desktop other money keep or buy crypto when it dips

[celot]

If mine eth, how much eth you get every day for 1 tool mining

[Vann]

Depending on the GPU for a 1060/1070, RX 570/580, between 0.06 - 0.08 ETH per WEEK of 24/7 mining. That amount will also decrease every week as the ICE AGE difficulty and block time increase takes a hold.

[Za1n]

Thanks for all the tips!

For those of you who would not invest in a rig now: What would you do with the money in the crypto scene?

At this point in the cycle I agree that it is NOT time to be thinking of buying a new rig. Two main reasons for this is the currently highly inflated price of the components due to all the new people getting in, and the insanely high difficulties to mine any of the coins due to this inrush. As has been pointed out, ROI times of 12+ months are assured and may never make it as you are trying to pay down a rig you paid 1.5x the price for compared to 6 months ago. Relying on reselling your cards will also be a gamble as once the masses realize the jig is up, there will be a mad dash for the exits and mining cards will flood the secondhand market.

The main argument I hear for buying a rig now is that "if ETH goes back to $400 everything will be great again". This is wrong as it does not take in account the difficulty increase in mining. When the run-up first began early this year, one of my rigs could make almost 1 ETH per day by itself. Now it takes almost 20 rigs to bring in that 1 ETH per day.

So even with ETH returning to the $400 range, profits will not be as great as they were and the difficulty is still climbing day by day. It will take a month or two of very low to negative profits before people start abandoning mining in mass due to them clinging to this hope that if price recovers everything will be ok again. The price would need to not only recover but grow exponentially again (think $800, $1200, $1600, etc.) for daily profits to keep up with the growing hashrates being added daily.

Getting to your question, the thing to do now and in the immediate future would be to take that cash and invest directly into the coin(s) you would otherwise mine.  I think both BTC and Ethereum, as well as many other coins, will be trading pretty low here just before August 1st. You might even pick up ETH for $150 or less in short order. For sake of comparison lets look at some examples.

You invest say $6,000 in a new rig (using your specifications from above). You would build a rig capable of making $15-$20/day after electrical costs. This would take you 400 days or well over a year just to recoup your investment. Even if the coins were to double in value again you would only be looking at $30/day or 200 days to ROI. But these values do not count the increasing difficultly, so again it would probably be closer to 2 years, if ever, to fully ROI.

Take that same $6,000 and buy ETH. Say it does go down to $150 you could buy 40 of them. Even if ETH recovers to "just" $300, your $6,000 becomes $12,000, or double your original investment. So the question you need to ask is what is the more likely outcome in the next two years. ETH recovering to at least $300, or mining to remain profitable enough to just break even, much less double your investment?

Finally I just used ETH as an example, you would probably mine Equihash (Zcash) or some other algo with Nvidia, but the overall principle is the same as all coins are following the same downward trend in mining profitability.