My first mining rig (GPU)

[Exodus28]

Hey guys , I am about to get into mining and it's a little bit out of my comfort zone.

I'm not really a computer guy.  I'm a Gen X'er. I coach baseball and own a Plumbing company.  Needless to say , a lot of this stuff is foreign to me.  But I'm excited by the concept of mining and want to give it a shot.  I have a buddy who has mined in the past, and he is building me a GPU rig. 

Not being a "computer guy" is there going to be maintenance issues that I will stumble over , or is it more like "set it and forget it"? 

My thoughts were to set this up in my office , allowing my business to absorb the cost of electricity while I benefit from the profits of mining. 

Do you guys think this is something that can be easily learned or am I way in over my head here?  This forum has been a great asset.  I have spent countless hours reading about mining all over the internet.  If there are any particular posts I should read here, please attach them to a reply. 

Thanks in advance.

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[Exodus28]

Added Details: 

My friend is supplying all of the components, less the GPU cards. 
I am giving him roughly a $2,000 budget for GPU's

Any suggestions to maximize the efficiency of our build?

[aBTCd]

If you are not a computer guy, you will have issues with maintenance because a lot of things need to be taught first.
It would help if you can be together with a person who will be building a rig for you because you can learn a lot of things during preparation and installation.

From my personal experience, I can tell you that it will be hard if something crashes because you will invest a lot of your time in research and repair. If someone else would repair it for you, it will be expensive.

I would call myself a computer guy and I had a lot of struggles maintaining a rig because any downtime means expense. In the end, I decided just to buy coins and hold them, from time to time even trade them a bit and now I have plenty of free time

Oh, and BTW, the room where your rig(s) would be, temperatures might go extremely high. It can be also very loud.

[arielbit]

passion is a good start for anything to gain some success...do you have passion in computers?..and also electricity?

it seems your buddy dumped his gear on you LOL 

[styleshifter]

You can gain experience already if you start with your office computer.
Install a good GPU and use the NiceHash miner.
That's all and still easy. 

After some time you can switch to a dedicated mining rig with multiple GPUs.
Then you can dive deeper and think about mining software, mining pools, wallets...

[batsonxl]

if it was the year 2013-14-15 i would say yeah go for it and keep mining but these days profit is so low that looks 1-2 years to ROI you gear.for 2000$ you could buy coins and sit relaxed not thinking about gpu are crashed or not, most of your time you need monitor your rigs,
 

[Exodus28]

I believe these will be more productive than some of these previous posts are stating. 

I do not calculate $2,000 taking all that long to recoup because the power I am using to run these is not coming at my own personal expense.  The cost of electricity will be shifted to my Plumbing company and written off as an expense to the business. 

This should change my return rates.   How long could it take to make $2,000 if electricity was free?

[tg88]

This should change my return rates.   How long could it take to make $2,000 if electricity was free?

Hard times,
With free electricity it would take 18 to 24 months to achieve ROI.
After this period you can resell the GPUs.

[Exodus28]

With $2,000 would I be better off buying an ASIC or just buying $2,000 in coins.

[Herry Toms]

Added Details: 

My friend is supplying all of the components, less the GPU cards. 
I am giving him roughly a $2,000 budget for GPU's

Any suggestions to maximize the efficiency of our build?

This is a great budget to build a beast mining rig to start with. When you are ready to go check out Cryptonight coins such as RYO which is most suitable for GPU miners, It's hash algorithm CN-GPU is the only in the whole Cryptonight family that is suitable for AMD and as well as Nvidia cards.
Good luck..!!

[hustleman]

I to am not very computer savvy... I decided to put together a 12 gpu amd mining rig back in 2017.  I knew nothing, but had a friend via skype.  With his help, putting the hardware together was not difficult, but troubleshooting the mining software, windows, ect was a nightmare.  I spent a lot of time on this forum, watching youtube videos to finally learn OC/UV, error codes, reasons for complete shutdowns, virtual memory settings, switching from one miner to another, switching coins to mine, ect...  If you really want to learn there is plenty of material, lots of reading and videos to watch.  With all the being said after about 6 months on my first rig, I got the hang of everything, kept it stable, and maxing hashrate.  I built 2 more... Nvidia and another AMD.  Nvidia was way easier initially but after getting the hang of flashing amd bios, what OC/UV for each amd card it was super easy too.  

[thefix]

With $2,000 would I be better off buying an ASIC or just buying $2,000 in coins.

You could go half and half by building a nice AMD Ryzen pc($1000) setup with Ryzen 3700 and a RX5700 GPU allowing you to mine monero with the cpu and eth or other coins with the GPU. Spend the rest on the coins of your choice. Worst case is you realize mining is not for you and you have a very modern pc that you can use in your business or a kick arse home computer. Asic miners are noisy, put out tons of heat and they are junk once the difficulty reaches a certain point.

[adaseb]

We need more info here to give you more advice.

Basically if you got free electricity (which you might not) you will only make around $0.30-$0.40/day/GPU. If your electricity rate is $0.10kwh USD then you will make maybe $0.01/day/GPU.

So I am assuming your plumbing business will be used as a write-off to pay for these electrical bills? Maybe check with your accountant if you can do this first. Because it would seem suspicious for your yearly electrical bill to go from $1000/year to $10,000/year.

Regarding the ASICs, they are easier to maintain and set up but they are as long as a vacuum. If this is inside an office then you won't be able to get any work done