How To Build Your First Mining Rig
By Zachary Galante — Senior Data Science Student at Bryant University
So you’ve been keeping up with the stock market and cryptocurrencies and are seeing the changes with stocks such as GME and AMC. In addition to these highly volatile stocks, the price of Bitcoin is also at an all time high. This comes weeks after Elon Musk announced that his company, Tesla made a small investment of $1.5 billion into the cryptocurrency.
Many people are aware that they are able to invest money into Bitcoin directly, but many may not be aware of another way to earn cryptocurrency, and that is through a mining rig. This article will be a complete guide for someone who has never built a mining rig before and will cover important parts in building it.
How a mining rig earns profit
When someone is building a computer with the intent to mine for cryptocurrency (also known as a mining rig), there are a few important factors to keep in mind. The absolute most important aspect of mining is the cost of power. In order to maximize profits, a rig needs to be running 24/7, often drawing large amounts of power, and in effect making an impact on the power bill. When calculating profits, aside from the initial investment of the hardware for the rig, the continuous need for power is the only cost for operating a mining rig. Another cost, depending on your location could be for cooling your room. For example if you live somewhere where it is very hot, you may need to bring the temperature down slightly as these computers can get very hot very fast.
The Components necessary
CPU (Central Processing Unit): This component is used to run supporting programs for the computer, and is essential to the function of the machine as whole. When building a mining rig, the overall power of the CPU is not the most important aspect of the build. If you were looking to build a computer for gaming, then you would want to purchase a higher end CPU. Another important aspect to note, is that when selecting a CPU it is beneficial to buy one with inline graphics, which are found in most Intel CPUs.
RAM (Random Accessible Memory): Similar to the situation with the CPU, the performance of RAM in the computer is not essential to the profitability of a mining rig. Having anywhere from 8–16 gb would be sufficient to run the basic operating systems and the programs necessary for mining.
GPU: This is the absolute most important component to a mining rig. This is where all the important calculations are going to be made, and these cards will earn your profits. Currently, due to the high demand for both gaming and mining, these cards are extremely difficult to get. At the time of writing this article, the NVIDIA 30 series is the most sought after card in the market right now, due to its low cost relative to it’s level of performance. Due to that, both gamers and miners have been buying them as fast as they are in stock (very similar to the situation with the PS5). With that being said, in an ideal world we would all be building rigs with multiple 30 series cards, but that is not the situation. Instead, other suitable options include other GPUs also made by NVIDIA, such as their 20 series.
Also when selecting a GPU, it is important to keep in mind that there is the option to use multiple in your rig (As many as your motherboard will allow). This will also increase profits, and again in effect, the cost of power.
Motherboard: This is essentially the foundation for the computer’s hardware, and where all the components are attached. The two major features that need to be considered when selecting a motherboard is how you are going to connect to the internet, and also the number of GPUs it can handle.
Case: Depending on how complex you plan to build your mining rig (referring to the number of GPUs you plan to use) a variety of cases could be appropriate. If you only have one GPU and are building a pretty basic / standard build then a traditional mid-sized case would work. However, if you plan to use multiple GPUs, then an open case would be much more beneficial, as it will allow for more cooling as well.
When checking for profits, your rig’s profitability could change dramatically as the price of Bitcoin is extremely volatile. That’s why it’s important to ensure that you will be making profits rather than losing money paying for power. Lastly, once you have completed your build, the next part is getting it up and running to mine, which will be covered in the next article.
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