I started mining cryptos in late 2013. Had a nice income until Asics were built and Litecoin went down like hell.
But since Ethereum appeared, it is a great opportunity to mine it. Since Ethereum restricts its users from mining with Asic chips, you will be totally fine with graphicscards. If you are able to get one :D!
Depending on what country you live in, most GPUs are sold out. Even Nvidia took its toll because it isn*t quite as effective as AMD but effective enough to generate a good profit.
If you want to start mining any cryotocurrency, i suggest you to calculate your costs first.
On this website you can find a good mining calculator:
https://www.cryptocompare.com/mining/calculator/eth?HashingPower=27&HashingUnit=MH%2Fs&PowerConsumption=120&CostPerkWh=0.12
For typing in your data, you can expect hashrate of a single RX 470 or RX 570 at 27mhash to around 31mhash.
For better results you will have to edit the Bios on the cards. You can find a good explanation here:
Costs of a miningrig:
The costs of a rig are increasing daily because of the high demand and the low stock.
You will need a mainboard with enough Pcie connections, depending on how many cards you want to install in one rig.
There are mainboards designed especially for this purpose. For example the AsRock PRO BTC R2.0 Mainboard. (6 Pcie connectors)
You will need a powered riser cable for each card. You can order them from ebay or directly from china. I recommend to check the version number and pick Version 6 and above. The risers are pretty self explanatory.
Powersupply 1000 watts and above. A rig with 6x RX 470 draws about 900 watts from the wall. you can get better results by tweaking the biossetting a bit more.
Any CPU will do the job. Try to keep it low energy. So a dual core with 45 watts of TDP is enough.
8 GB of ram to run the rig stable.
The case you build your rig in is not that important. There are plenty of DIY cases built from aluminum or you order a server case for around 100 bucks and fiddle your cards in there. Just make sure that you have plenty of air flow and check the temperatures of your cards. They should stay under 80C° so you do not shorten their lifespan unnecessary.
The mining software will work on Linux and Windows so its your choice.
There are nice, ready to go OS from simplemining and ETHos that can make mining very simple. Setting it up for someone who already worked with linux is a piece of cake.
For Windows i suggest to deactivate firewall and defender settings so the miner wont be stopped from them. Besides that, it is pretty straight forward and every mining pool site explains the steps to connect to them in every detail.
In conclusion, the hardest part about crypto mining is getting graphicscards and pay for the electricity.
Ive set up my miners outside of Germany because in Germany were paying about 0,26€ per KW/h. This is the second place on the list of priciest countries for electricity.
If you have any questions, do not hesitate to ask.
See you on the diggingsite