Mining Ethereum (ETH) is easier said than done, but with a solid guide it’s a relatively easy weekend project and quite rewarding as a passive income generator. I want to share the build I built to save time for others who want to get mining but don’t really know where to start.
Parts list for building an ETH Mining Rig
https://pcpartpicker.com/user/defna/saved/FmGRBm
The show stoppers of this rig are the Radeon RX480s. This is a great card for the ETH hashing algorithm (Ethash) considering its price point of $250 (I’ve even seen these floating around for $200 a few months ago). Given the difficulty of ETH mining, two RX480s will get you a hashing rate of about 58 MH/s which equates to roughly $13.05 per day in profit (p/d) if you sell your rewards immediately and do not include appreciation.
The other benefit of the RX480s is they’re versatile and can be used to mine other cryptos like ETC ($10.57 p/d), UBQ ($10.39 p/d), EXP ($9.58 p/d), ZEC ($6.93 p/d), DCR ($4.17 p/d) etc. One concern of ETH mining is the ever-approaching transition to Proof of Stake. With this build, you won’t be dependent on the viability of ETH mining because you can easily switch to another mining pool by changing a few settings and the RX480s will perform well.
After you order your parts and build your machine, I’d recommend purchasing the Linux-based software PIMP (Portable Instant Mining Platform) https://getpimp.org/. For $30 it is well worth your money as it bypasses the need for a Windows license and will save you the struggle of configuring the GPU drivers on other Linux distributions yourself. It will install directly onto your SSD and your machine will be fully optimized for mining Ethereum.
With that being said, the grand total of the build including software is $991.58. Given the current payout for ETH mining, you could expect to make back your investment in 76 days! Also, this rig is capable of supporting two additional cards which would increase the initial investment by 33% but would also increase the capacity to generate revenue by 100%. If you opt for the 4-card system, you could expect to make back your investment in 57 days!
For those of you who want more information please let me know and I’ll be happy to provide. Also if you have any questions about mining or get stuck during the process of getting your own rig, just shoot me a message and I’ll see if I can help you out :)
Happy Mining!
Wow 1000 usd,? Really? That is super cheap. The problem now is that all the gpus are out of stock, even the mother board as well. Now with the gtx 1060 coming to market, there might be some stock available for retail. I hope you haopy mining :)
Yeah they're quite hard to find at the moment. Keep any eye out for the RX580s which have very similar properties suitable for ETH mining.
What is the CPU usage on that setup?
I'm not sure to be honest because it's so minimal. The GPUs are doing all of the work, you don't really have to worry about the CPU at all.
Sounds like an opportunity to mine some Gridcoin on that CPU then, and get yourself some additional payback :)
I just checked, and it was 7%. That's a great idea, I am going to look into that to see if that's possible. Thanks :)
It will definately work for you, its a bit more involved than hash mining, take a look at www.gridcoin.us and the gridcoin reddit for assistance.
EDIT: Just check your overall temperatures, with your open frame in the picture its going to be fine Im sure, but if you have heat problems I can point you to solutions like http://efmer.com/b/
Perfect Timing my friend! This was next the next job on my TO-Do list. Research and cost analysis.
You saved my lots of time and frustration. I really appreciate it!
Have a great DAY!!
Glad I could help, if you have any more questions just ask!
Thanks for the informative post! I've been thinking about getting into mining myself for quite some time and I did have some questions. What is the energy consumption like? Do you have any concerns about cooling/overheating and how do you address that?
-O.T.
Energy consumption is around 400W with two cards. Overheating isn't too much of an issue as most of the RX480/RX580s models have solid cooling systems and will shut themselves off if they start to heat up too much.
Awesome thanks for the info! One other question, how is the noise on one of these rigs? I have some spare space near my bed and am kind of concerned about losing sleep.
-O.T.
Good points in this article. Nice to see I'm not the only one who thinks like this. Be prepared for a fluctuating crypto market. We really need more insights in the market and previous investment results. I was wondering if anyone of you uses: https://www.coincheckup.com They seem to give this complete indepth analysis of all cryptocoins. Sorted by team, product, company, advisors, previous investors, etc. For example: https://www.coincheckup.com/coins/Ethereum#analysis To check Ethereum Detailed report.