In this guide I'll lead you through building the current quite efficient mining rig with around 150 MH/sec based on ETH mining.
1. Hardware
Like building any other computer, you will need some key parts, unlike gaming PC's we will only focus to get a great quality graphics card and quite power efficient power supply. When building your rig you should ask yourself first what is your budget and are you going to upgrade your rig with more GPU's down the road, based on that you can decide what components to choose.
- Motherboard:
Generally, any motherboard with PCIe slots on it is suitable for mining. With that said, there are potentially some limitations when you start to pack a large number (4+) of GPUs onto one motherboard, even if that board has enough PCIe slots to physically accommodate them. That’s why picking a suitable motherboard is probably your biggest hardware headache if you want to run as many GPUs as possible in your rig. My top choice currently is "Asus B250 Mining Expert board". It’s literally made for mining, with support for up to 19 GPUs and 3 power supplies right out of the box. Even if you don’t intend to initially run more than a few GPUs, the included mining-centric diagnostic features and ability to expand later probably make the price premium over less-robust boards worth it. ASRock H110 Pro BTC+ is another excellent choice for mining, with support for up to 13 GPUs. However, it currently costs about the same as Asus’s mining board, and for the money I’d rather stick with Asus. If you know that you’ll definitely stick to a single PSU and a small handful of GPUs (e.g.: the majority of us), this is a fine choice, especially if you find a deal on it. Finally, Biostar TB250-BTC is also aimed at miners, and costs considerably less than the Asus and ASRock offerings. The Biostar board “only” supports 6 GPUs, but that’s likely all that the majority of us need. If price is your primary consideration, the TB250-BTC should be at the top of your list for 6 GPU rig builds.If you only want to use 3-4 GPUs in your rig, then you’ll have a much easier time. Most boards with up to four PCIe slots should accommodate a GPU in each. Keep in mind that you can use old hardware that you have sitting around, except in case of GPU's and PSU because they use too much power for as little as they produce, but you can try it out nonetheless. - CPU Because the GPU's do all the work. Your CPU will essentially sit idle, so there is no reason to waste money on anything other than the bare minimum. I would recommend the cheap but quite efficient "Intel Celeron G3900" for about 50$ price.
- RAM When it comes to RAM, 4-6GB is fine. Overkill really, at least for Linux. If you have an old 2GB stick (or even 1GB!) sitting around and plan to run Linux, you’re good to go. If you want to run Windows, then 4GB is probably a realistic minimum. While Ethereum mining is pretty memory-intensive, everything happens on the GPUs. System memory will be pretty much unused, so there is no reason to spend money here, just go with some cheap DDR3 memory.
- Power supply The power supply is extremely important! A good, efficient PSU will keep your electricity costs to a minimum and more than pay for itself over the long run. Seasonic, EVGA, and Corsair are all generally top brand choices. The 1200W PSU may seem like overkill, but power supplies are most efficient when they’re not running near their rated maximum load. A 6 GPU rig will draw about 750 watts, which means a 1200W PSU will have sufficient headroom to perform efficiently.If you’re planning on running only 3-4 GPUs, you can save a bit of money and go with 800W PSU instead. The ones I would recommend at the moment are EVGA's Supernova 80+ platinum 1200W and 800W PSU's.
- Graphics card The far best mining choice currently is the Radeon RX 570 / RX 580. The RX 570 delivers nearly the same performance as the RX 580 (within 4-7% or so) for a bit less power consumption—they’re essentially equal from an efficiency standpoint. The RX 570 is usually significantly cheaper than the 580, so generally the 570 is the best choice.Which model to pick, though? While literally any RX 570/580 card will do, the most important thing to look for is memory speed if you want the best performance. Cards with a higher memory clock speed will generally perform a bit better while mining ETH (and can generally be overclocked more). If you plan to mine Ethereum you should go for 8GB graphics cards, because of Ethereum's high DAG file which requires more that 4GB of memory in order to mine it. With all that said, the 8GB versions of the cards tend to have faster-clocked memory than most of the 4GB cards, so if the price difference isn’t too large, spring for whatever is the fastest. Most of the cards fall between 1650 Mhz (6600 Mbps effective) to 2000 Mhz (8000 Mbps effective). The slower 1650 Mhz memory GPUs will hash at 21-23 Mh/s, and the fastest 2000 Mhz ones will do 25-28 Mh/s (both can potentially be pushed higher with BIOS mods and good luck).The best advice is usually to just pick up whichever 570/580 card you can get your hands on for the least money, as mining speed differences between brands/models are pretty small after optimization. In case you can't get your hand on any AMD GPU's, nVidia’s 1050TI/1060/1070 video cards are also excellent for mining. You will find it easier to sell 1070's later on if you choose to get out of mining business since they provide great gaming GPU as well.
- Case In my opinion the best way is not even to bother finding a large enough compatible case. Instead just get some scrap wood or metal and build your own, shelf like case. That will offer you better cable management and better airflow. You will be able to save a lot of money doing it that way. Plus you can get creative with it.
- Important stuff you are going to need as well No matter what you do you’ll need risers to connect your GPU's to your motherboard. If you’re buying a mining frame, most include risers. When buying risers, the best at the moment are "powered USB raisers", they usually cost around 15$ a piece but are a much needed necessity for miners. They require power from PSU and they are directly connected to your motherboard with usb connector and PCI connector. Any raisers should do the work, you should just focus that they are powered and preferably USB since they provide easier setup for newbies.
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