Recently, for a number of reasons, mining profitability has begun to decline. The increased difficulty of calculating the hash and reducing the reward for the mined block, practiced on most projects, makes miners doubt the feasibility of this initiative.
Though some beginners still want to start mining and build a rig just for fun. What components are needed to build a mining rig and how to choose the right equipment? Freewallet tries to answer these questions in the text below.
Components for mining rig
For an effective mining process, the GPU rig should consist of the following components:
- Motherboard – A powerful motherboard will be able to increase the life of the rig (ASRock, AFOX, Gigabyte, Asus).
- Power Supply – Mining consumes a huge amount of electricity. It is recommended to use a power supply unit with a capacity of at least 750 W depending on the needs (GreenVision, Chieftec, Aerocool).
- Processor – (AMD, Intel).
- Video Cards – The optimal number of cards for one farm is 4-6 units, with a speed of at least 400 h/s (Nvidia, AMD, Sapphire, Gigabyte, Asus).
- RAM – For efficient installation, you will need at least 4 GB of RAM.
- PCIe Risers – vertical mount cables help connect graphics cards to the motherboard (Atcom, HQ Tech, Cablexpert).
The hard drive, in fact, is only needed to install the mining farm software (60 to 120 GB is enough). - A fan will be needed for additional cooling (NSI, Zotac Polit, Gigabyte).
- The Linux operating system is considered the best operating system for mining. However, Windows or Mac OS are still great alternatives.
- Accessories – monitor, keyboard, mouse and USB cables. They will be needed to set up a mining farm.
- Frame to assemble all components, it will help to hold all the components of the rig.
Where should I buy the components
In specialized stores, everything is simple: you can pick up the goods on the day of treatment, you do not need to wait for delivery. But the difference in price compared to Amazon can reach 100%. So, the GeForce 1050 Ti card in stores sells for $ 220-230, and on the Internet it can be purchased for $ 130. It is better to order accessories on Ebay or Amazon at an acceptable price and wait 20-25 days for delivery.
Mining rig building steps
- Assemble the frame on which all equipment will be mounted.
- Assemble of components. The process is no different from building a regular computer. The motherboard is placed on the bottom shelf of the frame, but it should not contact its surface.
- Install the cooler and processor on the motherboard.
- Mount the power supply to the corner of the frame.
- Set the power button and indicators.
- Connect a hard drive.
- Connect video cards with raisers.
Inexpensive mining farm is almost ready. It remains only to install the operating system and download the software for the mining.
How to choose components for the rig
Motherboard
A lot of beginners face the first problems already at the stage of choosing a motherboard. We recommend finding the board with 6 or 8 slots for video cards. Accordingly, not every motherboard’s bus will be enough to operate with so many video cards. You should check that the motherboard you’ve chosen will be able to use all 6 or 8 GPUs simultaneously.
The main criteria for choosing a motherboard for mining:
- Its price
- Number of PCI-E x16, PCI-EXPRESS x1 and M.2 ports.
Risers
The riser is a small adapter between the PCIx16 and PCIex1 slots. In simpler words, a riser is an adapter between a video card and a motherboard. Which raiser is better for home mining?
There are three types of risers:
- It is better to use a 12-volt riser with a 6-pin power connector, because they usually have a built-in fuse, which are necessary for video cards. In addition, 6-pin risers have three wires for each power pole, which provides a more balanced load on the connectors.
- A slightly worse riser with a 4-pin molex power connector, which consists of two ground wires and one 12 volt wire.
- The worst riser options are risers with a SATA power connector because they have thin pins. Such risers will eventually lead to problems with mining because of burnout of contacts at the connection point.
Power Supply Unit
A mining rig (especially if several powerful video cards are involved in it at once) is a very energy-consuming thing. To “feed” such a device, you will need to choose a high-quality power supply that can withstand heavy loads and support the system without interruptions.
What is the best power supply for mining? Miners usually use one of these solutions:
- One ATX format power supply unit (Advanced Technology Extended) – For a small mining farm, power from 1000 watts will be enough. It is convenient to connect to a unit. Pay attention to the number of slots for video cards – the power unit of the mining rig will depend on this.
- Several synchronized power supplies with a special cable. They differ from the previous version in that they give more power allowing you to assemble a larger rig.
- Server power supply – It has a large output power and internal resource, but requires soldering for installation in the farm. When choosing this component, you should bear in mind that it often does not have any additional power connectors, makes noise and costs many times more.
CPU
Mining on the processor is not relevant in 2020. Therefore, choose the simplest and cheapest processor for your farm, based on the socket of your motherboard. The processor should be able to run Windows 10, Linux or Mac OS and miner itself.
- Celeron G3900 (G3930) for a mining farm on an Intel platform with a Z270 chipset.
- Core 2 Duo E7300 (any C2D series, starting from 7xxx) for a farm on an Intel platform with P45, P43, P35 chipsets.
- Athlon X3 445 for the farm on the AMD platform with the 970A chipset.
If you also want to mine Monero with CPU you can check processors starting from Intel Core i5 and AMD Ryzen 5.
GPU
There are special calculators to check possible mining earnings on specific video cards. There you can see how much the farm will bring to you with certain cards on different coins. They provide current data online at the moment, because network difficulty and rates are constantly changing.
Both Nvidia and AMD graphics chips have their advantages and disadvantages. But the main difference between them is the efficiency in mining. Depending on the coin, miners select exactly those video cards that give more power and consume less electricity on a certain algorithm. You can learn more about this in our article regarding the best GPUs for mining.
The main pros and cons of the cards of the two manufacturers can be described as follows:
- Nvidia is easier to configure, fewer problems with cooling, but the power consumption is slightly higher.
- AMD is more difficult to configure and maintain, there are nuances in cooling, but more energy efficient.
The best graphics cards currently are the RX 400-500 series cards from AMD and GTX 1060 (6 gigabytes) / 1070/1080 (Ti) from Nvidia. You should focus on cards with the most massive radiators and a large number of coolers. Based on the experience of the miners, the best AMD video cards are released by Sapphire, and Nvidia – by ASUS.
RAM
As a rule, there are no special requirements for RAM in a mining rig. To assemble a small farm and save money, one 4 GB RAM bar is enough. Nevertheless, if you wish, you can purchase more advanced RAM or install, for example, two bars more than 4 gigabytes.
Those who build the farm from new components should buy RAM with DDR4 memory. Motherboards based on new chipsets no longer support the old type of memory.
Hard Drive
To build the first computer for mining, a regular HDD disk is enough. Nevertheless, if you have enough money, it is better to choose an SSD disk. The advantage of the second type of disks is that they will work faster and the time it takes to boot or reboot the computer will be spent several times less. In addition, such drives consume much less energy than their HDD counterparts. For home mining, an SSD hard drive of even 60 gigabytes will be enough.