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This is how you get half a dozen or more double-slot sized GPUs to fit on one motherboard. Celerons, single-stick memory configurations, and other money saving shortcuts are all fine here. This is a perfect place to use items off the spare parts shelf. Dust off that dual-core Celeron, puny Pentium, or Ivy Bridge antique. They all work just fine in a mining rig. There's a small corollary here, and it's that CPU mining of certain algorithms is still potentially profitable. You're probably better off buying another graphics card rather than worrying about CPU mining potential.
Right now they're expensive though. But check this listing to make sure. Be wary of second-hand cards formerly used in mining rigs however, as the stress shortens the lifespan of the hardware considerably.
Select personalised content. Cryptocurrency is volatile, and there's no guarantee you'll make back the money you spend on your hardware as quickly as you expect. In a way, blockchain technology is similar to a shared database. Read review. Create a personalised content profile.
One area requiring investment is the power supply. Typical multi-GPU cryptocurrency setups require plenty of juice, more than even a high-end gaming system, and these PSUs will cost you. A gold rated power supply is minimum, since mining rigs run at constant high loads, and depending on what GPUs you're running and how many of them , you'll want at least a W output, if not more.
This Corsair HXi has the capacity for several high-end graphics cards. You'll need all the efficiency you can get. Something else to keep in mind with power use is your power circuit.
Most US homes come with 15A circuit breakers, which means a single circuit will top out at around W. If you're thinking about setting up multiple mining rigs, you'll need to keep them on separate breakers. Good news: you may be paying a premium for a graphics card and a high capacity power supply, but you can cheap out a bit when it comes to your system memory and storage.
What is a cryptomining rig? OK, the "rig" is essentially a customized PC. It has all the common elements of a PC: CPU, motherboard, RAM. And maybe because GPU mining and cryptocurrency are considered dirty words to PC gamers. Especially to PC gamers looking to build their.
Likewise, the speed of your OS drive isn't important for mining. If you have an old hard drive or spare SSD around, that'll do the job just fine. If you're picking up a fresh part, grab a small SSD on the cheap. It'll make the system easier to use, and you don't need much storage space to keep your mining operation running.
You only really need 4GB as there's not much going on in the memory-use front. Building your own cryptocurrency mining rig is no harder than building any other custom PC. It's a great way to learn the inner workings of the hardware, and save some money over a prebuilt system outrageous graphics card prices notwithstanding.
But if you really don't have the time to build your own mining rig, buying prebuilt is always an option. But should you buy a prebuilt desktop PC, or a dedicated mining rig with multiple graphics cards? Thanks to the cryptocurrency boom, the latter cost thousands of dollars on Ebay, both used and new. Buying used could net you heavily worn graphics cards with diminished lifespans. Either way, it's a huge investment if you're just getting started with mining.
For a more traditional prebuilt system, you'll be stuck with a maximum of two GPUs by default, and even prebuilts have been hit by the current GPU shortages. And if the mining thing doesn't work out, you've still got a bodacious gaming PC. But is at-home mining worth it?
By Adrian Kingsley-Hughes for Hardware 2. I'm old enough to remember being given a couple of bitcoins when they were worth next to nothing.
Needless to say, I don't have them anymore. Now, with bitcoin and other cryptocurrency prices skyrocketing again, there's renewed interest in cryptomining, which is a way to accumulate cryptocurrency without having to pay for it. Cryptocurrency What every business needs to know.
Read More. Let's take a look at what makes a good cryptomining rig, and what hardware it takes if you want to be serious about mining.
In the most basic terms, you are using a computer or computers to solve cryptographic equations and record that data to a blockchain. Taking this a bit deeper, miners verify the hashes of unconfirmed blocks and receive a reward for every hash that is verified. The process is computationally intensive, requiring state-of-the-art hardware if you are planning on making much headway with mining.
Mining, as it was back in the days of the gold rush, is not for the faint of heart. And as with all high-end systems, it's less a case of how much do you want to spend, and more a case of how fast do you want to spend. So, what hardware do you need to mine cryptocurrency? OK, the "rig" is essentially a customized PC. Where things deviate from the norm is when it comes to the graphics cards. You're going to need quite a powerful GPU for mining, and likely you are going to be buying more than one.
A lot more. In fact, you can think of a mining rig as a relatively cheap PC with one or more high-performance GPUs attached. You need to connect multiple graphics cards to a single system, which means you also need a motherboard to handle that. You'll also be looking at more than one power supply unit PSU if you're planning to push things to the extremes. There are also some other mining-specific items you'll need to make the mining rig ready for mining.
OK, let's start with the motherboard. The Asus B Mining Expert is a beast of a motherboard, capable of having 19 graphics cards connected to it. That's a lot. The board isn't new -- it was released in -- and it is finickity when it comes to setting up it needs a specific layout of AMD and Nvidia graphics cards ,.
Asus has published recommend GPU layouts for , , and card for this board, and while other layouts might work, I recommend staying with what the manufacturer suggests, as veering away from this is a recipe for a serious -- not to mention expensive -- headaches.
This quad-core Core i5 is perfect for this setup and works great with the motherboard chosen above. You're not going to overspend on RAM either. SKILL fits the bill. Depending on how many graphics cards you have installed, you may need multiple PSUs. It's tempting to find the cheapest possible, but since they are going to be pushed hard, I recommend paying a little more. These Segotep PSUs are middle-of-the-road good value, yet they offer reliable performance. The modular nature also means that you're not turning the mining rig into a spaghetti of wires. This is where a bitcoin mining rig differs from a regular PC in that you can't have all the graphics cards directly attached to the motherboard, so these risers allow you to connect them indirectly.
You're going to need one of these for every card you connect other than the card that goes into the x16 PCI-e slot. This six-pack of powered risers are great and provide stable power to your graphics cards. I do not recommend using non-powered risers. I've had nothing but problems with stability using them in the past in cryptomining rigs, so don't make the same mistake I made! This is a great card and everything you're looking for in a mining rig.
Loads of potential for overclocking, stable, and great cooling. Another nice side benefit is that it's quite an efficient card, which means lower power consumption and reduced mining costs.