I recently decided to build myself a small mining rig, and before you tell me about the ROI I will start by saying that I didn´t do it for the ROI, in fact I am quite sure that I will be better off buying and holding, I built the rig as a learning experience and basically because I thought it would be fun (which it turned out to be!). Besides, if mining doesn’t work out I would have a bad ass gaming PC.
Building a mining rig is pretty much like building a PC, probably easier since you don’t have to worry about fitting all the cables into a small computer case. So, let’s start by the components I got and their price:
An Open Case: I got a really cool one from a miner in Buenos Aires that includes 4 fans, the price of 115 USD was quite reasonable too.
H81 PRO BTC Mother Board: 83 USD
Celeron 2.9 Ghz Processor: 59 USD
240gb SSD (Later to find out this was completely unnecessary): 110 USD
8gb Ram (4gb would have done fine, but feck it they were cheap): 86 USD
750 W Sentey Power Supply: 126 USD
Riser Cables: 8 usd each
Power Button: 10 USD
Video Cards: It all really comes down to this basically, since it was my first rig and I wasn’t sure I was going to make it alive I bought one Gigabyte Nvidia 1050 ti 4gb to test things out (it mines at 12.3 MH/s) Price – 165 USD
So I spent a total of 762 USD for a 1 video card rig, the price after that will depend on the video cards I add to it.
Building the beast!
Building the hardware was actually a lot simpler than what I initially thought. Some things you should really be careful with is:
- Making sure you buy a processor that has same chipset as you motherboard.
- Buy a power supply that can power all of your components (In my case, I will probably need to buy another one after I have 3 or more cards).
- Make sure you buy a power button, otherwise the bloody thing will just sit there and laugh at you!
Now the software was a bit trickier. Before I tell you all the hurdles I faced let me just jump right on to the solution: Buy Ethos Distro USB! (price 39 USD).
Well, at first I tried to install Ubuntu like 200 times, it kept giving me this annoying error:
"The installer encountered an error copying files to the hard disk: [Errno 5] Input/output error This is often due to a faulty CD/DVD disk or drive, or a faulty hard disk. It may help to clean the CD/DVD, to burn the CD/DVD at a lower speed, to clean the CD/DVD drive lens (cleaning kits are often available from electronics suppliers), to check whether the hard disk is old and in need of replacement, or to move the system to a cooler environment."
Me: “Come on Linux, I love you!! Why you do this!!
I have no idea why it gave me that error, I tried every possible solution after I finally gave up and installed evil windows 10. After that things went more smoothly, Installed Nvidia drivers, downloaded Claymore miner, set it up and started mining (I love it when things just work!).
However, I have been told that Windows 10 does not support more than one card, I am not sure if this is true but before I encountered more problems I got myself an Ethos USB, which works like a charm, it comes pre-loaded with most cards drivers and you can spare yourself the SSD drive.
What’s next?
Now I buy more cards, go broke and never break even!
What is worse I already feel I am becoming addicted to this little bastard...
