This is the short version of my story on how I got into crypto.
I discovered crypto in December 2017 and started mining different coins with my own PC.
I had a Radeon R9 280 series. Installed full node of geth and it took almost a full week to sync to the last block. After starting to send some shares I realized i needed a mining pool otherwise i would get a reward in 2 years or so. But ETH on R9 was way to slow... so turned to Equihas and tried BTG and Zcash. After another week of jumping around pools and miners, I got some $5 worth of crypto combined.
As I discovered it's potential and hit a deeper understanding of the mechanism, decided to build my own GPU rig.
Skeptical of the crypto at that time, I believed that if worst come worst the bubble would pop, I could still sell the card to the gamers.
Went on amazon, ordered the 18 PCI-ex motherboard and 6 risers, and went to the local store to get the rest. Guy was very friendly and helpful. That was probably the last batch of cards before the shortage. Got 6 pieces RX580 at just over $400 Canadian a piece.
When risers came, I built the wood frame, having allotted space for 18 cards and 3 power units. Meanwhile I use my PC mainboard and connected 4 cards and ... taddaaa...!! mining began. Wasn't it fun. It took me another week to get to the full hash rate after settling on Claymore miner and modded the GPU BIOS. Early January i finally got the holy grail of mainboards the B250 Mining expert. Set it all up, configured the voltages and clocks and mining at 181 Mh/s at 770W.
That's the most decent you can go while keeping system stable.
That time the investment return calculation was very promising and I was supposed to break even in just over 3 months. But as we know, crypto prices went down and difficulty increased, so return is about 1/3 of the anticipated.
All my (modest) revenue is invested in several ICO's. (RentBerry, Minerone and Restart Energy).
Hardest is to explain my dearest wife where is the money that I was so proudly bragging about ::) :
"This mining rig will make us about 800-900 bucks a month"
"If i buy another 2 cards will pay Mateo's daycare in Bitcoin"
"We should get a Model S and be pay by the rig".
Haha, we'll see what the months to come will bring.
Photos sourced from: http://abelcrypto.com, http://pinewood.swlsb.ca.