I started mining Ether back on February 11, 2017 back when the price was around $13 USD per ETH. I had an old PC that I wasn't using so purchased an RX 480 to mine with. After a week of struggling with Windows and driver issues, I bought ethos and started mining. I then bought 3 more RX 480's and added them to the old PC (it only has 4 PCI slots). I then bought a second PC with 6 PCI slots, ethos and 6 more RX 480s bringing me a total hash power of 237 MH/s (no overclocking). I put the rigs in the basement right next to the furnace and added a wifi extender so they could get connectivity (the machines only had ethernet, no wifi). I had several issues with this setup so far:
1.Wifi would drop regularly. I eventually figured out this was due to the wifi extender being too close to the furnaces. I moved the extender farther away and the problem went away. I lost a few days of mining due to this.
2.The 15Amp breaker has tripped several times. This basement circuit is shared with the garage and maybe something else - not sure (its an old house). I lost a few days mining because of this and expect to have more problems until I find another circuit or one of the machines or upgrade the breaker.
3.Upgrading Ethos to a newer version made mining unstable due to the miner being "more efficient". I had to underclock the cards to get stability back. I lost a few days of mining due to this.
4.The rigs overheated once. I was running the fans at 60% to keep the noise down, but then a storm front rolled in and they both overheated. The fans now run at 100% to hopefully avoid this, but we still haven't hit the hot months so I am not sure yet. The extra heat was nice in the winter but now the basement is feeling a bit warm. I lost a few days of mining since I was traveling when it overheated
5.Alpereum had some problems so the rigs were down for a day or so until I switched to nanopool.
6.The claymore miner had some problems so I lost a day or so before I switched to another miner.
After spending about $3000 USD on the hardware, about $500 in electricity, and 80+ hours working on the rigs, I have generated about 25 ETH over the past 3 months currently worth $2300 USD. The rate of mining eth has has dropped almost in half since I started due to more people mining and maybe the POS ice age.
My main goals were to learn more about ethereum mining and not lose any money along the way. Assuming the price of ether doesn't crash, I should break even in another month. I have learned a lot - mainly about the difficulties in keeping mining rigs running. It has been a good learning experience, but I would have $21,000 worth of ETH today (at $90/eth) if I had invested that $3000 in ETH when it was $13 so it wasn't the best use of money from an investment point of view.
I see many people on this forum wanting to get into mining part time - hopefully my story will help you along your journey.
