My First Mining Rig - If I Can Do It, Then Most People Can. Part 1
Ethereum mining is where it’s at for GPU miners, so that’s what I’ve focused on. I’ve kept the same format and detail level as my old guide, so if you were around back then, you’ll know what to expect.
If you’re new to the world of crytocurrency mining, this guide should give even an absolute beginner all of the knowledge needed to put together an efficient Ethereum (or other GPU-minable altcoin) mining rig using readily-available consumer hardware.
This guide will be broken into several parts, each focusing on a different aspect of building your first mining rig. First, let’s take a look at what you’ll need in terms of hardware to put a respectable Ethereum miner together.
Build your own Ethereum Mining Rig, part 1: Hardware
Here is the list of hardware that I recommend. Don’t worry if you’re not able to get exactly what’s on this list, I provide some excellent alternatives below the table.
Motherboard 1 x Asus B250 Mining Expert $180
Processor 1 x Intel Celeron G3900 CPU $45
Memory 1 x 4GB DDR4 DIMM $40
Power Supply 1 x 1200w Platinum PSU $260
GPUs 3+ Radeon RX 570 video cards (*see below) ~$200 each
Boot Device 1 x 60GB SSD -or- USB stick (Linux) $5 – $35
Case 1 x build your own (see bottom) -or- open frame case $30 – $200
Some explanations and alternatives for each item:
Motherboard
Generally, any motherboard with PCIe slots on it is suitable for mining—typically one GPU per PCIe slot. The PCIe slots don’t need to be full-length, as we can attach GPUs to 1x slots with the help of risers. With that said, there are potentially some limitations when you start to pack a large number (4+) of GPUs onto one motherboard, even if that board has enough PCIe slots to physically accommodate them. That’s why picking a suitable motherboard is probably your biggest hardware headache if you want to run as many GPUs as possible in your rig.
My top choice is currently the Asus B250 Mining Expert board. It’s literally made for mining, with support for up to 19 (!) GPUs and 3 power supplies right out of the box. Even if you don’t intend to initially run more than a few GPUs, the included mining-centric diagnostic features and ability to expand later probably make the price premium over less-robust boards worth it.
The ASRock H110 Pro BTC+ is another excellent choice for mining, with support for up to 13 GPUs. However, it currently costs about the same as Asus’s mining board, and for the money I’d rather stick with Asus. If you know that you’ll definitely stick to a single PSU and a small handful of GPUs (e.g.: the majority of us), this is a fine choice, especially if you find a deal on it.
Finally, the Biostar TB250-BTC is also aimed at miners, and costs considerably less than the Asus and ASRock offerings. The Biostar board “only” supports 6 GPUs, but that’s likely all that the majority of us need. If price is your primary consideration, the TB250-BTC should be at the top of your list for 6 GPU rig builds.
If you only want to use 3-4 GPUs in your rig, then you’ll have a much easier time. Most boards with up to four PCIe slots should accommodate a GPU in each. Keep in mind that you can use old hardware that you have sitting around—the board doesn’t have to be recent. I dug out an old ASRock 970 Extreme4 that I used four years ago for litecoin mining, and it still works fine today for up to 4 GPUs (5 is possible with some work). So it’s possible to pick up an ancient board on eBay/Craigslist for nearly nothing and mine with less than 6 video cards.
CPU / Processor
This one is easy: buy the cheapest CPU that works with whatever motherboard you pick. When it comes to mining, the GPUs do all the work. Your CPU will essentially sit idle, so there is no reason to waste money on anything other than the bare minimum.
All of the motherboards that I recommended based on Intel’s LGA 1151 socket, so that means the Celeron G3900 is probably the best choice.
If you go with an AMD motherboard, a Sempron CPU will do nicely.
Memory
4GB is fine. Overkill really, at least for Linux. If you have an old 2GB stick (or even 1GB!) sitting around and plan to run Linux, you’re good to go. If you want to run Windows, then 4GB is probably a realistic minimum.
While Ethereum mining is pretty memory-intensive, everything happens on the GPUs. System memory will be pretty much unused, so there is no reason to spend money here, especially with DDR4 prices so high.
PSU / Power Supply
The power supply is extremely important—don’t skimp on it! A good, efficient PSU will keep your electricity costs to a minimum and more than pay for itself over the long run. Seasonic, EVGA, and Corsair are all generally top brand choices. The 1200W unit that I’ve linked may seem like overkill, but power supplies are most efficient when they’re not running near their rated maximum load. A 6 GPU rig will draw about 750 watts (assuming 6x RX 570 cards, properly optimized), which means a 1200W PSU will have sufficient headroom to perform efficiently.
If you’re planning on running only 3-4 GPUs, you can save a bit of money and go for their 850 watt model instead.
GPUs / Video Cards
The top Ethereum mining choice is currently the Radeon RX 570 / RX 580 line*. The RX 570 delivers nearly the same performance as the RX 580 (within 4-7% or so) for a bit less power consumption—they’re essentially equal from an efficiency standpoint. The RX 570 is usually significantly cheaper than the 580, so generally the 570 is the best choice.
Which model to pick, though? While literally any RX 570/580 card will do, the most important thing to look for is memory speed if you want the best performance. Cards with a higher memory clock speed will generally perform a bit better while mining ETH (and can generally be overclocked more). Memory capacity isn’t really important beyond 4GB, so all other things being equal, there is no reason to shell out extra cash for the 8GB version of a card. It’s true that every GPU needs to be able to hold Ethereum’s DAG file in memory, and that file is slowly increasing in size—but it won’t surpass 4GB until late 2019 (and ETH’s switch to PoS will likely occur before then, anyway).
With all of that said, the 8GB versions of the cards tend to have faster-clocked memory than most of the 4GB cards, so if the price difference isn’t too large, spring for whatever is the fastest. Most of the cards fall between 1650 Mhz (6600 Mbps effective) to 2000 Mhz (8000 Mbps effective). The slower 1650 Mhz memory GPUs will hash at 21-23 Mh/s, and the fastest 2000 Mhz ones will do 25-28 Mh/s (both can potentially be pushed higher with BIOS mods and good luck).
The best advice is usually to just pick up whichever 570/580 card you can get your hands on for the least money, as mining speed differences between brands/models are pretty small after optimization. These 8GB MSI RX 570 cards are $220 each as of 11/29/2017, and I’m running mine at 28 Mh/sec without pushing them too hard.
If you can still find old RX 470/480 cards on the secondary market, they’re just as good the RX 570/580 cards that replaced them.
*While my guides deal with setting up and optimizing AMD’s GPUs, nVidia’s 1060 / 1070 video cards are also excellent for mining. Generally these days I tend to recommend whichever is cheaper (and right now, that’s AMD). But if you find a deal on some nVidia 1070 GPUs, don’t hesitate to grab them—they perform just as well as AMD’s offerings, and are arguably easier to set up (just remember to install nVidia drivers instead of AMD’s if you follow the rest of my guide!).
Boot Device
If you plan to run Linux, you can use pretty much anything, including a ~$5 16GB USB stick (we’ll be using Claymore miner, which doesn’t write Ethereum’s DAG file to disk, so we don’t need to worry about wearing a USB stick out due to constantly writing to it, like with the stock ethminer). With that said, SSDs are pretty cheap nowadays and it might be nice to have one in case you want to try Windows at some point.
If you plan to run Windows, then a cheap 60GB+ SSD is your best bet. If you have an old mechanical hard drive laying around, that’ll work fine too.
