Beginner’s Guide

In January, Ethereum wasn’t even worth 10 dollars, whilst we’re trading them for over 300 dollars right now. It’s not very hard to see that Ethereum is growing & thriving like never before. It’s time now to help nature a bit by building your own Ethereum Mining Rig!

In a previous article, how to mine Ethereum, I explained how you, as a crypto-person, can start mining. Today, I will go more in-depth into the magical world of setting up your own Ethereum Mining Rig, which isn’t very hard but isn’t very easy without some sort of help or guidance.

In this article, I will be focussing on a mining rig with 6 modern GPUs. You could choose more GPUs as well, but you will need different Mining Cases, Power Supplies and more, than what I will mention here. Obviously, this could be used as a guide for any rig and you would only have to change some parts of your hardware to make it fit again.

Building an Ethereum mining rig is as easy as eating mango.

What will you need?

• A motherboard
• CPU
• A power supply
• Up to 6 GPUs (Of course you can use more if you take a different build)
• Up to 6 USB riser cables (1 per GPU)
• A hard drive (SSD preferred)
• Memory

These 6 parts are essential for your mining rig. Leave out one and you won’t be having a profitable rig. Below, I will give more details on each part and what I would recommend adding to your mining rig.

Although I will be mentioning the components that I think are the best to use, it’s recommended that you do your own research on these too, as the ones that are the best for me, could be garbage in comparison to the other components you can find. If you have almost free electricity, you probably wouldn’t mind about higher electricity consumption, whilst that would be a disaster for me, as I live in a country with quite high electricity prices. Another reason is that I could miss great components, which would be better than the ones I list here. Ethereum mining best GPU. (How to build an Ethereum Mining Rig).

Motherboard

The motherboard is the “brain” of your mining rig. From the motherboard, the GPUs are controlled and your miners won’t work too well without it. You will need a motherboard with 6 PCIe slots to connect a GPU through. There are multiple great motherboards on the market, some more widely available than others and some functioning better than their rivals, but I would like to recommend you either of these: Z270 Gaming M5 (Or M7, but the M7 is far more expensive), the cheaper but not much worse ASRock H97 anniversary and the older but still working ASRock H81 PRO. The Z170-E ASUS 6 GPU motherboard is a great option too, as long as you don’t go above 4 GPUs. Although it should be able to control 6 GPUs, some bugs may arise if you connect more than 4 GPUs to it.

The most important part is that you play it cost-efficiently: Spend less, earn more. Therefore, you should also search for each fitting motherboard on multiple sites (or just google it), to figure out the best price for the best quality. (How to build an Ethereum Mining Rig).

CPU

Although there are some Motherboard+CPU in 1 combination available, the separated Motherboard and CPU are preferred. You don’t necessarily need a $500 CPU, as it’s not the most important part of your rig. A good CPU that is pretty affordable and functions well is the Intel Celeron G1840. It’s

Power Supply

A great PSU (Power Supply Unit), is the EVGA 1000 GQ, which provides 1000 Watts. The PSU should provide enough power for your rig and is not insanely expensive. It kind of depends on what components you’ll take in your mining rig and how many GPUs you put in it. If 1000 Watts is not enough for your rig, the SeaSonic Platinum 1200W offers a wonderful solution as well, with 200 additional watts for you to use on your rig.

GPUs

There are multiple factors that make GPUs good. The most obvious ones are its price and its hash rate. The price should be low and the hash rate should be high. Then there’s another important property of your GPU that should be good, which is its electricity consumption. If your electricity cost is high, you might just as well stay out of the Ethereum Mining business.  Make sure your electricity cost is not high, but also not very low, you should probably go for a miner that consumes very little electricity. If you got access to very cheap electricity or even a free supply of it, electricity consumption should be less of a worry for you. (How to build an Ethereum Mining Rig).

In short, that means that you will need to find a GPU with a high hash rate, for a low price, and with low energy consumption. Below, I will list some of these GPUs.

There are multiple great GPUs out there and it’s quite hard to say which is the best. Currently, the GTX 1070 is a great option. The best GTX 1070 is probably the Gigabyte GeForce GTX 1070 Windforce OC 8 GB. Although it has a 10% higher price than some of the other GTX 1070s, it truly compensates for that disadvantage by delivering a higher hash rate with very well functioning built-in fans to keep the miner cool, as you could probably derive from the name and last but not least: low electricity consumption

There are other great GPUs too, like the Radeon RX 470 and Radeon RX 480, which are undoubtedly among the best GPUs on the market. They have a power consumption that’s only slightly more than the GTX 1070, they cost less than the GTX 1070, and their hash rate approaches the GTX 1070’s. It really depends on when you’re planning to buy them and what your precise electricity costs are, as their prices are fluctuating and from time to time a cheaper GPU is available on either the RX or GTX side.

Hard Drive

Another necessary component of your mining rig is a Hard Drive. You could use a cheaper HDD/USB stick, but the SSD is preferred. If you are looking for a low-budget mining rig, you should go for the USB option though, as that tends to be much cheaper. The SSD is faster though and it often stays in good shape for longer.

Riser Cables

Now, these don’t have to be very expensive. You need a bit of quality though, so I recommend not to order at unknown sites that you shouldn’t trust, but you shouldn’t be paying tens of dollars for these things though. It’s best to use 1x 16x riser cables, which are needed to connect your motherboard & GPUs. One of these per GPU should be enough. (How to build an Ethereum Mining Rig).

Memory (RAM)

The Random Access Memory is the last, but definitely not the last piece you’ll need to complete your rig. A while ago, the 4 GB was fine and it should still work well, but I recommend getting 8GB of RAM now though, simply because it’s faster and more future-proof. The HyperX FURY 8GB DDR4 seems alright, but really any 8GB DDR4 coming from a trusted retailer should work for your mining rig, so don’t hesitate to buy one if you find a cheaper one at a trusted retailer.

Assembling the rig

Now we arrive at the part that’s much easier than the previous one for some, but much harder for others. It’s hard to explain how to assemble the whole rig exactly, as: If I would explain it, it would only be valid for one rig and you could encounter tons of complications if you take even a slightly different rig and your real situation might not even come close to my situation.

Assembling the rig mostly takes patience, a bit of work, and a reasonably well functioning brain. It’s not rocket science, really, as all pieces are kind of made to work together with other pieces.

Some obvious, yet often forgotten things are the temperature and ventilation of the room you put the miners in. You should put the miners in a cool environment, not too close to other objects (especially inflammable ones)

If you need help assembling the rig, a video would most likely help more than just words. Therefore I recommend to you: Youtube.com. The number 1 video provider on the internet. Just search for “Mining rig” on its search engine, together with some words that would best describe your rig, and off you go. For specific help, I recommend the Technical Support section of bitcointalk.org.

You’ve made it!

Now you know how to build an Ethereum mining rig! All that’s left to do is installing the right mining software (I suggest getting Claymore’s) on the right Operating System (I recommend windows 10, as it’s widely used, very reliable and functions greatly), configuring your miner to your likings (Overclocking it, underclocking it or just running it regularly, try testing it for the right hash power at the right electricity consumption, etc…) and then it’s finally time to pull some fresh Ethereum into your wallet!