Topic: [GUIDE - Personal Experience] How to get started with Mining (Read 301 times)

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The mining rig which I set up in my bed room is now doubled in size and has been sat up in whole new room.
I just wish that I keep adding more and more mining rigs in the years to come.
Sharing this so that anyone who wants to mine will be inspired by this.



I gotta say it's very addicting to see the whole thing running up 24x7. It's some sort of love! Lolz.

Hope you guys find this thread helpful!

Updating for the visibility.

Also check latest actual photos and payment stats and other info in the PART II

VISIT PART II HERE

If you are new then this should be helpful for you all.

light =/= solar generation
Do you think people in Germany get only 1 hour of sunlight?  

As I was saying ~ 6 hours at best locations, you can play with this atlas and you'll see you're not getting more peak hours than the southern USA and barely a few percentages than southern Europe, and nobody in this world gets 12 hours.

No problem at all using the pen drive 24x7.

I am using this since couple of months now. OS is just platform to connect your rig with the pool through mining software. Thats what I say it in simplest possible language.

You can check the picture above for your reference, I have plugged in flash drive.

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You must visit India. 
Specially now when the Summer season is going on. The sunrises sharp 6-6:30 with bright sunlight and sunsets around 6:30 with dim light. Perfect 12 hours cycle.

Nowhere in this world will you get 12 hours of direct sunlight to produce energy from your solar panels.
The average is between 5-7 hours in the US and it's far worse in Europe, for example, Germany has an installed capacity of 54GW out of a total 218 GW but in January solar panels have produced only 0.69TWh out of 46.5TWh, that's 1.4% compared to 24%.

Great guide @so98nn but I would like to point to few things:

There are also CPU and HDD/SSD minings.

Processing

With the help of some of the pools ^{[they do the conversions for a certain fee]}, they could also earn BTCitcoin even though they were mining an altcoin.

Since you're targeting newbies, then I'd suggest explaining this part in a detailed manner...
^{- Some of them might get confused that a "single" 2000 W PSU is enough for running a 3000 W mining rig [I do know you typed "PSU's" but still].}

You might want to explain why each one of them may be needed at some point ^{[e.g. risers]}.

I'd like to point out a rare issue that some might face in the future and it's a restriction that some of these have based on your location ^{[personally, NiceHash isn't an option for me and might not be for some]}.
^{- If you see nothing works, don't panic [just switch to another option, your rig is fine].}

I noticed there is a lot of accumulated dust in this picture. It's best to keep mining rigs ^{[especially GPUs]} dust-free ^{[I'd recommend using a blower [from a safe distance] at least once a month]}.

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Can someone merit so98nn on my behalf?

In my hometown, where I'm living, I have plan to use solar panel. In fact, yesterday I have talked with few local suppliers and I need the solar panel badly for my home. After reading this post, I got curious why not I increase the solar panel system capacity and start mining it if it’s profitable. That's where the idea came from.
I can't directly use electricity as they have limit on the supply. Moreover, it will be suspicious if I suddenly consume more electricity than previous. That's why solar is in my plan if possible.

If you ask my decision. It is time to sell your old cards, dead cards or your old rigs. Sell them and enjoy the overvalued price you can sell in this period. Why not take profit and enjoy your life now? Old rigs now can be sold at 75% of price you bought it 4 years ago. It is more than a free gift for you.

If you love mining, you can join again when things are down and price of cards, rigs are cheaper. You can use that money to reinvest in new rigs or second-hand rigs but with better hardwares next 2 years.

Profit in mining is affected by crypto market. In bear market two years ago, you get negative figure if you are short term miner: mine and pay in the same month.
Mining is the game for big farms which can reserve their cryptocurrency when price is cheap and pick money out of own pockets to pay power bills.

I am not sure from where you are getting the idea of supercomputers, but that's just bluff.
For mining, you always need special equipments that is ASICS and all for the BTC and GPU's for the alts.

Honestly, with my experience I am doing great in recovering my investments. As I already mentioned in the OP, you should buy the GPU's with 360 degree views on cost, hash rate, your regional electricity costs etc and work out the math.

It's doable, and I am already up for my third mining rig soon! You can imagine if I am taking that risk then I am doing all good. 

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Its not about how much power they have. It's about how much you have invested and how much power you have got. It's just about "TIME" to recover your investments.

The ROI can be calculated from the standard approximated calculators.

Well the Solar Panel System calculations are very easy to perform.

Let us consider. .

1 GPU x 100 watt
Rest of the components 200 watt

In total: 300 watts of energy required by your rig.

Solar Panel Required:

Solar panel electricity is calculated based on the size and shape of it. Each panel has solar cells (photoelectric cells) which produce energy amounting to 14-15 watts per square foot.
So a solar panel with 78 inches x 39 inches with 72 cells will produce 345 Wattage of energy.

However,

These calculations will change based on your region, availability of the sunshine.
Note that: Since you will consume continuous energy you will be able to use the Solar Panel for 12 hours only. Meaning, you will be running your rig only for 15-16 days in a month.
In this case, to achieve the ROI you will need to consider the cost of solar panel too.

Just to get how big the solar panel would be, look at the image below:



Its a tech, Im not sure about this.

Do mining really profitable? I am not really a fan of computer technology but as what OP had presented it came down to a point where only a little push towards learning how to mine especially bitcoin could be done even a newbie.

The simplicity but knowledgeable posts, tips and recommendation as I have observed was really honest and there is a willingness to help others especially the users that are now already in the mining cryptocurrency. However, I am not sure if mining really profitable?

I have read some replies before in this forum talking about bigger mining industry with powerful computer being run that could defeat solving capacity against smaller or lesser power mining set up. This means based on my understanding that profits would be more likely goes to miners using powerful computers.

If this is the case then it would be better to form a group with the same wants to build powerful mining set up that could compete with other mining industry. There may be a list of pending transaction or unconfirm transactions waiting to be mine but it can be done with easily with those supercomputers.

Correct me If I am wrong but I have the high interest with the topic that you open up OP for us the newbie.

There is no problem with the stability of electricity from Solar power, there are devices that control it. It's not a new technology. If they had enough sunny hours per day they can have enough power, also batteries are required.
but here we come to the more complicated part. If you want to run mining on Solar power, it will cost too much initial investment and this significantly postponed return of investment.

How stable electricity from Solar Panel system is? If it is stable, your GPU won't be damaged by using Solar Panel system.
With Solar Panel system, I guess that you can not run your GPU to mine cryptocurrency 24/7.

Can not answer you.

Lifespan of a GPU is used to mine crypto is affected by how you config it. Your card can be doomed if you config it wrongly.
Your card can be damaged faster if you let it running with very high temperature.
Your card will have better ventilation and better lifespan if you regularly clean dust.

Many things. Lifespan of card can be one month to few months or few years.

No doubt that this topic will help newbies who are looking for mining solution. It will be much better  for them if you provide some trusted mining equipment providers information on your main topic which will reduce the chances of getting scammed by fake mining equipment selling website. 

You will get lots of professional miner who are running their mining rigs but mining isn't legal in their region. Actually it depends on availability of proper power source and safety. If you can set your mining with proper power coverage and other facility then you can easily run this IMO.
For your first question i can say that its possible but you will have to user powerful solar panel for that and who work in this field can give you the best solution. As far as i know running mining activity with limited power supply is quite hard and most complex part is maintaining the cooling system.

Crypto is illegal here in my country but still I have opportunities here to start mining as in my hometown, I can be safe and out of any questions from legal authority.
However, I'm still confused on 2 facts.

1. Can I mine crypto with Solar Panel system, if so, what will be the requirement. Say, I'm starting with only 1 GPU.

2. What's the expected lifetime of GPU will be? Will it be the same as we have while we play games? Or if we mine with GPU, expected lifetime will be decreased?

(!) From Personal Experience: This guide is written in layman language or at least I have tried to simplify it in that fashion. If there exists such articles out there then still you could just use it since it's from my own experience and everyone has different way of setting up things.

This guid could be understandable for those who might not have understood the existing one. So read through and all the comments are welcomed.

This mining is associated with the Altcoins Mining. You can always choose in between Bitcoin and Altcoin however the former one is very hard for me considering the costs of equipment, maintenance and manufacturer support.
**In case of altcoin mining rigs, they are very easy to set, and one can DIY the whole stuff. This is the reason I like it the most. It gives you limitless way of setting up, you can maintain it yourself and there are thousands of channels which provides easy way to overcome the problems if any.

1] The Mining Rig (Hardware):

For altcoin mining the algorithms which are used can be run on the GPU's. Thats is Graphic Card Units. Basically they are used in the gaming but with the disruption of mining and there easy to use algo's one can now use their Hash Power to solve the complex math behind mining. In this your GPU's are solving those transactions and confirming them with the blockchain's nodes. For this purpose you get share from the altcoin which you are mining and are paid in the same coin. For example, ETH mining would give you ETH, RVN mining would give you RVN etc.

Components of Mining Rig:

a) Graphic Card Units (GPU) : The most common used are NVIDIA and AMD cards. You will hear different names like MSI, GIGABYTE, ASUS, PowerCooler, Sapphire etc. too and will often buy from these manufacturers.


b) Motherboards: This would be a bridge between your components, so one of the vital part while choosing your motherboard. They come in all shape and choices. A normal Motherboard has capacity of 1-2 GPU's however, when it comes to the mining you will have to use whole new upgraded motherboard or special mother boards designed for the Mining Purposes.
They will usually constitute of 6-20 GPU slots! The most commonly used motherboard is 6-GPU capable motherboard. The more the GPU slots the more power it will consume and that will directly affect your mining efficiency too. The calculations are later in the article.


c) Memory / RAM: This is very important when it comes to choosing higher memory cards or lower depending upon your GPU specs. The more the memory the higher the performance. So always go for 8 GB memories. Nothing special about these category, they are the normal RAM's.


d) Solid State Drive (SSD): Well, to load your OS with configuration of algorithms you will need a drive.
With my experience I have skipped using the SSD after I learnt that it's a mandatory requirement. What I mean is, you can always use any bootable device that could be configured!

I am using a 32 GB Pen Drive which makes it very cheap and easy to handle. I have explained this in the Operating System section.


f) Power Supply Unit (PSU): The most important part! When it comes to running a mining rig your electrical supply needs to be controlled properly. Otherwise you could end up burning your rigs and such incidences had happen earlier due to mis-matched PSU's!

Mining rig is all about electricity. Since you will be running GPU's which use 100+ watt of energy and whole rig would be running on 900 watt plus if you have 6 GPU's.  So it's high electrical consumption and if your electricity is not stable enough then it could be problematic.

So a good PSU normally has 1000 watt splitter. If your rig is more than 6 GPU then choose accordingly. For example, 3000 Watt, 2000 Watt PSU's.


e) Cables: Well, you will need few cables with different purposes behind them. Viz., Power chords (PCI's), Risers, PSU power chord, Monitor cable, Connectors.

                                                                        Risers                                   PCI Chords Power                                             Splitter
*Important Note: If you are from the Asian countries then note some of them will have to use Conversion Plugs. They are easily available at local hardware store.



2] The Operating System & The Pool Mining Software):

The OS could be anything from the Linux to Windows and most preferred is linux for it's periodic stability. However you can always switch to windows if that one is easy for you. OS entirely depends on what kind of pool software you will be using. However, almost all of them can be installed safely on windows, linux, iOS etc. For example, NiceHash miner, Lolminer, ethOS and more.

There is important note: If you have bought a pre-built mining rig then you have to do nothing for OS part since they will have it covered already.

Reference Here

Examples of OS:
1) SimpleMining
2) NiceHash
3) ethOS
4) Hive OS
5) Mother of Dragons
6) Braiins OS
7) EasyMiner

If you are doing DIY then it is very easy to install these OS's on your device. I am using SMOS (Simple Mining OS) and believe me, I am from biotechnology field and still was able to load it entirely on flash drive. 
Just follow their instructions on the website and you are good to go.
Dont forget to add your e-mail ID which is used to identify your rig on the server by nano-pool or any other pool that you are using.

No need to buy SSD in this case. As I stated earlier, 32 GB pen drive/flash drive would be okay. Just convert it into a bootable device as per SMOS instructions and plug it into your motherboard.

The whole process is automatic, once system starts it will automatically get started with mining command.



3] Choosing the Pool

It entirely depends on what coins you are going to mine, what is your hashrate and what is pool's hashrate. It's important that pool is completely alive and not going to be dead or has less miners/active workers.

The most popular is Nanopool. I am using this one since it has easy dashboard and live balance show up, lowest pool fees, and completely transparency of what I am really mining and what I am upto!

Have a look at my one of the mining stats here:


You will get the updates upto the last minute. It shows the current balance for the current cycle. How much Hash rate is being dedicated to this pool and more stats at the bottom. For example, you mining rigs, its ID, accepted share etc.




4] Choosing the GPU

I think this would be most important part of the article. Your profits, your investment is dependent on the GPU that you buy. The market is full of choices and you can have as low as 200 buck GPU to 1500 USD GPU available on the market.

BUT, its always important to see what you can afford, how much ROI time you looking for and also the electricity available in your area!

a) Cost: If you are just starting with the mining then it's better to start with old GPU's but pretty enough to have hashrate above 20-25 MH/s to mine ETH. If not then you can always choose other algorithms to mine!

b) GPU Hashrate & Electricity: The more hash rate (power) the more is electricity required by your mining rigs. For example: With 6 GPU and 100 watt energy consumption each, you will end up 600 Watts for the GPU itself and additional 200-300 for rest of the components. At any given point this rig will consume around 900 watts.

c) The Power Cost: Above factor will contribute to your power cost and which you have to compensate from the mining rig earning itself. Once it is reduced, the rest will be your profit.

So it is always better to check how much you could afford and whether the given hash rate is enough to mining power cost + profits.




5]GPU Information Sites

It is always important to study the GPU. For it's hash rate, power, ROI, efficiency of mining and whether it can be overclocked or not. Overclocking can help increase the hash rate! Read later down below.

Check all the GPU info here: https://www.hashrate.no/

Once you finalise the GPU which is in your budget and calculations go for the following site and check which coins can be mined with that card.

Which coin? Check here: https://whattomine.com/





6]Setting up GPU hash options

a) The Hash Options: Well when it comes to the algorithm we all are noob at the first. So you must checkout this page here: https://www.hashrate.no/options?gpu=nv&coin=1 to see what options can be selected for your GPU.

This will generate an algorithm command for you and will have all the info it for example: algorithm, pool, your wallet address etc.

Example:


You can have N-number of settings on this site based on your GPU, Coin, etc. Choose the one which will profit you most based on your hash rate.

Hash rate and profitability can be estimated from the what to mine site mentioned above.

b) Overclocking GPU: Most of the miners will do this to have more hash rate. However note that this will put your GPU's in aggressive mode. Meaning will consume more power, will run more faster and could heat up very fast!

So go for these options only if you are okay with them and understand the risk involved. However, with as far as SMOS, they will have safe example given which you can use with one click!

Example from my SMOS dashboard is down below:
This is according to my cards that is RX 570, Sapphire. SMOS will automcatically detect your cards and give settings to overclock. Pretty cool stuff when you start doing it all on your self.


7] Air Conditioner

The most vital part of your set up has to be air conditioner with proper circulation around the room. The reason: You rig will be a hotter than you think. The temperature could be more than 85 degree celsius and eventually it could burn the wires if not taken care of.

So if you are from the colder zone then you have little to worry but still need to have proper circulation.

If you are from the temperate region then you need air conditioner running 24x7 and maintaining the temperature to lower than 18 degrees. This will keep your rig in the region of 60-65 degree celsius. Still hot but okay to work with.

This one should be based on your area (room). In anyways the final goal is to keep your rig colder.

**With overclocking things could get more hotter so make sure that you work the math properly.



Below is the image of my first ever mining rig that I built myself. It was DIY and its running pretty well until now.