Hello! In here we will break down the basics on how to mine Cryptocurrencies.

This will cover the overall process, check out one of the other guides for an in depth step by step dive into how to mine, where we will walk you through each and every step of the way!

The two most popular options are:

1. ASIC Mining (Bitcoin) Where you use a pre-built machine that has specifically been created just to mine bitcoin (or whichever else other ASIC compatible Cryptocurrency)

2. Graphics Card (Ethereum) which uses the computational power of a graphics card to do the same thing as ASIC.

You can also mine on your CPU Cryptocurrencies like Monero or mine on your HDD/SSD SiaCoin and a few others but we will only be covering the main two here (ASIC and Graphics card).

 

Graphics card

This is the type of mining we prefer here at UKM, and here's why!

ADVANTAGES:

• More easily accessible equipment (most of the time).

• Higher resale value.

• Equipment isn't as sensitive to dust or heat.

• Modular construction so if something breaks you can easily replace that part without throwing it all away.

• Accumulation of one of the best most versatile cryptocurrencies with extremely high future value prospects.

• You're in control of the size of the rig you build, it can be as large or small as you want.

• The ability to mine any algorithm

 

DISADVANTAGES:

•  Requires construction yourself.

•  Potentially higher startup costs depending on demand for components.

•  Takes up more room than an ASIC miner.

 

The first thing you'll need to consider when building your own rig is how many graphics cards you want in it, you can have from 1 to 13 but things get difficult past 8 so for the purpose of keeping it simple we will stick with 8 and that's what id advise you to do as well. Going for more than 8 is not advised at all (for your first Miner).

If you head over to https://minerstat.com/mining-calculator you can put in the graphics card you want to use and it will give you a hashrate depending on what you put in. This hashrate value is the total computing power of your rig and its what determines your reward for mining! For the purposes of this guide look for ETHash (Ethereum) and put that hashrate + Watts into the calculator.

With this value head over to https://minerstat.com/coin/ETH put your numbers in and you should get your daily profit! Keep in mind this number changes all the time depending on:

 

Difficulty- how hard the algorithm is for us miners, the higher it is the more work we need to do for the reward

Gas (Network fees)- This is a big one and the reason profitability doubled earlier in 2020. DEFI caused lots more transactions so lots more fees on the ETH network resulting in huge profits going directly to the miners!

Network Hashrate- If more people are mining it means your percentage contribution is less resulting in your reward being lower.

 

 

 

OK so lets get into it! how to get started! what you'll need:

1. Mining Server box: 

We recommend a server style box to put your mining rig because its:

• Easier to transport

• Smaller to store.

• You get better air flow.

Additionally for scalability of your mining empire you can stack one on another easily! Obviously you will need it to be compatible with the amount of GPU's you're going to use and you cant squeeze 8 in a 6, even if it looks like it might fit! Additionally you will need it to be able to fit in the amount of PSU's you're using, if you only have enough space for one PSU you might have to increase the rating of the PSU instead of getting two smaller ones.

As you can see this case is more than big enough to fit all the graphics cards you would need and give you plenty of room for good air flow which is very important. Additionally it has room for two massive PSU's so could fit a very powerful high revenue mining rig inside! 

Available here

 

2. Graphics cards: 

The bit that does all the work. The fact of the matter is AMD is king when it comes to price per hash and hash per watt performance on ETHash (at the moment). NVIDIA is king when it come to alternate algorithms like CuckAtoo32 ( Grin) which is best for use with NICEHASH which is a mining program which automates all the profit switching but we wont get into all that just yet.

To keep it consistent we will focus on ETHash because we wont be using NICEHASH for this guide. Check out the NVIDIA NICEHASH guide for that!

Rx 5700, Rx 580 and Radeon VII are the best for ETHash, pick according to your budget and power consumption limits.

Some may argue different cards are better but i like to get the most modern cards for the price as possible. The older cards have decent hashrates as well if you can find them anywhere, but you have to be careful not to fall into the trap and buy any 4GB or under cards because these no longer work on ETHash due to the DAG size being larger than 4GB now (more on that later). Additionally older cards will have probably been used for years at this point if you buy used so the chance of failure is much higher. Do your own calculations before buying but as a rough guide from the time of writing this these are the best in my opinion.

Graphics card:	Hashrate (ETH) MH/s	Watts	Watts (Undervolted)	Price(£)	MH/s/W	£/Watt
Radeon VII	87.8	250	210	700	0.42	3.33
RX 5700	52.2	155	115	390	0.14	2.51
RX 580 (8GB)+ Bios modded	29.84	150	100	170	0.30	1.7

 

 

Available here

3. Power supply: 

This part is equally as important as the graphics card choice and something which should not be overlooked! A good high efficiency well sized PSU for your Rig will save you a lot of hassle, the last thing you want is to have to replace a faulty PSU after you just wired it all in! Also PICK A MODULAR PSU, it will make your life so much easier!

Modular design EVGA PSU

 

DO NOT SKIMP ON THE PSU!

Add up all your power consumption of your graphics cards and then add an extra 20% to give you the total power usage. For example Radeon VII's use up around 250W of power (Pre undervolting) that means for an 8 GPU rig you will need 8 x 250 = 2000w base then 2000 x 1.2 = 2400w. As a result you will need two 1200w PSU to run this rig, you might get away with less but its not advisable (This rig wouldn't be limited by the power consumption it would be limited by the VGA cable capacity which we will talk about later). The total power consumption of this rig once undervolted will be less (around 200-210w per PSU) but you need that extra power as a buffer.

I recommend EVGA, they've never let me down and the build quality is unmatched, get at least an 80+ Gold rated, this means that at 100% load its 87% efficient which I've found to be a good middle ground for price and efficiency.

 

 

Make sure you look at the number of SATA, MOLEX and VGA 8-Pin PCI-e Power cables (Ill just call them VGA from now on) you have and do a calculation of how many you need for your whole Rig, if you don't have enough you might need to get a larger PSU regardless so you can plug everything in. The risers (Skip to point 3 if you don't know what Risers are) will need one SATA power cable per riser or two Risers per MOLEX.

Always pick safety over everything else, plugging too many Risers into the same power plug can cause it to pull too much power which might cause it to burn up and create a fire. If you really need to use more than one thing per connection search the maximum rating that cable has online before doing it!

 

POWER DRAW IS:

6-Pin PCI-e Power cable -  13Amps

MOLEX Power cable -  11Amps

SATA Power cable -  4.5 Amps

If i was following the same Rig i gave an example of earlier and i had two 1200w PSU's that would give me 6 VGA and 6 SATA/MOLEX per PSU. A Rig with 8 Radeon VII's would need 16 VGA to power the graphics cards alone (2x8PIN per GPU) so a 1200w PSU would not do, even if the Rig would only consume 2400w, you're limited by the VGA cable capacity.

 

 

This Rig would instead require two 1600w PSU's which each give 9 VGA cables. So you now have enough VGA cables, but do you have enough SATA/MOLEX?

Well you have 12 total and the standard ASROCK PRO BTC H110 motherboard requires two MOLEX connectors off the bat, reducing your total down to 10. If you use the two left over VGA connectors for your risers then you only need to use 6 for your risers reducing you down to 4 you now require one for the 24PIN PSU Adapter (What allows you to use 2 PSU's) now you have 3 left.

A system this powerful will produce a tonne of heat so all three should be used for cooling fans 10 200CFM (at least) fans if you copy the frame we linked earlier. If they are all MOLEX connectors you have remaining you can power all 10 easily if you link them together correctly using connectors and all then fans are no more than 3 Amp as each MOLEX connector can deliver a total of 11 Amps, a SATA connector can only deliver a total of 4.5Amps so just jiggle around distribution of power to fit your needs.

Available here

 

 

3. Powered PCIE Risers

 

 If you're unaware a PCI-E Riser is what you plug your graphics card into to connect it to the motherboard since you can't fit 8 GPU's next to each other on a standard motherboard, you just don't have enough space. 

Instead you plug your 1x PCI-e connector into the motherboard and use a USB-A cable to connect it to the Riser board which has a 16x PCI-e slot (a graphics card slot) 

Using a Riser isn't the only way, you could use a specially designed motherboard which is extra large with lots of slots on but we've not had the chance to try one yet and chances are it's not as safe as just using a powered riser. 

Make sure you put a riser which has the correct type of power delivery you have available, for example there is no point buying a load of Molex risers if you don't have them available, to avoid this we recommend buying a riser with multiple options (6Pin+Molex+SATA).

Buy as many as the amount of graphics cards you'll be using!

Available here 

 

 

 

4. PSU Sync Device (FOR DUAL PSU ONLY)

This device connects both your PSU's together and allows you to have them both turn on at the exact same time when you press the power button.

Ideally SATA as the MOLEX connectors are more valuable for power consumption tasks as this doesn't use power it only sends a signal.

Available here

 

 

 

 

5. Storage

Your storage device is where you run the mining program from, and for this guide we will be using a USB drive instead of an SSD simply because its easier to use. All you have to do is upload the mining program onto the USB, then plug it in and it will run, we will get onto why we don't use windows next!

You'll need a fast USB to avoid performance degradation, we recommend buying as fast a USB as possible!

Available here

 

 

 

 

6. Operating system

We much prefer to use a Linux based operating system over windows for lots of reasons...

A. Control.

Its easier to remotely control features like clocks, voltages, states and fan speeds without having to use a third party program which often cause problems with bugs and glitches which all costs you money in downtime!

B. Time for downloads. 

Windows takes ages to download and update, then you need to disable anti-virus, install drivers, and disable features. Even once its all working you can still get BSOD randomly.

C. DAG size.

This wont be an issue after December 31st 2020 but if you are mining on 4GB cards you cant mine on windows with them because windows increases your dag usage by a tiny bit which pushes you over the 4GB limit.

D. Increased hashrate and Efficiency.

Yes from all our testing you get better hashrates and lower power usage from a Linux based operating system. Potentially you can get the margins much closer but we have found around 2-3% increased hashrates from simply switching to a Linux based operating system!

Trust us its not worth the hassle, the only reason you should use windows is to bios mod your graphics cards before mining (that's not even required and more into BIOS modding later) or if you are using an internet connection which requires logging into through a browser like an office connection.

So which do we recommend? Minerstat operating system (MSOS).

Its easy to use and you get loads of tools to optimise your mining like:

• Bios modding.

• Balance monitoring.

• The ability to set up triggers under certain conditions such as idling.

• Profit switching for the most optimal profit coin at any one time.

• Statistics on your profitability along with power consumption.

• Remote overclocking.

• An app so you can constantly monitor your mining rigs 24/7.

Available here

 

 

 

7. Ethernet cable

To connect your pc to the internet (Optimal method). 

Pick an ethernet cable which has a high bandwidth allocation and a high shielding rating for low interference and reduced latency.

Available here

 

 

 

8. WIFI Connector (Optional)

If you can't connect with a wired connection a quick high range WIFI connection is required. Not all WIFI connectors are compatible with UBUNTU. 

 

 

9. Monitor

To connect to set up your mining rig you'll need a monitor. DVI monitor is important so you can connect directly to the onboard graphics through your motherboard without having to change from HDMI to DVI which sometimes doesn't work without bios updates/ for first boot.

Available here

 

 

10. CPU 

A CPU which is compatible with the motherboard you're using. If you're using the ASROCK PRO BTC H110 which we recommend you can use the G4400 GPU.

Available here

11. High CFM FAN

A high CFM fan is important for adequate cooling during mining. Lower CFM fans can work but its better to run high speed case fans and low speed GPU fans in order to reduce the overall wear on your CPU fans as these are more difficult to replace than a case fan.

Available here

 

 

12. DVI Cable

To connect your motherboard to your monitor you need a DVI male to male cable 

Available here