Tips for Building an Ethereum Mining Rig

It is possible to build an Ethereum mining rig by following two key steps, namely, choosing the right equipments and assembling these together to start mining. When you do not wish to invest in specialized mining hardware, you may resort to cloud mining.

What will you need to start building an Ethereum mining rig?

One of the first things that you are going to need is the motherboard. This is really the computer’s brain and will form the very base of the rig. You will have to look for GPU slots in this to see how many GPU cards you can fit into it.

Another important piece of hardware which you need for building a mining rig is the graphics card. There are some which are very expensive but do not give much hashing power. They are others that are affordable but may use more power. Your choice of the card will be dictated by how powerful you wish the rig to be and how much money you can afford to spend. The idea is to select an efficient GPU from reputed providers.

Next you will require a hard drive for storing the OS and mining software. A regular SSD will be enough and its size depends on how much you plan to mine. When you intend to download the whole blockchain which may be large, you will need a bigger drive and therefore you have to pay more.

The Ram or Random Access Memory is integral to any PC and it will work as the scratch pad for making calculations and recounting information. A 4GB RAM should suffice for building an Ethereum mining rig.

Power Supply Units or PSUs are available in different dimensions and you need to choose one depending on the kind of calculations you will do. It is advisable to choose PSUs which can accommodate more components if needed. When you are planning to create a mega rig it may be better to get dual power supplies instead of one.

You should not have components stacked atop one another as this may cause a fire problem. You may keep the entire system open or alternately build a case.

When you have got these different components for the mining rig, you will need to put these together. For the software, you need to set up an OS on the computer. Most choose Windows because it automates driver installation while those who are technically savvy prefer the Linux Ubuntu which has more options. You need to download EthOS that is specially designed for Ethereum mining.

When the operating system is installed, you can either choose to mine solo or join a pool. When you mine alone and your hash is accurate you get to win block rewards. Else, you have to join a mining pool and team up with other Ethereum miners to get better returns. The mining pool is preferred as you can enjoy a steady income and you need not download the whole blockchain.

When you join the mining pool, you need to have an address. Yu can use the interface EthDev wallet to get the address. Without this address the mining pool will not know where to pay the money. When you own an address you can start ethminer. This must be downloaded to make your GPU or CPU run the hash algorithm. When you download this, the firewall can raise issues; even Windows may do that if it does not approve of the software. When you confirm that it is valid, the installation process starts till ethminer gets installed. This will then connect to your mining pool and will also inform it about where to send the altcoins.