With over a thousand different cryptocurrencies out there, the potential to make money is enormous. There are two main ways of doing so.
The first is by buying and selling currencies. You invest in a currency, hope that its value rises, then sell it for a profit. The second is by a technique known as mining.
Read on as we take a look at what you will need in order to build a very simple Cheap Cryptocurrency Farm mining rig.
Cheap Cryptocurrency Farm
How Does Mining Work?
For cryptocurrencies to work, all the transactions made need to be verified.
This stops people from trying to spend their currency more than once. It’s done by allowing users across the network to verify the transactions. Doing so gives you the chance to earn some cryptocurrency as payment.
But in order to actually earn the coins, you will also need to be the first to solve a complex mathematical problem. The faster your rig works, the more likely you will be the first to solve the problem and earn yourself some cryptocurrency.
What You’ll Need
Building a mining rig is not much different from building your own PC. The basic components will be the same, but some are far more important than others.
Enclosure
You’ll need something to hold all of your components. Rather than a sealed unit, you’ll want to build something that is open-frame. Some components are going to generate a heck of a lot of heat, so you really don’t want to seal them up. You can buy an aluminum rig, or even build one into a milk crate if your budget is low.
Motherboard
Gaming motherboards will work ok, although you’ll need to check how many graphics cards they can support. You can also buy dedicated mining motherboards that are built to handle a lot of graphics cards, and come with the BIOS settings already set up for mining.
CPU
Your CPU surprisingly doesn’t need to be that powerful. A dual-core Celeron will you give you enough grunt to get the job done. Most of the heavy lifting will be done elsewhere.
Power Supply
You’re going to be running a lot of power-hungry components, so you really need to invest in a serious PSU. You should be looking at 1000W output as a minimum, so even gaming PSUs aren’t going to cut it.
It’s also possible to connect multiple power supplies to a single motherboard if you’re on a budget.
RAM
The good news is that you’re not going to need crazy amounts of RAM for your mining farm.
8GB should be more than enough to get by on. You could probably even get by with just 4GB if you’re strapped for cash. And it will leave you more money to spend on the most important component.
Graphics Cards. Lots of Graphics Cards
Graphics cards are the key to your mining rig. They’re the part with the hash rate to perform the calculations you need to make money mining cryptocurrency.
And there are two main brands that are leading the field.
Nvidia Mining Cards vs. AMD Mining Cards
Nvidia and AMD produce high-end graphics cards that are a great choice for your mining farm.
AMD is probably the better choice for the novice miner as they come in a little cheaper than their Nvidia counterparts. But Nvidia cards are usually easier to use, simpler to configure and give you more scope when it comes to overclocking.
Nvidia cards are also more powerful. But AMD cards are more efficient at solving the algorithms of some types of cryptocurrency, so it pays to do your research if you have a specific currency in mind.
How Much Will It Cost?
How much it will cost really depends on how much you’re willing to spend.
You can buy a decent open-air frame for under $100, or use a milk crate for free. You could invest in a dedicated mining motherboard for $200 or more, or make use of a motherboard from an old gaming PC. A good power supply can easily set you back $200 or more, and you can buy 4GB of RAM for less than 50 bucks. You can also look at buying a refurbished PC that a lot of places are selling for a $100.00 bucks. Then take out the internals and set it on a mining frame. Or just make it a one card mining rig. Talk about a cheap cryptocurrency farm. 🙂
Where you can’t skimp is on the graphics cards. The good news is that with the value of cryptocurrency down over the last couple of years, the price of graphics cards has dropped too. Where once you’d be paying over $500 for a decent card, you can get the same for around $250 at the moment.
Remember though, that the more cards you have, the more powerful your rig. But if you just want a cheap cryptocurrency farm; you can start with just one card. Maybe use the card your computer already has.
How Much Can You Earn?
How much money you can make depends on a huge number of factors.
The number of people currently mining will impact your profitability, as will the cost of electricity. The two biggest factors, however, are the price of the currency you’re mining, and how many coins you earn for when you find the solution. Currently, for example, you earn 12.5 BitCoins per block, but this is due to halve in 2020, something which happens roughly every four years. Most people assume your electricity cost is about $0.10 cents US. Where I am in Pleasanton, CA; I pay almost $0.24 cents a Kilo Watt hour. It’s near impossibly to profit at this point in time with these market conditions. But prices can change in an instant.
The most accurate way to calculate your potential earnings is to use an online profitability calculator, which allows you to input the current price of the currency, your costs, how many coins you earn per block, and work out exactly what your earnings are likely to be.
They include big players such as Bitcoin, Ethereum, Litecoin, and Monero. Some currencies such as Ripple work on a different protocol that means they cannot be mined. There are more than enough out there for you to be able to find a good option.
Modifying the Drivers for Performance
There are tweaks that can be made to your GPU drivers that will improve the performance of your mining farm.
For example, setting drivers to “compute” mode optimizes your GPU to handle computations rather than graphics. AMD themselves state that it should “provide better performance with Blockchain Compute applications.”
The exact settings that will work best depend on a wide range of factors. But there are whole communities out there dedicated to finding the best driver settings, so do some research for the cards that you’re using.
Overclocking
Graphics cards are software limited to ensure that they don’t overheat. But it is possible to use special software to persuade your cards to work at a faster rate, in a technique known as overclocking.
This type of software will allow you to tweak the settings for how fast your GPUs will run, how hot they can get, what voltage they operate at, and so on. By tweaking these settings it’s possible to increase the productivity of your mining farm, but take things too far and your cards will overheat.
Thinking About Building a Simple Mining Farm?
If you’re thinking about building a simple mining rig, then we hope that this guide has been of some use.
If you want to know more about the world of investing and cryptocurrency, then we’re here to help. We have a ton of great articles covering all aspects of investing and cryptocurrency. We also have more information on topics such as real estate, technology, health and healing, and more.
Feel free to take a good look around and send me pictures of how you made your cheap cryptocurrency farm! I love to see new ideas.
