New to Mining. Could use a little help!

Hey All!

So, I’m going to start by saying PLEASE HELP! Haha!

I recently came into a small fortune and I would very much like to use it to create a passive income. With the stock market being an inevitable shitshow right now, I wanted to get into something that I could exert at least a modicum of control over (ie what to farm and when to do it). As with all things however, I have to get everything approved by my significant other.

Over the last week I have been watching every video and reading as much as I can about mining currency. I’m pretty confident I’m ready to make the plunge and I have approval from the aforementioned significant other to spend roughly 2500 as a proof of concept to show her we can make money doing this.

Can anyone give me some idea of what hardware a newbie like me should acquire to make a good impression so I get approval for roughly another 20k (max allocated for this idea If it works). I believe a a 250k mobo with a celeron processor is the most cost effective? Also, rx580 vs 1660 super? Right now there’s a 80$ difference in cost per card. Not sure which to pull the trigger on. As for Risers, anybody have a preferred brand so I can at least try to limit how many defective ones I receive. And the power supply? I’ve heard a lot about gold rated ones. Are they a good investment?

To start I believe I’ll be using nicehash since I have to be able to show my wife the profits in a way she understands. However, I’m open to any other program that has a understandable interface. Thanks in advance for any help you all can provide.

Thomas Schell

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bro my rig has been killing ETH on Nicehash im getting $1 per day out of my RX 5700 per card before electric I have a detailed build list in the forum thread and lots of pics.

my first rig sucked read past that to my second rig for the good stuff lol

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Once I get home from work I’ll dig into it! What do you think about this proof of stake thing I’ve been reading about?

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It is a little bit scary not gonna lie. Especially since I am just getting into this and starting to invest more and more. I am confident that even though things are uncertain we will find someone or something to take advantage of all of the computing power sitting idle if. When ETH does switch and the mining world is turned upside down I think there will be a period of not much profitability, but I do not think it will last forever.

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What about for a 13 slot mobo? I’m leaning towards a h110. Any recommendation?

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And also a compliant RAM and processor.

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that is a great board also I know HashRaptor recommends it and he knows his stuff I am not sure about the processor but I assume its about the same as the Asus B250 and most people are going with one stick of ddr4 to help with CPU mining Monero on the same rig

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Getting into GPU mining is a bit of a risky investment right now. Etherium is probably going to move away from proof of work in the next few years, which will likely up end the GPU market significantly. Not that it isn’t a fun hobby, and not something that you can’t make money on right now. But, something to keep in mind before making any large investments.

Doing a test rig is a good idea, just to see how it fits in your space. Even if you want to build up a bigger set of mining rigs, doing it in your home may be… inconvenient. Electrical set-up is probably the first thing you’ll need to take into consideration. Unless you plan on using a 220 outlet (like for a washer/dryer), you’ll be a bit more limited on how many cards you can put on a circuit before running into issues. There is also heat and noise to consider. Depending upon how your living space is set-up, you might need to do something akin to Vosk’s mining shed if you want to go heavily into mining, which is it’s own expense.

Not trying to say it’s a bad idea, just saying it’s something to really look into the potential difficulties before dropping too much cash on it.

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I went ahead and bought a rig that holds 12 cards. I also bought a 1600w power supply and the 13 slot h110 asrock. Got 1 stick of ddr4 ram and a cheap celeron processor since I don’t have any intention of CPU mining. I’m planning to pick up 12 1660 supers in the next couple of weeks, 6 to start and probably 6 more 2 weeks after that.

I know Eth is planning to go POS. I’m thinking until that time I’ll have all my cards working on Eth. And then when it goes POS I’ll try to buy whatever other eth I need to be able to stake it. At that point I’ll probably put the rig on nicehash.

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Will I have power issues with 12 of those cards running out of one outlet? We have a spare bedroom in our apartment that I plan to put most of this stuff in.

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1600w power supply only gives you 1280w using the 80% rule. Do you think you’ll manage to run 12 cards on 1280w or add another psu?

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If it’s 15 Amp, 120V outlet, you theoretically should be fine granted that there isn’t anything else on the same circuit pulling a lot of watts. At 1280W, you’d be around 11 amps.

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I’ll have a second power supply for sure just in case. And how would I be able to tell what the outlet is? And what if I run all these cards off two separate outlets in the same room?

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you have to figure out which breaker the outlet is on and then you can tell what size the breaker is and then that tells you what the circuit is rated for

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So…find the fuse box and put a new breaker in yes? Lol I can do that haha.

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no lol find the breaker and hope its at least 20 amps if you have fuses you might want to address that first lol then upgrade to a breaker panel

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The most straight forward way of knowing what circuit goes to what is to flip the breaker and see what turns off… though I wouldn’t just do that without some precautions like unplugging valuable electronics and such. Lamps and such would be the safest thing to have plugged in.

I’d hope your breaker panel (if it is a breaker panel) would have things labelled so you might not have to do a whole lot of figuring out.

If you got fuses, then then i’d really hope there was some labeling in place because there is virtually no way of knowing(that i know of) until you overload the fuse.

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I don’t think this apartment complex has fuses lol. I think I’ll run a heavy duty extension cord to another plug in another room. Assuming they aren’t on the same breaker that should fix the problem yes? Also, I was planning to play with the power draw and etc. with afterburner on the cards. Minerstat says the 1660 super can hash at 26 MH around 80 watts. 12x80 is 960.

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Given that it is an apartment complex, there should hopefully be a breaker box for each apartment but that depends on building codes for your area. Every apartment complex I have been in has a breaker box, usually hiding in a closet. I live in upstate NY so your codes could vary.

There’s a decent chance that your proposed mining room would be on a shared circuit with another room, depending on how new the complex. The main concern for power is if the proposed room shares a circuit with bathrooms (the vent is the major concern) or ventilation system.

While it probably wouldn’t hurt, you should try to avoid using an extension cord if you can help it. Just adds a complication, trip hazard, etc that could potentially cost you the rig.
However, if you do use one, you have to be sure it’s rated to handle the Amps you may draw, so Heavy Duty should be more than enough. Otherwise, its just a fire hazard.

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You will probably be fine with a 12 1660’s, but going too much past that isn’t likely to be feasible given your space. Iit all really depends on how the building is wired, but I’d be surprised if you could fit too many GPU rigs in an apartment.

You might want to look a bit more into Proof of Stake. The big draw of that is how much less resources (electricity) it takes. Basically, it’s just running a program on a computer to be a node on the network, as opposed to trying to run lots of heavy calculations through GPUs/ASICs to support a network. This would be your Energi (NRG), Dash, and hundreds of other coins.

Granted, it is also a risky space. There’s a -lot- of projects that are scams or have just failed due to lack of original development.

Etherium is probably going to be moving to it in the next few years as well. You should thoroughly research any project you are thinking of investing in. Vosk has done a lot less coverage on this space, since he’s doing more of a mining channel. (edited to fix a sentence in the wrong spot :smiley:)

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