I’m old enough to remember being given a couple of bitcoins when they were worth next to nothing. Needless to say, I don’t have them anymore. Now, with bitcoin and other cryptocurrency prices skyrocketing again, there’s renewed interest in cryptomining, which is a way to accumulate cryptocurrency without having to pay for it.
Let’s take a look at what makes a good cryptomining rig, and what hardware it takes if you want to be serious about mining.

Mining rig considerations

Here are a few considerations to bear in mind when building a mining rig:
And as with all high-end systems, it’s less a case of how much do you want to spend, and more a case of how fast do you want to spend. So, what hardware do you need to mine cryptocurrency? In fact, you can think of a mining rig as a relatively cheap PC with one or more high-performance GPUs attached. You need to connect multiple graphics cards to a single system, which means you also need a motherboard to handle that. You’ll also be looking at more than one power supply unit (PSU) if you’re planning to push things to the extremes. There are also some other mining-specific items you’ll need to make the mining rig ready for mining.

It’s not going to be cheap! You need to factor power consumption in your mining equation because that can eat into your earnings.You’re not building a regular PC, and getting everything to work can become a game of trial and error and a lot of fiddling with drivers. Be patient!

Why are graphics cards prices so astronomical?

Prices are being driven high by two factors:

Supply chain issues causing backlogsIn order to prevent high demand from miners causing even more issues, most cards now feature LHR (Lite Hash Rate) to limit mining speeds, making them less desirable for cryptomining. The card listed below is not limited, so the price making it perfect for mining.

Asus has published recommend GPU layouts for 19-, 13-, and 11-card for this board, and while other layouts might work, I recommend staying with what the manufacturer suggests, as veering away from this is a recipe for a serious – not to mention expensive – headaches.   Yes, prices are soaring for this motherboard, but that’s part and parcel of bitcoin mining. If you want something priced a little more reasonably, then you could take a look at the Monland B250C BTC Mining Motherboard. A lot less powerful, but a fraction of the price. Note: Asus recommends running Windows 10 with this motherboard.  Also: Best external hard drives These Segotep PSUs are middle-of-the-road good value, yet they offer reliable performance. The modular nature also means that you’re not turning the mining rig into a spaghetti of wires. You’re going to need one of these for every card you connect (other than the card that goes into the x16 PCI-e slot). This six-pack of powered risers are great and provide stable power to your graphics cards. I do not recommend using non-powered risers. I’ve had nothing but problems with stability using them in the past in cryptomining rigs, so don’t make the same mistake I made! And, unlike a lot of graphics cards nowadays, this does not feature LHR (Lite Hash Rate) to limit mining speeds.

24GB 384-Bit GDDR6XBoost Clock 1725 MHz1 x HDMI 2.1 3 x DisplayPort 1.4a10496 CUDA CoresPCI Express 4.0