Quote from: Newminer27 on January 26, 2018, 07:07:41 PM

Quote from: nsummy on January 26, 2018, 06:12:49 PM

Even though these threads pop up more frequently than a bad Herpes flare up, I will say this is probably the most grounded one; Asking what it will take to make a certain amount, instead of announcing you have a $60,000 bankroll and know nothing about about computers Grin

But I digress.

A few things about this question. First of all, does this house have a basement or a space to put this gear? In my bedroom I have a 5 card rig and the heat is insane, noise was also insane until I broke down and bought 2 water coolers for my 1080s. And this rig maybe makes me $30-$40 a day, just to give you an idea of the scale of economies you will need. Before starting any venture like this, its good to know where you plan to put this equipment. As far as electrical goes, I don't think you will need to start fucking around with the circuitry (unless the house is super old) and I definitely wouldn't tell your landlord. He won't understand what you are talking about and will most likely panic.

2nd, with the GPU card shortage there is no way you will be able to acquire everything at once and hit the ground running. It will have to start out slowly, which is good, because even if you are well versed in computers, I'm sure you have no experience trying to hook up 8 graphics cards to a single motherboard

And beyond that, it will take some time to learn the tricks do doing this cheaply, like buying an old HP server on ebay for 500 bucks or getting a 1200w server psu for $20. I started my rig by buying all of the components from newegg and amazon. I don't regret it because I also am using my rig as a personal computer. But as I expand, I am now starting to figure out how I can install new equipment into a rack and better organize it.

On the same note as the GPU shortage, do not pay over retail for cards. Your earnings will flucuate like high tide on a full moon. All of my currency holdings have been cut in half since 3 weeks ago. I'm not worried, but if I had been mining with a bunch of $1000 1080ti's my cheeks would be stretched right now. You need to think of the resell value of anything you buy. If I sold all of my cards today, I would make a profit, despite having used them for a year. In 2 months they will be cheap again. I got into mining at the height of the Ethereum craze. At the time it was hard to find cards, then a month later there were nothing but articles about people selling their cards after Ether lost half its value.

Now to answer your question about the best way to go about this, there are different schools of thought. By far your best bang per buck on a card basis would be the 1050ti. You get about 45 of those running at once and you will make your $2k a month. Of course as you have probably already thought, running 45 cards requires a lot of overheard with multiple motherboards and computer to monitor. The equivelant would be about 10 or 11 gtx 1080tis, or around 15 or 16 1080s or 1070ti. The larger miners favor the gtx 1080ti because they are more dense; 10 cards take up a lot less space than 45! Your best bet would be to scour the internet and if you see any 1050ti and up at retail or below, buy it. You are going to have to put this together piece by piece.

thanks for the info, so i have loaded up an ebay cart with a 12 gpu mining motherboard, the 12 cheapest "buy it now" 1050tis, 12 pcie risers, a celeron g3930, a 4gb stick of ddr4, a 60gb ssd, and an open air mining case. only thing i have yet to add is the power supply and im not entirely sure what power supply i will need for this lol. the total cost of my ebay cart is about $3400, and a profit calculator says that i should net 340 a month from this setup, not bad. maybe ill just start with this and then double or triple it once i get the hang of it. and yes there is an entirely empty room in my house i plan to put the rig.

You should get a second 4gb stick. Some people have issues running 12 gpus with only 4gb of ram. It's not much more money and it can only help with stability. Also it is difficult to get more than 8 gpus to work on a single motherboard, especially 8 nvidia gpus. Since you're new at this, I think you should just get two 8-slot boards. I'd also recommend a 120GB SSD, especially if you'll be running Windows, so that you have a little breathing room. Again, not much extra cost. If you're using linux, and are comfortable with it, 60 GB is plenty.

Personally I would think twice before dropping ~$2500 on 1050 ti's. They only have 4 GB of RAM, which makes them less future-proof than the 6GB and 8GB cards out there. Still, they're a much better choice than the 1060 3GB. I would snap up 1060 6GB, 1070, 1070 Ti at or close to MSRP, which is still possible if you invest some time. Twelve 1070s will bring in about $1300/month minus electricity, under current conditions. So you could hit your $2k/month target with two 10-card rigs. If the cards are 1070 ti then you could hit it with two 8-card rigs under Windows. I don't know where you live, but in the U.S. most circuits are rated at 1440W for continuous use. An 8-card 1070 Ti rig can sneak in under that power threshold and earn close to $1k/month. So as long as you have two circuits in your home, you can run two rigs and hit your targets this way, without doing any electrical modifications.

That's about $9,000 for the 1070 Ti's. You also do not want to skimp on the power supplies. I made this mistake initially. I had endless headaches troubleshooting problems, and most of them would have been solved by a more robust PSU. I have two mixed rigs each earning about $500/month (each consuming about 700W), running 24/7, never go down. Each one is powered by a Corsair AX 1500i (80+ titanium). I highly recommend it. Others have used server PSUs. I don't have any experience with that, so I can't comment on that option.

If I had only one piece of advice for anyone. Do not skimp on the PSU. Do_not_do_it. I lost a lot of sleep and have some grey hairs because of that mistake.