How to Build a Crypto Mining Rig : Step-By-Step

Last Updated on October 28, 2021

Nowadays, cryptocurrencies have become very popular, and almost every crypto enthusiast is interested and wants to try to make a side income by mining them, not only trading. We will show you step by step how to build a crypto mining rig.

As cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin are rising in popularity, more people are now trying to enter the crypto mining industry. There is a lot of demand for computer hardware that can be used for cryptocurrency mining.

The problem most people face is that mining is simply not just an easy setup, it involves some technical skills and experience fixing issues. Also, the prices for the GPU cards have increased drastically in the last couple of years, which requires the miners to be the most efficient as possible, in order to be profitable.

But don´t lose hope, it is still a great opportunity and yes – still profitable! You just need to take the right steps. I will show you how to build a crypto mining rig successfully.

I will write about how I started to mine (actually not long ago, but I found some great hacks to make it easy as possible).

What is crypto mining?

Cryptocurrency mining is the process by which new crypto coins are created by using your computer’s CPU or GPU power to verify transactions on the blockchain. It is also the process of spending computing power to process transactions, secure the network, and also generate new coins.

Crypto mining is an integral part of how digital cash works. It involves solving complex cryptographic puzzles to verify blockchain transactions. Later on in this article, I will explain how to build a crypto mining rig.

How does crypto mining work?

Mining is the process of verifying transactions and new coins in a cryptocurrency system.

There are two ways to mine coins: solo mining and pooling. Solo mining is the process of doing the work yourself, while pooling is where miners are grouped together into a single large mining operation.

The most popular way to mine coins today is through cryptocurrency mining pools, which are responsible for approximately 80% of all crypto-mining efforts worldwide. You can find them online through websites like Binance.

The process of cryptocurrency mining involves using your computer resources (CPU power) to mine various cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Ethereum. It may sound like an easy task but you need some serious hardware for this task because the more hashes processed, the better chance you have of generating coins and making profits out of your investment.

Is crypto mining worth it? Is crypto mining profitable?

Is crypto mining worth it? There has been a string of headlines that cryptos are not worth the investment because they are losing value on a consistent basis. However, some would argue that this is an opportunity for people to see how financial decisions affect them on a day-to-day basis.

Crypto mining can be profitable but only if you put in the time and effort needed to find ways to increase your earnings. You will also need to perform some investment calculations.

Many people are wondering if cryptocurrency mining is worth it. It can be a good investment in the short term, but the long-term profitability of mining may not be guaranteed.

Over the last few years, there has been an increased amount of cryptocurrencies and the demand for them and their mining opportunities are increasing day by day.

Start mining with a good Laptop. How to mine Crypto? How to start Crypto Mining?

This is the easiest way to get it started and learn the basics. I bought a Lenovo Legion Laptop recently, with an NVIDIA 3060 card included inside, that cost me less than $1000. It was the cheapest I could find with this GPU. Probably your actual laptop will not be able to mine, but if it has an NVIDIA card GTX 1060 or RTX 1650 or greater, it will make it!

First, create a Binance account and download an ETH miner, I would recommend NBminer as it can unlock the hash power of the latest and most powerful NVIDIA GPUs.NVIDIA recently limited the hash power of her latest GPU cards, to make them more budget-friendly for gamers, but NBminer has found a hack that will automatically unlock the hash power.

Edit the text of the .bat file to include the Binance configuration text, and save it as .bat, by choosing “all files” in the drop-down selection when “saving as”.

The next step is to click on the freshly created .bat file and start mining! When you click the file, a command line will window will open and show your mining logs, hash rate, and GPU temperatures.

The mining profits will come directly to your Binance pool account, where you can also monitor all the hash rate statistics and if your worker is offline or online. This is the effective output of your mining that will convert into real money.

The 3060 GPU on this laptop has a hash rate of about 37 Mbps / sec, (The website I use for determining GPU has rates is BetterHash) which will generate you a profit, in September 2021, of about $3.6 per day, that’s $108 per month! Well, this laptop will pay itself in less than 10 months, and you will have a great laptop for the upcoming years, or you can just sell it and still have made a great profit!

Of course, you will have some costs with the electricity, but that would account for less than 15% of your revenue, usually. If you were using your pc for gaming you would have these costs anyway!

Add a second GPU card to your desktop PC

This is the next step in your mining learning curve!

We have seen that a $1000 laptop will pay itself in less than 10 months, how will a new GPU perform?

An NVIDIA 3060 GPU should cost something around $500, and that will be your only investment at this level.

The GPU cards connect directly to the motherboards, usually, most motherboards can connect 4 GPU cards simultaneously. You can either connect them via PCI-E Express 1x (the small rectangular entry), with a riser cable or via PCI-E 16x (the bigger rectangular entry), just by plugging them directly on the motherboard.

The new GPU will need around 150W to function properly. The motherboard connection provides 75W and the 8 pin connector on the top of your GPU (that connects to the PSU, power supply unit), will fulfill the remaining 75W (actually much more, so you don´t need to worry about it). Most PSUs come with multiple VGA cables for powering the GPUs and risers. If you connect a GPU using a riser, the VGA cable that comes from your PSU for power should be split in 2, using a splitter than you can buy cheap on Amazon, These splitters use 6+2 pins, the 6 pins you connect to the riser and the 8 pin you connect on the top of the GPU.
For the sake of simpleness, just connect to the motherboard directly at this level, since you won´t use 6 GPU´s but only one.

Install the latest NVIDIA drives (using the CD or downloading online) and voila! Now your miner will detect the new GPU automatically and start mining with it once you click the .bat file!

So, a GPU that costs $500 and an income of $108 a month, that’s less than 5 months to pay off your new investment! Cool eh?

That is why the demand for NVIDIA GPUs is so high and it is actually very difficult to find them in stock in the consumer market, but once you find them, don´t hesitate on buying!

How to build a crypto mining rig

This is the last step in the mining learning curve on how to build a crypto mining rig. A mining rig is simply a motherboard+Processor, the GPU´s and the PSU´s, no other devices such as keyboards, mouses, screens, etc, although you will need them initially to configure the Rig.

For this, you can actually use your own motherboard if it has at last 4 GPU entries, or you can buy another for around $200 that has, for example, 8 GPU entries!

So, how to build a crypto mining rig? In a Rig, the GPUS are connected to the motherboard via risers, those are small cables that make a bridge between the motherboard and the GPU, for better cooling and also space to fit all the GPUs at the same time. You can buy these risers on amazon very cheap and of good quality for around $20 a pack of 6. It is also a good idea to buy an external fan to improve cooling.

You will need to perform some configurations on the BIOS, in order to increase the efficiency and be able to detect all the GPU cards on the Rig, you can check it HERE.

Then, voila, let´s start mining again! The return on investment with this should be anything between 3 to 6 months, depending on the price of electricity and most important the price that you paid for the GPU cards and current profitability (crypto price).

Also, I use Minerstat to control all my rigs remotely, as I´m a pilot, this is very convenient to me.

It costs around $3 for each Rig a month, that’s almost nothing and you will gain even more with the optimizations it provides along with the remote control!

Overclocking

This will increase the hash rates, hence the profits, of your mining, but will also increase the GPU temperatures, be careful. With the Minersat software, you can load up the most common overclocking profiles and run them automatically, this is what I recommend, otherwise, it can damage your devices.

What crypto to mine?

Currently, ETH is the most profitable coin to mine, next are RVN and FIRO. I would advise initially to stick with ETH as it is easier and also will bring you more income.

With the 70 GPU´s I´m currently running (10 Rigs with the motherboard Asus Z270-A), my income is around more than $7500 per month. I have built the rigs by buying roughly 4 new GPUs per month and I keep adding them, this allows me to always buy the latest models and keep the rigs as profitable as possible.

Is crypto mining legal in us?

We are all familiar with the idea of crypto mining, but it is difficult to be certain if mining is legal. Some argue that mining is only legal when there are no laws against it. Many countries have not yet passed legislation on crypto mining, which is why some argue that crypto mining can be immediately classified as illegal.

The United States government has not legalized the use of cryptocurrency as yet. However, there is a growing community of miners and investors who believe that cryptocurrency mining can also be a lucrative business.

Crypto mining is not legal in the United States as of now. Some people think it will take time before we reach a consensus on whether or not crypto mining is legal.

It has been argued that Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies are not real money because they aren’t backed by any government or central bank. As a result, the idea of ICOs has become popular in recent years. These are an alternative to traditional stock IPO’s where you can buy into a company at its earliest stages before it becomes profitable. The problem with ICOs with most people though is that their returns are almost never guaranteed.

Will i become rich by mining crypto?

This can be true, or not. It will all depend on these 3 things:

1. The quantity and invesment you put on mining rigs.
2. The profitability of the mining.
3. The price if the coin you are mining.

If everything remains the same, you can keep adding and compounding the profits, by buying more and more GPUs with the profits you make from mining. This can make you a millionaire shorter than you think.

If the profitability of the mining falls, due to increased difficulty, or price depreciation, for example, thank you can still be rich by just buying more and more GPUs as stated before, although it will take longer for you to become rich.

You can become rich also, if the coins you mined now, will be worth 100x times more in the upcoming years, as it happened with many of them already!

Even if for some reason mining stops being profitable, you can still sell your GPU cards to gamers, and keep all the profits you generated until then!