[Jackreacher]

After reading the bitcoin thread here and some of the news articles on litecoin I decided to drop some cash into getting a mining rig setup. I have at best a rudimentary knowledge of how to build computer systems and virtually no knowledge on programming, but I built it anyway so if I can do it I'm sure you guys can too. Here's what my setup looks like:

The Hill Billy Rig


That grey thing on the right side of the pic is the 20 inch box giving it some more airflow, the cards get hot while running.

Here's a breakdown of the costs when I bought everything.

Motherboard: I paid $118 so shop around. Ideally you want to get a motherboard that is 1155 socket and has atleast 3 pci express slots, 6 pci express slots if you want to put 6 graphics cards on it which you can do on this motherboard. This one can actually have 7 graphics cards on it but it's not recommended!

Power Supplies x 2: Ok you can spend $350 on a big 1500w or you can do what I do and pay $130 less and get two 1000w power supplies and connecting them together with this whichs costs only 20 bucks. Now you have loads of power.

Graphics cards x4: I got one from asus for $240 on craigs, the other 3 i got em from Dell for $300. My advice, don't pay more then that. Try to pay less if you can and try to get the cards first because without them you can't mine. As you can tell these are out of stock on both links, the biggest challenge you will have is finding the cards. The ones you want to get are any brand of AMD 7950's(DO NOT buy XFC brand cards they suck for mining!!! They are the exception). AMD 7970's and 7990's are better performers but consume more power and are pricier. Your second best choice would be to get AMD r9 280x cards they are faster and a little bit more power hungry then the 7950's, all in all a great substitute as they are also more powerful too.

Solid State Drive: $50. get atleast 40GB one so you have a good amount of room. You won't need much more then that.

DVD Drive: $15. I'm sure you can get it for cheaper like I did I paid 5 bucks for one, you needed it to install the Windows OS and drivers.

Processor: $50. You don't need a fast processor the graphics cards are doing all the heavy lifting here. The intel celeron does more then enough. Make sure it is an 1155 socket processor or it will not work on your 1155 socket motherboard.

Ram: $40. That's a pretty good stick for this setup you won't need much more then 4gb anyway.

Dummy Plugs: $5 You need em so the graphics cards not connected to a monitor don't idle their speeds here's what they look like:

You'll need to buy the little metallic thingy inside of them separately at a fry's electronic store or a Microcenter.

Riser Cards: $20. Make sure you get exactly the ones I listed. I almost made the mistake of getting some larger looking ones that would not have worked.

Angle Aluminum Open Air Case:: I build it from scratch, can be a bit of a pain but it cost me just $20 for the aluminum and I kinda wanted to build it myself, plus I had the screws. If you want a premade case check here.

Operating system: Unless you like to torture yourself or are familiar with linux get Windows. Trust me. I'd still be trying to get linux to run the mining software right now if I didn't switch to windows. As soon as I did I had everything running in a span of about 2-3 hours. It's only $190 to get windows 7 ultimate *cough* Piratebay *cough*.

Grand total for all my hardware came to: $1800

Why would I say this is a good investment currently? For one digital currencies are in our future, and it's currently in it's infancy but there's currently enough programming infrastructure built in that it's generally easy for anyone who has a bit of money to get in and start mining ASAP as long as they got some hardware. Right now theres quite a few currencies and you can mine multiple cards with this setup. You can mine DOGECOIN one week, Litecoin the next week, and another the following week or focus on one, it's up to you.

Now if you've been mining several digital coins with good prospects you can trade them in for bitcoin and then for cash or you can trade them for other currencies and then bitcoin leading to cash, you have tons more options available going this route, waiting for currency values to move in your favor. Some of these coins even have values that some might say are tangible. For example Craftcoin is a coin you can mine that serves as real currency for the game Minecraft. So there might be an incentive to mine currencies that serve a virtual necessity via video games as well to retain a bit more investment security.

Now the other reason I think this investment is a pretty safe is aside from losing some time you can recoup a big portion of your initial investment by selling the hardware you bought. The graphics cards(assuming you bought them at the prices I recommended) are selling for 350-500 dollars. So if you bought 4 you can sell them all for $1200 to $2000 used easily. And the rest of the parts you can sell em on ebay as well. You have a good chance of getting most of your money back.

As for how much money I'm currently "making" with this mining rig here's a breakdown.

According to the cgminer (the mining client that I'm using) I'm making roughly 15,000 DOGECOIN per day which translates to 0.029 Bitcoin per day which is equal to roughly $20 per day. You can see the different profit estimates for each currency here Now this is the current estimated value according to coinwarz.com as I am mining at a hash rate of 2265(KH/s).

Now for a minor breakdown of valuation in terms of dollar amounts if as an example the value of 15000 DOGECOIN doubles then I'm potentially making $40 for that day when I trade it in to bitcoins and then cash. If it's present value(15000 DOGECOIN) gets cut in half I'm potentially making $10 assuming I make the trade from DOGE to Bitcoin to dollars with those hypothetical exchange rates. Also If I trade 15000 DOGECOIN for Bitcoin today and the value of Bitcoin doubles the following day I can potentially make $40, if it's value is cut in half I can potentially be making $10. So there are fluctuations in the value of the cryptocurrency you are mining, and there are fluctuations in the bitcoin price as well which you can take advantage of(or it can become a disadvantage if the prices change in a way where you lose value in what you mine/trade). Also the currency you are mining may go bust and for that reason I recommend mining multiple currencies not just focusing on one(even bitcoin can go down and most likely will) but the currency you are mining might even replace bitcoin in terms of value so again don't put all your eggs in one basket, just my suggestion.

Now how to start mining once you got the hardware bits in place. Ok here is the absolute best guide to get this working ASAP once you got your windows installed on your rig. Click here for the guide. Congratulations you have avoided spending tons of hours trying to figure it out the hard way like I did as I discovered that guide only recently and it got my rig working. You're welcome. If you have any trouble whatsoever with your mining rig visit this place signup and jump in their chatroom. The guys there are super nice and will guide you through any difficulty you might have, they helped me big time.

Now start mining and have fun! It's a pretty sweet hobby and I really enjoyed building it. I setup teamviewer on it so when I'm away from the area for a few weeks or so I can monitor my rig remotely at any time.