Cryptocurrency mining farms: is it worth building and how to make money? Assembling a mining farm How to assemble a Bitcoin mining farm yourself

The rates of Bitcoin and Ethereum, the most popular cryptocurrencies today, have already reached sky-high heights against the dollar, and continue to rise. And since cryptocurrency mining can, if desired, be carried out by anyone with access to the Internet, it is natural that thousands of users are looking for step-by-step instructions on how to assemble a farm for mining bitcoins or ether from scratch with their own hands and pay for it in 2 months, and then start getting high income. And of course, for novice miners, the most profitable option seems to be a budget mining rig on an old processor and old video cards. But what are the profitability prospects for such a farm? What equipment do you need to choose for cryptocurrency mining to be successful? And how to assemble a farm that would consume as little electricity as possible, but at the same time bring a good profit?

How to assemble a mining rig at home: step-by-step instructions

A mining farm can consist of one or several hundred computers connected into one network. But as a rule, small farms are created at home, consisting of one system unit with several powerful video cards connected to the motherboard. Moreover, neither processor performance nor PC RAM are particularly important.

It is the performance of video cards that is used to carry out calculations and create new blocks in cryptocurrency systems. Unlike the central processor, which is designed to solve many problems at once and cannot be reconfigured to perform only one algorithm, the graphics processor of a video card can be reconfigured so that all the power is directed exclusively to the creation of digital money. Therefore, cryptocurrency mining on video cards is hundreds of times faster than on a processor.

Assembling a small farm can be done by any advanced PC user who knows how to connect hardware to the system unit and has at least minimal knowledge of how to set up simple power and cooling systems. And for those who want to figure out how to assemble a mining rig, the step-by-step instructions presented below will be useful.

Hardware and components required for a mining farm

Before you begin assembly, you need to prepare all the necessary equipment - both functional hardware and additional components for connecting video cards and a cooling system. The list of what you need to create a “home” mining farm is as follows:

From 3 to 12 gaming/specialized for cryptocurrency mining video cards with high performance (the hashrate of each card is decisive, and the higher it is, the better)
Powerful power supply
6 pin cables and adapters for connecting additional power to video cards (each card will need two 6 pin cables)
A motherboard with as many PCI slots as possible, since this is where video cards are connected
PC with Internet access
Processor - any, you can even use an old 1-core one
Hard drive - any
Random access memory (RAM) - selected depending on the number and power of video cards, but in most cases 4 GB of RAM is sufficient
Raisers for video cards are components that allow you to “move” the card from the motherboard to the rack
Rack - a frame on which all the equipment will be installed (you can make it yourself from scrap materials)
Fans for cooling video cards.

It is best to equip a mining farm in an unheated room - in a garage, basement, etc. This will help reduce the cost of cooling equipment. But at the same time, the air humidity in the room should not be too high.

Step-by-step instructions for assembling a farm for mining on video cards

After all the equipment has been purchased/found, you can proceed directly to assembling the mining rig. First you need to install all the racks and mentally or on paper draw up a plan where the monitor, system unit and video cards will be placed, and then assemble the farm according to this plan. Step-by-step instructions for “strengthening” a PC for cryptocurrency mining look like this:

Assembling the main part of the computer - connecting the processor, hard drive, RAM, motherboard and monitor
Connection to PCI-ex connectors of video card motherboards, but not directly, but through risers. That is, the card is installed on the riser, and then the riser itself is connected to the motherboard via a PCI-ex adapter. It is important that cards can be connected to both 16x and 1x connectors.
Place the risers on the rack so that there is a distance of at least 10 cm between them.
Connecting video cards to the power supply using 6 pin cables
Connecting your computer to power and the Internet
Installation around a rack with video cards of an air/water cooling system.

After the farm is assembled, you need to check the functionality of all equipment. To do this, you can use the AIDA64 program - simple and effective software that provides comprehensive information about all computer components. And if the check shows that all video cards are connected and working, you can install the miner program and start mining cryptocurrency.

Secrets on how to assemble a cryptocurrency mining farm and pay for it in 2 months

Experienced miners, who earn more than $1,000 in net profit monthly from cryptocurrency mining, claim that there are only two secrets to how to assemble a cryptocurrency mining farm and pay for it in 2 months: do not skimp on reliable, powerful hardware and choose the right digital currency for mining. After all, for example, using low-power old video cards, it is realistic to mine only little-known cryptocurrencies, which will then be difficult to sell even on a specialized exchange. And if you try to mine Bitcoin on a home mini-farm, you will most likely not recoup the costs of equipment and electricity even in a year. Therefore, you need to choose both video cards and currency very carefully.

Best Farm Equipment

Previously, to mine digital money, miners used powerful gaming video cards, which, although they provided the performance necessary for solving problems, consumed too much electricity. But now the leaders among video card manufacturers AMD and NVidia offer equipment designed specifically for mining. These cards are as powerful as gaming cards, but they require less power to operate.

According to miners from the USA and EU countries who mine cryptocurrencies on video cards, the TOP 5 video cards for mining in 2017 are as follows:

NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 Ti
AMD Radeon RX580
ASUS MINING-P106-6G
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070
AMD Radeon RX480.

The cost of the above video cards ranges from $300 to $700, but their computing power is enough to completely pay for themselves in 2 months of Ether mining. Of course, there are more budget options for video cards for mining from AMD and NVidia, but their performance is lower.

Choosing the most profitable cryptocurrency for mining

Mining profitability calculators can help you choose a cryptocurrency - online programs that can be used to calculate with an accuracy of 85% how much income a mining farm will generate. However, these programs have one drawback - they carry out calculations based on the current rate of cryptocurrencies, and do not take into account the prospects for their rise in price/decrease in liquidity.

Therefore, in addition to calculations using a calculator, you also need to take into account trends on cryptocurrency exchanges. Moreover, there is no need to independently study the dynamics of the exchange rates of all digital currencies - the network contains selections of electronic money made by experts that are profitable to mine in 2017. And according to experts, novice miners should pay attention to the following cryptocurrencies:

Ethereum
Ethereum classic
Litecoin
Ripple.

How to build a Bitcoin mining farm yourself

The answer to the question of how to assemble a Bitcoin mining farm on your own in 2017 is clear: it is impossible. At the moment, the most expensive cryptocurrency can only be mined using specialized hardware - ASIC miners, and in order to make a good profit, you need to use several ASICs at once. Therefore, now more than 95% of new bitcoin coins are mined on huge farms owned by pools.

The difficulty of mining bitcoins is currently very high and is increasing every day. Therefore, even on the most powerful video card, bitcoin mining will not be profitable. The cost of the newest and most powerful models of ASIC miners, the production capacity of which is sufficient to create new blocks, starts from $5,000.

Mining Bitcoin alone in 2017 - does it make sense?

The idea of assembling a mining farm on the basis of a home PC and mining bitcoins in 2017 is no longer relevant. The extraction of the most expensive cryptocurrency is now carried out mainly by pools, on the farms of which hundreds of ASIC miners work around the clock. Therefore, those who want to mine Bitcoin should join one of the large and trustworthy pools and rent equipment from them, which will generate passive income.

Do-it-yourself budget mining farm on an old processor and old video cards: Is there a prospect?

Network users who do not have the funds to purchase new powerful video cards or ASICs, but want to make money from mining, can create a farm from old or used components. A budget do-it-yourself mining farm on an old processor and old video cards can theoretically also be profitable. Its profitability will depend on two decisive factors:

Power and energy consumption of old video cards
The rate of the cryptocurrency chosen by the miner.

A budget mining farm can be profitable

Processor power does not play a special role for mining, so even models released in 2010 and earlier can be used for the farm. But as for old video cards, their hashrate matters. If a novice miner has several working gaming video cards released in 2012-2014, he has every chance to assemble a computer for effective mining of Dash, Ripple and even Etherium. But there is no point in using older low-power video cards - mining on them will not pay for itself.

Building a mining farm from scratch and making money on it is real

Having old gaming video cards and a PC with Internet access, or having the funds to purchase the necessary equipment, building a mining rig from scratch will not be particularly difficult. Many network users from all over the world have coped with this task and are earning several thousand dollars a month from cryptocurrency mining.

Without a large amount of money for initial investments and having assembled a budget farm, in the future you can make good money by mining cryptocurrencies, which are just gaining popularity. Nowadays it is not very difficult to mine them, and since in the future, with a high probability, their rate will increase, such mining can be considered as a profitable investment.

2017 is the time to start mining cryptocurrencies

Cryptocurrencies are gaining popularity every day, and with a high probability in the future they will become on a par with ordinary money. And although it is now very difficult to mine Bitcoins, beginners in the field of creating digital coins do not need to despair, because there are many other virtual currencies, the value of which is rapidly growing. And since mining them in 2017 does not require large amounts of power, even a self-assembled budget mining rig on an old processor and old video cards is suitable for this purpose. Step-by-step instructions on how to assemble a farm from scratch are quite simple, and there are plenty of video tutorials online that clearly show each stage of creating a computer for mining virtual coins. Therefore, we can say with confidence that 2017 is the right time to start mining digital money, because now it is quite possible to create a farm for mining cryptocurrencies and pay for it in 2 months.

Hello dear readers. The author of the blog, Ruslan Miftakhov, writes as always, and in this article I want to discuss such a phenomenon as farm mining, which is currently most relevant in the West and in the countries of Southeast Asia, especially in China.

And only recently they started mining in Russia. Many of you have probably heard about such concepts as cryptocurrency, mining on a farm, and Bitcoin, which are gaining popularity on the Internet. What it is and how to make money from it, we’ll talk about it in this article.

Mining farms or how your computer can bring you money

So, you decided to assemble your own “farm” and start making money by mining one of the cryptocurrencies. To begin with, I will tell you about what mining is and how a mining farm works.

Mining is the process of extracting virtual money on the World Wide Web.

Mining can be done by anyone who has at their disposal computer equipment of the required power (the so-called farm) and specialized software that allows them to use the computing power of the equipment to solve an algorithm with gradually increasing complexity.

Having solved the algorithm, the computing power earns a coin or coin - a small amount of encrypted information that is sent to your - a kind of account that stores information about your coins.

This currency is stored decentralized, that is, distributed among users.

That is, in simple words, a mining farm is a kind of block of computers busy solving algorithms 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year.

So, having defined the concepts, let’s move on to the main object of interest – our farm, which you can easily assemble with your own hands. And you may immediately have a question: what is needed in order to assemble your own device for making money?

The farm consists of powerful video cards mounted on a frame, as well as large power supplies, the power of which is sufficient to ensure the operation of the entire system.

A small-sized system can easily fit into the case of a conventional system unit, but there are also units that occupy entire industrial hangars.

Building a farm requires significant material costs on the part of a novice miner associated with the purchase of equipment and payment for consumed electricity, and its volume will be more significant the larger your system is.

You also need to think about adequate ventilation, otherwise you will face problems of overheating and equipment freezing.

Farms are divided into several types, similar in operating principle:

created from video cards, the total computing power of which determines the volume of mined “coins”. Moreover, it is worth noting that only ATI Radeon video cards, starting from the seventh generation, are suitable for mining, while NVIDIA cards are useless in this case due to low computing power.
composed of FPGA modules. The modules are therefore less energy-intensive, smaller in size and work more reliably than video cards.
based on ASIC processors. They are quite expensive to create a farm, but they work the fastest.

There are several ways for a novice “miner” to earn money without so-called investments in his own farm:

Free faucets for collecting virtual coins, automatically generating coins and allowing you to choose at what time to collect the currency - after 20 minutes or within 24 hours.

Some faucets, mostly new ones, allow you to earn up to 5,000 coins per hour. Payments are made once a week, which, with the declared capacity, will allow you to collect up to several million coins at a time.

You can start with a Bitcoin faucet that I have tested, where you receive a Satoshi once per hour for entering a captcha, and you can withdraw at least 30,000 Satoshi to your Bitcoin wallet.

Here is another proven faucet for paying out cryptocurrency dogecoin from 100 coins, register and earn before the rate rises to the skies.
The next method is cloud mining, which involves the collective use of remote servers and data centers, the owners of which bear all the costs of maintaining the equipment.
Farming games provide miners with a creative representation of mining as an economic game. Income is accrued for the development of your farm, the construction of facilities and the development of technologies and can be displayed in the form of your virtual account.

The seven largest mining farms in the world or the whales of the cryptocurrency market

1. Nothing is known about the location of the largest mining farm in Russia. All information about the location of this industrial giant is classified, as the owners do not want to jeopardize such a serious source of income.

It is only known that, according to data leaked to the network by the owners themselves, the size of the room in which the unit is located is 1,500 square meters, which houses 3 thousand ASIC processors, consuming 4.5 megawatts of electricity per hour.

At the beginning of 2017, the farm enriched its owners by 600 bitcoins every month. At a cryptocurrency rate that is maintained at $3,700 (more than 200 thousand rubles) per “coin,” the income is 134 million per month (at the exchange rate as of August 9, 2017).

2. In the USA, the largest farm belongs to Dave Carlson and brings its owner literally millions in profits. In just a year, Dave was able to turn his hobby, which began with one video card in the basement, into a large production facility that occupied an entire hangar.

This growth was ensured by the strengthening of Bitcoin in the market, with which Dave works. Carlson also founded a company engaged in the production of mining equipment.

3. The largest farm in Iceland is considered to be a farm built by the Genesis Mining company called Enigma.

Why Iceland, you ask? A cold climate ideal for mining, which allows you to save on cooling, low electricity prices and the cheapest and most stable Internet in Europe - these are the three components of the success of Genesis Mining.

4. In Hong Kong, unlike Iceland, miners are not so lucky with the climate. High humidity and heat are not conducive to comfortable operation of temperature-sensitive mining equipment.

But this did not stop Allied Control from building the largest farm in China, one of the three largest in the world. The company solved the problem with heating the system by using a unique double-immersion technology, which not only reduced the risk of overheating, but also significantly reduced the noise level.

5. The BitFury farm is located in Georgia and, like the Hong Kong one, uses double-immersion cooling technology.

The system consumes electricity from a local hydroelectric power station, which, due to relatively low prices for electricity and low labor costs, makes the overall cost of mining extremely low.

This allows the company to constantly increase its cryptocurrency mining capacity in Georgia, which could well make the farm the largest in the world.

6. The owner of the Linthal farm, commercial director of the IT company Netmon from Uster (canton of Zurich) Guido Rudolfi, was at the origins of Bitcoin mining in Europe.

Due to the low cost of electricity and mild weather conditions, the system quickly grew and is now the largest in Europe.

7. Mining is much more widespread in China than in any other country. Ask any miner where the biggest cryptocurrency farm is located, and he will certainly tell you about a mega-farm in the Sichuan province of China.

For many years, nothing was known about this mining giant except the very fact of its existence. Until the spring of 2017, when Chinese photographer Liu Xingjie was able to get there.

It turned out that this is a whole complex of farms, each of which is busy mining one specific currency, which allows the owners of the entire complex to receive huge money on each cryptocurrency.

What is the reason for such rapid growth, you ask a logical question? The answer is simple - cheap electricity.

How much can you earn on cryptocurrency or how much does your computer power cost?

So, having figured out how the farm works and looking at the real “titans” of mining, let’s ask ourselves how much we can earn from this business.

No one will give you an exact answer to this question. It all depends on what kind of investment you are ready for, since the profitability of mining directly depends on many factors, which I partially cited above when analyzing the system design.

The volume of production is also affected by the instability of the exchange rate to the real currency. In order to clearly determine how much money you will receive from your farm, there are many calculators on the Internet, many of which calculate profits, taking into account many negative factors.

To summarize, I want to say that by assembling a farm and starting mining, you do not lose anything, and by reading certain literature and delving into the market, you can quickly pay for all the expensive equipment and start making net money. As they say, whoever doesn't play doesn't win.

Thank you for reading this article. Good luck with your mining. See you soon!

I was with you, Ruslan Miftakhov

Every crypto enthusiast is thinking about creating their own farm. Without a doubt, this is expensive and not always effective if you approach this matter without enthusiasm and without calculating all the nuances of the mining process through the farm. A cryptocurrency mining farm is the only way to earn bitcoins, and one of the most effective means of accumulating other cryptocurrencies, which may well repeat the fate of the pioneer.

How to build a mining rig

As already mentioned, putting together a farm is expensive. Despite the fact that it is unknown when the investment will pay off, no one stops mining. However, there is one significant caveat, which is that the requirements for equipment are constantly growing. Therefore, even if a person has already set up a small farm, this does not mean that the matter will end there.

The equipment will have to be regularly updated, more modern and technically advanced models will have to be purchased. For example, we can consider mining on video cards and ASICs. Previously, a video card was enough for a farm, but now you have to buy several ASICs, which are very expensive, but, admittedly, more economical. What will happen in a couple of years? Again, throw away several thousand dollars on upgrading equipment? And so it will be.

But such expenses are not so scary if we say that the earnings from solving one crypto problem are 12.5 bitcoins, each of which costs $2,700. At this rate, everything will pay off in record time. The main thing is that the user has in his hands tools that work at the modern level.

So, you have decided to build a mining rig. It doesn’t matter how exactly you came to this decision, but if the decision is made, then the main thing is to choose the right equipment.

The first step is to decide on the amount you are going to spend on creating a farm. Now that the cryptocurrency rush has subsided, the cost of a NEW, cheapest farm that can at least pay for itself in the next 7-8 months will be no less than $3,500.

It is important to understand that only video cards generate income, but in order for them to be able to do so, they need additional equipment in the form of a motherboard, processor, memory, hard drive, power supply. All this costs approximately the same as one video card. In the future, if you decide to continue mining, then the same equipment can be used further, changing only the video cards to newer ones.

For a simpler understanding of the issue, and also to avoid confusion with prices and names, only new components will be considered.

Choosing the size of a mining rig (motherboard)

The most common motherboards for mining are those with the ability to connect six video cards at once. However, before you go to the store and buy the first thing you can find in this series, read on the Internet about what pitfalls this or that motherboard may hide. To do this, collect information about all the offers that are available (there is no point in waiting more than 1-2 weeks) and spend the evening searching for information about possible problems. Try to choose a model where the number of possible problems is minimized. If you are not a specialist or at least not an advanced user of computer hardware, then the proposed approach will solve a huge part of the problems already at the initial stage. The average price of a mining motherboard will be approximately $100-150. Everything will depend on the number of PCI-E 16x and PCI-E 1x slots. The more PCI-E 16x slots, the more expensive the motherboard will be, but there is no need for PCI-E 16x slots. PCI-E 1x slots cope with the task quite well.

Ideally, this is a motherboard with one PCI-E 16x and five PCI-E 1x. The remaining parameters are not significant. The picture above shows an ideal motherboard for such purposes.

Selection of video cards for mining

It is best to choose video cards of the same series. In this case, you also reduce the risk of equipment conflicts and minimize the time that will have to be spent on setting up and further maintaining the farm.

It is impossible to say definitively which cards are better. You always need to look at additional parameters that cannot be listed within the scope of this article, and some parameters are already changing.

Everything will depend on the relationship between the algorithm of the coin you want to mine and the energy efficiency of the card. This is how the profit received from is calculated. The only parameter you should pay attention to is the number of shader units. The higher the value of this parameter, the more efficient the video card is in mining.

At the moment, cards from AMD are the most effective when mining Ethereum, but video cards from nVidia are most effective when mining most other cryptocurrencies that are mined using video cards. The most effective at the moment is zCash. The efficiency of zCash mining on nVidia video cards is 20-30% higher than that of AMD video cards.

Perhaps you need to choose only among top manufacturers. Such as ASUS, GIGABYTE, MSI, PALIT, ZOTAC. Speaking specifically today, based on your budget you need to choose Palit GeForce GTX 1070 GameRock Premium Edition cards. Their price today fluctuates around $500.

There are many services on the network that will show you what speed your card will give and on what algorithm, as well as how much you will earn according to today's exchange rate and taking into account its current complexity.

The warranty on video cards is usually 24-36 months, 12 with very rare exceptions. Which more than covers the payback time of the video card.

Let us note once again that the payback time for the entire farm is from 8 to 12 months. The payback time for the card is about 5-6 months.

Selecting power supplies for mining

Perhaps one of the most important components in the entire farm. After all, the stability of the entire farm will largely depend on the power supply. If you make the wrong choice, then at best you will have to remove a couple of cards so that the remaining components have enough power. You also need to choose from top manufacturers, since only they guarantee that their device will produce the declared power and even a little more. It is better to choose from brands such as Chieftec, Cooler Master, Deepcool, INWIN, Thermaltake, Zalman. But again, for each model you need to look at reviews online, since any product has defects or some specific features. For a farm with 6 cards, you need to take a power supply of at least 1200 Watt, and such units are not cheap, so either take two of 750 each and connect them in parallel (one to the motherboard and three video cards, the second to the hard drive and the remaining three video cards), or take server power supply for 1500 watts and solder it to the required number of connectors. Both alternative solutions are for advanced users, but otherwise you won’t fit into the budget. 1200 Watt power supplies start at $400.

To power the second power supply without a motherboard, you need to close 2 contacts, as shown in the figure (be sure to first turn off the power supply using the button that all power supplies have today. And in the future, turn it on/off only from it):

Selection of other components

Other components can be selected only based on compatibility. But as a rule, today, such a problem no longer exists. Take the smallest processor available. If it is an Intel platform, then take Celeron, if it is AMD, then take Sempron. If you don’t plan to mine on a processor the same way, then any will do. Same with the hard drive. You can take the cheapest one, but it is recommended to take an SSD, at least 64 GB, at least 32 GB. First of all, it is more profitable in terms of energy costs. SSD drives consume several times less electricity. 2 gigabytes of memory is enough, since the system will go there with a maximum of Windows 8, and most likely Windows 7.

Don't try to stuff it all into your computer case. Even if you succeed, it will all overheat terribly, which means it will glitch and fail. To secure it all, assemble a small structure from an aluminum angle. It is often used as accessories when assembling furniture. But essentially any metal corner will do, from which you can assemble a structure like the one in the picture below:

You will also need raisers (this is an adapter from a PCI-E 16x slot to a PCI-E 1x slot):

The quantity will depend on the number of PCI-E 1x slots and, of course, the video cards that will be connected there.

Choosing premises for a farm

For this type of farm, it makes no sense to allocate a separate room. The maximum that can be used for these purposes is a garage, but provided that there is a stable and fast Internet. You may also need a UPS to equalize the voltage and for possible disconnections from power surges. And so, if a little noise does not bother you, then you can leave it in the room or move the farm to the balcony, if it is glazed and there is no dampness or dust there.

Also, the room should have good ventilation or be regularly ventilated, as a lot of heat will be generated.

The average cost of electricity in Russia is 6-7 cents. The farm's consumption will be about 1000 watts per hour.

Internet for the farm

A farm needs stable and fast Internet. Preferably wired, but if you have good 3G/4G Internet in your area, then it will work. If the Internet is not fast enough, there will be losses during the “share” transmission. In simple words, the cards will solve the problem, but will not have time to transfer it before someone else transfers the solution to the same problem and it turns out that your cards will work in vain. Ideally, the ping should be no more than 50 ms. Good mobile Internet usually provides 100-200 ms. If the ping is more than 200, then there will be losses. It is also better not to use Wi-Fi.

Setting up and installing mining software

As mentioned above, it is best to install Windows 7 and 8. Download and install the latest drivers from the video card manufacturer’s website. It is not recommended to install anything else. Especially antiviruses and firewalls, as they will block mining programs. Maximum browser and remote desktop access management program.

The selection, installation and configuration of mining software is selected according to the selected video cards and the selected cryptocurrency algorithm. All this is available on cryptocurrency mining pools.

Farm automation

If you install a farm in a garage or want to control the operation of the farm remotely, it is recommended to install TeamViewer. With it, you can monitor the work of the farm even from your phone or tablet.

It is also advisable to install any program that would monitor the temperature readings of all systems and keep logs, so that in the event of equipment failure, you can understand and solve the problem as soon as possible.

If the farm keeps freezing, first look for a problem in the software. If there is no such problem, then start removing one card at a time. Do not forget that the problem may be in one of the key components of the farm, such as the motherboard, processor, hard drive, memory or power supply. In this case, it will be possible to find out exactly what is working incorrectly only by replacing each of the components. But as a rule, this is unlikely and is only possible in the case of a manufacturing defect.

Overclocking video cards

Beginners are recommended to overclock only using programs provided by card manufacturers. Each manufacturer usually has its own program and all of them can be found on the website or bundled with drivers. The increase in power with this overclocking will be from 10 to 15% (depending on the video card and manufacturer). All other programs are very specific and each has its own individual settings. Almost all professional programs for overclocking cards change the BIOS settings, and this is no longer a guarantee if something goes wrong. The card will simply turn into a “brick”. And the gain from such an in-depth overclocking will be no more than 10-15% (plus what we have already managed to squeeze out of overclocking with the basic program) with the most fine-tuning. In addition, an overclocked video card will consume more electricity, sometimes disproportionately more than the profit received. Therefore, it is also important to maintain a balance here.

In conclusion, to summarize, if you are not advanced enough in terms of setting up computer hardware, then we recommend buying everything new and under warranty. More advanced users will be able to do the same on cheaper and second-hand equipment. However, the risks and time spent increase. But in any of the options, video cards must be purchased new, since this is your main investment, on which your future earnings will depend. After the warranty period has expired, it is better to sell the video cards and upgrade them to newer ones.

It is also advisable to carry out equipment maintenance once a month. Clean dust from coolers and lubricate them if necessary.

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If you came to this article, then most likely you are interested in how to assemble a mining farm in 2017.

Obviously, any farm assembly begins with the selection of components. There are a lot of different little things here, so at the very beginning we suggest considering all the equipment that will be used when assembling the farm.

Components for a mining farm of 6 video cards

Below we will try to describe the selected equipment as best as possible and give an estimate of the approximate cost (much depends on where you buy the components).

SSD hard drive;
CPU;
Video card (6 pieces);
Motherboard;
Power unit;
Raiser;
RAM stick;
USB WatchDoc (if you’re not familiar, below we describe in detail what it is);
Monitor emulator.

Now let's go through the equipment in order.

SSD hard drive

Why did we take SSD? Can I use a regular non-SSD hard drive? Yes, of course you can, but it would be better to use an SSD, since now it is not so expensive, but the operating speed is much higher. Obviously, a farm with an SSD disk will freeze much less often (or not at all) than with a regular one.

CPU

The processor chosen was Intel J1840 - the cheapest on socket 1150. Its price starts around 2,500 rubles. You can buy it cheaper on Aliexpress, but keep in mind that you will have to wait a long time for delivery.

Video cards

The most interesting thing is the choice of video card, although now the choice is already so standard that it is not so interesting - we will install the Radeon Sapphire RX 470 (by the way, this video card appears in our material: here you can see its characteristics).

Motherboard

Everything is simple here, model Asrock h81 pro btc R2.0. Why she? Yes, because Asrock designed this motherboard specifically for mining, what could be better? Prices on the market at the moment start from 5,500 thousand rubles.

Riser

If you are a novice miner, then we will briefly explain what it is.

A riser is an intermediary between your motherboard and video card. Why is it needed? The fact is that you cannot directly plug 6 video cards into one motherboard using a standard connector (they simply won’t fit). This is what the riser is used for.

In simple terms, a riser is an additional slot for a video card that is connected to the motherboard via a cable. Accordingly, the video card can be positioned as it suits you.

A set of 6 risers can now be bought on Aliexpress for 1,500 rubles. Note that version 6 of the riser has already been released.

power unit

There are no special recommendations here, the main thing is to choose a power supply that can supply energy to all video cards at full size and with a small power reserve. Each video card has a power consumption, we will have 6 of them, respectively, we multiply the power of one by 6 and get the critical lower limit of the power supply power, add a reserve and take a cheaper option.

It is also worth noting that if you decide to get serious about manning, then you should look towards server power supplies. They are designed from the factory to operate without interruption for many years.

Make sure that the connector in the power supply matches the riser connector. Mostly the molex connector is used. But there may also be SATA and 6 pin connectors.

USB WatchDog - is used so that if the entire mining farm freezes, it will reboot automatically without your participation.

Thus, you receive the following advantages and conveniences:

You can safely go on vacation or simply be away from the farm without fear of stopping its work.
Any freeze = stop of income and loss of precious time, so this thing will help you mine and earn without interruption.

Monitor emulator

It is needed to start the farm, because... the farm and any computer will not start if the video card does not detect the monitor connection. The cost of the emulator is 150-300 rubles.

Mining farm assembly stage

Now let's move on to the most interesting part - assembling a mining rig.

Housing for mining farm

The classic body layout is an aluminum profile, a pair of wooden slats and plywood/chipboard/fibreboard for the bottom.

By the way, it’s worth saying that you can leave the farm without a housing, but then it will work in a heap and the likelihood of a connector coming loose increases.

Here are the approximate dimensions of the case:

Length 70 cm.
Width 40 cm.
The height of the bar (on which the video cards will be mounted) is 12 cm.

It is also advisable to mount the last bar after you have received the video cards, so that you can measure everything accurately and avoid mistakes.

Installation of components into the housing

We start by placing the power supply and motherboard on the bottom of the case.

We connect the connectors of the power supply wires to the motherboard. Next, we connect the SSD drive to the SATA 1 connector of the motherboard, and also insert the SATA power connector from the unit into the SSD drive.

Windows installation

At this stage, we can begin installing Windows on our farm. We recommend doing this using one video card inserted directly into the connector, i.e. not through the riser.

Installation of video cards

The installation of video cards begins with the placement of risers on the top wooden rail. We connect power to the risers with cables and insert a video card into each riser.

We attach the video cards to aluminum profiles using self-tapping screws. Next, we connect the power cables directly to each video card.

We take a USB extension cable and connect the riser to the motherboard, do this with all 6 risers.

Now install the monitor emulator.

Please note that the monitor emulator must be inserted into the video card that is included in the PCI x16 slot.

We will tell you how to use USB WatchDog in a separate article.

That's it, this mining farm is assembled. How do you assemble your farms? We'll discuss it with interest in the comments.