Mining rigs come in all shapes and sizes.For the purpose of this guide, we will focus on building a very basic rig.This guide is intended to get you started and to assist in building your first rig.Once you know how to build one, you can grow your rig empire as big as you want.We will show you how to build your very first rig for under $1000.If you don’t want to invest any money in hardware and simply want to use your current computer to start mining, you can skip ahead to Part 2: Software Requirements.The first thing you need to know about mining, is that currently, mining power is processed using your graphic’s card (GPU).The days of mining with your CPU only are long gone.GPU offer a much faster way of solving the algorithms required to generate your coins.GPU’s should be your main focus when designing your rig.You can get a full list of the various GPU’s and their expected performances here: https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Mining_hardware_comparison or here: http://litecoin.info/Mining_Hardware_Comparison.

These are the most current and accurate listings for GPU hash rates.When you are mining, the same values that apply for Bitcoin mining will apply to any SHA-256 coin mining.The same is true for Litecoin and all other Scrypt based coins.bitcoin core offline transactionWe currently like the ATI HD 7950 card’s.ethereum virtual machineWe feel they currently offer the best bang for your buck if you are operating on a budget.bitcoin core wallet reviewOf course, you can always replace your graphics card for a better one in the future.bitcoin gebührenGenerally, there are only 3 things you want to worry about when building a mining rig.bitcoin faucet instant pay

The rest of the hardware doesn’t really matter.Below are the components we recommend for a basic rig.Feel free to swap out parts for better performing ones if you wish.This is just a basic outline of a generic budget rig.bitcoin jailbreakThis rig will get you anywhere between 1000-1200 kh/s when mining Scrypt coins and 950-1150 MH/s when mining SHA-256 coins.Once you are done, the rig will look something like this: Now comes the fun part.Now that you have all your components, you can start setting everything up!Make sure to keep the manuals that came with the components in case you get stuck on a step.This is the part where you’re probably wondering why you didn’t get a monitor, keyboard, mouse or a CD drive.Basically, once you have everything setup, you won’t need them anymore.If you’re reading this and are interested in mining coins, you probably already have a computer in the house.Simply take the monitor, keyboard and mouse and set it up on the rig temporarily so we can get things set up and configured.

The next step is simply to power it up and install an Operating System on the machine.You can install Windows or Linux from a USB key or CD-Rom drive.(If you install from CD, simply take a CD-Rom drive from another computer temporarily to get through the installation).To install windows from a USB key, you can follow this guide.The rest of the guide will assume you are using Windows.So, now you’ve got your rig installed with an operating system.It seems that the author of cgminer has removed the compiled Windows version of cgminer 3.7.2 from the official download location here and you may have a hard time finding it at a different safe location.The cgminer version 3.7.2 is the latest version of cgminer with GPU mining support, all newer versions are designed for use only with SHA-256 ASIC miners for Bitcoins and will not work on GPUs for scrypt mining.So if you are mining for Litecoin or other alternative scrypt crypto currency you would need to download cgminer 3.7.2 in order to be able to use your graphics cards with it.

The official download location only offers Linux versions of the cgminer and that goes not only for version 3.7.2, but for most older versions that also support GPU mining.So if you need to download cgminer 3.7.2 for Windows you can do so from the link below.– You can download cgminer 3.7.2 with GPU mining support for Windows OS here…This guide will show you how to get started with Litecoin GPU mining.If anything is unclear in this guide please leave a comment about it.In this guide a AMD/ATI Radeon 6870 is used but settings for other AMD/ATI cards are available also.If you are looking for the most efficient card to mine with then you’ll want to get a AMD Radeon 7950.When looking at the hash to watt ratio this is currently the most efficient card on the market.You’ll want to start with pooled mining as solo mining is not very viable anymore.The difficulty of the network is too high to effectively solo mine with a single computer.It’ll take a very long time to get a single block of 50 LTC.

I suggest you skip to step 2 for pooled mining.However, for people with access to many computers I’ll leave the basics of solo mining in this guide and you can continue reading.If you want to solo-mine you’ll need to have the litecon client installed and configured.You can download the litecoin client here, if you are running windows look for the latest litecoin-x.x.xx-win32-setup.exe as this is the easiest way to install the client.After you installed the litecoin client it will have to catch up with the network first before you can start mining as you can see in the image below.Once the client is done synchronizing with the network (this can take some time) you’ll have to setup the litecoin client.In order for the litecoin client to support mining you’ll have to create an ini file in the %appdata%\litecoin folder.To get to this folder click your start button (start->run for Windows XP) and type in %appdata%\litecoin Now right click in the folder (not on a file or directory) and goto New->Text Document And rename it to litecoin.conf Now you should get this pop-up as you’re trying to change the extension of a .txt file to .conf.

If you don’t get the above pop-up you’ll have to switch off “Hide extensions for known file types”.In Vista/Windows7 you can find this by pressing ALT once and then going to the Tools->Folder options menu.In Windows XP this menu should be visible without pressing ALT.After this, remove the .txt from the filename so the full name becomes litecoin.conf.Now open litecoin.conf and insert this information: You should change the username and password for safety, even though you’re only allowing the localhost here trojans and mallware ect.could easily access your wallet if you have the standard username/password.Currently I advice you to use cgminer as guiminer-scrypt is still very unstable.Cgminer is command line software and a bit harder to set up but if you follow this guide it should be no problem as we also create shortcuts on your desktop to start the mining.I won’t be covering the Reaper miner here since it is less stable than cgminer and doesn’t have any performance advantages.

Cgminer for windows, linux and the source are available here or a backup link for the windows client here.Guiminer can be found here.This one is not recommended but you can try it if you like.Now not all graphic cards support mining but if you purchased a medium range or better one the last 1-3 years you should be able to mine.If you have an ATI/AMD card you’ll need the AMD-APP-SDK, which can download here.Also make sure your ATI/AMD drivers are up to date.Extract the cgminer zipfile (to make it easier to launch I extracted the files to c:\) If you are solo mining you can proceed to step 4.In order to mine with a pool you’ll have to register an account.I will be using coinotron in this guide./coinotron/AccountServlet?action=logon Next, go to “my account” and add a worker, in this case 1 for username and password.Make sure LTC is selected under coin.After you added it you should see the following: Now you’ll have to determine the optimum settings.Intensity, this you can set anywhere from 0 to 18 where at 18 your computer becomes unusable and might even freeze.

For me the optimum setting is 12 when I’m at my computer and -16 when I’m not working on my computer.You’ll have to see what works best for you.The difference in hashrate is quite big, at 10 I only get 80Kh/s while at 16 I reach nearly 250Kh/s You can try any of the thread concurrencies within these ranges but it has to be a multiple of 64.Make sure you use the concurrency that fits your card model.57xx cards: 2368-4096 (3200 is common) 58xx cards: 4096-8192 (5600, 7168, and 8000 are common) 5970 card: 4096-8192 (5632 or 8000 are common) 67xx cards: 2368-4096 (3200 is common) 68xx cards: 3008-6720 (4800 is common) 69xx cards: 4096-8192 (5600, 7168, and 8000 are common) 6990 card: 4096-8192 (5632 or 8000 are common) 7xxx cards 64 * bus_width_of_card_in_bits.So, for a 7950, that would be 64 * 384 = 24576; ideal values are 21712 or 24000./wiki/Southern_Islands_(GPU_family) You can set a maximum temperature if you run into problems, the default is 95 which is ok for most cards.

I prefer to run it from cmd so I can see any error might it occur.Replace -u and -p with your own username and password.Don’t forget to change the username and password to your own, you wouldn’t be the first one mining on my account :3334 -u cryptocur.1 -p 1  –thread-concurrency 8192 -I 10 -g 1 -w 256 For solo mining you have to connect to your own litecoin wallet:  c:\cgminer-2.11.3-win32\cgminer –scrypt -o http://127.0.0.1:9332 -u username -p password  –thread-concurrency 8192 -I 10 -g 1 -w 256 This is the result with intensity 10: This is the result with intensity 16: Guiminer-scrypt can be setup like this, it has some default values also but you’ll want to tweak to get the right settings.Note that guidminer-scrypt gets very different results with the same settings, I find it harder to get good hashrates with guiminer-scrypt.If everything is running smoothly with cgminer you can create shortcuts on your desktop by just right clicking your desktop and going to New->Shortcut Now just paste the commands in there and create the shortcut Now you should easily be able to start mining with your gpu from your desktop.