Want to get into mining digital currency (bitcoins, litecoins, and/or other altcoins), but have no idea how to go about it?This guide will take a complete beginner through the various steps involved in building your own power-efficient ~1900 kH/sec litecoin mining computer.Guide: Build your own Litecoin Mining Rig 4/06/2017: This guide is nearly four years old.While the Windows and Linux setup portions are still somewhat useful in a general sense, please don’t attempt to buy any of the hardware recommended in part 1—it’s quite obsolete!If you’re looking for information about modern GPU mining, please click here for my updated 2017 guide on Ethereum mining.Click the image or heading in each section to jump to that piece of the guide.Part 1: Hardware Learn what components give you the best bang-for-the-buck when it comes to litecoin mining.See what you’ll need to pack multiple GPUs into a single computer for maximum efficiency.Then, follow a step-by-step guide on how to assemble everything into a plastic milk crate to facilitate airflow and cooling.

Part 2: Linux Setup Follow a detailed set of instructions that will have you up and running with Linux on your litecoin mining rig in about an hour.The guide is tailored to the complete Linux beginner and includes every single command that you’ll need to input—no guesswork or incomplete steps!Part 3: Windows Setup If Windows is more to your liking, we’ve got a guide for you, too.Covers a complete installation from start to finish: BIOS settings, drivers, mining software, auto-startup, remote admin, and more.For more advanced users, undervolting your GPUs (to save power) is also included as an optional step in the guide.Part 4: Optimization After you’ve got your litecoin mining rig running, check out the optimization guide for tips on getting the best performance possible from your GPUs via overclocking and cgminer tweaks.Also learn how to set up an automatic failover mining pool, so that your rig will continue mining even if your primary pool becomes unavailable.Part 5: Mining FAQ Read the rest of the guide, but still have some questions?

Chances are it’s covered in this FAQ.This guide is going to show you how to build an Ethereum Mining rig yourself which has two main steps - choosing and sourcing your equipment and then putting it together!Depending on times its probably going to take you a week or so to get all the pieces and then another half a day fiddling with configurations etc. Its the same as building your own computer normally but with a few extra considerations that mainly involve which GPU's you pick.bitcoin 256 hashIf you don't want to buy mining equipment, You can also try buying a cloud mining contract with Hashflare or Genesis Mining.charlie hebdo bitcoinYour going to have to get hold of a fair few components and the costs stack up quite quickly: Another issue you can have with your graphics cards and your motherboard is that they just won't all fit in together nicely because of the spacing on the motherboard between the PCI Express slots.bitcoin aktienkurs

Fear not - you can use a GPU riser that is basically an extension cable for a PCI Express slot.Some graphics cards are really quite bulky so be careful when you are making your selection.You can get a riser here.Alternatively you can source some of you components from gpuShack, on our second mining rig we are using the MOBO/CPU/RAM/SSD Bundle for 5 GPUs.Remember to use the promo code CRYPTOCOMPARE gets 5% discount off your purchase.litecoin tableAs mentioned make sure your power supply unit can handle the Graphics cards and that you have risers capable of placing extra GPU's in a safe location.bitcoin to rmbMake sure all the connections are in nicely and everything is held together firmly.litecoin mining desktopA word on positioning.GPU's can get hot - especially if you overclock them so be sure to get the best bang for your buck - and to be safe to place your rig in a well ventilated area so it doesn't overheat.

Once it switches on you need to make sure all the software is there for you to get it mining!The first thing you need to do is install an operating system on your computer.For the more technically minded there is linux Ubuntu but for the majority Windows is probably best as it automates installing drivers for your computer to talk correctly amongst all the components.The advantage of Ubuntu is it gives you more options and its free!You can donwload EthOs which is a specifically designed APP for Ethereum Mining - you can read more about this here but its a great way of having a bespoke mining system for your rigs and GPU's to manage them!Once you have installed the operating system there are two ways you can mine: If there are any questions on how to get your rig up and running - or any part of the process - just drop us a line at the bottom of the article - our resident mining guru will help you out.You can also post in our Ether Forum and one of our community should be able to help you out!

Also if we've got something wrong or it can be explained better let us know!Jump to: , This page lists any tutorials that might be helpful to new miners.In my previous Reckoner feature about Litecoin, I came to the conclusion that I had three options on the table at that stage of my experiment mining the crypto-currency: Option 1 – sell up and cut my losses.Option 2 – keep mining at my current rate.Option 3 – buy more rigs and mine even more Litecoin with the hope that the price rises.Option 1, the path of least resistance.That’s the choice I ultimately ended up at.My Litecoin mining adventure wasn’t profitable and —if I’m honest—a waste of time.To redeem something out of the experience, I can at least share with you what I did wrong.If you are thinking about mining Litecoin or some other sort of crypto-currency, you can learn from my mistakes.The main thing everyone wants to know is “how much money did you lose, man?!”Let’s cut to the chase.Which is a total spend of $21,586.02.

That puts me at a total loss of $8,183.24.However, I do have 894LTC in my wallet.The current price of LTC right now is hovering around $2.50 (ugh), which means if I was to sell my entire LTC stash, I will have lost $5,948.24 all up.A good scenario is the price of LTC maybe hitting $5 once it’s announced on Mt.Gox (see their blog post which addresses this further).Which means, realistically, I will have lost $3,713.24 in total.If I was to sell that LTC for $9.15 per coin, I could break even on the whole thing.If I sell for $10, I’d make $756.If I sell my stash for $72.50 per coin, I’d be able to buy a sweeeeeett Mercedes Benz A250 Sport.Yeah, that isn’t going to happen.I was naive enough to think that the price of LTC would grow so quickly, that it could meet the minimum repayment on my card and cover the costs of electricity, rent & an internet connection.Unfortunately, this did not happen.I see now—with the benefit of hindsight—that this goal was unrealistic.I totally underestimated the sharp rise in mining difficulty too.

I knew it would rise, but not at the rocketing rate it has.Between April and August, LTC mining difficulty grew by 437% – that’s insane!My setup could have been more refined.I could have been running rigs with 5 cards per motherboard, resulting in a slightly lower initial setup cost and slightly lower power consumption.I could have also flashed the graphics cards’ BIOS (and hence, underclocked the GPUs) for a good balance of power consumption and performance, ultimately saving more power.With 7×5 card rigs, I would have spent $12,502.23 on gear and $1,910.67 on miscellaneous setup equipment.This would have saved me a total of $1,644, which at the end of the day would have been a noticeable difference.There would have been a small decrease in power consumption by having less rigs with more cards, but not by a lot and it’s hard to work out the exact power usage in the real world, especially after system tweaks.Let’s say I achieved a 10% reduction in my power consumption — a generous estimate based on the result of GPU tweaking and rig consolidation.

That would have made my power bill $3,796, instead of $4,218, decreasing my loss by $422.Tweaking the system and consolidating my rigs would have made a difference (to the tune of almost $2000), but not that much of a difference in the overall scheme of things.I still would have lost over $1,000.The key to crypto-currency mining (in Australia at least) is cheap power.Many of the people who purchased my gear are mining Litecoin and other coins, and when I asked them how they’re justifying the low profitability, they all said said they’re able to snag free electricity from somewhere.Normally stashing a few rigs at work, hoping nobody notices (hah).Good luck to them I say!If you can find free power, here’s how it breaks down: Spend $14,500 to set up a farm that should generate around 600LTC month.If you don’t have to pay for power—and assuming the LTC rate of difficulty increases at the same rate—you should have accumulated around 7200LTC.If you end up selling that LTC for say, $6 a coin, how much would you make?

Turn around and sell the gear for at least half of its original value, and that number rises to around $35,000.Assuming your source of free power doesn’t disappear, or find out and call the police for stealing… But what about solar power?The sun gives us free electricity!Let’s use it to power our Litecoin farms!Over the course of a year, our 30x GPU Litecoin farm will use 73,634kWh of electricity.Charged at 18.225c/kWh (still the cheapest power I can find in Australia), the annual power bill will be $13,419.A solar system with enough average peak output to supply 8400W of electricity would cost about $10,000 (you can get 10kW systems installed for $10k these days, cool!).Solar panels that output 10kW will be able to supply all the power we need!Spend $10k to save $13.5k and the panels will last for 20 years giving out free electricity!Let’s go buy solar panels now!!!Don’t get too excited, though.There’s a few harsh realities of solar power we need to step through.First of all, the sun doesn’t shine 24/7.

At night, we’d need an alternative power source.Normally that’s the grid, but you could also install batteries.If you do, you’ll need enough of them to power 8400W for the time when the sun doesn’t shine, and then enough solar panels to charge the batteries and power the farm itself.You’d be looking at just $25,000 for the panels, let alone the insane amount of batteries you’d need (probably 40 of the biggest deep cycle batteries you can find, which will set you back another $35k).Spending $50,000 doesn’t make sense.There’s wind power, which if you’re in a windy enough area, can supply power at night, but a 10kW turbine is huge and will set you back $20k easily.Good luck getting a permit to put one up anywhere in Victoria too.Thanks anti-wind farm nutjobs.So the only real alternative is to get a discount on our electricity use by using solar when it shines brightly to give 8.4kW of power, then supplementing it with grid power when there’s not enough light.Solar panel output varies greatly depending on the amount of sunlight.

Take these PVOutput stats from a 10kW system out in suburban Melbourne.The 10kW solar panels only generated 11,350kW of power over 12 months (there’s a few days missing, so I rounded the number up).Our farm needs 73,634kWh of power per year, so there’s still a shortfall of 62,284kWh – leaving us with a power bill of $11,352.All we will save is about $2,000/year.In other words, it would take 5 years of mining to pay back the cost of the panels and even once the panels are paid off, you’re still only saving $2,000/year.Solar panels are great and every home should have them, but as far as Litecoin mining goes, unless you’re in for the super long haul, I wouldn’t bother.There’s always an opportunity cost involved with this sort of thing.What else could I have done with the same resources and what would have been the result of that?I can’t go back in time to change what I’ve done, but it’s interesting to see what could have been.I whipped up a few spreadsheets to either justify my actions or remonstrate myself for wasting money.

So I guess losing approximately $3,800 overall isn’t so bad.Investing in shares like banks and mining seems like a good idea to be honest, especially since how they’re so protected by the government in Australia at least.Would I have done it instead of LTC?Probably not 🙂 It’s pretty obvious that if you can score free electricity, get mining Litecoin NOW.You’d be dumb not to.If you are a bit less risk averse with your investments and an interest in crypto-currency, take a look at these Australian guys making a Bitcoin mining ASIC device.It sounds really good, and particularly if you’re also in Australia, as you can catch up and talk to the people making it – they seem to be much more transparent than the other ASIC hardware vendors out there.There’s also the bonus of Bitcoin being a bit more legit and more ecosystem and culture around it than Litecoin, which is nice.That’s pretty much it for me in regards to crypto-currency.I don’t really intend to write any further regarding Litecoin or Bitcoin in the near future.