bitcoin_rig

Mining rig

A mining rig is a computer system used for mining bitcoins. The rig might be a dedicated miner where it was procured, built and operated specifically for mining or it could otherwise be a computer that fills other needs, such as performing as a gaming system, and is used to mine only on a part-time basis.

Warning: GPU mining is not very profitable (if at all) anymore, and even if you have free electricity, GPU rigs will likely never pay for themselves at this point!

How to Set Up a Bitcoin Miner

Last updated: 26th November 2013

There are three main categories of bitcoin mining hardware, each more expensive and more powerful than the last. This guide to setting up a bitcoin miner explains each of them, and talks about how to make them work.

By this stage, you will understand how bitcoin works, and what mining means. But we need to get from theory to practice. How can you set up a bitcoin mining hardware and start generating some digital cash? The first thing you're going to need to do is decide on your hardware, and there are two main things to think about when choosing it:

This is the number of calculations that your hardware can perform every second as it tries to crack the mathematical problem we described in our mining section. Hash rates are measured in megahashes, gigahashes, and terahashes per second (MH/sec, GH/sec, and TH/sec. The higher your hash rate (compared to the current average hash rate), the more likely you are to solve a transaction block. The bitcoin wiki's mining hardware comparison page is a good place to go for rough information on hash rates for different hardware.

Energy consumption

All this computing power chews up electricity, and that costs money. It's worth looking at your hardware's energy consumption in watts, when making your choice. You want to make sure that you don't end up spending all of your money on electricity to mine coins that won't be worth what you paid.

Use these two factors to work out how many hashes you're getting for every watt of electricity that you use. To do this, divide the hash count by the number of watts.

For example, if you have a 500 GH/sec device, and it's taking 400 watts of power, then you're getting 1.25 GH/sec per watt. You can check your power bill or use an electricity price calculator online to find out how much that means in hard cash.

However, there's a caveat here. In some cases, you'll be using your computer to run the mining hardware. Your computer has its own electricity draw on top of the mining hardware, and you'll need to factor that into your calculation.

Bitcoin Mining Hardware

There are three main hardware categories for bitcoin miners: GPUs, FPGAs, and ASICs. We'll explore them in depth below.

CPU/GPU Bitcoin Mining

The least powerful category of bitcoin mining hardware is your computer itself. Theoretically, you could use your computer's CPU to mine for bitcoins, but in practice, this is so slow by today's standards that there isn't any point.

You can enhance your bitcoin hash rate by adding graphics hardware to your desktop computer. Graphics cards feature graphical processing units (GPUs). These are designed for heavy mathematical lifting so they can calculate all the complex polygons needed in high-end video games. This makes them particularly good at the SHA hashing mathematics necessary to solve transaction blocks.

You can buy GPUs from two main vendors: ATI and Nvidia. High-end cards can cost hundreds of dollars, but also give you a significant advantage over CPU hashing. For example, an ATI 5970 graphics card can give you over 800 MH/sec compared with a CPU, which will generally give you less than 10 MH/sec.

One of the nice things about GPUs is that they also leave your options open. Unlike other options discussed later, these units can be used with cryptocurrencies other than bitcoin. Litecoin, for example, uses a different proof of work algorithm to bitcoin, called Scrypt. This has been optimized to be friendly to CPUs and GPUs, making them a good option for GPU miners who want to switch between different currencies.

GPU mining is largely dead these days. Bitcoin mining difficulty has accelerated so much with the release of ASIC mining power that graphics cards can't compete. If you do want to use them, you'd best equip yourself with a motherboard that can take multiple boards, to save on running separate PSUs for different boards.

FPGA Bitcoin Mining

A Field Programmable Gate Array is an integrated circuit designed to be configured after being built. This enables a mining hardware manufacturer to buy the chips in volume, and then customize them for bitcoin mining before putting them into their own equipment. Because they are customized for mining, they offer performance improvements over CPUs and GPUs. Single-chip FPGAs have been seen operating at around 750 Megahashes/sec, although that's at the high end. It is of course possible to put more than one chip in a box.

ASIC Bitcoin Miners

This is where the action's really at. Application Specific Integrated Circuits (ASICs) are specifically designed to do just one thing: mine bitcoins at mind-crushing speeds, with relatively low power consumption. Because these chips have to be designed specifically for that task and then fabricated, they are expensive and time-consuming to produce - but the speeds are stunning. At the time of writing, units are selling with speeds anywhere from 5-500 Gigahashes/sec (although actually getting some of them to them to ship has been a problem). Vendors are already promising ASIC devices with far more power, stretching up into the 2 Terahashes/sec range.

In September 2015, 21 released its 'Bitcoin Computer', which houses a mining chip and retails for around $400. It is aimed at developers to build applications with and not those wishing to mine bitcoin for profit.

21's 'Bitcoin Computer', which is aimed at developers and retails for $400.

Calculate mining profitability

Before making your purchase, calculate the projected profitability of your miner, using the excellent mining profitability calculator from The Genesis Block or this one. You can input parameters such as equipment cost, hash rate, power consumption, and the current bitcoin price to see how long it will take to pay back your investment.

One of the other key parameters here is network difficulty. This metric determines how hard it is to solve transaction blocks, and it varies according to the network hash rate. Difficulty is likely to increase substantially as ASIC devices come on the market, so it might be worth increasing this metric in the calculator to see what your return on investment will be like as more people join the game. Use this guide on calculating mining profitability for more information.

Once you have chosen your hardware, you'll need to do several other things:

Download the software

Depending on which equipment you choose, you will need to run software to make use of it. Typically when using GPUs and FPGAs, you will need a host computer running two things: the standard bitcoin client, and the mining software.

Standard bitcoin client

This software connects your computer to the network and enables it to interact with the bitcoin clients, forwarding transactions and keeping track of the block chain. It will take some time for it to download the entire bitcoin block chain so that it can begin. The bitcoin client effectively relays information between your miner and the bitcoin network.

Bitcoin mining software

The bitcoin mining software is what instructs the hardware to do the hard work, passing through transaction blocks for it to solve. There are a variety of these available, depending on your operating system. They are available for Windows, Mac OS X, and others.

You may well need mining software for your ASIC miner, too, although some newer models promise to ship with everything pre-configured, including a bitcoin address, so that all you need to do is plug it in the wall.

One smart developer even produced a mining operating system designed to run on the Raspberry Pi, a low-cost credit card-sized Linux computer designed to consume very small amounts of power. This could be used to power a USB-connected ASIC miner.

Join a pool

Now, you're all set up. Good for you. I bet you thought you were going to be mining more bitcoins than the Federal Reserve prints dollars, didn't you? Sadly not. You will stand little chance of success mining bitcoins unless you work with other people. You can find out more about that in our upcoming guide on how to join a mining pool.

As bitcoin world wobbles, mining rig company plans $2 billion IPO

HONG KONG (Reuters) - Bitcoins are worth less than half of what they were in December. Mining them is 60 percent less profitable than it was in 2017. Even retailers of hobbyist mining rigs say they are seeing fewer customers.

Why, then, is Canaan Inc, a leading cryptocurrency mining rig supplier, looking to raise up to $2 billion, according to two sources with knowledge of the deal, in the world’s biggest bitcoin-focused initial public offering to date?

Canaan is expected to present itself to investors not so much as a bitcoin company, but as a chip designer focused on developing other markets in artificial intelligence and blockchain, the electronic ledger that underpins bitcoin.

“Their customers happen to be bitcoin miners. But they are a chip company, not a bitcoin company,” said one of the sources. Both declined to be named because information about the IPO has not yet been made public.

The offering for Canaan, which claims to be the world’s second-largest bitcoin mining hardware supplier, is scheduled for July, the sources said. Canaan declined to comment.

The Beijing-based company’s profits rose seven-fold last year to 361 million yuan ($56.67 million), according to its prospectus, as bitcoin’s soaring price drove a surge in demand for its products, sold under the AvalonMiner brand.

But the effects of bitcoin’s volatility and rising mining costs can be seen in the shops of Sham Shui Po, just a few kilometres from Hong Kong’s central business district, where the IPO has been filed.

Businesses selling mining rigs there said demand - especially for high-end machines - was limping along.

Alvin Wong said the only rig in his Hong Kong electronics store this week was plugged in underneath the cash register, busily crunching numbers in search of profit.

“Since we weren’t selling the miner, we thought we might as well use it,” said Wong, a sales representative at Centralfield, in the Sham Shui Po computer district.

The change has come suddenly. Just a few months ago, demand for bitcoin mining gear in Sham Shui Po was booming. [nL4N1PY242]

Bitcoin prices have fallen 40 percent this year, hurting margins for miners. The cryptocurrency rose from $1,000 in January last year to more than $19,000 in December. Currently, one bitcoin is worth about $8,400.

PROMISED LAND

To some, the IPO presents a rare opportunity to buy into in a cryptocurrency supply company. They point to the old investing adage that the surest way to make money in a gold rush is to sell mining equipment.

“Investors are always looking for crypto ‘picks and shovels’, and that’s what this is,” said Jehan Chu, managing partner at Kenetic Capital, a Hong Kong based blockchain and crypto currency investment firm.

Canaan produces mining machines containing application specific integrated circuits, or ASICs, which are chips designed for a single purpose. Its customers are mostly large-scale miners with facilities holding thousands of machines working around the clock.

However, the rules governing bitcoin limit the amount that can be mined at one time. This means that the more computers there are mining, the more work and electricity are needed to earn the tokens.

Fast-rising capacity in the industry has hit profits hard: combined with the fall in bitcoin prices, analysts at Bernstein estimate that mining revenues are just 37 percent of their 2017 peak at roughly $17 million per day.

Last month, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Corporation (TSMC), the world’s largest chip manufacturer, cited uncertainty in the crypto market as a reason it was cutting its full-year sales target. TSMC is a major producer for Canaan Creative and its larger rival, Bitmain.

Cryptocurrency mining is under pressure in China. But last month, China Securities Regulatory Commission vice-chairman Jiang Yang gave Canaan the regulator’s apparent approval.

Visiting its factory, he said: “no matter what the chip is used for, fundamentally you’re still a chip company, and I hope you list in China,” according to mainland media reports.

MARKET TEST

Bitcoin-related companies have to date largely avoided diving directly into the public market - a fact illustrated by the pricing range suggested for Canaan’s deal.

Although the two sources were confident the IPO could raise $2 billion, others with knowledge of the deal said it was more likely to raise between $500 million and $1 billion.

A lack of comparable companies makes it harder to price. In Australia, DigitalBTC went public via a backdoor listing in 2014. Eighteen months later, however, the company changed its name to DigitalX and switched its focus to fintech software.

Last year in Canada, listed miner Leeta Gold became HIVE Blockchain.

“Its not your everyday investment world,” said HIVE chairman Frank Holmes, who is relatively new to the crypto world, but is a well-known investor in gold.

HIVE, with a market capitalization of $318 million, mines bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies in Iceland and Sweden, favored for the energy-intensive process because of their cool temperatures and cheap power.

“We became the first public company that allowed institutions to play in this kind of space,” Holmes added, pointing out that HIVE’s second-largest shareholder is Fidelity, the giant U.S. fund manager.

Other companies are also getting in on the act, with Canaan’s smaller rival Ebang also considering a Hong Kong IPO, according to IFR, a Thomson Reuters publication.

“The excitement about bitcoin and cryptocurrencies is not nearly finished, it is only just beginning,” said Kenetic’s Chu, who added that if successful, Canaan’s IPO would encourage other cryptocurrency-related firms to list.

People involved in Canaan’s IPO say the prospects for the offering depend in part on the price of bitcoin over the next two months.

While soggy prices, combined with rising mining capacity, will hit the hobby miners served by the Sham Shui Po shops far harder than Canaan’s industrial-sized customers, they would still cast a shadow over the deal.

In Sham Shui Po, meanwhile, Alvin Wong says he will soon unplug his rig to put it and others back on the shelves - just as soon as customer demand returns.

Reporting by Alun John and Jennifer Hughes; additional reporting by Sijia Jiang and Fiona Lau of IFR; Editing by Gerry Doyle

Best Bitcoin Mining Hardware for 2018 – Bitcoin Miner Reviews

The following page reviews the best hardware available today in order to make some sort of a profit with Bitcoin mining.

If you’re completely new to Bitcoin mining please read our “Is Bitcoin mining still profitable?” post before moving on. It will give you a good idea about the profitability of mining and will make you think twice before entering this very competitive niche.

If however, you are aware of the competitive nature of Bitcoin mining and still want to get in the game, here you will be able to find the best Bitcoin mining hardware available. The good news is that there are not many mining hardware companies left that make ASIC miners so choosing will probably be easy. That’s also the bad news. Even though many websites state long lists of Bitcoin mining hardware, only a handful of mining rigs can deal with the rising Bitcoin mining difficulty that’s out there these day.

How to compare Bitcoin miners

Below is a side by side comparison of all relevant miners. Underneath the table you’ll be able to see a summarized review of each of the miners. Keep in mind that in order to see how profitable you can be with any Bitcoin miner you’ll need to use a Bitcoin mining calculator based on your electricity cost, the Bitcoin exchange rate and the increase in difficulty throughout time. Since not all of these variables are known you will have to guess some as best as you can.

Select miner

AntMiner S9

Antminer R4

Antminer T9

AntMiner S7

AntMiner S5

Antrouter R1

Use our basic Bitcoin mining calculator to help you compare miners

Antminer S5 Bitcoin Miner Summarized Review

The Antminer S5 is the entry level Bitcoin miner for someone who isn’t ready to part away with more than a few hundred bucks. Users who have purchased it seem mostly pleased with the device. However this is an outdated device and with today’s mining difficulty and decreasing block reward you won’t make more than 0.05 BTC each money in revenue. This means you’ll need to run it for about one year and 8 months to get a full Bitcoin. Some customers also complained about the device being too noisy, but that’s just how a miner works – it’s loud and hot.

Click here to view Antminer S5 deals on eBay

Avalon 6 BitcoinMiner Summarized Review

The Avalon 6 is a great contender for both S5 and S7 AntMiners. From the small number of reviews that can be found online people are saying that it’s not nearly as loud as your usual miner and the hash rate is pretty reasonable. However at the current price tag I see little reason to choose it over the competition, it’s $100 more than the S7 that brings to the table superior results.

Click here to view Avalon 6 deals on eBay

Antminer S7 Bitcoin Miner Summarized Review

The Antminer S7 was the raining champion up until a few months ago. Even at today’s difficulty levels and with the block reward halving you can still make 0.15BTC a month. It’s not a lot at the moment but if the Bitcoin price continues to rise it may be a profitable investment.

However I wouldn’t suggest buying this rig due to the fact that it’s neither here nor there. It’s too expensive for an entry-level device and it’s too weak to generate any substantial amount of Bitcoins. Users who bought the device seem generally happy with it however it was first introduced on August 2015, so it’s not that new.

Antminer S9 Bitcoin Miner Summarized Review

The most advanced and most efficient Bitcoin miner today is the Antminer S9. If you’re serious about Bitcoin mining this is your rig. At the current difficulty this miner can mine around 0.02 Bitcoins every month which makes it seem like it would break even within a year. However we did not take into account the electricity costs, pool fees and hardware cost. Not to mention the fact the difficulty can rise and the Bitcoin price can drop.

It seems that even though this is the toughest miner out there, there’s only a small amount of time until it too will become outdated. Until that happens though, it looks like a pretty reliable piece of equipment.

Antminer R4 Bitcoin Miner Summarized Review

The Antminer R4 is intended for hobby mining – basically people who want to mine Bitcoins at home. Even though it can’t compete with the S9 it will probably be a good contender for the S7. The main advantage it has over other miners is the fact that it is has a specialized cooling unit that is much quieter than any other Bitcoin miner out there – since it’s made for a home environment.

According to our mining calculator this miner should break even in about 12 months. However if Bitcoin’s price continues to rise this miner may yet yield a good return on investment.

Avalon 7 Bitcoin Miner Summarized Review

The Aavalon 721 (or Avalon 7 as it is known commonly) is the latest Bitcoin miner supplied by Avalon in late 2016. It has a lower price tag than most of the advanced miners but is also less powerful. It seems to be a good choice for people who are looking for a cheaper entry level miner and don’t want to go for an Antminer S7.

According to our calculations, this miner should break even in about 24 months, making it a pretty risky investment. You can also connect up to 5 Avalon 721s in a row creating a powerful 30 TH/s mining rig.

Antminer T9 Bitcoin Miner Summarized Review

The Antminer T9 is a more reliable, cheaper version of the successful S9 model. However, the T9 uses almost 30% more power than the S9 making it much less attractive in terms of return on investment. If you want to get up and mining as soon as possible and reliability is more important to you than efficiency, then we’d say the T9 is a reasonable choice. If you don’t pay for power and just want a good, fast miner you can “fire up and forget,” the Antminer T9 will fit the bill nicely.

TechRadar pro

Best mining rig 2018: the top pre-built mining rigs for Bitcoin, Ethereum and more

Buy a mining rig to get earning cryptocurrencies ASAP

With the prices of graphics cards rising due to the cryptocurrency gold rush, it's now more sensible to buy a pre-built device for mining cryptocurrencies, which is where our best mining rig 2018 list comes in.

Unlike the best mining desktop PCs, which can be used for other day-to-day tasks as normal PCs, mining rigs are specially-designed for one purpose only: to efficiently and effectively mine cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin.

This means you won't be able to use a mining rig for other tasks, but it does mean you'll be getting the very best mining results thanks to the best mining rigs being designed to eke out the maximum return when running.

If you still want to build your own mining rig, check out our guides on the best mining GPUs, best mining CPU, best mining motherboards and best mining SSDs to help you get started.

1. Shark Mini

A great compact mining rig

Graphics cards: 6 x Nvidia GTX 1070 8GB | Warranty: 90 days

Shark Mining is a well-regarded company that makes some excellent pre-built mining rigs. Its Shark Mini is a compact rig that comes with four GPUs. The base model comes with GTX 1070 GPUs, but your can configure it to have a 1070 Ti GPU, which could net you an extra 10% profit, and you can also add a touchscreen display for keeping an eye on the rig. Shark Mining estimates a profit of $600 a month if you mine ZCash or Bitcoin, and up to $400 a month with Ethereum, though of course that could change.

2. Bitcoin Gold GPU Miner 2000 H/s

A good return on your investment

Graphics cards: 6 x Nvidia GTX 1060 6GB | Warranty: Default factory warranty

The Bitcoin Gold GPU Miner 2000 H/s from Ethereumminer.eu is a pre-built mining rig that offers the potential of a pretty excellent profit. While values may fluctuate, you could see this rig paying for itself after not long at all. Especially as it has recently had a price cut - something of a rarity with mining devices which usually see price rises! This rig can also be customised to suit your needs and budget.

3. Antminer D3

Graphics cards: N/A | Warranty: Contact MineShop for details

Application-specific integrated circuit chips (ASICs) differ from other mining rigs as they don't utilize GPUs to do the mining, which means price and power consumption is reduced. They can also solve Bitcoin blocks faster, which means they are definitely worth looking into. This ASIC miner from Mineshop.eu is a good mid-range miner that has a hash rate of 19.5 GH/s. Definitely one to consider if space is at a premium.

4. Shark PRO

A great mining rig for professional miners

Graphics cards: 6 x Nvidia GTX 1070 8GB | Warranty: 90 days

Shark Mining has another entry in this list of best mining rigs, this time with its Shark PRO mining rig. Like the Shark mini, this is a well-built device for mining that comes with a range of configuration options. The base model comes with six GTX 1070 cards, but these can be upgraded to GTX 1070 Ti or GTX 1080 Ti GPUs. It's an expensive rig, but the build quality and potential profit makes it a very tempting choice if you're serious about mining.

5. PandaMiner B5 Plus

An excellent compact miner

Graphics cards: 8 x AMD Radeon RX 460 | Warranty: 108 days

The PandaMiner B5 Plus is a brilliantly put together miner that's compact and attractive, while also being excellent at making profits when mining for cryptocurrencies. However, it is very expensive, and due to its popularity it can often be sold out. Luckily Pandaminer has a number of different models to choose from.

Bitcoin Mining Hardware Guide

The best Bitcoin mining hardware has evolved dramatically since 2009

At first, miners used their central processing unit (CPU) to mine, but soon this wasn't fast enough and it bogged down the system resources of the host computer. Miners quickly moved on to using the graphical processing unit (GPU) in computer graphics cards because they were able to hash data 50 to 100 times faster and consumed much less power per unit of work.

During the winter of 2011, a new industry sprang up with custom equipment that pushed the performance standards even higher. The first wave of these specialty bitcoin mining devices were easy to use Bitcoin miners were based on field-programmable gate array (FPGA) processors and attached to computers using a convenient USB connection.

FPGA miners used much less power than CPU's or GPU's and made concentrated mining farms possible for the first time.

Today's modern and best bitcoin mining hardware

Application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) miners have taken over completely. These ASIC machines mine at unprecedented speeds while consuming much less power than FPGA or GPU mining rigs. Several reputable companies have established themselves with excellent products.

Bitcoin Mining Hardware Comparison

Currently, based on (1) price per hash and (2) electrical efficiency the best Bitcoin miner options are:

AntMiner S7

AntMiner S9

Best Bitcoin Mining Hardware

Two major factors go into determining the best bitcoin mining hardware: (1) cost and (2) electricity efficiency.

Bitcoin mining is difficult to do profitably but if you try then this Bitcoin miner is probably a good shot.

ASIC Bitcoin Mining Hardware

Application-specific integrated circuit chips (ASICs) are bitcoin mining hardware created solely to solve Bitcoin blocks. They have only minimal requirements for other normal computer applications. Consequently, ASIC Bitcoin mining systems can solve Bitcoin blocks much quicker and use less less electricity or power than older bitcoin mining hardware like CPUs, GPUs or FPGAs.

As Bitcoin mining increases in popularity and the Bitcoin price rises so does the value of ASIC Bitcoin mining hardware. As more Bitcoin mining hardware is deployed to secure the Bitcoin network the Bitcoin difficulty rises. This makes it impossible to profitably compete without a Bitcoin ASIC system. Furthermore, Bitcoin ASIC technology keeps getting faster, more efficient and more productive so it keeps pushing the limits of what makes the best Bitcoin mining hardware.

Some models of Bitcoin miners include Antminer S5, Antminer U3, ASICMiner BE Tube, ASICMiner BE Prisma, Avalon 2, Avalon 3, BTC Garden AM-V1 616 GH/s, VMC PLATINUM 6 MODULE, and USB miners.

AntMiner U2

BPMC Red Fury USB

GekkoScience

Best Bitcoin Cloud Mining Services

For those not interested in operating the actual hardware then they can purchase Bitcoin cloud mining contracts. Being listed in this section is NOT an endorsement of these services. There have been a tremendous amount of Bitcoin cloud mining scams.

Hashflare Review: Hashflare offers SHA-256 mining contracts and more profitable SHA-256 coins can be mined while automatic payouts are still in BTC. Customers must purchase at least 10 GH/s.

Genesis Mining Review: Genesis Mining is the largest Bitcoin and scrypt cloud mining provider. Genesis Mining offers three Bitcoin cloud mining plans that are reasonably priced. Zcash mining contracts are also available.

Hashing 24 Review: Hashing24 has been involved with Bitcoin mining since 2012. They have facilities in Iceland and Georgia. They use modern ASIC chips from BitFury deliver the maximum performance and efficiency possible.

Minex Review: Minex is an innovative aggregator of blockchain projects presented in an economic simulation game format. Users purchase Cloudpacks which can then be used to build an index from pre-picked sets of cloud mining farms, lotteries, casinos, real-world markets and much more.

Minergate Review: Offers both pool and merged mining and cloud mining services for Bitcoin.

Hashnest Review: Hashnest is operated by Bitmain, the producer of the Antminer line of Bitcoin miners. HashNest currently has over 600 Antminer S7s for rent. You can view the most up-to-date pricing and availability on Hashnest's website. At the time of writing one Antminer S7's hash rate can be rented for $1,200.

Bitcoin Cloud Mining Review: Currently all Bitcoin Cloud Mining contracts are sold out.

NiceHash Review: NiceHash is unique in that it uses an orderbook to match mining contract buyers and sellers. Check its website for up-to-date prices.

Eobot Review: Start cloud mining Bitcoin with as little as $10. Eobot claims customers can break even in 14 months.

MineOnCloud Review: MineOnCloud currently has about 35 TH/s of mining equipment for rent in the cloud. Some miners available for rent include AntMiner S4s and S5s.

Top 5 Best Bitcoin Mining Rigs: Compare, Buy and Save

• Published Feb 18, 2018 at 2:09am
• Updated Feb 28, 2018 at 7:41pm

First of all, mining Bitcoin directly simply isn’t profitable. Multiple sources report that it just can’t be done. You could get an Antminer S9, the best ASIC hardware on the market, and you’ll be lucky to break even. There’s a lot of confusing information about this subject so let me be crystal clear: you as a person with a max budget of say, $10,000, can make money mining cryptocurrency, but not Bitcoin (See end of article for more discussion).

The best Bitcoin mining rig is a mining farm in China. Since most of us are not able to participate in this tantalizing yet capital-intensive business activity, we are left to mine all of the other cryptos. Fortunately, building a cryptocurrency mining rig is fairly straightforward. And once you acquire a bunch of whatever coin you choose to mine, you can use that coin to trade for Bitcoin (or Ethereum or Litecoin, and then into USD).

There are a few ways to make money with mining equipment. The stronger and more interesting one, in my opinion, is by mining new alternative cryptocurrencies. While most of these will be worth nothing, some of them will eventually be worth 10 or 100 times their current price. This means that with even only your CPU, you can stand to make an incredible percentage. The second option is to simply pick one or two cryptocurrencies you feel very strongly about and go with them. Because of my limited mining capacity (One GTX 1070, One GTX 1060), I have opted to solely mine Garlicoin. This is a trite memecoin, but since Dogecoin did very well, there is a fair chance the same could happen for Garlicoin. The third option is to use something like Nicehash (check out their profitability calculator). This service will automatically use your mining power and then pay you in Bitcoin. You won’t earn much, but then you’ll own the biggest crypto of them all; plus this is far more efficient than mining Bitcoin directly.

Disclaimer: If you are looking to invest or for financial security, I recommend you DO NOT spend money on cryptocurrency or cryptocurrency mining equipment. The best practice for getting into crypto is visualizing all of the money you are spending as being burnt in a fire. This is gambling, pure and simple.

Here’s the five best ways to get Bitcoin by mining altcoins.

1. Build a Dedicated GPU-Rig

If you’ve paid attention to crypto news, you may have heard that there are no graphics cards on the shelves. It’s true, there are very few, but if you can get between three and six of them, you can build a rig. Check Amazon for GTX cards, and you may be lucky enough to see something for sale. Note that you should pay around $400 for a GTX 1060, $550 for a GTX 1070, and $700 for a GTX 1080. That said, you may find cards that are more expensive. If you’re a gamer, you can squeeze some additional potential use out of the card (see item 5), but don’t think you’re evading some kind of risk because a graphics card is technically a capital asset: if you look to sell it later, chances are so will a lot of other people. Hence, buying during a shortage will likely mean selling during a surplus, and that’s bad business! Still, in theory, you can write this stuff off on your taxes since it is business equipment so you can lop 30% or so off the price right there.

Building a rig is fairly straightforward. You’ll need a mining motherboard, a processor (a cheap one is fine; the mining work is done by the graphics cards), a small quantity of RAM, PCIe risers (to reach the cards), flash drive, mining rig frame, cable ties, and a heavy-duty power supply (wouldn’t go lower than gold). There are many full guides to building a rig (Cryptosrus, Vice, YouTube), and it’s not exactly rocket science as most of the components are plug and play. However, there is trouble-shooting, diligence, and a fair amount of technical knowledge to get a hold of. If you’re not intimidated by computers, you can get through it. That said, don’t think you can set it up and forget about it. Coins fork. Graphics card stop working. Computers glitch. That said, most of the time, it is pretty close to printing money (between $2 and $3 per day per card).

That said, the biggest con to mining is that if you don’t find it fun, it’s not considered a betterm financial prospect than simply investing (some debate can be read here). For the investor-minded, we recommend Coinbase for buying Bitcoin and a handful of other cryptos.

2. Add a Crypto Mining Card To Your Current Windows Desktop

If you have a Windows desktop, there’s a good change your PC has one or two slots where you can stuff a graphics card. Unfortunately, this is not as simple of a solution as it may seem since graphics cards are overpriced and hard to find. Still, while opening up your PC may seem scary, hardware installation can be cheap ($40 or so at Geek Squad) and doing it yourself is simple. Check out this guide on how to add a graphics card to your current system.

Depending on your motherboard, you can install either Nvidia or AMD cards; be sure to figure out your system configuration (use the Run app (windows key + R) and type in dxdiag.exe to see your system components as a starting point).

Once you put in the graphics card, it’s pretty easy to get up and running. I was able to mine Garlicoin (which I don’t necessarily recommend you mine, but it’s a normal crypto in terms of difficulty for set up) in about 10 minutes. Back in 2014, I mined around $200 worth of Dogecoin using my CPU. It was worth $200 then. I don’t want to think about what it would be worth had I held, but probably around $2000.

3. Purchase an External GPU

Note: I do not recommend this, but the numbers bear out my personal suggestion. My EGPU, the Aorus GTX 1070, broke after two weeks of mining. That said, I recognize this is anecdotal evidence so I will explain this option nonetheless.

If your PC has a Thunderbolt 3 port, you can hook it up to a new technology, the external graphics card. To be clear, you MUST have a Thunderbolt 3 port. This is not merely a USB C port nor a USB 3.0 Superspeed port- it has to have a little Thunderbolt icon by it, then you’ll know, that’s Thunderbolt 3 (see this guide if you’re still confused).

There are two types of EGPU. All of them have the same basic principles, however. The first type is simple an external box that holds a normal graphics card, such as the Akitio Node. The second type contains a GPU already, like my late Aorus GTX 1070, that is a box that comes including a graphics card. For the former type, you will have to also purchase a graphics card separately.

Once you do, setup couldn’t be simpler. You simply plug in the power, plug in the EGPU, the PC detects it, and you run your miner. Again, I did this with Garlicoin and setting it up to mine on two graphics card (the PC’s internal card and the EGPU) was as simple as passing a flag at the command line, something like, “-d 1” to tell the miner to use graphics card. If you get this far and can’t figure out how to mine, feel free to email me danny dot vega at heavy dot com.

4. Mine With Your PC’s CPU

Mining with your CPU is doable, but with electricity costs and how considerably slower CPUs are for mining, it’s not necessarily a surefire way to money. That said, mining with your CPU can be worth it if you mine small, new cryptocurrencies. While you won’t necessarily mine a huge amount, there are definitely stories of people buying small amounts of crypto and then finding it has gone up significantly in value. After all, there was a time where one could mine Bitcoin itself with their CPU, though this was a long time ago.

This thread on BitcoinTalk.org gives some suggestions. Again, based on Dogecoin’s success, I recommend Garlicoin. It is a memecoin and not very special in any regard, but it does have a popular subreddit. You can learn how to mine Garlicoin with your CPU here.

5. Purchase a New PC With Graphics Card In It

This is either the best way or the worst way to do this, depending on your situation. If you’re looking to upgrade your PC, then this is the best way. While the price of graphics card is skyrocketing, it is not doing so when that graphics card is inside a PC. Therefore, the only way to get a graphics card at the normal human price is precisely by purchasing a PC. Check out some PCs with GTX 1070s or The Top 5 Best Desktops For Mining Cryptocurrency.

If you don’t need a new PC or need to upgrade, however, this is the equivalent of wanting to get a new tires, but getting a new car instead. Truly, it’s not that bad, but I don’t recommend it. The profitability is only that much farther.

I hope I was able to guide you toward some products or enlightenment in your crypto journey. If you have any questions or comments, I’m known to answer thoroughly.

Addendum: Are ASIC miners and mining Bitcoin really unprofitable?

Some people seem to have taken umbrage at this claim. Yet, no one has provided any evidence that this is not the case. Feel free to run the numbers yourself. TechRadar (identical to this article) reports that the most powerful Bitcoin miner on the market is the Antminer S9. There are also some less reliable companies selling similar miners at a slightly better price/performance. Even using the best case numbers, the break even point for these miners is almost a year long (calculations can be done on Coinwarz.com). Here Nicehash shows that profitability for an Antminer S9 is 10 months away. For a GTX 1070 that costs $600, it’s less than 8 months.

GPUs (even in today’s market) take 30% less time to pay their themselves, retain some value, and most importantly can be repurposed to mine a huge variety of coins. Once your Antminer S9 stops being profitable (if it ever gets there) mining Bitcoin, it’s a paper weight. That is not true about GPUs. They have resale value and can mine many different coins.

It is not my fringe opinion that mining Bitcoins is a bad idea. This Antminer S9 review on 99Bitcoins states,”Also there’s always the question of the increasing difficulty and how much time will pass until the Antminer s9 becomes obsolete (usually this happens within 8-12 months).” Buying an ASIC-miner means you’ll need luck just to make money, even if the price of Bitcoin increases. If you believe in Bitcoin, buy Bitcoin. If you want to make money mining, buy a GPU.

If you want to buy an ASIC-miner, I recommend you use an even more application-specific circuit called “an exchange.”

20 Insane Bitcoin Mining Rigs

Last updated on May 7th, 2018 at 12:43 pm

You already had the chance to see how Bitcoin miners take their “job” seriously in this post, when we wrote about the Frankenstein-like computers experts and amateurs were building in order to create digital currency.

If you still had any doubt about their commitment to the mining career, the next pictures will show you that they’re here to stay. These next 20 mining rigs are totally insane! Oh and if your interested we did a review on the best bitcoin mining software so you can be sure you get the most Hash per $ spent :)

1. 8 Core FPGA Bitcoin Miner

This rig is so complex it even looks like a model of a small city. And in the digital currency town every light is green!

2. 2x Gigabyte HD7970 – wooden model

Imagine the power of a machine like this. We’re confused just by looking at all these wires!

3. Insane 4 x HD5870 Miner

You can almost feel the wind coming out of those fans.

4. My Hobby Rig

Our favorite feature of this mining rig is the supports used to balance the legs of the table.

5. Sci Fi Mike Miner

This one is really good looking: with that sleek black box and the see through plastic supports.

6. Little Farm

The heap of boxes is simply amazing. And the huge fan is a great detail.

7. The Superior Frame

Never a simple self like this supported such a complex structure, we bet!

8. The Moose’s Tip Jar

Ooohhh, this one could belong to the movie “Avatar”. If Pandora inhabitants could connect their special “braiding” to a Bitcoin mining rig.

9. The Navidos Money Maker

It’s like having a wine rack full of digital money makers.

10. The Ghetto Money Maker!

It’s hard to believe that what seems like a bunch of garbage stuck in a plastic box can be the solution to your financial problems.

11. The Devil 13

The Antichrist of the Bitcoin mining universe.

12. Mining Rig Extraordinaire – The Trenton BPX6806

It’s like those pastimes when you have to figure out how many objects are in the picture, minus the creepy security footage that’s playing on the computer screen. Can you count the number of towers?

13. The Plan Man Rig

Two great details: the blue neon lights making us go crazy and the little fan swinging on the top of the mining pyramid.

14. The Hippie Tech Mobo

Those elements on the top seem like they’re about to spit some spikes. No, they’re just making money!

15. Monster Heater Mine

The mining rig of a geek with obsessive compulsive disorder. At least, this one is super organized.

16. The Tech Farm

We can only imagine how hard it will be to untangle all these wires…

17. The Fire Risk!

The number of fans is just too damn high! And also the danger rates.

18. Vendo’s GPU

The latest trend: mine Bitcoins and make the laundry at the same time.

19. Super Rig

This mining rig can create digital coins, make your lunch and raise your kids.

20. The properly refrigerated rig

There’s one mining rig that won’t get (too) hot. Well, at least, that’s the goal.

21. The Millionaire’s mine

This one has got to be the winner!

And a BONUS for you: Little Baby Ghetto rig in Bitcoin Examiner office :)

US Search Mobile Web

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The Yahoo product feedback forum now requires a valid Yahoo ID and password to participate.

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Improve your services

Your search engine does not find any satisfactory results for searches. It is too weak. Also, the server of bing is often off

I created a yahoo/email account long ago but I lost access to it; can y'all delete all my yahoo/yahoo account except for my newest YaAccount

I want all my lost access yahoo account 'delete'; Requesting supporter for these old account deletion; 'except' my Newest yahoo account this Account don't delete! Because I don't want it interfering my online 'gamble' /games/business/data/ Activity , because the computer/security program might 'scure' my Information and detect theres other account; then secure online activities/ business securing from my suspicion because of my other account existing will make the security program be 'Suspicious' until I'm 'secure'; and if I'm gambling online 'Depositing' then I need those account 'delete' because the insecurity 'Suspicioun' will program the casino game 'Programs' securities' to be 'secure' then it'll be 'unfair' gaming and I'll lose because of the insecurity can be a 'Excuse'. Hope y'all understand my explanation!

I want all my lost access yahoo account 'delete'; Requesting supporter for these old account deletion; 'except' my Newest yahoo account this Account don't delete! Because I don't want it interfering my online 'gamble' /games/business/data/ Activity , because the computer/security program might 'scure' my Information and detect theres other account; then secure online activities/ business securing from my suspicion because of my other account existing will make the security program be 'Suspicious' until I'm 'secure'; and if I'm gambling online 'Depositing' then I need those account 'delete' because the insecurity 'Suspicioun' will program the casino game 'Programs' securities' to be… more

chithidio@Yahoo.com

i dont know what happened but i can not search anything.

Golf handicap tracker, why can't I get to it?

Why do I get redirected on pc and mobile device?

Rahyaftco@yahoo.com

RYAN RAHSAD BELL literally means

Question on a link

In the search for Anaïs Nin, one of the first few links shows a picture of a man. Why? Since Nin is a woman, I can’t figure out why. Can you show some reason for this? Who is he? If you click on the picture a group of pictures of Nin and no mention of that man. Is it an error?

Repair the Yahoo Search App.

Yahoo Search App from the Google Play Store on my Samsung Galaxy S8+ phone stopped working on May 18, 2018.

I went to the Yahoo Troubleshooting page but the article that said to do a certain 8 steps to fix the problem with Yahoo Services not working and how to fix the problem. Of course they didn't work.

I contacted Samsung thru their Samsung Tutor app on my phone. I gave their Technican access to my phone to see if there was a problem with my phone that stopped the Yahoo Search App from working. He went to Yahoo and I signed in so he could try to fix the Yahoo Search App not working. He also used another phone, installed the app from the Google Play Store to see if the app would do any kind of search thru the app. The Yahoo Search App just wasn't working.

I also had At&t try to help me because I have UVERSE for my internet service. My internet was working perfectly. Their Technical Support team member checked the Yahoo Search App and it wouldn't work for him either.

We can go to www.yahoo.com and search for any topic or website. It's just the Yahoo Search App that won't allow anyone to do web searches at all.

I let Google know that the Yahoo Search App installed from their Google Play Store had completely stopped working on May 18, 2018.

I told them that Yahoo has made sure that their Yahoo members can't contact them about anything.

I noticed that right after I accepted the agreement that said Oath had joined with Verizon I started having the problem with the Yahoo Search App.
No matter what I search for or website thru the Yahoo Search App it says the following after I searched for
www.att.com.

WEBPAGE NOT AVAILABLE
This webpage at gttp://r.search.yahoo.com/_ylt=A0geJGq8BbkrgALEMMITE5jylu=X3oDMTEzcTjdWsyBGNvbG8DYmyxBHBvcwMxBHZ0aWQDTkFQUEMwxzEEc2VjA3NylRo=10/Ru=https%3a%2f%2fwww.att.att.com%2f/Rk=2/Es=plkGNRAB61_XKqFjTEN7J8cXA-
could not be loaded because:
net::ERR_CLEARTEXT_NOT_PERMITTED

I tried to search for things like www.homedepot.com. The same thing happened. It would say WEBPAGE NOT AVAILABLE. The only thing that changed were all the upper and lower case letters, numbers and symbols.
Then it would again say
could not be loaded because:
net::ERR_CLEARTEXT_NOT_PERMITTED

This is the same thing that happened when Samsung and At&t tried to do any kind of searches thru the Yahoo Search App.

Yahoo needs to fix the problem with their app.

Yahoo Search App from the Google Play Store on my Samsung Galaxy S8+ phone stopped working on May 18, 2018.

I went to the Yahoo Troubleshooting page but the article that said to do a certain 8 steps to fix the problem with Yahoo Services not working and how to fix the problem. Of course they didn't work.

I contacted Samsung thru their Samsung Tutor app on my phone. I gave their Technican access to my phone to see if there was a problem with my phone that stopped the Yahoo Search App from working. He went to Yahoo and… more

Build Your Own Portable Bitcoin Mining Rig / Battlestation

Introduction: Build Your Own Portable Bitcoin Mining Rig / Battlestation

This is XK ; For a really long time since i bought and build my own Bitcoin Miners , I have always wanted to build something more "dedicated " for mining tasks rather than using classical Server cabinets and so on. Something that will change my life entirely. Something that will never be forgotten ! Thus i build my evil setup !

For those who are not willing to say " Shut up and take my Money ! " I highly not recommend to proceed from now on ! I would say " Run You fools ! " Enough B.S.

Step 1: Some Background Information

As in the all other
Computational System We are struggling with heating issue. In order to resolve this issue (Since most of the CPU's are not operating above certain temperatures.) there are gigantic coolers in Data Centers , Or Liquid Cooling System in PCs or some Geeks such as us are using Liquid Nitrogen for Benchmark Overclocks, even baby oil !

Despite the fact that most of the People are thinking; "RESISTANCE" is the reason why Processing units heat up its actually not that simple. If you are more on the Scientific side you probably would have heard about and familiar with something called Information Theory , Thermodynamics and Entropy. At this point I would give you tiny tiny tiny piece of scientific explanation about heating but that's about it. Nothing more nothing less. This is an optional part of course for those who are CURIOUS about the reality behind heating (IN CPUs of Course)

As we all know this Cliché & Fact "Energy never Created or Destroyed " Energy Only transforms from one another.Despite the fact that we still could not fully formulate it as a Mathematical Model ; "Information" is also a kind of energy. So If you are familiar with Von Neumann Architecture Which is the currently used Architecture in all computational system that we are using while reading "this" including cellphones , Calculators and Super Computers. (Excluding Quantum Computers) ; You would know the FETCH + DECODE + EXECUTE Cycle. First you fetch the variable "A" From Register and Then "B" you add them up and put the result back to "A" and Clean "B". So I am asking this question from this example;

A(k) + B(k) = 17 and Last Picture is like this

If i wanted to figure out what was the value in A and B in k-th step ? Is there anyway for me to know that; If We did not saved it in the somewhere in the Memory ? Answer is swift and crystal clear : NO Of course. Which means our computational system is IRREVERSABLE you cannot say UNDO until the first computation that was made from that CPU. You can UNDO as long as the variables are stored in Memory and mapped correspondingly. So as far as the Information Theory concern in total entropy of the Universe is increased but as we Know Energy must be conserved Thus information that is lost from A and B (but most of it turns in to the New Information) must be transform into another kind of energy and guess what it is ? HEAT ENERGY !

Since our Setup Consists of 60+ GH/s(60 billion Hashes per second in one FDE Cycle) and Using SHA256 Algorithm (Which is 256 bits) ; We are dealing with 15.360.000.000.000 bits per second during these operations, as a comparison criteria : 4 GHz and 8 Core CPU 2.048.000.000.000 bits per second which is 8 Times less than our Setup therefore heat dissipation would be greatly higher. But don't be sad 8 Core CPU does this calculations in 1 cm^2 area our ASICs have much more surface area for to dissipate heat.

Enough Science lets move on to the Applied side of it !;

Step 2: Things That You Will Need !

1x Any Proper Frame you can choose ( Preferably Aliminum or Metal ) I have used Aliminum Wheeled Grocery.

Sh*t Load of Zip-Ties (Optionally Various Colors and Sizes)

Star Screw Drivers

Various Size and Length of cables

Electronic Connector / Terminator

Devices Used

3 x Dyconn 10 Port USB3.0 HUB

1 x IKEA PowerCord w/ power switch on it

1 x AMD CPU Fan 100 mm 12 Volt 0.7 Amp

2 x 120 mm Fan 12 Volt

2 x 100 mm Fan 12 Volt

1 x Xigmatek Tauro 500 W Power Supply

1 x 30 Amp Sound System Fuse

2 x Thermometers

ASIC Miners

26 x 336MH/s ASICMiner USB 2.5 W

4 x 1.6GH/s ANTMINER

2 x Butterfly Labs Jalapeno 7 GH/s

1 x ASICMiner Block Erupter Cube 30- 38 GH/s

Step 3: Checklist for Your Design

So first things first you may wanna lay down all you got !

Cleaning processes may or may not require for your case, Depending on whether or not you are using old Fans. If that's the case its always better to use cleaned up fans.

In my setup i have used 4 different layers in order to differentiate the items from each other. If you will follow a different setup there are some aspects you need to consider for efficiency.

* Hot air rises and the Cold air sinks. Because of that; Make sure to put most head productive items on the highest layer as possible.

* Power Cords and Power Adapters are EMI Productive which may cause some problems in long term so its always better to keep them separate (also for troubleshooting wise if necessary)

* Simulate or plan air flow scenarios. Where the cold air will be pulled and where the exhaust fans will be directed.

* Make sure to plan and put everything where ever you have planned to put so. Try whether or not everything fits as you imagined.

* Plan for cabling . Cable management is very important subject. You want your Battle-station to look pretty right ?

From this point I will put every picture I got to explain the process. I try not to talk as much as I did before this point. But I will put some important points on the picture notes.