Building My First Mining Rig - An Epic Newb Adventure, Part 1

Hello, my name is dhouse. I'm a software developer with a wife and a little 9 month old kiddo. I have a lot of hobbies, such as Talmudic study, Russian literature, fantasy baseball, all thing blockchain and crypto (of course), and howling into the void.

I decided to build a GPU mining rig despite the fact that I don't know almost anything about hardware or mining. IF I CAN DO IT, SO CAN YOU! (Actually, that might not really be true, since I do have a lot of familiarity with computers, being a software dev and all...but you probably can. If you are at least a little bit smart, you can reach your dreams! Or at least some of them. Hopefully. GO YOU!)

It's intimidating but so fun. I'm having so much fun just going for it, and not worrying about the fact that I don't know what I'm doing. I can google, I can read, I can learn this stuff. It's an amazing feeling, to realize that I can just do this, all on my own, no permission needed from my boss, from my professor, from my parents - from anyone! (Except my wife of course, lol. I told her, look - if you could build a machine that literally prints money, wouldn't you do it? Hook, line and sinker.)

Well, I haven't done it all yet - but I've started! And if there is anyone who has experience with this stuff and wants to warn me about things, or tell me I'm doing something wrong - GO AWAY MIND YOUR OWN BUSINESS haha just kidding, seriously I would love to learn as much as possible so comment away.

I made one of the most cheap, ghetto DIY 'frames' imaginable - I am basically mounting two small metal wire shelves between two upside-down milk crates, all using zip ties. I mounted the motherboard on the metal wire shelving, with a plastic placemat in between.

Of course, I accidentally bought DDR3 ram and my mobo needs DDR4, so I had to take a break until I can get down to the computer store and pick me up some of the right kind of Ram. But it's a start!