Hey folks and welcome to my first SteemIt post 

I’m going to share with you details about my mining rig, what parts I used, what results I’m getting and an answer to the question…. Was it all worth it?

Let’s start this story with why I’m doing this. Well that’s easy for me, I love anything to do with computers, I started as the IT support nerd in a small company way before the Millennium bug was even thought about. Although moving away from IT support I still find computers interesting so when I read up about how you can run a PC and it makes money I had to take a look. I decided to build a small but expandable testbed to look at some of the stats.

Let’s move on from the why I did this and take a look at my shopping list: -

Motherboard – ASRock H81 Pro BTC Intel H81 Socket LGA 1150 DDR3 ATX was the obvious choice. I only plan to install 2 GPU cards for now but may one day add some more, the fact you can install 6 in this motherboard is great for mining.

CPU – I went for a cheap one here - Intel Celeron G1840 Dual-core (2 Core) 2.80 GHz Processor.

Memory – Again I went budget and got the cheapest 4 gig stick I could find.

Disk – I had a 80 gig disk lying around so used that.

GPU – 2 x Sapphire AMD Radeon R9 380 4GB NITRO Graphics Cards.

PSU – I went for a EVGA 750 Watt GQ Gold PSU, this is plenty for running 2 GPU’s, Motherboard, Disk etc., when I buy more GPU’s I’ll buy an additional PSU to run those.

PCI-E Risers – I bought the powered ones with a 60cm lead. I bought 6 in preparation of buying more GPU’s. 

After spending a little over £600 on eBay I eagerly awaited the arrival of my new mining rig parts. Within a week they all arrived safely but I waited until the following weekend to open and test everything.

For simplicity I installed a 90-day trial of MS Windows and run Nice Hash Miner but once I’ve confirmed everything works as it should I’ll be moving to EthOS.

As you can see from the photo this rig is not pretty but it does work. I do need to build a new case but I’m waiting for more cards to arrive, once they do I’ll make a nice case for it.

I’m in the UK and electricity is not cheap here, I’m paying around £0.12 per KW Hour but I do intend to shop around and see if that is the cheapest I can get.

So let’s discuss if this is worth doing from a financial view point. For simplicity I’m using Nice Has miner I’m sure that isn’t the best but even based on that here are some approximate figures: -

Cost of Hardware - £665 this excludes a disk as I had one lying around

Cost of Electricity per month - £50

Income per month - £80

Profit Per Month - £30

ROI – well over 20 months.

I think it is fair to say that given a 20-month payback it probably isn’t worth doing from a financial view but I’m sure I can improve on these figures by moving away from Nice Hash and over to Eth OS. And that my friends will be the topic of my next post.

Please comment below, I’m particularly interested in HOW I can improve my rig so I want your candid feedback. Is Eth OS the way to go?

I hope you enjoyed my first post on SteemIt 

Jimmy