How to build a mining rig for Monero

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If you want to build a mining rig for Monero, you’ve come to the right place. Most mining rigs consist of a frame, basic computer parts (motherboard, power supply, RAM, etc.), and somewhere between 4 and 7 GPUs. You can customize and modify your rig however you want depending on your initial investment and your plans for the future, but we’ll be describing a basic 6 GPU mining rig for Monero in this guide.

This 6 GPU mining rig will cost you around $1,800 to $2,500 depending on the prices you manage to secure for your GPUs. Currently (6/1/2017), most of the best GPU options are sold out, causing ridiculously high prices to pop up on Amazon, eBay, and other merchants. That said, there are ways to acquire GPUs at moderate prices, and I’ll describe that below.

Hardware List for 6 GPU Monero Mining Rig

Power Supply Unt (PSU) –  What’s the best PSU for mining Monero? You’re going to want a power supply that can save you as much energy as possible in the long run, since you’ll be trying to offset the price of electricity with the profits you make from mining. If you have a low-quality or inefficient PSU, you’re going to be incurring unnecessary charges on your electricity bill. It’s also a good idea to get a high-quality PSU so that you’re safe from fire or other random problems.

Good 1200 Watt options for your 6 GPU rig (Corsair is generally a good brand):

You definitely want a 1200 W PSU if you’re going to have 6 GPUs running at the same time, but if those are generally low in stock and you are willing to settle for 4 or 5 GPUs on your rig, you can go with a 1,000W power supply (but you still should get one that’s rated for low electricity consumption!).

Motherboard — What is the best motherboard for mining Monero? There are lots of doable motherboard + CPU combinations that will work for building an Monero mining rig, but actually finding one in stock can be a bit of a headache. Some sites sell pre-configured motherboard + CPU products, but if you want to save some money, it might be worth your effort to look around on Amazon and eBay to find a good combination that will work for you.

It goes without saying that you’re going to want a motherboard with the same number (or more) PCI slots you’re going to need for your graphics cards. If you are willing to settle for using less than 6 GPUs in your rig (and thereby getting less profit), there are tons of options to choose from and they are widely-in stock. But if you want to stay true to the plan, max out your profits, and run 6 GPUs, you’re going to have to do a bit more digging to find the appropriate combo on some hard-to-find motherboards.

The below are easy links to Amazon, but if you can’t find one on Amazon, it’s also worth checking eBay and Newegg for stock.

The two most popular boards (and therefore the best for getting support online:

Other options that will work just fine:

CPU — Now, what is the best CPU for mining Monero? That’s a much easier question: the simple answer is that you should get a CPU that works with the slot on your motherboard. If you’re going to get one of the above motherboards, chances are you’re going to need an Intel CPU for slot LGA 1150. Unless you plan to use your rig for something other than mining, you should just get a budget Intel Celeron CPU to keep the cost of your rig down.

RAM — What’s the best RAM to buy for mining Monero? To go with your motherboard and your CPU, you’re going to need some RAM for your rig. The most economical purchase is likely to be a single stick of 4GB DDR3 RAM. If you want to run other applications on your rig for one reason or another, then perhaps go with 8GB. Regardless, you don’t need much RAM to mine.

Graphics Cards (GPUs) (4-6x) — What’s the best GPU for mining Monero? There are lots of good answers to this question, but as of the time of this writing, the answer is: whatever cards you can get your hands on. Stock is so limited that almost anything is better than nothing, but there are still a select few AMD RX cards that you should probably stick to.

The actual brand of the card is not the most important part (although some are better than others, like the usually-higher-quality Sapphire and MSI), rather you want to make sure you get the right AMD chip. A variety of manufacturers make cards using AMD RX 470, 480, 570, and 580, and just about any of them will work fine. Also, it’s likely a good idea to get an 8GB RAM card.

  • ​​​AMD Radeon RX 580 – An RX 580 will likely get you more than 400H/s, and when stock is available, it’s a great card for mining Monero.
  • AMD Radeon Rx 480 –    Another great card for mining Monero is the Radeon RX 480. This card usually gets more than 400H/s after a bios mod and tweaking the clock speed and uses roughly 150 watts.
  • AMD Radeon Rx 470  –   Basically the smaller brother of the RX 480, the RX 470 is widely regarded as the best bang for your buck in Monero mining — as long as you can find it. After you mod it, you’ll get more than 400H/s, and it consumes around 140 watts.
  • Gigabyte GeForce GTX 1070  –  While I would recommend against getting an Nvidia card (they tend to have less support from mining software), it’s impossible not to mention the GTX 1070. It will get you more than 400H/s and uses almost half as much energy as the RX cards, so while it may be expensive up front, it might pay off for some in the long run.

PCIe Riser Cables — What are the best PCIe risers to use for mining? In my experience (and I’ve asked around about this quite a bit to professional miners), you’re best off using the Ver. 06C or Ver. 007 6-pin to SATA PCIe risers that you can find on Amazon and other retailers. Don’t cheap out on these — get some good quality risers. This is one area of your rig that will most likely fail at some point, and if that happens, you don’t want to lose a card or have a wire catch on fire.

1x Solid StateDrive (SSD) — What’s the best hard drive/SSD for mining Monero? You probably want to get a solid state drive of course (it will save you on energy and would be one less failure point for a rig that’s going to be running 24/7). A 120GB SSD will do just fine from just about any brand.

Mining Case — You’re going to need something to keep your rig put together on (you only need one!) If you don’t have the skill or materials to build your own (people have built some crazy cases out of a variety of materials), you probably want to get something that was assembled by someone else. Something like this one on Amazon would work perfectly.

Operating System —  You have a few options when it comes to operating system. I personally went with Windows 10 for my rig (most software for mining will work fine with Windows, and I already had a key laying around from an old computer). But if you don’t already have access to Windows 10 for free or cheap, you can try a modern fork of Linux, too!

Accessories —  Of course you’re going to need a cheap Monitor, Mouse and Keyboard to get everything set up, but chances are if you’re looking build a rig then you already have some of these laying around somewhere. Also, don’t forget to buy a cheap power button for your rig so that you can easily turn it off and on.

How to Assemble Monero Mining Rig

After you’ve managed to pick up all of these parts, you have to embark on the actual process of building your rig. So how do you assemble a Monero mining rig once you have all the parts? It might seem daunting if you’ve never assembled a computer before, but it’s actually pretty simple. Just follow these steps.

Steps to assemble a Monero Mining Rig

Step 1 — Get your rig case set up. I ordered a wooden “case” from eBay for my rig, so it required a bit of work to put together. This step will depend on where you get your case (or if you decide to build it yourself), so simply follow the instructions from the manufacturer. My wooden “case” just required me to have a philip’s head screwdriver, and to screw in a couple screws. Then I was ready to mount the motherboard.

Step 2 — Mount the motherboard. After your mining case is set up and ready to go, you’ll need to mount your motherboard to the rig so that the bottom of it is protected from damage. My wooden rig included some spacers and screws for this, so it was pretty straightforward. I laid my motherboard on the wooden case to make marks for the holes with a pen, and then placed each spacer above the marks.

Here’s an example of these holes on the Biostar TB85 motherboard. The red arrows show the holes I would consider mandatory on this board (they were the only ones that fit on my case), and the blue arrows I left unscrewed.

I used the screw and screw driver to get a hole going for each spacer. Then I removed the screws from the wooden case, placed the motherboard on top of the spacers (this part might take a bit of work to line up all the spacers correctly), and then screwed each screw in. You’re going to want to use all of the screws that your motherboard requires, which will probably be somewhere between 7 and 10.

Step 3 — Connect the CPU. This step varies by motherboard and CPU (it’s slightly different for AMD CPUs, compared to Intel CPUs, for example), but it’s still pretty straightforward. You should always check your CPU and Motherboard instructions before proceeding, but the gist is this: open up the CPU holder using the lever, remove the plastic insert (if your motherboard has one), and place the CPU inside. You’re going to want to look for an arrow on one corner of the CPU and line it up with an arrow on the motherboard.

Click here for an easy and quick rundown on how to install a CPU on a motherboard.

Once you have the CPU actually seated and installed properly on the motherboard, you need to connect the CPU fan to the motherboard. You should see a three-pin connector that is likely labeled something like “CPU fan”. Then, you should use an 2×4-pin cable to connect your CPU to the power supply. Most likely the cable (and the GPU) will be labeled CPU. The port that you want to connect to your power cable is going to liekyl be a 4-pin port located somewhere on the motherboard near the CPU.

Step 4 — Install the RAM. You’ll see two or four slots on your motherboard for DDR3 RAM. You already ordered your DDR3 RAM sticks from Amazon (or some other dealer). Simply remove them from the packaging, make sure the levers for holding down the RAM are open, and seat the RAM in the motherboard. If you do it correctly, the stick(s) should click into place nicely on both sides and should be secure.

Step 5 — Connect the SSD. This is a pretty simple step as well. You should have an SSD which will serve as your hard drive. Connect this SSD to the motherboard using the SATA data cable that most likely shipped in the same box as your motherboard. After this, connect your SSD using the sata power cable that came with your GPU. One cable should be labeled SATA, you should connect that end to the GPU end that also says SATA, and then connect the SATA cable to your SSD.

Step 6 — Mount and connect GPUs. This is likely going to be the trickiest part of the actual hardware assembly, but it’s not that bad. First you need to take out all of the risers from their packaging, and assemble them appropriately. The PCIe 16x part will connect directly to the bottom of the video card, which connects to a USB cable, which connects to a PCIe 1x piece that connects to your motherboard. You can connect this 1x slot to the 1x slots on the board, and also the 16x slot. However, for the 16x slot, be careful to place the 1x piece in the correct direction. The below image depicts the correct placement.

After you have the GPUs connected to the motherboard, you need to mount them to the case. This can be done in a variety of ways, but the most common is to simply place the GPUs on the case and connect them more “permanently” using zip ties. Finally, after you have your GPUs mounted, you should run a cable labeled “VGA” rom the power supply unit to the 6- or 8-pin VGA connector on each GPUs, and you should connect a few SATA power cables to each of the powered risers. I recommended the 6-pin to SATA risers above, and I would further recommend that you only connect at most 2 cards per SATA cable from the GPU.

Step 7 — Mount a couple fans. To keep your rig cool, it’s a good idea to mount a couple of fans that blow towards the GPU and help air flow between your cards. There should be a couple of fan connectors on your motherboard, and it’s pretty simple to mount a fan or two with zip ties.

Step 8 — Connect your power button. You’re probably going to have to take a peek at your motherboard manual to do this correctly (it varies a little bit between boards), but you need to connect your power button to the motherboard. Just find which pins correlate with the button (they’re probably at the bottom of the motherboard, on the opposite side from the CPU).

Step 9 — Check all your connections and cable management. Mining rigs are known for being not that stable and prone to weirdness and fire etc, so it’s a really good idea to check all of your connections and make sure that everything is secure. You should have power cables running from the PSU to the SSD, the GPUs, the GPU powered risers, the CPU port on the motherboard, and the motherboard via its big power cable. And once you know for sure all of these are lined up and connected correctly, you can mount your PSU somewhere on the rig.

One little extra tip that might come in handy is that it’s worth it to use zip ties to clean up your cable management a bit. You don’t want any hot fans (like from the PSU, especially) blowing hot air on another connection. Specifically, watch out for those powered riser converter cables. You don’t want one of those sitting on top of the hot-air-blowing PSU fan. You also want to make sure there isn’t any tension of pressure pulling on any of the connections.

Step 10 — Get software up and running. I’m going to save this for another guide entirely, but after you get all this hardware set up and connected, you’re going to need to get your software up and running. If that’s EthOS, then you simply throw that OS on a USB stick, plug that into your rig, power things up, and press whatever key on your keyboard will let you choose your boot drive. It’s F8 on many motherboards. Then select the USB drive that has EthOS waiting to be installed, and follow the instructions. It’s a similar process for Windows 10, but like I said, I’ll leave this for another guide.

Have feedback or thoughts on how we can improve this guide? Leave a comment.

Full list of Claymore’s GPU miner parameters and command line options

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If you’ve been mining with Claymore’s for a while now, you might have realized that the program is far more powerful than you thought. While it’s easy to get it set up and running initially as we detailed in our full Claymore’s guide, it also has an extensive number of parameters that can control everything from the time between HTTP requests to target GPU temperatures — all from the command line.

From the program’s Readme.txt, here’s the full list of Claymore’s command line options:

-epool Ethereum pool address. Only Stratum protocol is supported for pools. Miner supports all pools that are compatible with Dwarfpool proxy and accept Ethereum wallet address directly. For solo mining, specify “http://” before address, note that this mode is not intended for proxy or HTTP pools, also “-allpools 1” will be set automatically in this mode. Note: The miner supports all Stratum versions for Ethereum, HTTP mode is necessary for solo mining only.  Using any proxies will reduce effective hashrate by at least 1%, so connect miner to Stratum pools directly. Using HTTP pools will reduce effective hashrate by at least 5%.

-ewal Your Ethereum wallet address. Also worker name and other options if pool supports it.  Pools that require “Login.Worker” instead of wallet address are not supported directly currently, but you can use “-allpools 1” option to mine there.

-epsw Password for Ethereum pool, use “x” as password.

-eworker Worker name, it is required for some pools.

-esm Ethereum Stratum mode. 0 - eth-proxy mode (for example, dwarpool.com), 1 - qtminer mode (for example, ethpool.org),  2 - miner-proxy mode (for example, coinotron.com), 3 - nicehash mode. 0 is default.

-etha Ethereum algorithm mode for AMD cards. 0 - optimized for fast cards, 1 - optimized for slow cards, 2 - for gpu-pro Linux drivers. -1 - autodetect (default, automatically selects between 0 and 1).  You can also set this option for every card individually, for example “-etha 0,1,0”.

-asm (AMD cards only) enables assembler GPU kernels. In this mode some tuning is required even in ETH-only mode, use “-dcri” option or or “+/-” keys in runtime to set best speed. Currently ETH-LBRY mode is not supported in assembler. Specify “-asm 0” to disable this option. You can also specify values for every card, for example “-asm 0,1,0”. Default value is “1”. If ASM mode is enabled, miner must show “GPU #x: algorithm ASM” at startup. Check “FINE-TUNING” section below for additional notes. NEW: added alternative assembler kernels for Tonga and Polaris cards for ETH-only mode. Use them if you get best speed at “-dcri 1” (i.e. you cannot find speed peak), use “-asm 2” option to enable this mode.

-ethi Ethereum intensity. Default value is 8, you can decrease this value if you don’t want Windows to freeze or if you have problems with stability. The most low GPU load is “-ethi 0”. Also “-ethi” now can set intensity for every card individually, for example “-ethi 1,8,6”. You can also specify negative values, for example, “-ethi -8192”, it exactly means “global work size” parameter which is used in official miner.

-eres this setting is related to Ethereum mining stability. Every next Ethereum epoch requires a bit more GPU memory, miner can crash during reallocating GPU buffer for new DAG.  To avoid it, miner reserves a bit larger GPU buffer at startup, so it can process several epochs without buffer reallocation. This setting defines how many epochs miner must foresee when it reserves GPU buffer, i.e. how many epochs will be processed without buffer reallocation. Default value is 2.

-allpools Specify “-allpools 1” if miner does not want to mine on specified pool (because it cannot mine devfee on that pool), but you agree to use some default pools for devfee mining.  Note that if devfee mining pools will stop, entire mining will be stopped too.

-allcoins Specify “-allcoins 1” to be able to mine Ethereum forks, in this mode miner will use some default pools for devfee Ethereum mining.  Note that if devfee mining pools will stop, entire mining will be stopped too.  Miner has to use two DAGs in this mode - one for Ethereum and one for Ethereum fork, it can cause crashes because DAGs have different sizes.  Therefore for this mode it is recommended to specify current Ethereum epoch (or a bit larger value),  for example, “-allcoins 47” means that miner will expect DAG size for epoch #47 and will allocate appropriate GPU buffer at starting, instead of reallocating bigger GPU buffer (may crash) when it starts devfee mining. Another option is to specify “-allcoins -1”, in this mode miner will start devfee round immediately after start and therefore will get current epoch for Ethereum, after that it will be able to mine Ethereum fork. If you mine Expanse, the best way is to specify “-allcoins exp”, in this mode devfee mining will be on Expanse too and DAG won’t be recreated at all. If you mine ETC on some pool that does not accept wallet address but requires Username.Worker instead, the best way is to specify “-allcoins etc”, in this mode devfee mining will be on ETC pools and DAG won’t be recreated at all.

-etht Time period between Ethereum HTTP requests for new job in solo mode, in milliseconds. Default value is 200ms.

-erate send Ethereum hashrate to pool. Default value is “1”, set “-erate 0” if you don’t want to send hashrate.

-estale send Ethereum stale shares to pool, it can increase effective hashrate a bit. Default value is “1”, set “-estale 0” if you don’t want to send stale shares.

-dpool Decred/Siacoin/Lbry/Pascal pool address. Use “http://” prefix for HTTP pools, “stratum+tcp://” for Stratum pools. If prefix is missed, Stratum is assumed. Decred: both Stratum and HTTP are supported. Siacoin: both Stratum and HTTP are supported, though note that not all Stratum versions are supported currently. Lbry: only Stratum is supported.

-dwal Your Decred/Siacoin/Lbry/Pascal wallet address or worker name, it depends on pool.

-dpsw Password for Decred/Siacoin/Lbry/Pascal pool.

-di GPU indexes, default is all available GPUs. For example, if you have four GPUs “-di 02” will enable only first and third GPUs (#0 and #2). You can also turn on/off cards in runtime with “0”…”9″ keys and check current statistics with “s” key.

-gser this setting can improve stability on multi-GPU systems if miner hangs during startup. It serializes GPUs initalization routines. Use “-gser 1” to serailize some of routines and “-gser 2” to serialize all routines. Default value is “0” (no serialization, fast initialization).

-mode Select mining mode: “-mode 0” (default) means dual Ethereum + Decred/Siacoin/Lbry mining mode. “-mode 1” means Ethereum-only mining mode. You can set this mode for every card individually, for example, “-mode 1-02” will set mode “1” for first and third GPUs (#0 and #2).

-dcoin select second coin to mine in dual mode. Possible options are “-dcoin dcr”, “-dcoin sc”, “-dcoin lbc”, “-dcoin pasc”. Default value is “dcr”.

-dcri Decred/Siacoin/Lbry/Pascal intensity, or Ethereum fine-tuning value in ETH-only ASM mode. Default value is 30, you can adjust this value to get the best Decred/Siacoin/Lbry mining speed without reducing Ethereum mining speed.  You can also specify values for every card, for example “-dcri 30,100,50”. You can change the intensity in runtime with “+” and “-” keys and check current statistics with “s” key. For example, by default (-dcri 30) 390 card shows 29MH/s for Ethereum and 440MH/s for Decred. Setting -dcri 70 causes 24MH/s for Ethereum and 850MH/s for Decred.

-dcrt Time period between Decred/Siacoin HTTP requests for new job, in seconds. Default value is 5 seconds.

-ftime failover main pool switch time, in minutes, see “Failover” section below. Default value is 30 minutes, set zero if there is no main pool.

-wd watchdog option. Default value is “-wd 1”, it enables watchdog, miner will be closed (or restarted, see “-r” option) if any thread is not responding for 1 minute or OpenCL call failed. Specify “-wd 0” to disable watchdog.

-r Restart miner mode. “-r 0” (default) - restart miner if something wrong with GPU. “-r -1” - disable automatic restarting. -r >20 - restart miner if something  wrong with GPU or by timer. For example, “-r 60” - restart miner every hour or when some GPU failed. “-r 1” closes miner and execute “reboot.bat” file (“reboot.bash” or “reboot.sh” for Linux version) in the miner directory (if exists) if some GPU failed.  So you can create “reboot.bat” file and perform some actions, for example, reboot system if you put this line there: “shutdown /r /t 5 /f”.

-minspeed minimal speed for ETH, in MH/s. If miner cannot reach this speed for 5 minutes for any reason, miner will be restarted (or “reboot.bat” will be executed if “-r 1” is set). Default value is 0 (feature disabled).

-retrydelay delay, in seconds, between connection attempts. Default values is “20”. Specify “-retrydelay -1” if you don’t need reconnection, in this mode miner will exit if connection is lost.

-dbg debug log and messages. “-dbg 0” - (default) create log file but don’t show debug messages.  “-dbg 1” - create log file and show debug messages. “-dbg -1” - no log file and no debug messages.

-logfile debug log file name. After restart, miner will append new log data to the same file. If you want to clear old log data, file name must contain “noappend” string. If missed, default file name will be used.

-nofee set “1” to cancel my developer fee at all. In this mode some optimizations are disabled so mining speed will be slower by about 4%.  By enabling this mode, I will lose 100% of my earnings, you will lose only 2-3% of your earnings. So you have a choice: “fastest miner” or “completely free miner but a bit slower”. If you want both “fastest” and “completely free” you should find some other miner that meets your requirements, just don’t use this miner instead of claiming that I need  to cancel/reduce developer fee, saying that 1-2% developer fee is too much for this miner and so on.

-benchmark benchmark mode, specify “-benchmark 1” to see hashrate for your hardware. You can also specify epoch number for benchmark, for example, “-benchmark 110”.

-li low intensity mode. Reduces mining intensity, useful if your cards are overheated. Note that mining speed is reduced too.  More value means less heat and mining speed, for example, “-li 10” is less heat and mining speed than “-li 1”. You can also specify values for every card, for example “-li 3,10,50”. Default value is “0” - no low intensity mode.

-lidag low intensity mode for DAG generation, it can help with OC or weak PSU. Supported values are 0, 1, 2, 3, more value means lower intensity. Example: “-lidag 1”. You can also specify values for every card, for example “-lidag 1,0,3”. Default value is “0” (no low intensity for DAG generation).

-ejobtimeout job timeout for ETH, in minutes. If miner does not get new jobs for this time, it will disconnect from pool. Default value is 10.

-djobtimeout job timeout for second coin in dual mode, in minutes. If miner does not get new jobs for this time, it will disconnect from pool. Default value is 30.

-tt set target GPU temperature. For example, “-tt 80” means 80C temperature. You can also specify values for every card, for example “-tt 70,80,75”. You can also set static fan speed if you specify negative values, for example “-tt -50” sets 50% fan speed. Specify zero to disable control and hide GPU statistics. “-tt 1” (default) does not manage fans but shows GPU temperature and fan status every 30 seconds. Specify values 2..5 if it is too often. Note: for NVIDIA cards only temperature monitoring is supported, temperature management is not supported. Note: for Linux gpu-pro drivers, miner must have root access to manage fans, otherwise only monitoring will be available.

-ttdcr reduce Decred/Siacoin/Lbry/Pascal intensity automatically if GPU temperature is above specified value. For example, “-ttdcr 80” reduces Decred intensity if GPU temperature is above 80C.  You can see current Decred intensity coefficients in detailed statistics (“s” key). So if you set “-dcri 50” but Decred/Siacoin intensity coefficient is 20% it means that GPU currently mines Decred/Siacoin at “-dcri 10”. You can also specify values for every card, for example “-ttdcr 80,85,80”. You also should specify non-zero value for “-tt” option to enable this option. It is a good idea to set “-ttdcr” value higher than “-tt” value by 3-5C.

-ttli reduce entire mining intensity (for all coins) automatically if GPU temperature is above specified value. For example, “-ttli 80” reduces mining intensity if GPU temperature is above 80C. You can see if intensity was reduced in detailed statistics (“s” key). You can also specify values for every card, for example “-ttli 80,85,80”. You also should specify non-zero value for “-tt” option to enable this option. It is a good idea to set “-ttli” value higher than “-tt” value by 3-5C.

-tstop set stop GPU temperature, miner will stop mining if GPU reaches specified temperature. For example, “-tstop 95” means 95C temperature. You can also specify values for every card, for example “-tstop 95,85,90”. This feature is disabled by default (“-tstop 0”). You also should specify non-zero value for “-tt” option to enable this option. If it turned off wrong card, it will close miner in 30 seconds. You can also specify negative value to close miner immediately instead of stopping GPU, for example, “-tstop -95” will close miner as soon as any GPU reach 95C temperature.

-fanmax set maximal fan speed, in percents, for example, “-fanmax 80” will set maximal fans speed to 80%. You can also specify values for every card, for example “-fanmax 50,60,70”. This option works only if miner manages cooling, i.e. when “-tt” option is used to specify target temperature. Default value is “100”. Note: for NVIDIA cards this option is not supported.

-fanmin set minimal fan speed, in percents, for example, “-fanmin 50” will set minimal fans speed to 50%. You can also specify values for every card, for example “-fanmin 50,60,70”. This option works only if miner manages cooling, i.e. when “-tt” option is used to specify target temperature. Default value is “0”. Note: for NVIDIA cards this option is not supported.

-cclock set target GPU core clock speed, in MHz. If not specified or zero, miner will not change current clock speed. You can also specify values for every card, for example “-cclock 1000,1050,1100,0”. Unfortunately, AMD blocked underclocking for some reason, you can overclock only. Note: for NVIDIA cards this option is not supported.

-mclock set target GPU memory clock speed, in MHz. If not specified or zero, miner will not change current clock speed. You can also specify values for every card, for example “-mclock 1200,1250,1200,0”. Unfortunately, AMD blocked underclocking for some reason, you can overclock only. Note: for NVIDIA cards this option is not supported.

-powlim set power limit, from -50 to 50. If not specified, miner will not change power limit. You can also specify values for every card, for example “-powlim 20,-20,0,10”. Note: for NVIDIA cards this option is not supported.

-cvddc set target GPU core voltage, multiplied by 1000. For example, “-cvddc 1050” means 1.05V. You can also specify values for every card, for example “-cvddc 900,950,1000,970”. Supports latest AMD 4xx cards only in Windows. Note: for NVIDIA cards this option is not supported.

-mvddc set target GPU memory voltage, multiplied by 1000. For example, “-mvddc 1050” means 1.05V. You can also specify values for every card, for example “-mvddc 900,950,1000,970”. Supports latest AMD 4xx cards only in Windows. Note: for NVIDIA cards this option is not supported.

-mport remote monitoring/management port. Default value is -3333 (read-only mode), specify “-mport 0” to disable remote monitoring/management feature.  Specify negative value to enable monitoring (get statistics) but disable management (restart, uploading files), for example, “-mport -3333” enables port 3333 for remote monitoring, but remote management will be blocked. You can also use your web browser to see current miner state, for example, type “localhost:3333” in web browser.  Warning: use negative option value or disable remote management entirely if you think that you can be attacked via this port! By default, miner will accept connections on specified port on all network adapters, but you can select desired network interface directly, for example, “-mport 127.0.0.1:3333” opens port on localhost only.

-mpsw remote monitoring/management password. By default it is empty, so everyone can ask statistics or manage miner remotely if “-mport” option is set. You can set password for remote access (at least EthMan v3.0 is required to support passwords).

-colors enables or disables colored text in console. Default value is “1”, use “-colors 0” to disable coloring. Use 2…4 values to remove some of colors.

-v displays miner version, sample usage: “-v 1”.

-altnum alternative GPU indexing. This option does not change GPU order, but just changes GPU indexes that miner displays, it can be useful in some cases. Possible values are: 0: default GPU indexing. For example, if you specify “-di 05” to select first and last GPUs of six GPUs installed, miner will display these two selected cards as “GPU0” and “GPU1”. 1: same as “0”, but start indexes from one instead of zero. For example, if you specify “-di 05” to select first and last GPUs of six GPUs installed, miner will display these two selected cards as “GPU1” and “GPU2”. 2: alternative GPU indexing. For example, if you specify “-di 05” to select first and last GPUs of six GPUs installed, miner will display these two selected cards as “GPU0” and “GPU5”. 3: same as “2”, but start indexes from one instead of zero. For example, if you specify “-di 05” to select first and last GPUs of six GPUs installed, miner will display these two selected cards as “GPU1” and “GPU6”. Default value is “0”.

Want to learn how to build a 6 GPU rig for Ethereum? Click here.

How to set up and run Claymore’s Ethereum miner on Windows

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If you’re new to mining, you’ve probably encountered — at one point or another — a mention of Claymore’s Ethereum miner. It’s one of the most popular, if not the most popular, software for quickly and easily getting your mining rig up and running. It offers extensive control features, runs smoothly, and even allows on-the-fly tweaking of certain parameters without a restart.

But for those who are just now getting into this mining thing, it might be a bit confusing to get running. What’s a config file? What are parameters? How do I get this thing to make me money?

Read moreHow to set up and run Claymore’s Ethereum miner on Windows

How to build a mining rig for Ethereum

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Mining cryptocurrency is becoming an attractive source of secondary (and passive) revenue for many, and one of the most popular cryptocurrencies to mine right now is Ethereum. That’s because, in the realm of cryptocurrencies, it’s easily the second most established — only behind Bitcoin. That caused its price to skyrocket over the course of 2017; it went from less than $20 at the beginning of the year to near $1,000 by the end. Anyone that was into mining Ethereum in the early days made significant gains.

And while the price is now significantly higher than it was at this time last year, that doesn’t mean it’s a bad idea to start mining it. In fact, even with as popular as mining the coin is, it’s still fairly profitable as long as you don’t have to pay that much for electricity. Before you get started, you need to build what’s called a mining rig. It’s basically a PC with lots of graphics cards. In this guide, we’re going to walk you through which hardware you’re going to want to buy, as well as how to put it all together.

Best Hardware for Ethereum Mining Rig

Power Supply Unit (PSU) –  What’s the best PSU for mining Ethereum? First, let’s start with the power supply. You might not expect it, but getting the right power supply for your mining rig can be critical to your sustainability as a miner. Indeed, it is the power supply that will determine a lot of how power-efficient your mining rig is, and therefore how much of the cryptocurrency you mine is actually profit. There are a few things to look out for with buying a power supply for your mining rig, but two of the big ones are safety/quality and power efficiency. Just about any standard power supply will work with your mining rig (so long as it has enough wattage), but there are some that are more ideal than others.

Good 1200 Watt options for your 6 GPU rig (Corsair and EVGA are great):

With 6 GPUs all running at full-throttle, it’s best to stick with a 1200W (or higher, but not too high) power supply. If you’re going to go with 4 GPUs (which many people do, despite the hit to profits), then a 1000W power supply will probably be fine. Again, however, it’s best to stick with the power supplies in the highest “platinum” category to maximize your profits, if you can afford it.

Or, if you’re going to be sticking with 3 or less GPUs, an 850W supply will probably do the trick:

Motherboard — What is the best motherboard for mining Ethereum? There are lots of doable motherboard + CPU combinations that will work for building an Ethereum mining rig, but actually finding one in stock can be a bit of a headache. Some sites sell pre-configured motherboard + CPU products, but if you want to save some money, it might be worth your effort to look around on Amazon and eBay to find a good combination that will work for you.

It goes without saying that you’re going to want a motherboard with the same number (or more) PCI slots you’re going to need for your graphics cards. If you are willing to settle for using less than 6 GPUs in your rig (and thereby getting less profit), there are tons of options to choose from. But if you want to stay true to the plan, max out your profits, and run 6 GPUs, you’re going to have to do a bit more digging. Finding the appropriate combo on some hard-to-find motherboards can be a bit of a task.

The below are easy links to Amazon, but if you can’t find one on Amazon, it’s also worth checking eBay and Newegg for stock.

The two most popular boards (and therefore the best for getting support online:

Other options that will work just fine:

For more motherboard options, check out our extensive list.

CPU — Now, what is the best CPU for mining Ethereum? That’s a much easier question: get a cheap CPU that works with the slot on your motherboard. If you’re going to get one of the above motherboards, chances are you’re going to need an Intel CPU for slot LGA 1150. Unless you plan to use your rig for something other than mining, you should just get a budget Intel Celeron CPU to keep the cost of your rig down.

RAM — What’s the best RAM to buy for mining Ethereum? To go with your motherboard and your CPU, you’re going to need some RAM for your rig. The most economical purchase is likely to be a single stick of 4GB DDR3 RAM. If you want to run other applications on your rig for one reason or another, then perhaps go with 8GB. Regardless, you don’t need much RAM to mine. Keep in mind that, depending on the motherboard that you buy, you might need to get DDR4 RAM instead.

Graphics Cards (GPUs) (4-6x) — What’s the best GPU for mining Ethereum? There are lots of good answers to this question, but as of the time of this writing, the answer is: whatever cards you can get your hands on. Stock is so limited that almost anything is better than nothing, but there are still a select few AMD RX cards that you should probably stick to.

The actual brand of the card is not the most important part (although some are better than others, like the usually-higher-quality Sapphire and MSI), rather you want to make sure you get the right AMD chip. A variety of manufacturers make cards using AMD RX 470, 480, 570, and 580, and just about any of them will work fine. Also, it’s likely a good idea to get an 8GB RAM card. A mix of these cards will work just fine — it might just take a bit of time to get the drivers working properly.

  • ​​​AMD Radeon RX 580 – An RX 580 will likely get you around 29 Mh/s, and when stock is available, it’s a great card for mining Ethereum.
  • AMD Radeon Rx 480 –    Another great card for mining Ethereum is the Radeon RX 480. This card usually gets around 27 Mh/s after a bios mod and tweaking the clock speed and uses roughly 150 watts.
  • AMD Radeon Rx 470  –   Basically the smaller brother of the RX 480, the RX 470 is widely regarded as the best bang for your buck in Ethereum mining — as long as you can find it. After you mod it, you’ll get around 29 Mh/s, and it consumes around 140 watts.
  • Gigabyte GeForce GTX 1070  –  While I would recommend against getting an Nvidia card (they tend to have less support from mining software), it’s impossible not to mention the GTX 1070. It will get you around 28 Mh/s and uses almost half as much energy as the RX cards, so while it may be expensive up front, it might pay off for some in the long run.

PCIe Risers — What are the best PCIe risers to use for mining? In my experience (and I’ve asked around about this quite a bit to professional miners), you’re best off using the Ver. 06C or Ver. 007 6-pin to SATA PCIe risers that you can find on Amazon and other retailers. Don’t cheap out on these — get some good quality risers. This is one area of your rig that will most likely fail at some point, and if that happens, you don’t want to lose a card or have a wire catch on fire.

1x Solid StateDrive (SSD) — What’s the best hard drive/SSD for mining Ethereum? You probably want to get a solid state drive of course (it will save you on energy and would be one less failure point for a rig that’s going to be running 24/7). A 120GB SSD will do just fine from just about any brand.

Mining Case — You’re going to need something to keep your rig put together on (you only need one!). If you don’t have the skill or materials to build your own (people have built some crazy cases out of a variety of materials), you probably want to get something that was assembled by someone else. Something like this one on Amazon would work perfectly.

Operating System —  You have a few options when it comes to operating system. I personally went with Windows 10 for my rig (most software for mining will work fine with Windows, and I already had a key laying around from an old computer). But if you don’t already have access to Windows 10 for free or cheap, Eth OS is a linux OS that mines coins like Ethereum and others pretty well.

Accessories —  Of course you’re going to need a cheap Mouse and Keyboard to get everything set up, but chances are if you’re looking build a rig then you already have some of these laying around somewhere. Also, don’t forget to buy a cheap power button for your rig so that you can easily turn it off and on. Also, don’t forget to find yourself a Monitor. Also, a couple fans would be useful to keep things cool. Zip ties will come in handy for mounting your GPUs and fans to your case.

How to Assemble Ethereum Mining Rig

After you’ve managed to pick up all of these parts, you have to embark on the actual process of building your rig. So how do you assemble an Ethereum mining rig once you have all the parts? It might seem daunting if you’ve never assembled a computer before, but it’s actually pretty simple. Just follow these steps.

Steps to assemble Ethereum Mining Rig

Step 1 — Get your rig case set up. I ordered a wooden “case” from eBay for my rig, so it required a bit of work to put together. This step will depend on where you get your case (or if you decide to build it yourself), so simply follow the instructions from the manufacturer. My wooden “case” just required me to have a philip’s head screwdriver, and to screw in a couple screws. Then I was ready to mount the motherboard.

Step 2 — Mount the motherboard. After your mining case is set up and ready to go, you’ll need to mount your motherboard to the rig so that the bottom of it is protected from damage. My wooden rig included some spacers and screws for this, so it was pretty straightforward. I laid my motherboard on the wooden case to make marks for the holes with a pen, and then placed each spacer above the marks.

Here’s an example of these holes on the Biostar TB85 motherboard. The red arrows show the holes I would consider mandatory on this board (they were the only ones that fit on my case), and the blue arrows I left unscrewed.

I used the screw and screw driver to get a hole going for each spacer. Then I removed the screws from the wooden case, placed the motherboard on top of the spacers (this part might take a bit of work to line up all the spacers correctly), and then screwed each screw in. You’re going to want to use all of the screws that your motherboard requires, which will probably be somewhere between 7 and 10.

Step 3 — Connect the CPU. This step varies by motherboard and CPU (it’s slightly different for AMD CPUs, compared to Intel CPUs, for example), but it’s still pretty straightforward. You should always check your CPU and Motherboard instructions before proceeding, but the gist is this: open up the CPU holder using the lever, remove the plastic insert (if your motherboard has one), and place the CPU inside. You’re going to want to look for an arrow on one corner of the CPU and line it up with an arrow on the motherboard.

Click here for an easy and quick rundown on how to install a CPU on a motherboard.

Once you have the CPU actually seated and installed properly on the motherboard, you need to connect the CPU fan to the motherboard. You should see a three-pin connector that is likely labeled something like “CPU fan”. Then, you should use an 2×4-pin cable to connect your CPU to the power supply. Most likely the cable (and the GPU) will be labeled CPU. The port that you want to connect to your power cable is going to liekyl be a 4-pin port located somewhere on the motherboard near the CPU.

Step 4 — Install the RAM. You’ll see two or four slots on your motherboard for DDR3 RAM. You already ordered your DDR3 RAM sticks from Amazon (or some other dealer). Simply remove them from the packaging, make sure the levers for holding down the RAM are open, and seat the RAM in the motherboard. If you do it correctly, the stick(s) should click into place nicely on both sides and should be secure.

Step 5 — Connect the SSD. This is a pretty simple step as well. You should have an SSD which will serve as your hard drive. Connect this SSD to the motherboard using the SATA data cable that most likely shipped in the same box as your motherboard. After this, connect your SSD using the sata power cable that came with your GPU. One cable should be labeled SATA, you should connect that end to the GPU end that also says SATA, and then connect the SATA cable to your SSD.

Step 6 — Mount and connect GPUs. This is likely going to be the trickiest part of the actual hardware assembly, but it’s not that bad. First you need to take out all of the risers from their packaging, and assemble them appropriately. The PCIe 16x part will connect directly to the bottom of the video card, which connects to a USB cable, which connects to a PCIe 1x piece that connects to your motherboard. You can connect this 1x slot to the 1x slots on the board, and also the 16x slot. However, for the 16x slot, be careful to place the 1x piece in the correct direction. The below image depicts the correct placement.

After you have the GPUs connected to the motherboard, you need to mount them to the case. This can be done in a variety of ways, but the most common is to simply place the GPUs on the case and connect them more “permanently” using zip ties. Finally, after you have your GPUs mounted, you should run a cable labeled “VGA” rom the power supply unit to the 6- or 8-pin VGA connector on each GPUs, and you should connect a few SATA power cables to each of the powered risers. I recommended the 6-pin to SATA risers above, and I would further recommend that you only connect at most 2 cards per SATA cable from the GPU.

Step 7 — Mount a couple fans. To keep your rig cool, it’s a good idea to mount a couple of fans that blow towards the GPU and help air flow between your cards. There should be a couple of fan connectors on your motherboard, and it’s pretty simple to mount a fan or two with zip ties.

Step 8 — Connect your power button. You’re probably going to have to take a peek at your motherboard manual to do this correctly (it varies a little bit between boards), but you need to connect your power button to the motherboard. Just find which pins correlate with the button (they’re probably at the bottom of the motherboard, on the opposite side from the CPU).

Step 9 — Check all your connections and cable management. Mining rigs are known for being not that stable and prone to weirdness and fire etc, so it’s a really good idea to check all of your connections and make sure that everything is secure. You should have power cables running from the PSU to the SSD, the GPUs, the GPU powered risers, the CPU port on the motherboard, and the motherboard via its big power cable. And once you know for sure all of these are lined up and connected correctly, you can mount your PSU somewhere on the rig.

One little extra tip that might come in handy is that it’s worth it to use zip ties to clean up your cable management a bit. You don’t want any hot fans (like from the PSU, especially) blowing hot air on another connection. Specifically, watch out for those powered riser converter cables. You don’t want one of those sitting on top of the hot-air-blowing PSU fan. You also want to make sure there isn’t any tension of pressure pulling on any of the connections.

Step 10 — Get software up and running. I’m going to save this for another guide entirely, but after you get all this hardware set up and connected, you’re going to need to get your software up and running. If that’s EthOS, then you simply throw that OS on a USB stick, plug that into your rig, power things up, and press whatever key on your keyboard will let you choose your boot drive. It’s F8 on many motherboards. Then select the USB drive that has EthOS waiting to be installed, and follow the instructions. It’s a similar process for Windows 10, but like I said, I’ll leave this for another guide.

Have feedback or thoughts on how we can improve this guide? Leave a comment.

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