Are you serious about mining cryptocurrencies? If so, you need to know how to make the best use of your money and equipment. In this guide, we’ll show you how to mine your digital treasure in the most profitable way.
Obviously, the big money is going into costly bitcoin ASICs. If you are already in that position, you probably know how the process works and are intending to mine bitcoin. However, those of you on a more moderate budget are probably looking at building a GPU miner for scrypt currencies, or a buying a small ASIC machine for bitcoin or other SHA-256 currencies. In that case, you have come to the right place.
How do I start?
Choose your currency
Digital puzzleThe process of mining digital currencies involves solving complex cryptographic puzzles. By doing this, miners are providing ’proof of work’ that is rewarded with digital currency. Broadly speaking, there are two proof-of-work hashing algorithms in use today: SHA-256 and scrypt. Note that there are some lesser-used alternatives, which we will not be looking at in this guide (for example, Primecoin).
SHA-256
The SHA-256 algorithm favours raw processing power. In bitcoin’s very early days, one could mine effectively with the CPUs and GPUs (graphics processing units) that you find in a normal home PC. That time has passed, however, and the difficulty level of bitcoin is so high that specialised processors known as ‘Application Specific Integrated Chips’ (ASICs) are needed to mine it. The use of such powerful processors, along with bitcoin’s exponential increase in difficulty level, have created a technological arms race, which means that even quite recently designed chips can quickly become obsolete.
Scrypt
The scrypt algorithm favours greater amounts of RAM and parallel processing ability, which is why GPU-based rigs are still the way to go. Furthermore, ASICs for scrypt have yet to take off, so the difficulty level of those currencies has not been pushed up as dramatically as has been the case with bitcoin.
The right rig
shutterstock_88988593Depending on your budget and the type of currency you intend to mine, there are two ways to go when setting up your mining system:
DIY mining rig
These can be built from your own PC, with as many graphics cards (ie: GPUs) as you can fit or afford. While some people may use a standard PC case, many use unusual casings, such as beer crates, which allow for increased air flow around the components. A bonus of DIY systems is that you can carry out both CPU and GPU mining at the same time (see our guide to mining altcoin).
ASICs
ASICs are self-contained units (power adapters not withstanding), which come with a USB and/or Ethernet port, and are usually ready made by manufacturers. ASIC miners are usually more expensive than DIY rigs and are mostly produced in the USA, which means those of us in other parts of the world will have to spend a little extra to get them imported.
