Chances are you have heard the term BitCoin over the past few months. I have learned a lot about BitCoin and other CryptoCurrencies along with how they work through many long nights of research. While doing this research I learned that I could mine for coins at my home using a simple computer setup. I was able to buy all the parts I needed for a small investment of under $700. (The prices of this hardware may have changed now, very likely going up as GPU’s are becoming harder to find.)
Here is a list of what I bought:
- GPU (x2) XFX Double D R9 270 925MHz Boost 2GB DDR5 DP HDMI 2XDVI Graphics Card (R9270ACDFC)
- PSU Corsair CX Series 750 Watt ATX/EPS Modular 80 PLUS Bronze ATX12V/EPS12V 744 Power Supply CX750M
- MB ASROCK 970 PRO3 R2.0 – AM3+ AMD 970 Chipset DDR3 Quad CrossFireX SATA3&USB3.0 A&GbE ATX Motherboard
- RAM Crucial 4GB Single DDR3 1333 MT/s (PC3-10600) CL9 Unbuffered UDIMM 240-Pin Desktop Memory Module CT51264BA1339
- CPU AMD Sempron 145 Processor (SDX145HBGMBOX)
And that’s it! Not too many parts there. It can be a little scary when all of this stuff arrives at your doorstep and you are the one that has to put it together. But building a PC isn’t all that hard…
Luckily I already had an old ATX pc case around here so I didn’t have to purchase one of those. They are pretty cheap though.
After all of your items arrive, you get to put your rig together. I won’t go into details here because there are a plethora of guides on the internet on how to assemble a pc.
Notice that we didn’t buy a hard drive? We don’t need one! There is a version of linux that is dedicated to mining coins, and it will run off of a USB stick. Chances are you already have one of those also. You can read more about that here along with installation and running instructions. I am using BAMT 1.3 as it seems to be the most stable version.
After you get that going, you need to join a mining pool. I highly recommend CleverMining, I have found them to be the most profitable pool.
Once you join the pool, you can begin hashing away and have those bitcoins deposited directly into your bitcoin wallet.
With this setup I am getting a consistent 440 KH/s on each card after a little overclocking. Mining with CleverMining at the current price of BitCoins I expect to break even after 15 weeks of constant mining. After that, it is all profit.
Some of you will want to know what my config file is for my R9 270 cards, so here it is:
“auto-fan” : “true”,
“auto-gpu” : “true”,
“temp-cutoff” : “87”,
“temp-overheat” : “80”,
“temp-target” : “75”,
“gpu-fan” : “0-100”,
“intensity” : “18”,
“worksize” : “256”,
“kernel” : “scrypt”,
“lookup-gap” : “2”,
“thread-concurrency” : “10239”,
“shaders” : “0”,
“api-port” : “4028”,
“expiry” : “120”,
“gpu-dyninterval” : “7”,
“gpu-platform” : “0”,
“gpu-threads” : “1”,
“gpu-engine” : “1050”,
“gpu-memclock” : “1200”,
“gpu-powertune” : “20”,
“log” : “5”,
“no-pool-disable” : true,
“no-submit-stale” : false,
“queue” : “1”,
“scan-time” : “60”,
“scrypt” : true,
“shares” : “0”,
“api-listen”: true,
“kernel-path” : “/usr/local/bin”
If you use those settings then you should be able to get close to the same results. Good luck and happy mining!