What it takes to start mining TODAY and what returns to expect

Synopsis: If you are someone like me, this blog will give you a quick rundown of what it entails to start your amateur mining setup, and whether the $ returns will do justice to your time and money that you have to spend. 

The techie inside me recently kindled this curiosity within to check out what the heck is this whole mining business. We  often get too busy with our professional careers and personal life with almost no time left to explore anything else. So was the case with me until recently when I decided to take a time-out from my job. And that gave me an opportunity to catch-up and explore on many things that I had been wanting to do for quite some time now. 

I kinda knew that mining isn't as profitable anymore, primarily due to the fact that the 'difficult' level has gone up, the rewards have come down and the size of DAG file (for ETH coins) has grown. So for anyone who wants to start making profits in the crypto-currency world, the easier way was/is to buy the currencies on one of the crypto-exchanges. Also to add to it, after the Jan 2018 bubble, the prices for BTC and ETH (and all the other alt coins) dropped by 50 -60%, almost overnight. And that's where they are even today, actually even lesser!

But my curiosity was too large to be contained. So I started my crusade - googling, reading, googling, discovering things, bits and pieces of info, contradicting reviews, et al. My start was almost from ground zero. I had been working far to long to have had a gaming PC at home. Life has changed so drastically in the last decade, we only find tablets and laptops lying around.. No desktop PCs!

So first thing I needed was a PC. I did have a flat screen monitor and a wireless keyboard/mouse in my home office - for that's what I use with my laptop when I am working from home. But had to get a desktop and a graphics card.

Graphics cards 

I was looking for a dual purpose GPU/video card which can give decent mining hashrate, and be usable for any gaming!

If you don’t want to spend too much money, yet get started with a single GPU or dual GPU minimalistic rig, you probably should just go with the Nvidia GTX 1060 card. It's decent throughput - aka hashing power in the miners lingo, and consumes lesser power (=electricity  = electricity bills)

Try not to go for the 3 GB, pay $50 more and get the 6GB if you want to mine ETH. The DAG file - which is the size of the blockchain that is needed to be loaded in the memory is already > 2.5GB so the GTX 1060 3GB card cannot mine ETH on a Windows 10 OS.

However, I still went with the 3GB as I just wanted to get a feel of the whole thing, spending the least possible. So I chose the $279 - 3GB card. Good news, the 'ethminer' is able to intermittently mine eth using Ethhash - daggerhashimoto algorithm. And when I switched to Linux, indeed it can still mine ETH.  Besides ETH, we can mine lot of other altcoins like Zcash - mining which is almost as profitable as ming ETH, maybe 5 - 10% profitability dip. So you can still go with the 3GB card if you really want to keep the budgets tight.

The GTX 1050 2GB/4GB should also technically work, it consumes even lesser power, and cost atleast $50 less than the GTX 1060. But I won’t recommend it for the mining endeavour.

So the major decision was made. Gigabyte GTX 1060 3GB.

Putting it together

Step 1:  Get the cheapest possible desktop PC: I looked at options of buying used desktops, while cheaper, they didn’t fit the requirements - needed a desktop with PCIe x16 slot with enough physical room in the PC case to hold a 9 inch card, and a ATX motherboard, plus a bigger Power Supply PSU. Finally I decided to build one myself and set a target of $200. At the end, I build my own desktop under $175. 

Step 2: Buy a Graphics/GPU card: Nvidia GTX 1060 3GB for under $279

Step 3: Choosing and installing the OS: The choice is either go with Windows 10 (Windows 7 also works as long as its 64 bit) or Linux, or use some of the new dedicated mining OS’s. While the dedicated mining OS (based on Linux) sounds cheaper than Windows 10, I was not comfortable with getting a pre-packaged Linux OS - not sure what all has been installed on it. But if you are starting ground up like me, a new Windows 10 means shelling out another $100, unless already have a licensed copy. Linux on the other hand is free, and so the obvious choice of OS to start mining.  

Step 4: Installing the miners: and start mining. On Windows 10 it is undoubtedly much easier with lot many fancy GUI options. So preference is Windows, with Linux you need to do more research and spend more time configuring - but its fun! This blog covers all the necessary steps and instructions to get started with mining on Linux. 

Step 5: Overclocking and all: Now you are getting into pro level if you want to do that. Will add a link to OC best practices. 

End Result

Its lot of fun tinkering and trying something new. But monetary profits? Seriously? The good news is that you will not be going -ve. Based on my testing so far, with a single GTX 1060, you will earn approximately a dollar a day, which is like $350 after one year - that is assuming the crypto market stays at today’s market price and doesn’t tumble another 50%!

My verdict - do give it a try for the fun. For profits, I don't think that's the right way. For $500 for a single GPU rig, you are better off to invest that money directly buying BTC or ETH or LTC or whatever on Coinbase. Use this link to register on Coinbase to give me a small referral token :)