Mining Rig

If you want to learn what is a mining rig, you are in the right place! We will go through mining rigs’ purpose, what they are made of and how to build your own.

What is a mining rig?

A mining rig is a specialized computer system, designed for the sole purpose of mining cryptocurrencies. Miners are the backbone of PoW Blockchains, as they secure the network,  confirm transactions and generate new coins.  

Mining rigs solve the mathematical algorithms, discover the next transaction block and get rewarded in cryptocurrencies when they succeed in doing so. 

Today, miners use two types of rigs – ASICs and GPU mining rigs

• ASICs (application-specific integrated circuit) are machines that are specifically made with very high computational power. This makes them ideal for mining coins based on CPU-heavy algorithms (Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, etc.)
• GPU mining rigs are computers that include one or (preferably) several graphics cards which they use to solve the mining algorithm. Although they have lower computational power than ASICs, they have much higher amounts of memory. This makes them ideal for mining coins based on RAM-heavy algorithms (check our best ethereum miners for example).

What does a mining rig consist of?

ASIC rigs come as-is and can be purchased as such. They are much more expensive than GPU rigs and much harder to find. 

The most renowned ASIC manufacturer is Bitmain and their Antminer rigs are the most popular on the market due to their performance and ROI ratio.  

GPU mining rigs, on the other hand, are more “democratic” in price and in the hardware needed to set one up. They are pretty similar to traditional desktop computers, as they are made of mainstream computer parts: 

• One or more GPUs
• Motherboard
• CPU
• RAM
• Hard Disk
• Power Supply

How to build your own mining rig

When building your own rig, you should first define the budget you are willing to invest. You can use mining calculators like those on Cryptocompare or WhatToMine to see your expected ROI. 

Once you’ve done that, you can pick your preferred GPU, check how many devives your motherboard can hold, and buy as many as you can afford. 

Always pick the same GPU model when building a mining rig, for better compatibility. 

Fill in the rest of the PC components, making sure that your power supply is strong enough to support all of the GPUs you are planning to put in your rig. 

Finally, build it, set it up and start mining!

If you’ve never built your own PC, check out this video. It will guide you through the steps of building your own GPU-based mining rig.