( 05 September 2019 )
Open Air Frame
Other than GPUs, your frame may be the most important thing your purchase and design. Temperature control, cooling, scaling, repairs, and upgrades are all heavily reliant on a well assembled well designed open air frame. The best open air designs separate components out, allow for proper air space, and are designed in a way that you can easily get to all component in the event in which they need to be swapped out or repaired.
Fig: Example of an Open Air Frame
Graphics Processing Units (GPUs) and Power Supply Units (PSUs)
GPUs and PSUs are the most important hardware components of your mining rig. For GPUs, there are several considerations that need to be focus on which GPUs are the most reliable and profitable for current and future mining. There are three major considerations:
Initial Investment (Cost of the GPU): How quickly you reach your ROI is directly proportionate to how much you spend for GPUs. While GPUs are still somewhat tough to source at cost without a market things have settled down to where you can find most cards retailers or through online stores. While one GPU may drastically outperform another, it may make sense cost wise to go with another GPU. For example, if you are able to buy TWO GPUs with an 18 MH/s output for $20 each that may be a better option then buying one card with a 35 MH/s rate for $500. So keep initial cost of hardware in mind when making this decision. This will vary quite a bit depending on where you live and what options are available to you at the time.
Hashrate vs Power Consumption Ratio: There are a few different philosophies on Hash vs. Power Consumption which are influenced not just by opinion but by area. If your power costs are low (or free) hashrates become most attractive. Additionally, with difficulty going up over time, hashing as many coins as possible in the early stages is also a consideration. If you live somewhere with high power costs, power consumption becomes critical.
Long Term Mining Ability: Just because a GPU mines well that does not mean it will continue to mine well in the future. There are two major considerations when considering long term mining ability. Difficulty and DAG. Over time as coins are mined, the difficulty of the algorithms increase. This is a sort of check and balance put in place on the block chain to ensure the security of the ledger and that no single entity can manipulate the blockchain. The important thing to keep in mind however, is that the difficulty will increase. So you will need as much hash power as you can get, whether that is achieved with scale (many GPUs) or raw power (GPU hashrates) you want to try and squeeze as much hashrate as you can out of your rig while remaining profitable in respect to power consumption. The second, and more important consideration is the DAG (Directed Acyclical Graph). The DAG basically maps out the algorithms and instructions. It must be loaded into memory almost like a header. Why is this important? Because the DAG grows at each increment. These increments are called “Epoch” and come in 100 hour increments. At a certain point, a GPU will not be able to fit the DAG into memory. This takes quite some time, however in the near future (at approximately epoch 199 or 200) cards with only 4 GB of GDDR5 RAM will no longer be able to handle the DAG and will not be able to mine Ethereum. Additionally, as we approach Epoch 200, the DAG will consume more and more of that 4 GB of RAM cutting into the hash power of 4 GB GDDR5 RAM GPUs. What does all of this mean? In short, make sure your GPUs have 8 GB or more of memory.
PSUs are the other important hardware component. This is not only going to power your rig and keep it online, but also factor into your energy costs. All PSUs are not created equal. Some are much more energy efficient than others. It is also important to understand how much power you need. There are three major considerations when choosing a PSU:
Durability/Output:If your rig is going to draw 1000W power, so you don’t need a 1000W power supply, you will have required more power than that as PSUs are not designed to run on their maximum load 24/7.
Efficiency:PSUs are typically rated into four categories: Bronze, Silver, Gold, and Platinum. Bronze being the least efficient and Platinum being the most efficient. Why is this important? Because the more power you waste/use the less profitable your mining rig will be. PSUs convert AC to DC power for your rig. During this conversion, there will be some power loss. This also produces more heat. The higher efficiency power supplies require less AC current to produce the same amount of DC power and produce less heat (which is also important as many GPUs hash better at lower temperatures). You can save 5%, 10%, or even 20% on energy costs with a Gold or Platinum PSU.
Cost: The last factor is cost. PSUs, especially the gold rated ones, can cost up to $200 or more. The more you spend on a PSU, the more profit you need to make to reach your ROI. So choosing the most cost effective PSU and balancing that with the most efficient PSU is an important calculation.
Fig: A Platinum Power Supply Unit (PSU)
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