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Before you yell at me for how bad gpu mining is, its the only thing within my budget right now. But Im not sure what equipment to use, or how to set it up. I know I need to set up my mother board and power supply below the GPU rack up top, but how can I fit as many GPUs as possible? I was thinking of using a riser board with multiple slots, but Im not sure if that would work. Anybody mind helping me out here?
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GPU mining in Bitcoin is simply not recommended nor is it at all profitable. This is the same for all other SHA256d coins due to re-purposing of Bitcoin hardware (which share the same algorithm).
Your electricity cost will be far greater than any rewards unless you are using an ASIC (Application specific integrated circuit) miner, any even in that case you may require cheap electricity in order to make it profitable.
However, GPU mining does exist in other Proof-of-Work coins that have not (yet) been primarily flooded with ASIC hardware. Ethereum, for example, has a relatively fair enough difficulty to make GPU mining viable in specific cases. I recommend using this site to compare graphics card profitability in different coins.
NOTE: Mining Ethereum on a graphics card will require atleast 4 GB of VRAM in order to fit the entire DAG file required for mining.
But what about other hardware, such as motherboards, and riser boards? Do you have any suggestions for them? – Micah Da Canon – 2018-10-02T03:19:18.967
Motherboards are fairly interchangeable, as long as they are capable of handling the PCI-E interface, they should work as any other motherboard. Typically people will buy mining specific boards like the ASUS B250 Mining Expert or Biostar's TB250-BTC Pro for easier setup (Are already configured with 4G Encoding, etc). Risers are also quite generic and can be picked up most online stores like eBay and Amazon. The only differences in these are the power inputs (SATA power, 6 pin, etc) – KappaDev – 2018-10-02T03:22:29.477
I always see people with mining setups with 12+ graphics cards, but I cant seem to find any motherboards that support that many, even with risers. Are they using something like pci-e expanders, or would those not work? – Micah Da Canon – 2018-10-02T03:26:03.623
Both motherboards I have mentioned have 12+ ports. Frequently, issues will become evident in the actual mining software. It is difficult for many operating systems to handle more than 12 cards in the limited PCI-E data lanes. Jamming too many cards on one board will usually result in higher failure rates as well. – KappaDev – 2018-10-02T03:28:53.367
GPU mining might be profitable for some altcoins using PoW algos other than SHA256d, but for bitcoin and other cryptos using SHA, GPU mining really is not going to be profitable unless you have free or very cheap electricity. – dbkeys – 2018-10-05T10:09:21.637