After hearing about cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, Litecoin, and Dogecoin, [Eric] decided he would have a go at designing his own mining rig. The goals of the project were to have a self-contained and stackable mining rig that had all the parts easily accessible. The result is this awesome computer enclosure, where GPU mining and traditional woodworking collide.
For mining all those coins, [Eric] is using five R9 280x GPUs. That’s an impressive amount of processing power that ended up being too much for the 1500W power supply he initially planned to use. With a few tweaks, though, he’s managing about 2.8 Mh/s out of his rig, earning him enough dogecoins to take him to the moon.
In the video below, you can see [Eric] building his rig out of 4×8 framing lumber. This isn’t a slipshod enclosure; [Eric] built this thing correctly by running the boards through a jointer, doing proper box joints with this screw and gear-based jig, and other proper woodworking techniques we don’t usually see.
Cool. I applaud the use of wood but would expect dark stain and brass candleholders!!
He should be getting at least 3.2 to 3.5 Mh/s out of that rig. The build is nice, not anything very unique but it is clean, but the config needs to be tweaked.
The post says he’s using 5 cards, but in the video (and the picture) it shows he only has 4 working. I think that’s where the 2.8Mh/s comes from. I have a rig with 4 R9 290’s and am getting around 3.3Mh/s, so his 2.8Mh/s makes sense with 280x’s as well. I wonder why he hasn’t gotten all 5 running…possibly his power supply issue. My advice would be to get an old 300 or 400w PS, short the green wire to a black wire on the 24pin motherboard connector so it turns on and use that second power supply to power the 5th card. This would solve his PS problem.
Nice rig !
So a wood frame made from 2x4s is now a hack?
I’m not sure where the hack is. I went through to the page and looked for any interesting tid bits that might have been missed out of the article but nothing..
Was a nice piece of woodworking at least :)
I guess the hack is building a case instead of buying one for $100 ?
the real hack is this part: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yuFHurrWswQ#t=75
I see that Matthias has not learned about the joys of swivel pad C clamp Vise Grips yet. They’re faster than bar clamps (or F, or G clamps) once they’re adjusted. Which if you’re making a few boxes at a time can matter. Having made 10 box joint boxes in a day I can tell you that it matters too.
StinkySteve, it isnt a hack in that regard either, he lists in the BOM that he used a computer case in addition to the 2x4s. Im not sure how and am not going to watch a 10 minute video just to find out, but I can only assume he was too lazy to drill some holes in the plywood bottom and glue standoffs or threaded inserts in, so he cut the part out which the motherboard/standoffs attach to.
Complexity does not determine the worthiness of a hack. You clearly did not read through the article. There is no mention of 2×4’s being used.
You clearly did not read the project page which clearly states this is made from 2x4s.
Actually, the only rule is that it’s not a hack unless somebody whines about it. Luckily, we’ve never had to disqualify anything!
I really wish I could +1 that comment Alex.
2.8 Mh/s ? Wow… Burning more kW/h worth of $$$ than you are making. Amaze indeed.
You beat me to it:)
by using R9 280xs he is using about $8.64 a day in electricity (assuming gold rates psu, and 12 cents per kWh)
But with this hash rate, he has the potential to earn $22.53 per day on Dogecoin, leaving him with $13.89 per day in PROFIT, assuming difficulty doesn’t go up too much over time he can potentially make $5,000.04. This assumes the value doesn’t go up or down. if it goes moon, who knows how much profit. if it goes to the ground, he’ll still have $2500 in computer parts to sell at a loss.
That enough for any american to get fat on.
Wow, $13.89 of pure PROFIT! I can’t imagine why anyone wouldn’t jump at the opportunity to make less than two hours’ worth of pay at minimum wage per day.
You wouldn’t take an extra 10 or 20 bucks a day from something that requires little to no work once setup? Might as well throw away money then.
He’s likely making more than $13 dollars a day anyhow. I have a 3.3Mh/s rig that averages $30 to $40 a day, 7 days a week, in profit mining dogecoin. It cost ~$2500 and I expect to make that back within 2 months. For reference, I’m a college kid with an internship where I make $12 an hour and I can only work a few hours a week. For someone like me this is the equivalent of a job without the work part.
> You wouldn’t take an extra 10 or 20 bucks a day from something that requires little to
> no work once setup?
You’re right, I wouldn’t, and I feel bad for the people who don’t make enough at their day jobs that 10-20 bucks a day really makes that much of a difference in their day-to-day lives. If you’re so desperate for an extra 10-20 bucks a day, you probably shouldn’t be dropping a few grand on computer hardware.
So the computer parts he used are free? This ignores taxes and all the trouble you’ll have converting bit coins to actual money, just look at the joke Mt. Gox has become, they suspended withdrawals again last Friday:
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-02-07/bitcoin-crashes-25-mtgox-halts-withdrawals
Yeah there are other exchanges, but the volume is so limited that the price will crash if even a minor amount of coins are sold:
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-02-10/bitcoin-flash-crashes-drops-80-seconds
The day any serious financial law takes a look at Mt Gox (Magic the Gathering Online Exchange) is the day Bitcoin dies in nanoseconds. The modern capitalist’s way of putting that off is to give a few $million of Bitcoins to someone with enough power to swing that. Same way the rest of the finance industry works. And chemicals, and nuclear power, etc. And pharma and food.
At the end of the day, I confidently predict they’d have made more money sticking to trading cards.
Yarr, that is an extra $7300 a year if it is $20 per hr. Not a bad bit of extra income if you ask me and it would pay for a good chunk of someones university costs for the year.
You have to earn enough to pay off the equipment before you can start talking pure profit though.
Each GPU is about $500, and he has five of them, plus the other parts, so let’s say it cost about $2800 to put that ‘rig’ together (minus labor costs)
Using peanutbutterjellytime’s numbers:
$22.53 gross – $8.64 electricity = $13.89 net profit.
$2800 hardware cost / $13.89 net per day = 201.58 days to break even
Of course that assumes the mining difficulty, expenses, and -coin value are set in stone. (In reality they’re not.) He says he plans on building more of these things, and installing dedicated HVAC and power to handle the load, which will only drive his costs up and push the break-even point further out.
It also assumes that the GPUs won’t break from being run full-tilt for 201.58 days (they will).
Don’t forget to check if your power rate is tiered, 1500W is 36kWh per day. That would propel me from 12c/kWh to a 89c/kWh rate. Completely eating any profit. Also in a warm climate it’s compounded by your air-conditioning bill.
As someone pointed out, if you have electric heat then mining is mostly free.
Still profitable if he lives in a dorm or apartment with “free” electricity (really fixed rate) or if he’s stuck with electric resistance heat.
It’s only free until the landlord catches on to the high electric bills.Google and you’ll find stories of tenants being kicked out of apartments/commercial spaces with so-called “free electricity” because they set up mining rigs.
No problem as long as he stays low. In a dorm, you’ll most likely run into issues with breakers tripping first.
Yes, what amounts to stealing electricity is a valid business model. Bitcoin is an interesting proof of concept that got co-opted by people trying to make it into something it’s not.
Especially since dogecoin is now open-ended inflationary.
Lord Keynes smiles upon doge.
You don’t understand Keynes, nor do you understand the difference between monetary and fiscal policy. Keynes at one point in his writings suggested fiscal policy (government spending) as a method for stimulating economic growth. Inflation pressures come from monetary policy (expanding monetary supply), and have nothing to do with fiscal policy.
At current difficulty (though may be different than listed on dustcoin) that rig is still quite profitable, even if it consumed 2-3x as much:
http://www.dustcoin.com/
And it will pay for it’s self in about 20 years.
20 years? That’s a little optimistic.
Yeah, all the math I’ve seen lately says the return on investment for mining is currently negative.
Depends on the coin, right now as BTC tanks, most mining becomes unprofitable. So many miners will cease operations. This is a great time for smaller miners like this guy to get more coins. Doge is holding strong against BTC with the recent addition of USDDoge exchanges.
Yeah, for now. Between the Last Big Thing crashing and the Next Big Thing taking off. Future history books will mention Bitcoin in a small footnote under the article for Charles Ponzi. Twas ever thus and ever thus will be.
Still, if big banking had been daft enough to buy into it, massive government bailouts would more than pay for a few graphics cards, plus a wonderful retirement for the miners.
Well, if u would still mine btc now u would be incredibly rich..
In a volatile market, he would have a much better chance of using the $$$ for the GPU to “buy low sell high” type of bitcoin speculation than doing actual mining.
Yeah, assuming he can find a trustworthy exchange that lets him convert to filthy fiat on a non-glacial time frame (there aren’t any) or if he can find any trustworthy buyers via localbitcoin (he won’t).
Before the GPU price surge (and/or GPU shortages) you could expect ROI in about 2-3 months for most any build, with mild to moderate difficulty fluctuations (and proportional increase in value of coin). GPU’s are a little pricey now, though, so it’s more like 4-6 months for ROI.
The hack is the masterfull bit of design in the concept and creation of his jig – hacks can be done in all fields, not just electronics. I tip my hat to something that in the old European apprenticeship system would be considered a cabinetmakers journeyman’s master project!
There is a certain irony in making a bitcoin miner with a flammable case.
I’d like to see you get wood to catch fire from an electronics mishap.
I’ve seen a lot of electrical fires in a decade of working in power plants and on ships. You’d be surprised what can happen when a power supply shorts out in a cabinet.
Well he’s not using NVidia so I think it’s safe
Jointer -1
Bitcoin -1
Dogecoin – 1,000,000
+wow
Sweet rig, and sweet video!
To the MOON!
“Proper” box joints would be done on a gang saw but a finger jig on a miter gauge works fine too
http://www.instructables.com/id/How-to-Make-a-Box-Joint-Box/
The best way is always the simplest. Also, you can stack cut box joints all the sides at once. It is faster and more accurate than cutting each finger one at a time.
“Wow. Such Mining Rig. So Amaze.”
So is the headline encrypted? In a different language? What?
So are we now angling for an acquisition by Cheezburger Network?
Hey. Listen. Image macros are the future. Of, like, literature and discourse and stuff.
“Mining Rig” me thinking “cool! somebody finally decided to hack a underground hydraulic jumbo”
Double sad, so disappointment.
Does Dogecoin have a different hash scale or something? Because my Bitcoin rig (that is, my home PC that is probably going to blow up soon from running the GPU for too long) gets 100Mh/s and my other machine, running CPU mining only, gets 45Mh/s
yes, it’s called scrypt, it’s a memory intensive form of hashing compared to the SHA-256 that bitcoin uses. Scrypt will never easily be mined by ASIC miners, as this was the whole point of making Scrypt – to keep power out of the hands of the few (but of course it will always fail in the long run)
There are a couple of other coins designed for mining on a CPU only, giving the regular Joe (and bot farms) the majority share of network control.
What song is this??
It’s in the blog entry
Music:
Breathe by Télépopmusik
Exchange by Massive Attack
Risingson by Massive Attack
Does it REALLY count if someone puts a lot of effort into being a complete dipshit?
Ouch, dude, I’m right here. It seems like you don’t have to put much effort into that. Thanks for watching anyway.
Mh/s??? Do you really mean 2.8Mh/s? My GPU runs at 330Mh/s.
Best hackaday title ever, ha ha….
“[Eric] built this thing correctly by running the boards through a jointer”
Er… ‘correctly’ is a matter of opinion. In my opinion, jointers aren’t as useful as other people seem to claim. If you already have a well calibrated table saw and a jack plane, you simply don’t need a jointer and you can spend your money on other tools. Most jointers also take up a ton of space, also.