For those not with the necessary technical knowledge, setting up the mining equipment for Ethereum can be difficult. As Ethereum’s market grows, more people are looking at investing in it. You can also mine Ethereum passively to generate income every month, but this is something that many people don’t realize.
Ethereum Mining
How can you get involved in Ethereum Mining?
First, you will need a computer or graphics card that can compute an algorithm it attempts to solve to generate Ether. The average Ethereum block that your video cards are trying to find generates 15 seconds on average. This means that every 15 seconds, the Ethereum network pays 5 Ethereum to the person who found the block. (This value could change over time).
It is important to note that Ethereum will eventually switch over to proof-of-stake with their Casper Fork, which will mean it cannot be mined anymore.
Setup Ethereum Miner
There are many options available for Ethereum Miners. These depend on the type of Video Card, how many you want, and your power requirements.
The standard setup typically consists of:
- 6x Video Cards (Minimum 3GB; 4GB recommended) – Best Hash/Price recommendation: Radeon RX570 4GB
- Highly recommended to get risers with all the capacitors built in – version 006C
- Recommendations: Asus Z170-A, Biostar TB250
- G4400 – The cheapest possible
- Recommended: 4GB Crucial RAM4-2133
- Minimum: 80% of maximum capability
- Recommended: 1200W Corsair Corsair HX1200, or any other 1200W Gold and Platinum PSU
- Minimum 60GB
- Ethernet cable (do NOT run wifi), power button to motherboard, fans for cooling.
This setup would allow you to average 0.5Eth per monthly. This can change depending on how difficult Ethereum Mining is. You can use the website WhatToMine for calculations and to find other profitable coins to mine.
It is important that you consider the difficulty of deciding whether to continue mining Ethereum or switch to another algorithm or coin.
Mining Pool Setup
A person who is only interested in building a few mining rigs may not be able to find a block solo-mining. It is important to join a mining pool. A mining pool combines all the hashrate from miners and greatly increases the chance that the group will find a block. The pool will pay you a steady amount, even if you don’t find a block.
There are many options for Ethereum mining pools. These choices vary depending on their overall hashrate, fee structure, payout structure, and other factors.
NiceHash is the easiest and fastest way to get involved. NiceHash will automatically select the best algorithm to hash, regardless of whether it’s Ethereum or another cryptocurrency. This pays out in bitcoin. You can use NiceHash by visiting the site and downloading the AMD or the nVidia installer, depending on your video card. (Note: Some antivirus software may detect mining software as malicious files).
After installation is complete, run the program. The program will perform a quick scan of your computer to determine if it needs any software. Once the scan is complete, enter your bitcoin address at the top. Once you have entered your bitcoin address, click the benchmark button to start the scan. This is crucial as you won’t get paid. Once you have this done, you can start mining.
Nicehash pays out minimum 0.1BTC every four days. It is important to note that although nicehash has a lower overall hashrate of 20%, the switching feature may make it more profitable than if your goal was to mine Ethereum.
Nanopool/Ethermine
Nanopool/Ethermine (Claymore Dual Miner). Nanopool is the largest pool of mining with over 130,000 active miners. They also pay uncle blocks and charge 1% as fees. This means that nanopool will give you a bonus if your miners are close to solving an algorithm that would have paid the block.
Ethermine is another option for a mining pool. They have approximately 75,000 active miners, charge a 1% fee and pay uncle blocks.
Ethermine and Nanopool can both run different software to hash Ethereum. Claymore Dual Miner is recommended as it allows you to hash Ethereum as well as another currency. This is because Ethereum heavily depends on memory usage, while the core processor sits idle. Dual mining is where the memory of your card will hash Ethereum while the core processor will hash Siacoin or Decred.
Nanopool now offers a quick start, making it easy to download the Claymore Dual Miner and set it up. Click on the Nanopool front page and click on the ‘Quick Start” button under the Ethereum banner. Follow these steps to install Claymore’s Miner and set up your config file using the config generator.
Simply drop the config file into the extracted location and click the start.bat file to load the miner.
You might need to make sure that you have enough virtual memory (minimum 16GB). Search for system in your start menu. Open system, click ‘Advanced System Setting’ on the left side, then go to the advanced tab, performance settings, and advanced again. Click ‘Change’ to adjust virtual memory. Next, uncheck the box that says ‘Automatically manage the paging file sizes for all drives’. Then enter a custom size of 16384 or whatever is the maximum allowed value into the Initial and Maximum fields. This will prevent any errors from occurring with virtual memory.
Profits and Conclusion
Once your miner has been set up, you can now sit back and enjoy passive income in the form Ethereum every month from your video cards. To determine your profitability, it is important to account for any variable costs you may incur during mining. Variable costs could include maintenance costs, electrical costs, pool fees and dev fees, as well as exchange fees.
The aforementioned mining machine would cost approximately $2,250USD at the time of writing and be capable of producing approximately 0.5 Ethereum per month. This is approximately $250 per month before variable cost. This means that your initial investment will be paid off in 9 months. This assumes that Ethereum’s price stays the same.
Ethereum mining is a great investment as it reduces the risk of trading in volatile markets and generates passive income every month. We will be discussing the importance of overclocking and undervolting cards in future articles. This will increase efficiency.