April 18th, 2013 
CryptoBadger 
One of my finished plastic-crate mining rigs.
So you’re interested in mining cryptocurrency, but you’re not sure where to start? No problem, this guide is all you need to set up your own headless litecoin mining rig—even if you have absolutely no experience with this sort of thing.
First, let’s get the obvious question out of the way: why litecoins? After all, bitcoins are worth more, right? The simple answer is that at the time of this writing, litecoins are currently the most profitable cryptocurrency to mine when you take into account how much each coin is worth, and the time required to mine one. Rest assured that if the situation changes, and another cryptocurrency suddenly surpasses litecoin as the best mining option, the rig outlined in the guide should have no problem switching over to a new coin.
This guide will be broken into several parts, each focusing on a different aspect of building your first mining rig. First, let’s take a look at what you’ll need in terms of hardware to put a respectable miner together.
Build your own Litecoin Mining Rig, part 1: Hardware
4/06/2017: This guide is roughly three years old. Please don’t attempt to buy any of the hardware recommended here—it’s quite obsolete! If you’re looking for information about modern GPU mining, please click here for my updated 2017 guide on mining Ethereum.
Here is the list of hardware that I recommend:
| Motherboard | ASRock 970 Extreme4 |
$98 |
| Processor | AMD Sempron 145 |
$38 |
| Memory | 4GB G.SKILL DDR3 SDRAM (2 x 2GB) |
$46 |
| Power Supply | Seasonic 860w Platinum PSU |
$199 |
| GPUs | 3 x MSI Radeon HD 7950 3GB GDDR5 (Twin Frozr) |
$319 each |
| (optional) | 3 x PCI-E riser cable | $5 each |
| (for dummy plugs) | 68 ohm 1/2 watt resistors | $3 |
Update 11/26/2013: The Radeon 7950 video cards are sold out pretty much everywhere. They’re still the best option for mining if you can find them, but if you can’t, then the new Radeon R9 280X cards are likely your best option. They do consume a fair bit more power though, so you”ll want to upgrade your power supply as well (this 1250w Seasonic should support three 280X GPUs without problems). As for brands, I recommend these Sapphire, Gigabyte, and MSI 280X cards for now. I’ll be updating the rest of my guide at some point in the near future with optimal settings for the 280X, so stay tuned.
Update 12/01/2013: If you’re trying to put a rig together, you’ve probably noticed that the above video cards have become nearly impossible to find. I’ve received a few messages from folks that are having some good results using the R9 290 cards, although they’re a fair bit more expensive than the 280X. If you’re itching to build a rig ASAP and can’t find a 7950 or 280X, then you might consider the 290. It looks like all of the current 290 cards are using AMD’s reference cooling design at the moment, so brand probably doesn’t matter too much. Although given a choice, you usually can’t go wrong with Sapphire, Gigabyte, and MSI. Again, remember to pick up a fairly powerful PSU if you’re going to run 3 of these in a rig.
You will also need a USB stick (8GB or larger, this one is fine) if you’re using Linux as your OS, or a harddrive (a cheap SATA drive of any size will do) if you’re using Windows. I will cover setup on both Linux and Windows in the next sections of this guide, as well as the pros and cons of each.
The video cards may be difficult to find, as they’re popular and often sell out. You can substitute nearly any 7950-based GPU, but if you have a choice, go for the MSI or Sapphire cards. They’re not voltage-locked and will save you some electricity in the long run. I have the MSI card that I recommended in all of my rigs, but I’m told that this (and also this) Sapphire card is also a good choice.
The motherboard, CPU, and RAM are all relatively unimportant. The motherboard simply needs to have enough PCI-E slots to host your three GPUs (if the recommended board isn’t available, here is another, or if you can’t find either ASRock, this Gigabyte board is a good alternative). The CPU will essentially sit idle, as all of the actual mining is done by the GPUs. The Sempron 145 is an excellent choice here because it’s cheap and draws very little power (if the Sempron is unavailable, this one is also a fine choice). If you’re going with Linux, you can get away with even less than 4GB of RAM, but I’d stick to that as a realistic minimum on Windows.
The power supply is important, and you don’t want to skimp on it. The Seasonic that I’ve recommended is extremely solid and 93% efficient, which will help keep power consumption to a minimum. It’s also modular, which is really nice if you’re putting this together in a plastic crate like I recommend.
The PCI-E risers aren’t strictly necessary, as all 3 GPUs will fit on the motherboard without them. However, airflow will be extremely limited due to the close proximity of the cards, and I really don’t recommend setting them up that way long-term. The riser cables allow you to position the GPUs off of the motherboard in a more spaced-out fashion. I dropped the temperature of my GPUs by nearly 10 degrees Celcius by simply using risers to separate them. Availability and pricing on Amazon is constantly changing, so check eBay if you can’t find them.
Important: you may also need to create dummy plugs for each of your GPUs. Some operating systems will idle video cards that do not have an active monitor connection, which will obviously kill your mining performance. Dummy plugs “trick” your OS into thinking a monitor is connected, thus preventing attached GPUs from being idled. You just need a few resistors ($1-2 at Radio Shack if they’re not available at Amazon) and these instructions to create your own plugs.
So you’ve got nearly $1400 worth of hardware, but no place to put it, as I haven’t mentioned a case. I highly recommend against trying to cram 3 GPUs into a conventional PC case. A plastic crate or two works far better due to the tremendous heat that the video cards will give off. Added bonus: they’re cheap!
Here is what you’ll need to create a simple DIY plastic crate housing for your miner:
Plastic Crate (get 2 if you want a place for your PSU) |
$5 each |
| Plastic stand-offs | $4 |
| 6 x #4 3/8″ wood or metal screws | $1 |
| Brace to rest GPUs on (I used two of these) | $4 |
| a few cable ties (8″ or so) | $2 |
| power switch & LED (optional) | $6 |
You can get plastic crates in most home improvement stores if you don’t want to ship it from Amazon. I picked mine up at Lowe’s for under $5 each. You should be able to get everything else on the list at Lowe’s if you happen to have one near you, too. As far as tools go, you’ll need a drill and a knife capable of cutting into whatever plastic crate you buy.
Assembly Steps:
First, attach your CPU & heatsink/fan to your motherboard, and place your RAM into the memory slot(s). Then follow the general steps below to mount everything into your plastic crate.
Click the images for a close-up look at each step.
Place plastic standoffs on the bottom of your plastic crate, and rest your motherboard on top of them. Make sure that all of the essential ports are accessible (SATA, USB, keyboard, mouse, etc). Use your knife to cut away pieces of the crate if necessary so that all ports you plan to use are exposed. Then plug your riser cables into the PCI-E slots of your motherboard.
Place your brace (either the plastic guards that I recommended, or a cut yardstick, or whatever you have that works) so that it is sitting above the motherboard, high enough for your GPUs to rest on. Cut the brace so that an inch or two sticks out on either end of the crate.
Drill holes in your brace so that you can secure it with cable ties (see image). Do not simply rest the brace on the crate! An accidental bump can cause it to fall into the crate, along with ~$1000 worth of GPUs if you do that!
Connect each GPU to it’s corresponding riser cable, resting the bracket end on the lip of the crate and the other end on your brace.
Screw each GPU down into the lip of the crate. If you drill small pilot holes ahead of time (mark where to drill with a sharpie), this is much easier.
If you have a power switch and LED, mount them into one of the crate’s corners. I was pretty sloppy with mine, but it’s functional.
You’re done! Simply connect everything to your power supply and you should be ready to power your rig on for the first time. If you have a second crate, you can put your power supply in there (along with your harddrive if you’re using Windows), and stack it under your main crate to save some space.
In the next part of this guide, I’ll show you everything you need to do to start mining under Linux (and Windows will follow shortly after)!
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Is it possible to run 3 or 4 saphire 7870 with 650 or 600 psu?
I have similar question, but I am wondering if there are alternatives for the 1250W Seasonic PSU for 3 280x GPU’s…as the PSU is out of stock.
Any feedback would be great.
Why aren’t my comments appearing…
The XFX Pro Series 1050W (http://products.xfxforce.com/en-us/Power_Supplies/Pro_Series_1050W_PSU/P1-1050-BEFX). Parts quality is comparable to Seasonic. There is a 1000W variant too, but I believe it will be a close call with 3 R9 280Xs on that one.
Cryptobadger mentions somewhere that XFX PSUs don’t have a decent 80plus rating. This is true for te 850W, but the models starting at 1000W do.
Emjay better get 80plus PSU. This will save you money in the future. Coursair as replacement for the one listed here should work. You may of course try any PSU for that. Note that the 3 GPUs will be 900W ( or close ) ( without undervolting ). If your PSU is 1kW 80% of that can be used. Note that you have also HDD, CPU, RAM on that system so you cannot fit in the 1kW. Better get a good PSU instead of saving a few $$ on a cheaper one.
I got the that one for 3xR9 280x cards:
Corsair Professional Series Gold AX1200 High
Works really nice. Same price as the SeaSonic listed here. So just buy premium brand PSU as it is really important for your system to be stable.
I made two explicit remarks about comparative quality and 80plus rating on newer XFX models but you seem to have missed those or something.
Three R9 280X GPUs should put you near 1000W, because they use ~50W more each, compared to the 860W in this guide for HD7950s. That’s why I suggested the 1050W model. Your 1200 is fine but I don’t think you can squeeze in a 4th R9 280X should you decide to expand in a few weeks.
do you really need expensive ram for a mining rig?
According to the author, “The motherboard, CPU, and RAM are all relatively unimportant.”
yes i know, but the ram he uses for this build is not very cheap that’s why im confused
You pay almost 1k for GPUs and 80 for the ram is a problem :). I use kingston as where Iive I have to order gskill for 10 rigs at a time to get it delivered at a good price so use any ram as long as it is noname or the cheapest. Still you can use the cheapest if you run extensive test on it and there are no errors.
If 50 more for ram is a problem better buy litecoin with the money you have instead of mining it. It is my way of thinking. Apologies if this sounds offending in any way.
Regards
i was just curious
Hi, I realize you just updated your comments about the R9 280x this morning, but what size PSU do you recommend (for 3 GPU rig) if they draw additional power? I’m looking to buy the hardware for the rig today/tomorrow and want to make sure I don’t get a PSU that can’t handle the beefier cards. Are all 3 makes you suggested have the ability to undervolt/overclock?
Thanks!
Thanks for the guide and updates! Are you using the 280X VAPOR-X’s? Looking forward to your tuning recommendations on these cards.
I’m thinking about putting this build in a HAF XB from cooler master. Bad idea? it looks amazing and there’s really good air flow in this case
A case by its nature will restrict air flow no matter how good it is, if you are serious about mining ditch the case.
will the vision tek AMD Radeon™ HD 7950 3GB PCIe Graphic Card from VisionTek® work ok?
Hi,
I am thinking about buying other manufacturer’s video cards. Is there a difference if Asus card is chosen instead of Gigabyte.
Regards,
LTC enthusiast
Is there enough room on the mobo for the 3 GPUs if I don’t get the risers?
Thanks for the awesome tutorial!
You can place 3 in that mobo, however, due to the heat issue, riser is necessary but optional.
Do you know if there are alternative vendors for the risers? It says it will take 28 days for delivery from OpenMart vendor via Amazon.
I can find a lot of risers, but not sure if the MOLEX is needed.
Cryptobadger, any thoughts? Anyone?
thanks everyone. This is a great site.
Will
According to the reading of this entire post, the author used one from eBay shipped from China. That means, brand doesn’t matter at all.
Have you ever built one with 7970, GV-R797OC-3GD GPUs? Supposdly they only use 200 watts a card and hash at about 682 Khs.
https://litecoin.info/Mining_hardware_comparison
Just tryin’ a 7970 and cant get more than ~498 kHps on win7 🙁 far below expectations, but my settings are way much “default” still.
If anyone has suggestions on cgminer settings, please let us know !
Have you changed the “intensity” and are you using cgminer?
If your on default as you say then intensity is probably low. Try increasing intensity upto around 15 or so. If your not receiving hash rejection notices then your good and it should have increased speed.
The increase intensity in CGMiner click “G” (for GPU) > “I” (for Intensity) > input 14 or 15 etc > Press Enter > Press Enter again.
Thanks for hint !
Setup is cgminer 3.5.0, and using these settings so far: -I 13 -g 2 -w 256 –thread-concurrency 8192
Changed intensity to 14-15, sorted no effects so far, not a single kHs in gain, neither increase in bad bl0cks.
Will soon be moving to linux, just to see how it feels 🙂
I’ll keep reading your posts, seems you know your way 😀
Best of luck.
I really don’t know my way 😉 I’m quite new to litecoin i was on the BTC bandwagon before. Have a look at my post at the bottom of this threat regarding my comments on 280X. I’ve found now that many settings really change the performance of my card. for example, increasing intensity above 13 has adverse effects, changing from –g2 has adverse effects, changing _increasing_ core clock or memory core, adverse effects.
Basically its helpful to read through files “SCRYPT-README.txt” and “README.txt” Funnily enough (!) and learn what each parameter your using does. scrypt-readme explains all important params in detail.
Essentially lookup other peoples successful bat file’s and test params methodically don’t just blindly increase or decrease values.
My next step is using MSI afterburner to reduce voltage.
lol now I know it 🙂
http://i41.tinypic.com/mizbxw.jpg
It’s all about trial and error 😛
OK dummy question. Where do you connect the monitor? Do you connect to each card VGA/DVI/HDMI output one at a time or is there a video connector on the motherboard? I have hardware coming in tomorrow and thought of this as an after thought. Unfortunately my 19″ lcd flatpanel is just single VGA input. I got 3 XFX R9 280X cards and they are 2XmDP HDMI 2XDVI and ASRock MB-990EX4 Socket AM3+/ AMD 990FX/ AMD Quad CrossFireX& nVidia Quad SLI/ SATA3&USB3.0/ A&GbE/ ATX Motherboard. I plan on installing and running Windows 7 home premium 64bit on hard drive. Processor will be AMD Athlon II X2 270 Regor 3.4 GHz 2×1 MB L2 Cache Socket AM3 65W Dual-Core Desktop Processor. For now, I plan on trying to setup an old atx full size tower which has removable side panel and placing a regular fan to blow air onto electronics, leaving the side panel open. Would appreciate any comment on configuring display on LC mining rig.
Once its up and running i believe you want to be using SSH if your running linux, i don’t know exactly what your supposed to do with Windows 7 except why would you need to connect a monitor to each of the video cards!?? In windows you probably just want to use the main (first?) card and run the machine from there. AFAIK you don’t want to crossfire connect the video cards. You just need to connect to video card 1, setup everything and fire up cgminer (after configs etc)
Thanks Rob. I’m researching now. I think I just telnet or open a command a command prompt once the rig is connected to home network. If I wanted to play a video game on the rig every once in a while then I supposse I would just hookup to one of the video cards like you said. Just a very basic question I did not really see any quick answer to in brief search. Wish my current monitor was compatible with cards but it is only vga and they are not. Oh well, if that is the least of my problems I’ll be very happy!
OK, I found the XFX R9 280X has DVI-I which carries both digital and analogue signal and DVI-D which carries all digital signals. They sell cheap < $15 cable adapter to convert DVI-I to VGA. All I gotta do is brave Black Friday like, at the actual store!
Hello, very nice thread.
I would like to know about the KWH consumption in order to be able to calcul the cost in electricity. COuld anyone help me with that?
I assume you know this, but just in case: kWh is 1000 Watt being pulled from your outlet for an hour.
As the guide explains, with the recommended hardware you’ll be using at times 100% of the Seasonic 860. It as a 80plus platinum rating, which means it’ll pull 1/0.91 * 860W = 945W under constant full load. This equals 0.945kWh. The guide (FAQ section) mentions 93%, I guess he interpolated an average or used his Kill-A-Watt readings directly.
The Seasonic X-1250 (80plus gold) has a potential to pull 1/0.88 * 1250 = 1.4kWh at full load. I think with 3x R9 280X but otherwise equal hardware you’ll use about 995W which means 1.137kWh from the outlet.
If you have other hardware, you’d have to share it for an educated guess. The 80plus ratings and heat loss percentages are at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/80_PLUS.
I have 20 cables on the way and should be here next week Wed the latest. However I will be using 3 Cards only setup so I think mulex is not required.
I also almost completed a store which will accept paypal bitcoin and litecoin :). The shipping will be from Germany, Bulgaria or UK depending where the cable you need is available. Max delivery time to the US with normal mail is a week I think.
Let me know if you are interested.
Hi Danail,
Yes, I would be interested. I am in Miami, and would care for 3 to 6 cables. How do you propose the next step is?
Thank you for replying.
Will
Hey this is my skype:
goshev2k
Msg me, I Will be glad to help with what I can. I searched like two weeks for those cables and had to order a bunch as it takes too long to deliver.
Thanks for the nice guide. Two questions:
– isn’t using plastic crates dangerous in terms of a) fire hazard and b) electric hazard if you have children/animals at home? If I would have to go for a case for those reasons what would you recommend?
– what kind of hashrates I can expect with the setup you described? Is there any source of info what hashrates one can expect from different GPUs?
Hi Andy,
For the creates I found a perfect and beautiful alternative and it works like a charm.
Do a Google search for: Cooler Master HAF XB
It is the next generation crate 🙂
Cheers,
Wes
I think the problem with using a case such as this is that all cards are adjacent each other. You really need to be using riser ribbon cables to allow as much separation of the GPU’s as possible. The cards are now so thick (for example 280x Vapor-x) there is very little space between one cards fans and the others backplate.
I’m about to built a crate setup, just waiting for my last 2 280x’s, but i tested the 280x I have with my old AMD 6950. The heat goes through the roof as soon as the 6950 is right against the 280x its just sucking hot air. Its usually sitting on 68 or 69C with the 6950 up in its face its doing 76C to 78 and significantly louder.
Check it here:
https://litecoin.info/Mining_hardware_comparison
Hi guys i thought i might help some people out how i reached a steady 712Kh/s with a R9 280X.
I’ve just gotten a new Sapphire r9 280X Vapor-x going. Me and a mate sat here for literally 2 hours trying to fine tune it. I could never get higher than 650Kh/s which was disappointing.
Finally we found the sweet spot being gpu engine 1020, memclock 1500.
The strange thing i found is that increasing the GPU engine above this, even though the card at least supports to 1080, is that the khs will decrease drastically. Also increasing the memclock, even though the card supports upto 1650+ before crashing, will reduce kh/s. So basically… reducing below default card levels will INCREASE kh/s.
Here is the cgminer bat file settings i have:
setx GPU_MAX_ALLOC_PERCENT 100
cgminer –scrypt -I 13 -g 2 -v 1 -w 256 –lookup-gap 2 –shaders 2048 –gpu-engine 1020 –gpu-memclock 1500 –thread-concurrency 8192 -o http://ltc.give-me-coins.com:3333 -u [USERNAME] -p [PASSWORD]
Note: obviously change the pool, username and password to your appropriate values.
I hope that helps someone
btw, for some reason posting to this forum messed up my cgminer bat above. It replaced all double hyphens with a single. make sure scrypt, shaders, lookup-gap, gpu-engine, gpu-memclock and thred-concurrency are prepended with a double hyphen – –
Hi Rob,
Thank you for your setting for the Sapphire r9 280X Vapor-x.
I’ve bought the R9 280x from Gigabyte, can I use your optimized settings?
I will be using 3x the R9 280x GPU’s, what while be the result each day with pool mining?
Kind regards.
Not really any harm in trying because those memory and core settings are quite conservative. But best to hunt through forums for configs on exactly your card (thats what i did) along with trial and error. Also check here (https://litecoin.info/Mining_hardware_comparison) of what people have which matches your card. Sorry I can’t really be much help on that
Nice setup, I wonder whether it would be any good for Feathercoin mining.
I can’t seem to find any hardware chart comparing mining rigs for Feathercoin?
It’s all scrypt mining, so there is no difference in which coin you actually mine, as long as it is scrypt the kh/s stays the same.
So for FTC you have the same hardware specs then for LTC
Hi reiti.net, thanks for your response, I have already read through FeatherCoin forums and I’m trying it out…on my APU lappy 😀 just to check it out.
I’m thinking about building a rig to use exclusively for mining, the one on this page looks like great idea for a setup with no cooling issues 😀
I was wondering about Power Connectors for 3x280X. They need 8+6pin each.
Is that any problem with power supplies?
When – “I’ll be updating the rest of my guide at some point in the near future with optimal settings for the 280X, so stay tuned.”
when – I can not wait 🙂 please Help 🙂
when – I can not wait 🙂 – “I’ll be updating the rest of my guide at some point in the near future with optimal settings for the 280X, so stay tuned.”
Hey, thanks for the great guide. Im going to use 3 sapphire 290’s not 290x’s. How many watts do you your power supply to output at minimum? Can I undervolt those and what are the best settings for the scrypt GUI miner on windows. Thanks for the help in advance. 🙂
I have 2 7990 in 2 pc’s… want to build a mining rig with these… have bought risers… same mobo as above… and same cpu… i am reading that it can become very hot… dont have a problem now when using cgminer… it hashes 1.2Mhsh/s per card ( havent run 24hours )… did you ever try 7990’s…. i should undervolt them to 1050mv? just to make sure the cards keep alive…. i have just a 1000W supply, will it be sufficient if i undervolt?
Dang thats like 4 gpus lol thats going to be very hot. What do you think about water cooling? Also i would be safe with a 1200W power supply. You might want to throw other cards on the rig later.
hmm watercooling… i have a server room over here with airco ( i run my own hosting center at home, lol ) … i can put it right under the 2000BTU airco… would that keep it cool? yeah, i agree.. should have 7950’s but this is currently what i got and have to work with… i will undervolt it to 1050mv, but it under the airco… and see what will happen. Thanks.
When – “I’ll be updating the rest of my guide at some point in the near future with optimal settings for the 280X, so stay tuned.”
when – I can not wait please Help
What do you think about the Scrypt CGminer ( GUI version) ? I would love if anyone can tell me the optimal settings for a R9 290 ( Not 290X) for the scrypt CGminer . For a good answer , I am willing to donate a little bit of bitcoin. Also, what is the minimum wattage need from a power supply to power these cards AND instructions on how to make sure the computer doesnt turn off and keeps on mining
A SMALL BITCOIN DONATION FOR THE BEST ANSWER. Thanks appreciate it. Good luck mining to ALL.
I have a Radeon 7950 working at 560/s. Should that show up as 2 GPUs to reach 1.2Mh/s? I’m wondering if I’m missing something to use the full card.
Thanks