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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hi,
Is it important that pcie 1.0, 2.0 or 3.0 is on mobo?
thank you
Not important at all.
1x, 4x, 8x, 16x is not either
Will work well on anything.
For example. 1x to 16x 1.0 PCIe riser connected to a R9 280x will work.
Hello chaps,
Planning to build a 4x R9 280x rig.
1 big PSU is quite expensive. Would it be ok/wise/smart to use 2x 650W PSU instead?
1 PSU for Mobo and 2 cards, and a second PSU for just 2 cards.
Thanks!
Using two Power supplies can be destructive and dangerous. Its possible but very hard to do.
http://www.add2psu.com/
This is misinformation. Conenct the Green wire to any Black wire on the 20pin to enable POWERED ON state. This allows the hardswitch to be the on-off switch. The most dangerous element SHOULD be the part where you remember to turn it on so the components can be powered. If not, PC building might be a little too advanced a mission. Don’t let unfamiliar basics make you fearful of the simple mechanics.
The turn on an ATX PSU you must ground the POWER_ON pin. It’s the one with the green wire on the 20pin connector. Connecting it to any of the black (ground) wires will tell the PSU to turn on, then you can use the hardswitch as a toggle. If your power supply doesn’t have a hard toggle, I’d recommend taking the time to wire up a proper toggle switch to the POWER_ON pin.
If I replace the GPUs with 3 Sapphire R9 290x cards, What would I need to change from the above rig specs
You need a bigger power supply is all. I would think 1200 to 1400 watt
I have only been able to find 2 msi gpu as you have recommended. i’m sure it’s possible to run 2 gpu’s. my question is, what kind of performance would i get as compared to 3 gpu’s and is the programming the same as with 3 gpu’s. I guess what i’m looking for is the same step by step instructions for 2 gpu’s as you have on the 3 gpu’s.
Thanks for all your help.
Its the same as if you had 10 gpu vs 2. There is a cmd line that says find all gpu connected. Oncw that is done your good to go… if you want you can in config file separate out different settings for each gpu… like tje one power color I have wirh 2 saph is set eng 975,1100, 1150 and different mem clocks as well.
Also, exactly which 3 sapphire gpu’s would be the best to use with the psu that you have recommended (seasonic 860W) instead of the MSI Radeon gpu
nice write up man! quick question. Im planning on setting up a 6x r9 280x rig. I have 6 powered pci-e risers coming and i am linking two 1000w power supplies together for a total of 2000w for the system. at 256w each card im left with 464watts. Should I upgrade one of the psu to 1250? or i should be ok with this setup
p.s im using windows 8 which supports 6 gpu
i am thinking to set up 4 x R9 280X rig. could you please help to suggest which MB, CPU and how big for the power supply to get this run smoothly. considering something cheap due to tight budget. really appreciated.
What determines if a videocard is good for the job?
Because videocards are expensive and im looking to find the cheapest with the highest yield.
Wich spec determines the speed of your hashing?
For example: This card; “ASUS HD5450 1GB DDR3”
Is only 30 bucks… if i buy 10 of those… Isnt that better then 1 MSI Radeon?
Thanks
You want to buy a VGA card which will not consume lots of electricity will give you good hashrate for the electric bill it generates and is not verey expensive. As the 7950 cards are close to impossible to find the next good options is the R9 280x as the owner of this block already mentioned.
It is up to you to buy 10 cheap VGA cards if the hashrate you will generate with those will cover your electic bill expenses and will give you some profit ( if you will be selling any of the coins you will mine to pay the electric ).
These cards you mentioned cannot be consuming less than 150W electricity so 10 of those if they give you the same or a bit higher hashrate compared to x3 R9 280x it is not profitable to use those.
You do the math 🙂 and after that you will see what is the best option.
Hoping you can answer this.
Im New to this.
Does the GB of the gpu effect mining.
I find conflicting reports on hash rates and dont see alot of people specifying which card when there is multiple versions.
Example
Will a 6GB sapphire 7970 outperform the 3 or 4gb version?
i see 700 k/h listed for the lower version… but dont see post on the higher.
What is the single most important factor when looking at a card… assuming wattage does not matter (free elec)
What if I have solar panels and I don’t have to worry about electric bills?
What GPU would you suggest?
I am using the Sapphire R9 280X and have undervolted to 1125 still getting 700kh/s. It results in a 70W saving at the wall per card which is significant
vapor -x btw
Hi Guys, just order 3 x ATI 7970’s for my rig. Is the 860w PSU pwerful enough for this, if I undervolt etc?
Great site btw.
If your 860w PSU is not 80+ gold or Platinum you must undervolt the 7970 cards because at full load with stock voltage needs 250-280w each one.
Thank you for your help. Whatvis easiest way to under volt? Sorry for the questions, but I am a noob here ..
How effecient is an xfx 7970?, ist should be better than an 7950 right?
Is it possible to use 4 grafic cards on this mainbord or is there a other option?
thanks;)
Wisitor
Do you have to use the EXACT same cards? I’m completely new to crypto mining. All of these cards are becoming extremely hard to find.
Hi heafers,
if you are you using cgminer then you can seperate the values for different cards using a comma.
So if you have two gpu’s, gpu0 and gpu1 and you want two different thread concurrency values then it would look like this:
–thread-concurrency=value1, value2
gpu0=value1
gpu1=value2
Hope that helps.
Can I run a gigabyte R9 290 GPU and sapphire R9 290 GPU on same MB? Or do the GPU’s have to be the same?
Yes you can.
New to this.
Does the GB of the gpu effect mining.
I find conflicting reports on hash rates and dont see alot of people specifying which card when there is multiple versions.
Example
Will a 6GB sapphire 7970 outperform the 3 or 4gb version?
i see 700 k/h listed for the lower version… but dont see post on the higher.
What is the single most important factor when looking at a card… assuming wattage does not matter (free elec)
For me is the wattage, because electricity in Spain is not cheap (0,15€).
But leaving out wattage…..
what spec of the video card has the biggest effect on hashrate…..
What effect does the GB’s have if any?
Overclocking the Gpu clock gain more hashrate
Got my rig built – it is working but my litecoin pool servers are offline…joining another pool now.
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10201960858815293&set=pcb.10201960860135326&type=1&theater
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10201960856775242&set=pcb.10201960860135326&type=1&theater
XFX RADEON Double D R9 280X 1000MHz BOOST Ready 3GB DDR5 2XmDP HDMI 2XDVI Graphics Cards R9-280X-TDFD
ASRock MB-990FX4 Socket AM3+/ AMD 990FX/ AMD Quad CrossFireX& nVidia Quad SLI/ SATA3&USB3.0/ A&GbE/ ATX Motherboard
Corsair Vengeance Blue 4GB (1x4GB) DDR3 1600 MHz (PC3 12800) Desktop Memory (CMZ4GX3M1A1600C9B)
Western Digital Caviar Blue 500 GB SATA III 7200 RPM 16 MB Cache Bulk/OEM Desktop Hard Drive – WD5000AAKX
Seasonic SS-1250XM X-Series ATX PC Power Supply
Qody PCI-E Extension Cable: 16X to 16X
AMD Athlon II X2 270 Regor 3.4 GHz 2×1 MB L2 Cache Socket AM3 65W Dual-Core Desktop Processor – Retail ADX270OCGMBOX
Etekcity 1000mW 802.11 B/G Long range High Power USB Wireless WiFi Network Adapter with 6dBi Antenna RTL8187L Chipset
Windows 7 Home Premium SP1 64bit (OEM) System Builder DVD 1 Pack
What is your hash rate?
Got up to about 675Khz per card w/ cgminer at I=19 and the rest defaults. I should be able to get them over 700Khz after tweeking. I could really smell the electronics cooking at I=19 so I’m backing off for tonight and running at 14 or 15…about 500Khz per card. The rig is only detecting 2 cards out of the 3. Looking for some resistors now, hopefully that will get all 3 going.
How many LTC are you pulling per day with 2?
How much electricity does this use per month to mine 24/7 say in nyc?
I suggest you figure out how to google before you spend money on a mining rig. look for a litecoin calculator…
Hmm do you have to use powered 1x to 16x? I ordered in some for my 2nd rig and got non powered ones…. i know 16x to 16x i used in first rig worked fine non power.
If you can then i need to figure out why mine isnt working if not then i need to order some new ones.
Uhm sorry if I missed something. But if we trick the cards that there is a monitor there, how will we get the miner to run on em?
Do we connect a monitor to the mobo or single card?
I had the same question. For now I’m connecting monitor to first card and other 2 are disconnected. I have an issue that the 3rd card is not being detected. I have not yet installed a dummy vga plug though, that may fix it…
Hi!
Good guide I’m looking to build one but..
It’s hard to find the same configuration.
What do you think about a :
3x Sapphire Radeon R9 280X
with the following powerblock:
Akasa Venom Power 1000 80PLUS Gold
I know it’s not a platinum but gold isn’t good enought? Do you think 1kW is enought with three 280x?
Thank you for your help! =)
The PSU may not be sufficient for 3 of these GPUs though. Even though you undervolt those the settings apply after the system boots so you need more watts at boot. If you know someone at the local hardware store and they have this PSU ask them to test it for you with the 3 cards. I have tested 1050W SeaSonic with these GPUs 3 of them and it is tricky to boot the system. May be I am not doing something wrong but just to be safe get 1250 Seasonic or the 1200i Corsair Platinum. I have bought this corsair a few days back this is a great PSU though.
Better get 1200W for 3 GPUs or 2x850W and build 4xR9 280x rig.
Damn…did I mess up already?
I got one 1500w (gold) for my FOUR r9 290x cards…why are you suggesting two 850w psu’s…am I missing something here? Should I have two 850x instead of one 1500w?
You can connect 2 PSU but it’s safer to have 1 PSU to supply power to multiple GPUs. I have a bit of doubt that 4 0f R9 280x GPUs will be sufficient with 1500W when people are trying to run with 1250W for 3 GPUs…
Danny 1500W should work fine with 4 GPUs.
Skype me if you need any help: goshev2k
Hey guys I am starting a new forum here:
http://litecoin-central.com/community/
If anyone wants to help me build it skype me so I can allow your IP to have access. During the development the access is restricted. Also on this website I plan to add hardware recommended/testted/nottested but suitable and lots of information as a whole for anyone who may want to start mining litecoin or any other altcoin.
Sent you message on skype
If the PSU is high grade this it should be able to handle like 200 – 300W over what it says on the box for short period of time. The GPUs will need more power only during boot before the undevloting takes effect.
The GPUs are 250W this means 1kW for all 4 while the system boots. The rest of the components cannot be more than 300W which makes 1.3kW and the 1.5kW power supply fits in these numbers fine.
Thanks all on the PSU assurance…
So, I bought the following mobo:
Gigabyte GA-990FXA-UD5
It has “5 PCI-E 2.0 interfaces for 3way AMD CrossFireX and SLI multi-graphics support”
My question is – does the crossfire capabilities on this make any difference to my set up and/or performance?
..and I have four Sapphire 290x cards…yet it says it suupports 3-way crossfire…just wondering if that matters.
You will not use the crossfire so that is not important. As long as you have enough PCI-E slots it is all good.
In this great guide says:
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
When I use the following setup:
– ASRock 970 Extreme4
– 3x R9 290 Sapphire (2 x DVI)
– Windows 7 64x
Do I need dummy plugs?
If yes, do I need a dummy plus for each DVI connection?
Thank you.
I want to build a mining rig. I cant choose between these 2 video cards. Club3D Radeon HD 7950 royalKing and Club3D Radeon HD 7950 ’13Series. And what for power supply do i need for 3 of these cards?
Are these cards even capable for the job ?
Is it possible to use radeon 7970 from Club3D ?
Please Help
Can you tell me if it is possible to use an XFX AMD RADEON HD7950 PCIE 3GB DDR5 along side 2 msi twin frozr hd7950 just like the ones recommended by crytobadger.
Yes but xfx dont ovetclock well… you will need to separate out settings in the script
Hi, i need to know what is the difference between
MSI
Radeon HD 7950 3GB GDDR5 R7950 TF 3GD5/OC BE
And
MSI
Radeon HD 7950 3GB GDDR5 R7950 Twin Frozr 3GD5/OC
Can i use BE modell card for mining LC ??? Thanks