My Crypto Mining Rigs
Building crypto mining rigs is one of my favorite hobbies. I bought used GPUs, and
built some frames with wood. I can monitor and control the rigs remotely using
my smartphone when I'm at school.
Crypto Mining Rigs in a Tent
My minings rigs in a grow tent cost me about $20K. What? How did a 14 year old come up with all that money??? Made money by mowing neighbor's yards, and helping my dad renovate his rental properties. Used that money to buy used GPU's and built my first two rigs. Then used the money made from mining to build the remaining three. These mining rigs hog too much power (about $650 a month) and spit out too much heat in the house even during the Winter, so my parents wanted them out. My dad gave me his garage space, and I set up a grow tent with ventilation to control the heat. I got one rig in the house to help heat up the house, and four in the tent. These rigs are made of NVida RTX3090, RTX3080, RTX3070, RTX3060, and AMD 580's.
Grow Tent - Exhaust System
Building exhaust system using 8" flexible aluminum ducts.
Fan Box
Built this box with a cheap $12, 22" box fan (2300 CFM) inside. Caulked all edges to seal tight, so no air escapes for maximum heat extraction.
Building My 3rd Rig
Picked up this used NVidia RTX3090 from Craigslist. It was so cheap, I was worried that it might be defective. When I tested it, it was generating too much heat and shut down. I disassembled, cleaned, and applied a new, high-end thermal pad with 15W/mK conductivity. It works great, no shutdown issue.
My Rigs before the Tent
My rigs before the grow tent, were heating up the garage to over 90 degrees during the Winter.
NiceHash Excavator
This is a small rig, using NiceHash Excavator miner app. It hashes ETH, then auto-converts to BTC into my crypto wallet. This rig is in my house to warm up the room. It has the lowest power consumption, a little over 500W, but it warms up the room without any central heating (vent closed).
Rig with Highest Power Usage
This rig hogs a whopping 1.9KW. I'm using HiveOS on HiveOn pool. This snapshot was taken before the grow tent, in the garage during June. Notice the two gpu's with 100 degree temperature? That's in Celcius, over 200 in Fahrenheit!!! It's got two 1.5KW power supplies on 240V 50A breaker. I like to keep below 80% capacity for a safety reason!!! I learned my lesson by almost burning down the house because I didn't know that in the house most of the outlets are about 110V x 15A = 1650W. Luckily, the breaker tripped, only burning the outlet. Imagine my Dad's face...
Thermal Pads for RTX3080
This RTX3080 core temperature is fine, but the VRAM would heat up to 99 Celcius. So I replaced the thermal pads with 15W/mK conductivity, and it dropped to 81 Celcius. I measure and label all the pads then take photos whenever I disassemble my GPU's for future reference.
Power Meter
I picked up this cheap power meter from Amazon. It's pretty close to +-3% within my estimation. What can I say, I'm a math wizard... The wifi thermometer lets me monitor the actual temperatures remotely.
Electrical System
My Dad didn't have time to do this for me, so he got me in touch with an electrician he knew. I watched him do it, and I think I could have done it myself and saved me $900. Well, it looked easy enough. That 120V 20A powered the fans, switch, router, thermometers, cameras, etc. I got 30A PDUs plugged into those two 240V 30A outlets. With an 80A breaker in the main electrical panel, 30A breakers in the sub-panel, and a built-in 30A breaker in PDU, I'd think safety is in order. Besides, I made sure I'm using less than 80% capacity.