I’ve decided to get back into some Crypto coin mining. You may know I had a Crypto podcast with Will called Aussie Tech Crypto.
Unfortunately, it has decided to rain for a week or more in my area so my solar panels will not help me much! *Sad WauloK noises*
I did a lot of research and had decided upon purchasing a couple of nVidia GTX 3060ti graphics cards which it turns out I could install alongside my current GTX 1070ti card. However, all retail places in Australia are completely sold out of the 3060ti cards! I can possibly find one 3070 card but they are about $300+ more than a 3060ti card which has about the same hashrate. *More sad noises*
So in the meantime I did a lot of research instead on ASIC mining rigs. These are specialised “computers” which only do one thing: Mine crypto currency. And they do it quite well. The graphics cards mentioned, particularly 3060ti, will do about 60 Megahashes per second. Something like the Bitmain Antminer S9j will do about 14.5 Terahashes per second.
They look like this:
You plug it in and configure it and then it just runs, when needed. You can configure them from a miner front-end like AwesomeMiner or the like. They can also run various software which has been specifically written for these, such as BraiinsOS and NiceHashOS — both of which have their own positives.
I am currently mining with my nVidia 1070ti card using NiceHash Miner anyway so may as well look at the NiceHashOS. I tested a few different miners yesterday over several hours and the easiest to use was NiceHash Miner for Windows.
I found an Antminer S9j on eBay for about AUD $900 so quickly bought it. There was another similar miner for about $600 but just before I hit the CONFIRM AND CHECKOUT button I noticed the seller had 0 (zero) reviews and the photo was taken from a website and the description said it was a thumbnail – so I dodged a bullet there!
The NiceHash profitibility calculator has the Antminer S9J at 6.49 AUD / Day. My nVidia 3070ti is currently estimated to be mining USD $3.00 / Day so if I can get another graphics card — probably a 3060ti if/when they become available – I should have a good amount of money being mined, especially if Bitcoin keeps rising in value as it is at the moment.