How To Mine Ethereum Part 2: Hashrate and GPUs

Dog has been walked.

So, once you decide that you want to mine Ether, you've got to shell out some cash for GPUs. But first, DO YOUR RESEARCH! Firstly, know the difference between processing power (hashrate) and memory. The higher the hashrate, the faster ether will  be mined, and the more money you will make. For memory, at the time of writing, you need at least 3gb to mine ether, because the blockchain is large enough to require that much memory. The blockchain is slowly increasing in size, so down the road you will need more and more memory.

So, you should be looking for a GPU with some where in the range of 20-30 Mh/s (mega hashes per second with 1 megahash = 1,000 hashes (SI units do come in handy!)). Now to make things more confusing, 1 Mh/s when mining ether does NOT equal 1 Mh/s of mining other coins. It kind of stinks, but that's the way it is, so get used to it.

AMD GPUs tend to be seen as a better investment than NVIDIA GPUs because of they have comparable hashrates for less than half the price. Now, you can't actually buy a AMD GPU that's good for mining at retail prices, because mining has become so popular that there is a worldwide shortage of GPUs. Yes, there is a worldwide shortage of a computer component that is tied to a highly volatile coin, and the manufacturer does not want to flood the market by manufacturing more GPUs, since the price of ether could drop, people stop mining, and there's a glut of GPUs and they can't sell they're new GPUs at a profit. Don't you just love economics? Needless to say, gamers are pissed at miners because of the price increase of GPUs (the other big market for GPUs is gaming PCs), for instance a AMD RX 480 8gb retailed for $200 brand new, and now you'd be hard pressed to find a USED one on ebay for $300. That being said, I believe this is still the best option. It still has a hasrate comparable to the $800 NVIDIA cards, and it consumes less power. It's a year older than the AMD RX 580 8gb, but again, still has a comparable hashrate with lower energy consumption and costs less (the 580 is about $450 on Ebay).

So once you pick your GPU, you need to decide if you want to just add it to your existing desktop computer or build a dedicated mining rig. If you're just getting your feet wet and don't want to invest $2,000 buck in building a 7 GPU mining rig, then I suggest just buying 1 or 2 GPUs and installing them to a desktop computer.

And now I need a nap.

How To Mine Ethereum Part 1: Super Basic

Ethereum (aka Ether) is a cryptocurrency (like bitcoin, but any cryptocurrency besides bitcoin is called an altcoin) but it works on a very different algorithm that was designed for smart contracts that are always executed correctly because they are part of a public ledger, so one party cannot disrupt the contract. Ether is the currency with which the contracts can be executed. Ether is the second "biggest" cryptocurrency, so it's the "biggest" altcoin (Litecoin, Dash, and Siacoin are others, but there's like 1200 different cryptocurrencies, including meme-based one like Dogecoin...yeah...meme-based).

That's all well and good, but how will it make me rich? Chances are, it won't. The value of Ether (and all other cryptocurrencies) is super speculative, so you kind of just need to buy a few coins, get lucky and ride a wave until you get scared and then sell them. Not too much different from penny stocks. Really, the main difference between altcoins (bitcoins is accepted by some vendors, so it's kind of becoming a real currency) and penny stock is that you can min for altcoins. All you need is a sieve and...jk you need a GPU. If you don't know what a GPU is, you should probably stop reading and not worry about mining. Huh...still there? Okay. A GPU is a graphics processing unit (aka graphics card) that is normally used for rendering games or models or art and other graphic-y things. But you can also use it to compute things, kind of like a CPU (central processing unit, the main "brain of your computer. But GPUs compute things much faster than CPUs and you can have up to 7 of them on a single motherboard, instead of just one CPU. So, you can compute the Ether blockchain algorithm that needs to be processed to keep the Ether network secure, and then you get rewarded for it! In Ether! So, mining is just this process of running the blockchain on your computer and then getting paid for it. You can also mine with a CPU but they're super slow and you won't make any money because it will cost you more in electricity than you will make mining Ether.

I have to take the Dog for a walk, so part 2 will be coming soon.

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