we are altcoin miners so we don't mind
bitcoin but we might just about every
other coin besides bitcoin we have to go
through to the next room the bunker
we've got a lot of noise in there and a
lot of airflow
mine step here are primary mining rigs
uh we've got a mixture of some nine card
rigs and some 12 card rigs all of these
are 1080 ti and video cards and they're
all constantly changing which algorithm
that they're mining depending on which
one is most profitable at any given time
and here is our original mining rig this
is our test bench a bit flashier and
that's just because those particular
cars happen to be cheaper at the time of
purchase on the mining rigs now instead
of having a motherboard with two or
three pcie lanes with 16 slots on uh you
will have a card with maybe 12 different
connectors for graphics cards
um because graphics cards are quite
large and don't all fit on right next to
each other on the board
you will move them away from each other
using a riser card and an extension
cable and you can see quite a lot of
that going on in the back there looks a
bit of a mess but it is functional and
of course if you can get a bit further
apart you can put a lot more air through
and keep the heat down
we've got a heat wave going on in the uk
people may not know this but for us this
is very hot at the moment yeah the heat
wave hasn't helped a lot and the cooling
solution that we did originally put in
hasn't really covered our needs we've
actually had to start ramping the power
back while we're developing a new
cooling solution
uh it's going to be a very make-do
cooling solution we're not going to buy
an off-the-shelf one so we'll be buying
carb radiator fans and then using a
raspberry pi to control the speed of
those depending on the temperature i
know it's a bit of a contentious issue
mining and energy but can you talk me
through that because i understand it's
slightly different with alt coins is
that right um
it depends on the coin and each coin has
wider one algorithm or multiple
algorithms and each of those algorithms
requires a different amount of power to
compute
some of the algorithms are really heavy
on gpu core some of them are very heavy
on the memory usage
the algorithms that we use all vary
so we don't really have a specific
efficiency on any one of them that we
can set up at the moment
um each of these cards are doing 250
watts of electricity in and converting
majority of that to heat
so we've got essentially a 15 kilowatt
heater here in a quite a small room so
we need to just keep that air moving as
much as possible what's going on with
the software you mentioned it switches
between coins i mean how does that
happen is that something you've off the
shelf is that software you guys are
bringing it's something you can make
yourself but we've used an off-the-shelf
one for that particular um
job it hooks up to several different
websites one of them is what to mine.com
and that tells you using your efficiency
of your card versus the difficulty of
that particular coin at the moment what
your returns are going to be
and it can compare all of those very
very quickly and select the right coin
to mine at the time
in terms of alt coins is there a kind of
standard amount or is it waiting for the
jackpot the one golden nugget how does
it work it's exactly the same as bitcoin
but the difficulty level is much lower
so you don't have to use asic
machines specifically for mining it um
some of the altcoins have got an account
rhythm built in and the idea there is to
keep it as decentralized as possible so
if it's just a6 then only those people
with an ac can a large investment in
asics are going to be able to really
contribute towards the system
um and if it's just gpus then there's
still an asic market there that you
could expand into and keep it as
decentralized as possible
and there's it's to do with the ethos of
the coin whether they've decided to go
fully decentralized or slightly less
decentralized if you had different
graphics cards with different hardware
see like in amd or nvidia then yes
definitely they'll be doing different
coins simultaneously but with all of
these being exactly the same card
essentially if it's most profitable for
one it'll be most profitable for all of
mine
so here's your 1x risers those are 12
pcie connectors where you normally see
them be this full size here the 16x
connector which is what the graphics
card plugs into yeah and then these are
in the same slot but they're only
running at one x speed so you don't need
the full width of the you don't know the
actual data transmission is relatively
low it's done a high high amount of
number crunching and then it returns
with a very small value essentially yes
or no i found something and that goes
back to the pool and the pool confirms
whether or not that's
a valid solution
i highly recommend a six card rig for
anybody's home
and any room you put a six card rig in
during the winter you won't have to pay
for heating on the output is hot air
lots and lots of hots if you can find a
use for that hot air it's no longer
really being wasted so perhaps it could
turn into a good use
um during the winter and certainly
during our office moves we couldn't run
these rigs at the offices so i took one
home my colleague took one home to keep
it going over and my conservatory was
warmed all through the winter i didn't
have to turn my space heaters on to keep
that nice and toasty so the rig paid for
its own electricity it paid a military
reward as far as bitcoin is concerned
and it paid for heating so i could turn
the heating off so
i certainly recommend having one at home
and as soon as it went the wife it's
like wait is it where's that mining rig
back it's too cold in here i need it
back now people will be used to seeing a
silver backplate where you screw it into
the back of the pc it's got a mesh over
it so it slows airflow and we've got
nothing to screw that into in our mining
rigs so we take it off just dropped a
couple of degrees off the temperature
every little helps when it comes to
getting heat out here people on the
other side of that camera can't
understand the temperature we are
planning on upgrading the cooling
solution the summer that we're having
this year
wasn't on our cards so the extra 15
celsius that the ambient temperature is
now is actually causing us problems and
we've got a new set of car fans behind
us that we'll be building into a new
cooling system so this was our first
build rig we've got a spare cabinet
sitting around we thought it'd be pretty
good for airflows that's primarily what
they're designed for as you can see
we've whacked a few baffles in cardboard
and a bit of rock wool there that makes
a big difference the amount of air
that's being forced between the cards
the air comes in the bottom and it's
pulled up by this car radiator fan at
the top and when this is running it's
pretty much close to ambient temperature
at all time even with that many gpus in
presumably these car fans are relatively
inexpensive compared to that's why
they're being used because they're super
cheap super cheap pretty high throw
throughput
easy to power
uh anything that's in a car has got a
very similar power supply to in a pc
running only 12 volts should we
go somewhere quieter yeah sure
they are not the best cards for mining
every coin by any stretch of the
imagination but they are probably the
best cards for my mining most of the
coins
the boards are actually mining
mining motherboards but they would work
absolutely fine as a gaming rig