My Crypto-Mining Setup

A reader was curious about my crypto mining setup, and while I gave some brief details in a response, I figured it would also be worthwhile to dedicate a post to the subject.

First and foremost, please remember that I play video games as a hobby and work heavily with media editing, it is much easier to justify potential risks around buying high-end graphic cards, since I can extract personal usage out of it. If crypto mining interests you, please make sure you do your due diligence on the risks and rewards (and there are many).

A simple rule: An ROI of 3-9 months is acceptable, after that you start to really push the boundaries, since a LOT can change in the crypto-space within the space of a year.

My Setup:

1. nVidia RTX 2080 Overclocked
2. i7-6700k Overclocked

What I Currently Mine:

• Ethereum
• Bitcoin

Ethereum Mining

Ethereum mining is currently profitable, even taking into account residential electricity costs. It was more profitable a few months ago, before the recent May Crypto Crash, but you get used to seeing those kinds of price swings if you’ve been involved with crypto as long as I have. My earnings are increased as I don’t have electricity costs. See below for how profitable mining currently (at time of writing) is:

My 2080 is overclocked to try and maximize the hashrate, while I downclocked the power consumption to lower (what would normally be expenses) and prolong the longevity of my graphic card.

Should you go out and buy an nVidia GPU? Probably not, the days of Ethereum mining are coming to an end soon (estimated Q4 2021). No one knows quite how GPU mining will change, though there are reports of the second-hand market starting to be flooded with GPU miners dumping their graphic cards. This has happened before in 2017.

At this stage, I am a hobbyist cryptominer, but I’ve been doing it as a hobby on/off for just over a decade now (yes, really!) My latest venture into cryptomining, which began in November 2020 has resulted in the following monthly income:

One thing to be aware of for Ethereum mining, is that the network is moving away from Proof of Work (mining) and to Proof of Stake (hold 32 ETH and validate transactions). That said, there are a variety of altcoins that I may experiment mining with once Ethereum mining is over.

Bitcoin Mining

With my CPU, I supplement it with a paid mining contract to try and boost earnings (for now). This was mostly an experiment. I do not recommend mining contracts where you purchase hashrate for a set period of time. You’re better off buying crypto directly. Here’s the results of my experiment:

This contract cost about $289 USD and lasts for one year. There are 140 days left, I’ll be lucky if I break even.

Future Plans

I am currently aggressively building my mining operations and will share the details of this project once it’s ready and I have more accurate projections 🙂 I may also buy a 3090 (for personal use), but I’m also debating waiting for next year for the next gen GPUs to arrive. Waiting until next year might be the wiser choice as I’d get in right at the start of the upgrade cycle and would have more insight into the GPU mining market after Ethereum has moved to Proof of Stake.