4 GPU Litecoin Mining Rig Guide

146 Replies

PLEASE NOTE: the guide below was written back when Litecoin mining on GPU’s was profitable. I recommend the AntMiner L3+ Litecoin Miner (ROI in about 100 days, currently) or building an Ethereum mining rig by following my 6 GPU Mining Rig Guide. Happy Mining!

Home-built crypto currency mining rigs are a great way to invest in the new digital currencies, while avoiding some of the risk involved in purchasing the coins outright. This guide will show you how to assemble a fairly easy to build ‘milk crate mining rig’. This rig is capable of mining at over 2,800Kh/s. As of the date this guide was updated (2/20/2014), a 4 GPU Litecoin mining rig like this can generate over $350 USD worth of Litecoins per month or around $500 USD worth of Dogecoin, and will cost you between $2,000-$2,500 to build. If you want to see the live current calculation yourself, click here, for a pre-configured Litecoin calculator or here for a Dogecoin mining calculator. You’ll just have to enter your electricity rate to calculate your net profits. I have built several of these rigs for myself and friends. Build time should be no more than 2 hrs.

Mining Hardware Build List

  • Power Supply – $250 –  1300 watt Gold Rated PSU  –  If you are having a hard time finding these larger power supplies in stock, an alternative is to get  two lower powered 750 watt Gold Rated PSU’s and connect them together with this add2psu adapter to power your rig.
  • Motherboard – $90 –  ASRock MB-970EX4 Socket AM3+/ AMD 970/ AMD (best motherboard for mining at the moment). If it is out of stock, this one or this one are good alternatives.
     
  • Graphics Cards (GPU) –  $350 x 4  AMD Radeon R9 280x – This is one of the best graphics card for alt-currency mining. It is capable of over 750Kh/s per card, bringing your total rig power to 3,000 Kh/s. Stick with the Sapphire, Gigabyte, ASUS or MSI brands and avoid the HIS, Powercolor and XFX brands as they are known to have issues with mining. I would also recommend the AMD 7950 if you can find them for under $300/ea. They get around 700Kh/s and use significantly less power than the 280x when under-volted. There are several other recommended mining cards that will work with this rig guide listed here. Just remember to calculate the power requirements for whichever cards you decide to go with.
  • CPU – $40 – AMD Sempron 145 Processor – We’ve chosen the cheapest option here, since the CPU doesn’t affect mining efficiency.
  • RAM  – $50  –  4 GB Corsair DDR3 RAM
  • 1x to 16x Powered Riser Cables –  $6 x 4  –  PCI Express 1X to 16X Powered Riser Cables – These riser cables allow you to suspend the graphics cards abover the motherboard for better airflow/cooling. We recommend powered riser cables which plug directly into the PSU to reduce the wattage required from the motherboard. The 1x male end of the cable plugs into either the 1x or 16x slot on the motherboard, and the 16x end of the cable is where the graphics card gets plugged in.
  • Hard Drive –  $40  –  Small Solid State Drive
  • Case – $6 – Plastic Milk Crate (you might be able to pick one of these up at an office supply store for less). Alternatively, for a much more aesthetically pleasing build, check out the custom built cases designed and built by Rich Chomiczewski. I’ve personally used his cases and can recommend the excellent build quality and customer service he provides.
  • Extra Cooling  –  $30  –   Box Fan – Best cooling for a mining rig, as it pushes all that hot air away from the rig.
  • Operating System  –  $0-$90  –  Windows 8.1  – If you’re familiar with Linux you can of course download it for free (some folks consider Linux to be the best OS for litecoin mining, since it keeps your overall costs down, improving your litecoin mining ROI). If you want to load the OS from a CD you might want to pick up a $29 external USB powered DVD drive. Many laptops in the ‘thin & light’ category are shipping with no internal optical drive, so it will probably come in handy for other uses as well.
  • Monitor, Mouse and Keyboard – Most people already have this trio somewhere around the house, but I included it since you’ll need it to set up your rig. Once the rig is setup it can run without these as a ‘headless mining rig’.

If you’d like to trade Litecoins or any other Scrypt based currency to Bitcoin, I would recommend the Cryptsy exchange. Also, I personally use and highly recommend CoinBase for buying and selling your Bitcoin for USD here in the US. If you sign up through that link, they’ll give you $5 worth of Bitcoin to get you started as a reward for buying your first coin through them!

Putting it all Together – Assembling your Litecoin Mining Rig

Here’s a quick Youtube Video Assembly Overview followed by step-by-step instructions:

  1. Unpackage everything
  2. Install processor and RAM on motherboard
  3. Plug in all riser cables
  4. Place motherboard in plastic crate
  5. Plug in SATA hard drive
  6. Connect all GPUs to riser cables and fasten them to plastic crate evenly spaced out for maximum heat dissipation
  7. Plug in all power supply connections
  8. Connect mouse, monitor and keyboard and an internet connection (I used a USB WiFi adapter)
  9. Check all connections once more
  10. Fire it up! Install the OS if needed. Install Graphics card drivers. Install mining software. Make sure fans are doing their job. Fire up the mining software, tweak for maximum hasrate and let ‘er run!

Sidenote: If mining isn’t your thing, and you are just interested in purchasing some cryptocurrency as part of your investment portfolio, I personally use and recommend Voyager.  Trade $100 on the platform, and receive $25 of Bitcoin FREE. 

146 thoughts on “4 GPU Litecoin Mining Rig Guide”

  1. dnyce

    Question, what if I didn’t need/want a beast this big as I might actually use it from time to time for gaming.

    Could I swap in the HAF XB case, instead of the milk crate (for looks), go with 2 GPUs (7950s) and leave room to improve there if need be?

    And also, what CPU cooler do you recommend? I don’t see that listed here.

    All in all, this is great info for a BTC noob like me.

    Thanks! 😉

    Reply ↓
    1. admin Post author

      If you are building a hybrid mining/gaming rig, you could definitely swap in the HAF XB case. I’m assuming you mean this case.

      You can put a maximum of 3 GPU cards in there, but it definitely looks much nicer than milk crates if you’ll be using the rig where you have to look at it. Aesthetics cost extra, but are worth it for something you use every day. 🙂

      Also, if you’ll be using this for gaming, I’d recommend upgrading the CPU to what I put in my first rig (see my first mining rig article). A Sempron is really slow for anything other than mining purposes.

      Reply ↓
      1. kobi

        If I use the HAF XB case, do I need the 1x to 16x Powered Riser Cables?, more over with all of the fans i can add to this case, is anymore cooling is needed, thanks
        kobi

        Reply ↓
        1. admin Post author

          You won’t be able to use 1x to 16x powered riser cables in the HAF XB case. As long as you have enough space between your cards for airflow, you’ll be fine. Just monitor your temps when you first start mining.

          Reply ↓
  2. bruiser99

    Nice info. I just recently finished a build similar to this. Some info that may help: the only place I had issues was with pci-e riser cables. I ordered a few from China but they still (1 month later) haven’t arrived. Ended up finding http://cryptosupply.com and tested the waters with them on 2 cables. Got them quick and they work fine. More expensive than Chinese shipped cables, but about half the price of the other US-based eBay stuff (no way I’m going to pay $20 for a powered riser cable).

    Reply ↓
      1. admin Post author

        I feel for you, socosoldier. Riser cables are hard to find. Every time I find a source and link to them, the traffic from this site gets them sold out within a day or two. 🙁 I’ll try to add another source soon.

        Reply ↓
  3. mark

    How far off is your earnings estimate from when this was wrote. Can you state in the article what the difficulty # was when showing it, or tell us.

    That might help later on when people see the article.

    thanks,

    Reply ↓
    1. admin Post author

      As of today, this estimate is still accurate (just checked on burnside’s calculator). The difficulty level of Litecoin is 482.51251079 today for future reference.

      Reply ↓

  4. Pingback: My First Mining Rig - Quad 7950 GPU - 2.2GH/s | Coin Mining Rigs

  5. Matt

    I noticed that your prior link to the 12GH/S rig not available. I would be interested in seeing the specs for that.

    Reply ↓
  6. Mandalorian

    I used to build custom computers in the early 2000’s. I am curious to see a picture of this rig assembled. How did you place the video cards to maximize cooling and to keep them stable (with the flexible PCI-e extensions). How did you attach the fan to the milk crate? Is the machine at floor level to maximize heat dissipation or on a desk? Thanks!

    Reply ↓
    1. admin Post author

      I have the rig sitting on a table. The box fan sits next to the rig and pushes all that hot air away from the rig. Video cards are fastened to the milk crate and spaced for maximum heat dissipation. Hope to have more pictures posted soon.

      Reply ↓
  7. Tommy

    Thanks for the article!

    I just placed a fat order for a rig based off what you’ve got here. The only thing I changed was the mobo, I’m using a gygabyte Extended ATX board since 1x-16x riser cards shipped from the US are crazy expensive! It’s a 1155 board, and I’m using a ivy processor, think pci 3.0 will net me any gains? Would running full x16x16x8x8 be better than x16x16x1x1? I’m guessing no to both, but what the heck lol

    Also went with factory overclocked 7970’s, or the GHz edition. I’m lazy and want to set and forget.

    My plan is to mine bitcoins till the impending ASIC bubble burst, then switch to litecoins.

    My running total was $2574.89, with two day shipping because time is a factor!

    Reply ↓
    1. Tommy

      My rig is together and hashing!

      http://imageshack.us/a/img40/3579/20130428170054zps0b08cb.jpg

      But I’m only getting about 2750MH average with Cgminer and a bunch of optimizations for this card. Any advice to get to 750MH per card?

      Even overclocked to 1150 I can only get 700MH. 1200mhz is an instant driver crash and 1175 isn’t too stable.

      The only thing I haven’t really played with was memory clock, I set it to 1000. Might I see a better hashrate from bitcoin by trying different settings? I thought that was a lot less important on bitcoins than litecoins.

      Thanks again for the article!

      Reply ↓
      2. fher98

        LOVE the setup man! Pretty cool looking.. Two questions.. whats the temperature with this fans, and where can I get them 🙂

        Reply ↓
        1. admin Post author

          Temperatures are in the mid 70’s Celsius. Fans like this are available online or from most local ‘big box’ retailers.

          Reply ↓
        2. Tommy

          Thanks!

          Sadly temperatures are in the 90’s even with these fans. There’s just not enough room to cool these cards unless you use cable risers which I haven’t been able to make work properly.

          I’ve ordered a set of waterblocks for my cards. I’m done trying to make air work!

          I bought these fans at newegg as a set of 4, they are xigmatech fans. The case was custom made.

          Reply ↓
      3. JayPi

        Hi,

        I can get 742 MH/s from 7970 (Sapphire or Gigabyte)
        1160 MHz core / 1500 MHz Mem
        — thread-concurrency 24000 -v 1 – g 1 – w 128 – I 20

        Try and tell me …………….

        Reply ↓
        1. admin Post author

          Impressive, JayPi! I’m curious what your temps are both on the cards and the ambient temps in the room. Heat seems to be the biggest issue on the 7970’s when you push them this high.

          Reply ↓
  8. Pascal

    Hey there! Thanks for this nice list and instruction of the setup!
    I would like to start a little bit slower with only one GPU and want to buy one more in 2 months or so…maybe even three, depends on the BTC price etc.
    What alternative motherboard but more interestingly: power supply would you suggest? 250 $ is definitely another level than, lets say, 100$.
    I would really appreciate your help 🙂 thanks!

    Reply ↓
    1. admin Post author

      Some folks would rather ‘go big or go home’ so to speak on bitcoin mining, but if you’re looking to start small and expand later, I would recommend buying all these parts along with just one graphics card. That way you can add more cards later without having to replace your power supply. If bitcoin value would tank in the future or mining becomes unprofitable, you can always sell the PSU on eBay and recover most if not all of its value. Just as an example, I bought that $250 PSU for $209 a month ago. It has since risen in value. Same goes for the graphics cards and motherboards. Two of the motherboards I bought were $180 at time of purchase. Today they are $300+ in value on eBay and Amazon. As always YMMV (your mileage may vary).

      Reply ↓
        1. admin Post author

          You could combine two 750 watt power supplies, but I wouldn’t recommend that one you linked to. It is cheaply built and isn’t modular. I’d stick with the modular Seasonic OCZ or EVGA gold rated ones.

          Reply ↓
  9. Ash

    Can you take some pictures of the rig setup please or email them to me, i wanna do your build but wanna try and figure out the milk create setup and do you think using this with the riser cables on your 7950 build would be better?

    Reply ↓
    1. admin Post author

      Hi Ash, Yes, this would definitely help with heat dissipation on my 7950 rig. I just haven’t taken the time to add the riser cables on that one. As far as a picture? Here’s a shot of someone else’s rig set up with a milk crate… https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=7216.msg1373047#msg1373047 As you can see from the photo, you can ‘modify’ the milk crate (i.e. cut sections out) for better airflow and access to ports on the motherboard, etc.

      Reply ↓
  10. Ben

    Please forgive my ignorance as I have very little to no knowledge of PC hardware, but I am intrigued by crypto-currency and would like to set up a mining rig. Once the rig is complete could I run it from my Mac desktop (Safari) and will mining from this PC render it useless for other activities? Alternatively, I have an old laptop that I no longer use, could I run a rig from this?

    Reply ↓
    1. admin Post author

      Mac hardware is designed for aesthetics not mining. I love my Mac but would never mine with it. Also, laptops are not well suited to mining. Poor cooling and low powered gpus. Best thing is to either buy the currency on an exchange or study up on what it takes to mine and use one of our build guides to assemble your first rig.

      Reply ↓
  11. Chris Greig

    This is fantastic advice; just what a noob needs. Just to complete the picture whats the approx (say order of magnitude) amount of LTE a rig like this can produce in a day?

    Reply ↓
    1. admin Post author

      I think you meant LTC. At the current USD value of Litecoin this rig would mine the equivalent of $12 USD a day. If you mine and hold as I do, this daily value has the potential to be even more.

      Reply ↓
  12. Timothy Crimmins

    Sorry, just looked at one of my PCI express cables and figured it out. It splits into an 8 + 6 pin plug. Looks like you only need 4 slots in the power supply.

    Thanks again.

    Reply ↓
  13. Timothy Crimmins

    How many PCI plug slots does the power supply have. It seems you need two PCI power cables to each card for a total of 8. Are there 8 slots on this power supply?

    Thanks!

    Reply ↓
  14. admin Post author

    Thanks for catching that simple arithmetic error! 🙂 I’ve edited the article to correct the price points. I use GUI Miner which on the back-end is Reaper. I’ve tried several others, but this one seems to be the most stable for my setup.

    Reply ↓
  15. Reinout

    4 x 400 $ isnt 1200$ ??

    Good setup , i have ordered 4 x 7950 saphires vapor X

    Which miner you recommend, Will mine LTC BTC TRC on Coinotron

    Cheers

    Reply ↓

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