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The Simple Bitcoin Mining Hardware Bible


Overview

This article will be about the basics of bitcoin mining for finding a bitcoin miner and understanding some of the concepts that differ from miner to miner.

Hashrate

Hashrate is a pretty simple concept. It is literally how many hashes the miner can complete per second. In modern bitcoin miners you'll be seeing a lot of stats like 100 GH/s or 1 TH/s. It's still a hashrate, but at a much higher speed. For instance, 100 GH/s is actually 100,000,000 hashes per second.

Examples:

  • 1 kH/s is 1,000 hashes per second (sometimes mistakenly written KH/s).
  • 1 MH/s is 1,000,000 hashes per second.
  • 1 GH/s is 1,000,000,000 hashes per second.
  • 1 TH/s is 1,000,000,000,000 hashes per second.
  • 1 PH/s is 1,000,000,000,000,000 hashes per second.

    • Power Consumption

    Before looking for a miner, I strongly recommend you test or look up (as long as your home/flat is up to code) the wattage of your wall outlets. Each miner has a different consumption as well as efficiency, these are all disclosed by the manufactures so read through the miners specs.

    Once you find out your outlets power output, I'd just write it out of save it some where for easy comparison later on when you're looking for units.

    Ventilation

    Now, when I saw ventilation, it's also about space. You need to make sure you have space to set the miner up that has some sort of ventilation, and preferably not in your direct living areas. Miners create a fair amount of heat and noise, so keep this in mind. I lived with 3 antminer S3's beside my bed for a few months, which wasn't much of a problem for me but I'm certain for most people it would be.

    Connection

    Miners can differ with what connections they use. As a general rule of thumb, smaller miners will have a USB connection (to your computer) to control the miner, and a small power supply. These small type miners use your internet connection to mine, as opposed to WIFI or Ethernet.

    Larger gauge miners (Let's say Antminer S3) are powered through a computer power supply and either set up through WIFI (some loss of hashrate) or hooked directly into Ethernet. The larger miners DON'T need a computer to be on, they do all the work themselves, smaller miners generally do.

    Mining Hardware

    Companies I'd recommend at least starting looking through would be BITMAIN and RockMiner. These are just two companies to look at, there's a lot out there but just be mindful of deals that are too good to be true.

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    Location: Toronto, ON, Canada

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