Pradeep Singh | 14th Jan 2018
Sometime back, one of my friends told me about Cryptocurrency mining using the Graphics Cards and since then I wanted to give it a try. However, because of the unavailability of good graphics cards in the market (or the crazy prices), I didn’t do anything.
Recently, while going through the configuration of my Gigabyte Brix GB-BXi7G3-760, I realized that it has an inbuilt NVIDIA GeForce GTX 760 GPU and I am not using it at all (I am using this box as a headless ESXi server in my virtualization lab). I knew it won’t be profitable for cryptocurrency mining as NVIDIA GeForce GTX 760 GPU is an old card now, but at least it can teach me something new. This was the time when I said, let’s give it a try.
Following is the picture of the Gigabyte Brix GB-BXi7G3-760, that I am going to use for this mining exercise –
To start mining with this box, I followed the following steps –
1. Prepare the Bootable USB with Windows 10:
Power consumption is one of the most important factors that affect your profitability with cryptocurrency mining. To keep the power consumption and hardware cost low, I decided to use a 32 GB USB 3.0 Flash Drive.
To keep things simple, I decided to use Windows 10 as the operating system on this machine. To install Windows on the USB flash drive, I used Rufus (installed on another windows machine).
2. Connect USB Flash Drive on Gigabyte Brix, Configure Windows and Install Device Drivers:
During the first system boot, OS asks some configuration parameters like Time Zone, Machine Name, Keyboard format, User etc, to complete the OS installation.
Once the OS got installed, I installed the device drivers especially the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 760 GPU driver.
Gigabyte Brix GB-BXi7G3-760 drivers can be downloaded from the following link –
https://www.gigabyte.com/Mini-PcBarebone/GB-BXi7G3-760-rev-10#support-dl
3. Register on NiceHash:
Though you can use any cryptocurrency mining application, I decided to use NiceHash to keep things simple. I had to register on NiceHash to create the BitCoin wallet (If you use any other wallet, NiceHash will charge some fee).
You can use the following link to register on NiceHash –
4. Download and Install NiceHash Miner Legacy:
As the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 760 GPU is not supported by NiceHash Miner v2, I used NiceHash Miner Legacy to use the GPU along with the i7 CPU for the mining.
NiceHash Miner Legacy can be downloaded from the following GitHub legacy (I used NHML-1.8.1.6.zip file) –
https://github.com/nicehash/NiceHashMinerLegacy/releases
5. Configure NiceHash Miner Legacy with Wallet Details and Start Mining:
On the NiceHash UI, I updated the Wallet details (created in Step #3) and start mining.
6. The Results:
I used both the i7 CPU and the NVIDIA graphics card for the mining. You can refer to the following screenshots (captured from the NiceHash website) for the results –
Conclusion:
I know what you may be thinking 🙂
Yes, It’s not going to be profitable, but at least you can learn your first lesson on the cryptocurrency mining and expand based on your budget.
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