In this guide I will show you how to setup pretty much any Bitmain miners. The video above is from 2017 but the same principles apply today!
In order for a Bitmain miner to work it needs 3 things-
1. Location – a place to run 24/7.
2. Power – a sufficient source of power to provide the miner with power.
3. Internet – All miners need a connection to the internet.
Let’s start by explaining each of the above list.
Location – Most of the Bitmain miners are loud with large 120mm fans that run up to 7500RPM. This means you can’t set one up right next your bed you sleep on. You will need to be creative with this. Anywhere in a home is probably a bad idea. What I do is run power outside my house and run them in a shed. Some run it in the attic or even their roof. You need to be carful with this – cables heat up and miners can fail and cause a fire. Always run your miner away from anything flammable, and make sure temperatures don’t reach dangerous levels. Those miners get HOT!. Also check what is your wall socket can provide, do you have 110V outlet? maybe 220V? make sure you know what you have to match the right equipment. My suggestion is to get an electrician to install a high amp 220V outlet that is specifically designed for 24/7 high amp usage. Your regular 110V US outlet will not be happy if you pull more than 1600W 24/7 and might heat up / fail / cause fire or jump the switch and so on.
Power – Each miner has it’s own power requirements. You would need a power supply to provide the miner with 12V using PCI power cables. Make sure your power supply have sufficient amount of PCI cables, and rated with the amount of Watt for your miner. Let’s say your miner you have uses 1200W – I would go and get a 1500W power supply and have a bit of room to not max out the power supply. I would also recommend using a power supply that is designed for mining specifically. You CAN use PC power supplies and other powers supplies but remember that not all of them are designed to run 24/7 at their rated power. Checkout our power supply section under Hardware to see what we have offered for you.
Internet – This is the most simple to solve. You do not need a high speed internet. All you need is a reliable source of internet connected to the miner using an Ethernet cable. We also sell switches so you can run multiple Ethernet cables from a singe source to run multiple miners at the same time. You will also need to be able to connect to the same network to find your miner, and exchange it’s settings so YOU get paid for the miners work.
Now that your miner has a nice place to chill, with power and internet connected correctly to it, it is time to set it up with a POOL.
So what is a pool? a pool is a third party service that basically connects miners together to miner more powerfully all together. Trying to mine a block on your own is near impossible unless you have a huge warehouse with top of the line newest miners running all for you. Most people don’t have that so they mine on a pool.
Registering to a pool is easy and free, just search “bitcoin pool” on google and you will find endless choices. Check what coin or algorithm your miner work on, and find a pool that supports it. I personally choose the largest pool out there with most amount of users. Pools charge a fee 0.5% to 5% or higher depending on what they provide you back with. Once you register with a pool you will receive a Stratum URL address (looks like this stratum.antpool.com:3333) and it seems like there is no longer a password used so you can leave it empty or follow your pool instructions. Next you will use your user id you register with, this way the pool knows who is owning the hashing power from the miner.
Now that you have that info on the side it’s time to update the miner.
Turn your power supply on, get a laptop and be connected to the same network.
Miners can take up to 10 minutes to boot so be patient with this.
Once your miner has fully turned on you can feel the heat coming out of the fans – this is a sign that it’s mining.
Download a software called “Advanced Port Scanner” from google or use any port scanner of your choice – Bitmain miners are DHCP by default and will grab an empty IP address from your router to be used.
Copy and paste that IP address on a browser and you should be asked a username and password. The default for all Bitmain miners is “root” as a username and “root” as the password.
From there, go to the configuration page (might look or worded differently from miner to miner) and change the URL, User, and password we grabbed from the pool before. Hit save and wait again. Be patient with this, it takes time. What I do next is to go to the miner stats and make sure the Hashrate is matching what the miner offers. If that’s what you see – you successfully set your miner up and you are actively mining!
Now go to your pool and look for the Hashrate to show up there. Heads up – it can take HOURS to show up! sometimes it only shows you are online, but 0 Hashrate. Don’t worry just keep waiting for a few hours and you will see it there. If not – start from the top of the guide, one step at a time, and do it all over again until it works.
Happy Mining!