— Mining Guides —
Mining Guides
36 evergreen guides covering how to mine, mining pools, payout schemes, hardware, and GPU rental — updated with live data.
Getting Started
6 guidesWhat Is Bitcoin Mining?
Learn how Bitcoin mining works, what hardware you need, and whether it's profitable.
Mining Profitability
Is crypto mining still profitable? Analysis with live rig data.
Electricity Cost in Mining
How electricity cost affects mining profit and how to calculate yours.
Self-Host vs Cloud Mining
Run your own rig or rent cloud hashrate? The economics compared with a real flagship rig vs real cloud-mining contracts.
How to Read MiningBoard's Rig Profitability Trends
How the /trends pages compute rising / falling rigs, what each status badge means, and how a buyer should read them.
What Is Proof of Useful Work?
Proof of Useful Work (PoUW) explained: how it turns mining energy into AI training, science, and real computation — vs. Proof of Work and Proof of Stake, with real projects like Pearl, Primecoin, and Gridcoin.
Pool Guides
9 guidesWhat Is a Mining Pool?
Understand how mining pools work, why they matter, and how to pick one.
Mining Pool Payouts Explained
Compare PPS, PPLNS, PPS+ and FPPS side by side with a decision table.
PPS — Pay Per Share
Deep dive into Pay Per Share: how it works, fees, pros and cons.
PPLNS — Pay Per Last N Shares
Deep dive into PPLNS: luck, variance, and why fees are lower.
FPPS — Full Pay Per Share
Deep dive into FPPS: fixed block rewards plus fixed transaction fees.
PPS+ — Pay Per Share Plus
Deep dive into PPS+: the hybrid of PPS and PPLNS.
What Is a Hashpower Marketplace?
How NiceHash-style hashpower marketplaces work — buyers rent hashrate, sellers point rigs, prices set by algo demand. With live rates.
NiceHash vs Mining Rig Rentals
Two hashpower marketplaces compared — pricing, payouts, and which pays sellers more per algo, with live rates.
How to Price Your Rig on Mining Rig Rentals
Floor vs recent vs asking price — how to set a competitive MRR rental rate, with live top-algo prices.
Hardware
7 guidesBest Bitcoin Miners
Top SHA-256 ASICs ranked by daily profit, efficiency, and ROI.
Best Litecoin Miners
Top Scrypt ASICs for Litecoin and Dogecoin merged mining.
Best Kaspa Miners
Top KHeavyHash ASICs ranked by profitability.
Best Ethereum Classic Miners
Top Ethash miners for ETC mining after the Ethereum merge.
Bitcoin Mining Hardware: 13-Year History
Every milestone Bitcoin miner from 2013 to today, with hashrate, power, J/TH efficiency, and a log-scale chart of the curve.
FPGA vs ASIC Mining
Why FPGA mining still exists, the algorithms where programmable silicon beats fixed ASICs, and a live comparison from our catalog.
Best Bitcoin Heaters
Mining + space heating in one box. Heatbit, 21energy, MintGreen, HotMine — every dual-purpose Bitcoin heater with the math vs. heat pumps.
Coin Mining
6 guidesHow to Mine Pearl (PRL)
Step-by-step guide to mining Pearl (PRL) — the AI-compute proof-of-useful-work coin — on Nvidia GPUs. Best cards ranked, profit math, and how to check earnings.
How to Mine Ergo (ERG)
Complete guide to mining Ergo (ERG) on Autolykos v2: VRAM requirements, the best GPUs ranked by live profit, wallet and miner setup, pools, and efficiency tuning.
How to Mine Vertcoin (VTC)
A complete beginner guide to mining Vertcoin (VTC) on Verthash: supported GPUs, wallet setup, miner configuration, pools, and how to check your profit.
How to Mine Groestlcoin (GRS)
Beginner guide to mining Groestlcoin (GRS): the ultra-power-efficient Groestl algorithm, supported GPUs and miners, wallet setup, pool configuration, and profit checking.
How to Mine C64 Chain (C64)
How to mine C64 Chain (C64) with your CPU: the RandomWOW (RandomX-family) algorithm, XMRig setup, huge pages tuning, pools, and profit checking.
How to Mine Raptoreum (RTM)
Beginner guide to mining Raptoreum (RTM) on the GhostRider CPU algorithm: why L3 cache decides your hashrate, miner setup with cpuminer-gr, pools, and profit math.
GPU Rental
8 guidesDatacenter vs Consumer vs Workstation GPU
What separates H100 from RTX 4090 from RTX 6000 Ada — ECC, NVLink, FP8, form factor, license, warranty.
Best GPU to Buy for AI Rental
Live host take-home and months-to-payback for every datacenter, prosumer, and consumer GPU. Buy-to-rent decision framework.
Top Earning GPUs Right Now
Live leaderboard of the highest-paying GPUs on AI rental marketplaces. Daily net, monthly net, payback windows.
Vast.ai Bid Pricing Strategy
How Vast.ai's bid auction actually clears, how to set your first rate, and how to adjust on-demand vs interruptible.
Rent GPU for AI Earnings
How much can you earn renting your GPU for AI workloads?
Vast.ai vs RunPod vs io.net
Side-by-side comparison of GPU rental marketplaces.
GPU Mining vs AI Rental
Should you mine crypto or rent your GPU for AI? Live data comparison.
Beginner's Guide to Renting a GPU for AI
Renter-side primer: what GPU rental is, how to pick one, and how to run your first AI job on Vast.ai or RunPod.