There are many different kinds of crypto miners that mine in different ways. In this article I want to mention a few different types of crypto miners, how they differ in setup, earnings and environmental issues like noise and heat.
Nothing i state is financial or investment advice.
What do you need to start crypto mining?
It depends on a few factors.
How much you are into tech/like to learn.
If you have access to a garage/storage that can handle noise/heat.
What electric cost you have ($/kWh)
If you have a house with a roof and or yard that can be utilized.
If you have stable internet.
Cost
Compare the above parameters to miners different earnings.
Different kinds of crypto miners
Let's quickly summarize the different kinds of crypto miners first. There are
ASIC Miners Traditional proof of work crypto miners that usually makes A LOT of noise and generate a lot of heat. These are the kind of miners that you use to mine bitcoin, litecoin and dogecoin with. They are often big, heavy, not easy to move and require a lot of power. However, they mine a lot.
Graphic card miners Also traditional proof of work crypto miners that mine more traditional old school crypto tokens such as ethereum classic or ravencoin. GPU miners create some noise/heat and require power but not as much as ASIC miners.
CPU crypto miners. Mines crypto utilizing the CPU. This was used a lot more before but have been mainly been overtaken by GPU miners. There are however still some smaller coins that can only be mined with a CPU. CPU mining is less power consuming compared to ASIC and GPUs but comes next in line.
IoT/network and other DePIN miners Miners that send IoT and network signals. And other DePIN (Decentralized physical infrastructure networks) devices. These miners are not traditional crypto miners that helps verify/secure a blockchain. They mostly collect and share data. However, they are almost silent, produce no heat and require very little power, like the Fry Foundation miners.
Hard drive miners Miners made of hard drives that utilize the space to earn crypto tokens such as filecoin or chia. These miners make a tiny bit of noise, heat and require a bit more power compared to IoT miners but not nearly as much as GPU miners.
Access to garage/storage
Having a separate area such as a garage is almost needed for running ASIC miners and/or big GPU mining rigs since they are noisy and create a lot of heat. Even some hard drive miners can make a bit of noise. ASIC miners and GPU miners are not suitable to be placed in a shared living space. I myself have had a GPU mining-rig in my living room when I lived alone. That worked for a while but it was constantly making noise and quite a lot of heat. The heat was manageable during the colder parts of the year but difficult to live with during summer.
There is only one ASIC miner I know of that is silent enough to have within a living room (I currently have one in a shared living space) and that is the Kaspa miner IceRiver KS0 that you can see here below. If you are interested
use the discount code "nordic" and you will get $125 discount on that ASIC miner.
Difficulty - which miner type is most difficult to use
Some crypto miners can be plug & play and some may require some learning before being able to use them. The difficulty level can also be very unique for each kind of miner. But here I will lay it out in a general overview.
ASIC miners are quite often simple to use. Simply start and connect to your wallet and you are ready to mine. Once started, it can run for a long time. However if they break, it is difficult to fix for an amateur.
GPU mining can also be easy, as you simply just need a working computer with a decent graphics card and you are able to quite easily make it start mining. Building your own GPU rig is very similar to building your own computer which can be learnt through youtube tutorials, but this obviously is then more difficult.
However, once a GPU is started, it can usually run for a long long while without needing to be checked in on.
IoT/network and other DePIN miners can also vary quite a lot in difficulty. A lot of these are made to be as easy to setup as possible, many are plug & play. However some do require some additional manual setup steps. Also, many of these do require frequent updates/checking in on. Hard drive mining can both be plug & play from already set up hard drives. If you want to mine with your own hard drive it will require more knowledge on how to set it up.or they can require some manual fixing to get started. Also able to run without much attention.
Electricity cost
The electric cost varies a lot with different crypto miners and also depends on where you live and how cheap/expensive your power is. Here is the order of most power hungry crypto miners, going from highest to lowest energy consumption.
ASIC, GPU, CPU, Hard drive miners and IoT/network miners.
The electricity cost by running an ASIC miner can be more than 2-10 dollars per day depending on what device you are using. The silent ASIC miner I mentioned before however only uses 65 watts so costs around $6 per month to run for me.
Mining crypto with a GPU is pretty much the same as running a gaming computer 24/7 and the electricity cost can become $10-20 dollars per month. Hard drive miners cost usually less than $10 per month in electric cost. IoT/Network crypto miner costs between $1-6 per month to run and requires very little power. For example, the Ethereum Classic ETCMC node only uses around 9 watts per day which is almost nothing.
If you have a house with a roof/yard
Some IoT/Network crypto miners or weather miners require being put out in a yard or high up on the roof to give the best connectivity/reach to spread the network. Therefore, some of these crypto miners require that one have access to such areas. This is for example the Hyfix MobileCM crypto miner.
Good internet to mine crypto
To be able to mine crypto you do need a stable network connection. That goes for almost all different sorts of crypto miners. ASIC, GPU and CPU miners require Ethernet cable directly connected to the miner/motherboard. For hard drive miners and IoT/Network miners they usually have both a Wifi and Ethernet cable option. But it is always more reliable to use an Ethernet cable if possible.
Which type of crypto miner earns more?
There is a huge difference in earnings between the different crypto miners. If we ignore the initial cost and electric cost to run the miners, the ASIC miners are the ones that earn the most as they have the most power. There after comes GPU miners and then I would say that CPU miners and hard drive miners comes on the same spot. And lastly comes IoT/network miners. For hard drive & IoT/network miners the earnings can vary between $0.0001 to $100 per month and it depends on the crypto token it mines. Their earnings are therefore not so predictable and can vary a lot. They are most often very profitable during a small time frame. ASIC and GPU miners are more reliable and are used more to mine the traditional high market cap crypto tokens and with that comes a higher price/earnings stability. Also, to take into consideriation for ASIC & GPUs is that the better the GPU you have the more it will mine. However, when taking electric cost into consideration, it is not sure that ASIC and GPU mining are the most profitable. A lot of people have high electric costs and will therefore not be profitable to run an ASIC miner as the electric cost would cost a lot more than what they earn.
How much a crypto miner cost
There is a huge difference in crypto miner costs. There really is no general cost for each category, but here is a rough estimate.
The ASIC miners are the most expensive ranging from $500- 20 000.
GPUs you can find new or in second hand and range from $100 - 2000.
Hard drive miners cost $300 - 1000.
IoT/Network miners can be cheap and cost as low as $200 - 500.
The cheapest crypto miner is probably either the ETCMC ETC node or the FRY miners.
Which miner suits you? Which is the best?
So which crypto miners is the best to have? Well, that depends on your situation. If you live within an apartment you might not be able to have an ASIC miner. If you live somewhere where you have cheap or free electricity you might make quite a lot from mining crypto using AISC or GPU miners. Over the years, mining the traditional big crypto tokens have proven to be the best and most reliable in terms of earnings and profit. However, not all of us have the ability and so mining other tokens using other miners is our only option. IoT/Network and different DePIN crypto miners can be extremely profitable but are most often that under a short time period. However, they are often easy to use, cost pretty much nothing in electric cost and don't make noise/produce any heat.
Want to see the exact steps how to
Transfer money to a crypto exchange.
How to buy/sell on a crypto exchange.
Create & use a crypto wallet.
Learn how crypto networks work.
Swap/use a decentralized exchange.
How to store crypto safely.
How to avoid getting hacked. All this I go through in a video for free to the right.
Review of a silent ASIC miner I can have in my appartment!
Most ASIC miners require a lot of power and cause a lot of noise, but not this one! This one I am able to run in my apartment without me hearing it.