Ive been wondering, is it possible to make a good custom Bitcoin miner? AntMiners aren't worth it anymore, and I can't find a miner that is. Can I build a miner myself that will be worth it? If so, what do I need to custom make a miner? What are some basic Bitcoin miner components. How much will it cost approximately? Is there anything else I need to know if i'm going to build a miner? There was some confusion, I don't mean I want to print my own pieces and make my own miner completely from scratch, I want to buy pieces online and make a miner, can I do this somehow?
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The last time I heard pricing of the engineering costs it was in the $500,000+ cost range to develop an asic– Mark S.May 3, 2016 at 13:02
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Two words. Holy Crap.– GoldNugget8May 6, 2016 at 3:17
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4 Answers
No, the ASIC chips used in miners are impossible to craft at home, and to my knowledge no competitive chips are for sale as component parts.
Development of new ASIC chips has progressed to a level where it costs millions to create a new template and you need state of the art (<16nm) production to produce them. It is not economic to do this at home.
Unless you live in an area with extremely cheap (or free) electricity, you probably will not be able to build your own miner from scratch. Modern mining requires ASIC's (Application Specific Integrated Circuit) in order to make any money. These are silicon chips that implement the SHA256 hashing algorithm in hardware, rather than running a software version of the algorithm on a general purpose CPU, or even GPU. Unless you are able to manufacture your own custom silicon chips, you would be better off purchasing an ASIC miner.
The closest you will come from the comfort of your home is an FPGA, which basically allows you to implement a customized circuit that is for you application. If you are not familiar with the SHA-256 hashing function and Bitcoins implementation of it, it could take you a long time.
This would never be better than simply buying an ASIC. It will not be more efficient. But if your goal is to learn, then you could try.
You could build your own miner if you have the technical knowhow and equipment using a batch of Bitfury 75GH/s chips, however, the idea of doing this at home is not going to happen. I am told that Bitfury has a minimum order of USD 2 M for all products (EDIT: seems they may have changed their policy) but, you might be able to find smaller quantities on eBay or elsewhere online. For USD 2 M it is more likely you might start producing en-masse in your garage. You might have more luck finding a retailer selling 55TH/s, 5.6kW Bitfury B8 servers or a Bitfury Block Box.
I am not affiliated with Bitfury.
If anyone finds any useful non-eBay links for these products post them in the comments and I will update my answer.
