Mining Rig: Should We Choose an Intel or AMD Processor?

Fundamentally, it doesn't really matter which platform we choose if we're talking about a home environment. The most important thing is to decide whether we're brand loyal or what experience we have with the given manufacturer's products. One thing is certain, it matters whether we pocket profits monthly, daily, or hourly $1 we pocket profit thanks to the main processing unit, the processor.

The main characteristic of the home product line is the affordable price range, which in Hungary, if we're talking about a better computer configuration, offers us options in the range of approximately 50,000 – 150,000 Ft for the processor. For this, we can get processors with sufficient computing capacity — in Intel's case, the i7 series, and for AMD, the new Ryzen 7 series models.

Here, however, I completely disagree with those who say that for a GPU-based mining rig, there's no need for high computing power from the processor... There's some truth to it, as most GPU-based mining rig owners are satisfied and buy an Intel Celeron G3900 or Intel Celeron G4400 or if we're more generous, even an Intel Celeron G4600model processor, which based on the current offerings can be purchased for approximately 10,000 Ft to 24,000 Ft. These can naturally handle the tasks assigned to the graphics cards, and it doesn't cause them too many problems nowadays, but the fact that we won't be able to properly sell or use this processor in the future is already certain.

These processors are practically the bottom of Intel's lineup in terms of performance, number of cores, and other features. However, the most important thing is that the processor is just one component of the complete mining rig, and this is where the next most important — actually the most important, but we didn't start with it for the sake of this article — component comes in: the motherboard...

For the above Celeron processors, most people choose the H110series chipsethowever, no matter how you look at it, motherboard prices with this chipset start from around 15,000 Ft and can go up to 30-35,000 Ft. But what's the point here? That if we buy a decent motherboard for, say, 20-25,000 Ft, we should put a basic slow and weak processor on it, which we won't even be able to use later if we no longer intend the machine to be a mining rig?

True, choosing a more serious processor means we can expect a significantly higher price, but it also matters that even the Intel Celeron G series, according to the NiceHash calculator and other test programs, can generate a monthly $0.5 – $1 profit, compared to a more serious unit (Intel i7-7700K, AMD Ryzen 1700(X),-1800X) which can produce up to a monthly $40 – $50 profit. In this case, let's decide with the "every little bit adds up" saying in our pockets what we choose. A super-weak Celeron that we can't sell later for more than a few thousand forints, or a more serious unit that we can still get rid of at a decent price in six months to a year, if we've gotten bored of mining in the meantime or want to upgrade to a stronger version.

• Intel and AMD performance according to and under NiceHash:
  • Intel i7 3930K: 330-360 HASH/s,
  • not exactly a modern piece — I got it back in 2013...,
  • powered by XMR-STACK-CPU,
  • monthly BTC earnings: 0.0020 – 0.0035 Bitcoin (BTC),
  • calculated over 12 months, to get some reasonable data:
    • we can mine 0.024 – 0.042 Bitcoin per month with it,
    • In forints, it depends on the Bitcoin's value against the US dollar at the given moment, but here are some examples:
    • 1 BTC – 1.3 million Ft (+-$000): 31,200 – 54,600 Ft / year
    • 1 BTC – 2.6 million Ft (+-$000): 62,400 – 109,200 Ft / year
    • 1 BTC – 5.2 million Ft (+-$000): 124,800 – 218,400 Ft / year – Bitcoin was at this price in December 2017!
    • 1 BTC – 26 million Ft (+-$000): 620,400 – 1,092,000 Ft / year – Many people believe that Bitcoin's price will reach $100,000 in the future!

• AMD Ryzen 1800X: 550-650 HASH/s,
• I got it just a few days ago so this is very fresh info,
• powered by XMR-STACK-CPU,
• monthly BTC earnings: 0.0045 – 0.0065 Bitcoin (BTC),
• calculated over 12 months, to get some reasonable data:
  • we can mine 0.045 – 0.065 Bitcoin per month with it,
  • In forints, it depends on the Bitcoin's value against the US dollar at the given moment, but here are some examples:
  • 1 BTC – 1.3 million Ft (+-$000): 70,200 – 101,400 Ft / year
  • 1 BTC – 2.6 million Ft (+-$000): 140,400 – 202,800 Ft / year
  • 1 BTC – 5.2 million Ft (+-$000): 280,800 – 405,600 Ft / year – Bitcoin was at this price in December 2017!
  • 1 BTC – 26 million Ft (+-$000): 1,404,000 – 2,028,000 Ft / year – Many people believe that Bitcoin's price will reach $100,000 in the future!

According to the two examples above, should we buy an AMD Ryzen 1800X processor because it's better? Better than the Intel i7-3930K, yes, but it's not a fair comparison of two processors since one is a years-old technology and the other is a completely new architecture from AMD.

Their prices were similar since I purchased the Intel i7-3930K model in 2013 for around 100,000 Ft and just a few days ago I got AMD's new Ryzen series' currently strongest version, the 1800X, for a similar price — exactly 98,000 Ft. I'm aware that AMD has a stronger variant, the Ryzen Threadripper series, but that's a completely different category, whose domestic sourcing isn't exactly 100% safe, and it should be competing with Intel's Xeon versions rather than among everyday contenders.

Returning to the question posed in the article, Intel or AMD? If anyone had asked me this a year and a half ago, the answer would have been clearly Intel... However, AMD introduced the Ryzen family, which in the same price range is stronger than the i7-7700K due to more physical cores. If a decision must be made, AMD is also a serious contender for building a strong mining rig, whose tasks can happily include cryptocurrency mining with the CPU.

To make a specific decision, you must consider the chipset's properties, limitations, and potential overclocking capabilities. In this regard, Intel is currently better — at least the selection is wider — but AMD's X370 isn't exactly a trivial player in this matter either.

I've been an Intel fan my whole life, I never had an AMD machine until now. I didn't choose AMD because it was cheaper — I could have probably bought the Intel i7-7700K for less — but rather because of the novelty of testing and curiosity, I decided to try the new AMD Ryzen processor. Alongside the new AMD processor (more precisely SoC), I chose an X370 MSI motherboard with 6 PCIe lanes, currently running 2 GTX1050Ti graphics cards, but in the coming period I'd like to maximize it with an additional power supply and 6-8 more graphics cards.

However, more on that later. Right now I'm mostly just experimenting with the new system to see what it's capable of exactly and stably, so a lot of time is being spent on fine-tuning, but I think it was a good choice.

I also welcome specific examples in the comments about what you would choose if you were building a mining rig right now.