Goldshell BOX-Series ASIC Miner Set Up: The Complete Guide for Beginners

You're excited to start mining and generating passive income with your Goldshell BOX. You may even have your miner shipped and ready to go already. But how do you actually set up your ASIC?

We've written this article to guide you through the set-up process and clear up some common misconceptions. The process is super simple and should take less than 10 minutes.

In this article we're using a Goldshell Mini-DOGE as an example, but the process is the same for any Goldshell BOX model:

• Goldshell CK-BOX
• Goldshell HS-BOX
• Goldshell KD-BOX
• Goldshell LB-BOX
• Goldshell ST-BOX

Here's everything you'll learn:

• What you need to get started, and how to decide on a Power Supply
• How do you access the miner's user interface?
• How do you connect to a mining pool?
• Recommendations for mining pools and coin wallets

ASIC Miner Set Up: What do I need to get started?

After you get your miner itself, you'll also need a Power Supply (PSU) and an Ethernet Cable.

Miner, Ethernet Cable, Power Supply

The Power Supply (PSU) converts the alternating high voltage current (AC) from the outlet into direct current (DC) which can be used by your miners.

If you've bought the Goldshell BOX with Power Supply included, you can skip the next step.

Please note: if you are mining in the USA or Canada, you might need to buy a new power cord. The Goldshell BOX with Power Supply Add-on comes with a Type-I power cord (suitable for China, Australia and New Zealand). USA and Canada outlets on the other hand, require a Type-B power cord. The cord from a desktop computer will work fine; it looks like this: Amazon example.

How do I choose the right Power Supply (PSU)?

Read this section if you bought a standalone miner and still need a power supply

The most important things to look for when choosing a Power Supply (PSU) are:

Wattage

The wattage is the maximum amount of power the PSU can output. The PSU must have a wattage that is higher than the miner power consumption. You will also want a bit of headroom. Maxing out your power supply at 100% is not good for longevity; in fact PSU’s generally run at optimal efficiency at 70-80% load.

Rating

• 80 Plus rating means that the PSU is rated for at least 80% efficiency.
• 80 Plus Bronze means the PSU is rated for at least 82% efficient.
• 80 Plus Silver means the PSU is rated for at least 85% efficiency.
• 80 Plus Gold means the PSU is rated for at least 87% efficiency.
• 80 Plus Platinum means the PSU is rated for at least 90% efficiency.

The more efficient a PSU is, the less extra power it has to draw from a wall - saving you money in the long run. It's up to you to determine if the long-term savings of having a more efficient PSU are worth the higher cost of the PSU. At LeetMiners, we aim to use 80 Plus Gold (at least 87% efficiency) or higher for all our mining activities.

Many Chinese produced PSUs do not have efficiency ratings, as 80 Plus is an American standard. Companies will report the efficiency in terms of percentage.

Example: Goldshell Mini-DOGE

We know that our Mini-DOGE requires 233W to run. Check asicminervalue.com for your own miner's power requirements.

In this example setup we're going to use a Goldshell brand PSU that supplies 1200W. 233W is only 19% of 1200W, far under our suggested 80% threshold, so we could use this PSU to power multiple miners if we wanted to.

Goldshell 4-connector Power Supply

The PSU we're using will work anywhere in the world, because it has "INPUT: 110-240V’ on its label.

• The U.S. uses 120 volts (you'll see 110 V in places because of legacy)
• Europe and much of the rest of the world uses 240 volts.

Below are are some other recommendations for PSUs.

Recommended Chinese Mining Brand PSUs for ASIC mining

Note: even if there are 10 connectors, this doesn't mean you can power 10 miners. You must add the wattage of all miners, and stay under the PSU wattage.

Are normal brand Power Supplies compatible with ASIC miners?

Yes, they are: you don't have to use a ASIC brand Power Supply with your ASIC miners. We like the PSUs in the table above because they are generally good quality, are fairly priced, and miner manufacturers sometimes include them as part of deals.

Here are some quality PSUs from general hardware brands:

Will I trip the circuit breaker?

The circuit breaker trips it cannot handle the excess load of electricity. A 15 amp circuit in the US is rated for a peak load of 15A x 120V = 1800 Watts. However, mining is a contiguous load so it is subject to an 20% de-rating, giving you 1800 * 0.8 = 1440 Watts. So, in order to not risk overheating the internal wiring and circuit breaker you must stay under 1440 watts for that entire circuit.

Which Ethernet cable should I use?

The ethernet cable is simply to connect the miner to the internet through your router. Choice of ethernet cable is not a huge deal. If you don't have a spare lying around, any amazon cable with good reviews will do, just make sure your ethernet cable is long enough if your miners will be far away from your router.

Now that we have everything we need, we plug our miner into the PSU and plug the PSU into the outlet. Then we connect our miner to the router.

The miner comes to life with a hum and then quiets down.

The status light will also turn on - don't be worried if it is red for now.

Connecting the miner: Access the miner's web interface

Now it's time to access the miner interface so we can get mining.

Go to https://find.goldshell.com/ to find the IP address of your miners.

What if I don't see anything on find.goldshell.com?

The Goldshell website has been known to not update in time.

If you do not see the IP address of your miners, you can download Angry IP Scanner to see if your miners are connected properly and view their IP addresses.

After running Angry IP Scanner you will see a list of IPs like this.

Blue is normally YOUR IP.

Green means that the IP address is active, and the device connected to it is responding to requests. This is most likely your miner/s. You can test them by going to the IP addresses in your browser.

Connecting to the Miner web interface

Take the IP address of the miner and enter it in our browser.

You'll see an interface that looks like this.

The miner is working properly if you see a Hashrate. This value should hover around the miner's advertised Hashrate. For our MINI-DOGE, you can see that it is 190.7MH/s, while Goldshell advertises 180MH/s ± 5%, so we know we are in the correct range.

Unlocking the Miner

You'll have to unlock the miner by creating a username and password:





The initial password is 123456789 - use this to unlock the account, and then you can change the password later.

How do you connect a miner to a mining pool?

The last thing we need to do is to connect the miner to a pool.

A mining pool is a group of crypto miners who combine their miner computational power to strengthen the probability of finding a block. If the mining pool finds a block successfully, the reward is split amongst pool participants.

Rewards are usually divided according to the proportion of hash power each individual contributes. For example, if I contribute 5% of the pool power, then I receive 5% of the rewards mined by the pool.

We recommend mining in pools because: while a solo miner will receive the full reward for finding a block, the odds of achieving success is very low due to high resource and power requirements. Teaming up with others dramatically improves success rate.

How do I find the most profitable pool to be in?

The industry is dominated by a small number of large pools. The miner's dilemma: a larger pool has higher overall hashrate so it will be able to mine more rewards overall. But in a smaller pool you provide a greater proportion of computational power, and thus receive a greater proportion of the rewards.

Sites like whattomine.com provide rankings for pools, however the best method to discovering what is most profitable for you is to try multiple pools yourself. You can try pools for 2-3 days each, and see which one yields the most coins.

Example: Connecting to the f2pool

We'll use the f2pool as an example, since its one of the largest, most established pools with an easy to use interface:

Change the currency I'm mining to Litecoin, or whatever you are mining.

Navigate to the Workers tab. Here I'll find information to connect my miner to the pool. Any of these pool URLs will work but you want to use the one that is closest to your location. Sine we're in North America, we're going to use to Pool NA URL.

Go back to the Goldshell interface and click on the miner tab. Under "Pool settings" click add

Fill your credentials. Note: Goldshell separates out the stratum+tcp portion of the address so you only have to type the URL into the URL field.

Give the miner 10 minutes to connect to the pool. You'll know you're connected when the gray INACTIVE status next to the Pool becomes a green ACTIVE.

When the miner is connected, you will be able to see its Hashrate in the pool interface.

Add a Wallet Address

Last step is to add your wallet address so you can get paid!

Navigate to your account settings and add your LTC address. Since we're dual mining LTC and DOGE, don't forget to add your DOGE address too.

Pool / Wallet Recommendations for Different Coins

We get asked this question a lot, so we'll write a longer article about our recommendations and rationale behind them soon.

For now, these are our quick recommendations for which pools to mine in, and which wallets to store those rewards in.

Goldshell Mini-DOGE

• Coin/s Mined: Dogecoin, Litecoin
• Pool Recommendation: f2pool
• Wallet Recommendation: Ledger S

Goldshell HS-BOX

• Coin/s Mined: Handshake (HNS)
• Pool Recommendation: dxpool
• Wallet Recommendation: Bob Wallet

Goldshell KD-BOX

• Coin/s Mined: Kadena (KDA)
• Pool Recommendation: Poolflare
• Wallet Recommendation: ZelCore

Goldshell LB-BOX

• Coin/s Mined: LBRY Credits
• Pool Recommendation: zPool
• Wallet Recommendation: LBRY Desktop Wallet

Goldshell CK-BOX

• Coin/s Mined: Nervos Network (CKB)
• Pool Recommendation: Poolin
• Wallet Recommendation: Neuron Wallet

That's the complete guide to setting up a Goldshell BOX miner! Questions? Let us know in the comments below!