Best mining rigs: the top pre-built mining rigs for Bitcoin, Ethereum and more

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With the prices of graphics cards rising due to the cryptocurrency gold rush, it's now more sensible to buy a pre-built device for mining cryptocurrencies, which is where our best mining rig 2018 list comes in.

Unlike the best mining desktop PCs, which can be used for other day-to-day tasks as normal PCs, mining rigs are specially-designed for one purpose only: to efficiently and effectively mine cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin.

This means you won't be able to use a mining rig for other tasks, but it does mean you'll be getting the very best mining results thanks to the best mining rigs being designed to eke out the maximum return when running.

If you still want to build your own mining rig, check out our guides on the best mining GPUs, best mining CPU, best mining motherboards and best mining SSDs to help you get started.

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Shark Mining is a well-regarded company that makes some excellent pre-built mining rigs. Its Shark Mini is a compact rig that comes with four GPUs. The base model comes with AMD RX 570/580, but your can configure it to have a NVIDIA GTX 1070 GPU or 1070 Ti GPU, which could net you an extra profit, and you can also add a touchscreen display for keeping an eye on the rig. Shark Mining estimates a profit of $200 a month if you mine ZCash , and up to $300 a month with Ethereum if you use the base model with, though of course that could change.

• Buy now from $2,690 (around £2,034, AU$3,642) 

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The Bitmain Antminer S17 Pro has some of the best advertised performance specifications, and comes with three different modes for advanced mining: normal mode, low power mode, and turbo. While the ASIC comes with a top hashrate of 53 TH/s, you will need to run it in the lower modes at times to help prevent over-heating. Even still, the S17 Pro is one of the more efficient ASICs out there, with a power rating of 39.5 J/TH. However, because of its high specs it is currently out of stok, and we await for Bitmain to restock the model and advertise a new price.

• You can buy the Bitmain S17 Pro here

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Application-specific integrated circuit chips (ASICs) differ from other mining rigs as they don't utilize GPUs to do the mining, which means price and power consumption is reduced. They can also solve Bitcoin blocks faster, which means they are definitely worth looking into. The Antminer D3 is an ASIC miner from Mineshop.eu is a good mid-range miner that has a hash rate of 19.5 GH/s. Definitely one to consider if space is at a premium.

• Buy now for €333.33 (around $386, £298, AU$540)

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Shark Mining has another entry in this list of best mining rigs, this time with its Shark PRO mining rig. Like the Shark mini, this is a well-built device for mining that comes with a range of configuration options. The base model comes with six AMD RX570/580 cards, but these can be upgraded to NVIDIA GTX 1070, GTX 1070 Ti, GTX 1080 Ti or NVIDIA RTX 2080 Ti GPUs (2080 Ti won't be available until October, but you can pre-order). It's an expensive rig, but the build quality and potential profit makes it a very tempting choice if you're serious about mining.

• Buy now for $3,790 (around £2,866, AU$5,130)

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The PandaMiner B5 Plus is a brilliantly put together miner that's compact and attractive, while also being excellent at making profits when mining for cryptocurrencies. However, it is very expensive, and due to its popularity it can often be sold out. Luckily Pandaminer has a number of different models to choose from.

• Buy now for  ¥12,000.00 (around $1,800, £1,400, AU$2,500)

• Best ASIC devices for Bitcoin mining

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