Hard Decision

[basedgamer69420]

I'm currently in High School and I'm thinking between buying a new rig or buying a MINING rig from the money I earned while working this summer, and I'm stuck and don't know what to do bc if I go with mining rig than I can lose money but if I go gaming rig I won't lose money but maybe I would have made money if I went with the mining rig and I am confusion. And if I go gaming I will be using it for school since I study IT so I don't know if I need a good PC for that. Please someone help.

[Falkentyne]

3 minutes ago, basedgamer69420 said:

I'm currently in High School and I'm thinking between buying a new rig or buying a MINING rig from the money I earned while working this summer, and I'm stuck and don't know what to do bc if I go with mining rig than I can lose money but if I go gaming rig I won't lose money but maybe I would have made money if I went with the mining rig and I am confusion. And if I go gaming I will be using it for school since I study IT so I don't know if I need a good PC for that. Please someone help.

I assume your parents know about this?  If you have to even ask questions about "mining" before you're living on your own, the answer is almost certainly "NO."

And if you're rich enough to throw money away like this as a minor (and who is going to pay for your electricity?), you wouldn't even need to ask this question to begin with.

 

Buy a gaming rig and lay off the mining until you're living on your own and have learned some responsibility.

Yes you do need a "good" rig for gaming.  Hardest part is finding a video card.  3060 Ti or 3070 or AMD 6700 or 6800 XT will get you up and going, assuming it's at MSRP.

[RONOTHAN##]

Go for the gaming rig. Get a decent GPU and you can always just mine on the side. It will be less expensive, less risky, and you can use the GPU for something that it's more designed to do (i.e. Mining) 

[tikker]

3 minutes ago, basedgamer69420 said:

buying a MINING rig

Don't. For the simple reasons that you don't sound familiar with what you are buying and that it sounds like you have better uses for the money. Mining isn't some magic money faucet, except in the case when you have a dozen or so cards running and fully paid for.

[Hybris5112]

The question you must be able to account for is ROI: Return On Investment. That means not just the one time costs of buying the hardware but also the upkeep costs of paying for utilities, internet, etc...

 

If you can't make a positive ROI then you are actively loosing money every moment that mining rig is working. So yes invest in a gaming rig and if you are willing to be smart for your money spec it for 5-7 year service life and get the top end parts where ever possible so that means getting things like a Ryzen 9 5950x and a 3090 and doing so with the idea that you won't be replacing those parts outside of actual failure or damage for 5-7 years or even longer depending on your gaming habits.

 

I'm sitting on a Intel 3970x based rig that is 10 years old that besides a failing motherboard runs everything I need so you can save money in the long run by going big now and you can likely run anything that comes down the pipeline for years to come.