Best mining rig 2018: the top pre-built mining rigs for Bitcoin, Ethereum and more

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.

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)

The Bitcoin Gold GPU Miner 2000 H/s from Ethereumminer.eu is a pre-built mining rig that offers the potential of a pretty excellent profit. While values may fluctuate, you could see this rig paying for itself after not long at all. Especially as it has recently had a price cut - something of a rarity with mining devices which usually see price rises! This rig can also be customised to suit your needs and budget.

Buy now for €2999.95 (around $3,600, £2,700, AU$5,000)

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. This 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 €499.87 (around $583, £441, AU$789)

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 or GTX 1080 Ti GPUs. 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)

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.