Setting Up and Using Orange Pi 5 for Mining VerusCoin (VRSC)

VerusCoin (VRSC) is an interesting project that has been available for a while already, but has more recently been generating attention among miners this year thanks to its ability to efficiently mine it with power efficient ARM-based devices such as smartphones and microcomputers. The focus of this article is how to set up VerusCoin (VRSC) mining on an Orange Pi 5 device (similar to Raspberry Pi, but more powerful) thanks to the use of a Rockchip RK3588S 8-core 64-bit processor that is capable of quite decent performance with a low power usage, making it one of the best options for efficiently mining VRSC or other similar crypto coins. We are going to be doing a separate guide on how to mine VRSC on an Android-based mobile device, so stay tuned for that as well…

So, what do we need to get started? Obviously, we first need to acquire an Orange Pi 5 board, a 5V USB-C power adapter capable of at least 10 Watts (2 Amps), along with an additional cooling as the CPU gets hot while mining as you should already know, then we also need a 16GB/32GB micro-SD flash card with a card reader. Do note that we don’t need the more complex, feature rich and expensive Orange Pi 5 Plus variant for mining or the 5B wit WiFi module, nor do we need more than the cheapest 4GB RAM version of the Orange Pi 5 board (it is available with up to 32 GB RAM). The official white power adapter capable of 5V 4A is fine for the purposes we are going to use the device, so you can get that one or skip the extra cost if you already have a 5V capable of 2A or more USB-C power adapter sitting unused. As for cooling, there are a number of options available, though the GeeekPi Orange Pi 5/5B Cooling Fan with Heatsink does seem to be a popular solution for active cooling that does the job well, even though it could’ve been made even better and more efficient. You would also need an ethernet cable to connect the Orange Pi 5 to a router or a switch for Internet connectivity, since we are not using the more expensive 5B versions that has an extra WiFi adapter, although you might want to go for that one and ditch the cables as well and go the wireless way.

Summary of what we need:
– Orange Pi 5 4GB with Rockchip RK3588S @ $79.99 USD
– Orange Pi 5 4GB with Rockchip RK3588S + PSU @ $89.99 USD
– GeeekPi Orange Pi 5/5B Cooling Fan with Heatsink @ $17.99 USD
– SanDisk 32GB Ultra MicroSDHC UHS-I Memory Card with Adapter @ $9.95 USD

After we have all the available hardware for our mining…