Want To Start Mining But Don't Know Where To Start

[ChillKyle]

Hi guys. So I want to start mining either bitcoins or litecoins. I currently pay for the electricity bill. I currently have a MSI GTX 760 and an Intel i5 4670K. I was wondering how do I start mining?

[Lays]

I'm curious about this as-well, I know the odds of actually getting enough to even pay the electric bill is very slim, but I want to try it sometime and just see how it goes.

[RuecanOnRails]

Mining Litecoin would be much better due to it being done on consumer grade hardware.

 

For a mining rig, you generally need high end AMD GPU's. Nvidia is very poor when it comes to mining and may cost you more in electricity.

Here's a comparison guide for hardware https://litecoin.info/Mining_Hardware_Comparison

Add up your hash and add it into a calculator.https://www.litecoinpool.org/calc calculations aren't valid for very long, difficulty changes every 3 days, and prices can jump around.

 

If you're looking to invest in Crypto-Currencies, I'd suggest splitting your investment amount between buying coins directly, and mining hardware. If the price suddenly jumps up, it would have been better to buy the coins, if the price and difficulty drops, mining would be better. This way you cover yourself a little bit better than investing in a single aspect of Crypto-Currencies.

 

Cards like the 7950, and 7970 currently offer the best price to hash.

[ForeseenVisionz]

Mining Litecoin would be much better due to it being done on consumer grade hardware.

 

For a mining rig, you generally need high end AMD GPU's. Nvidia is very poor when it comes to mining and may cost you more in electricity.

Here's a comparison guide for hardware https://litecoin.info/Mining_Hardware_Comparison

Add up your hash and add it into a calculator.https://www.litecoinpool.org/calc calculations aren't valid for very long, difficulty changes every 3 days, and prices can jump around.

 

If you're looking to invest in Crypto-Currencies, I'd suggest splitting your investment amount between buying coins directly, and mining hardware. If the price suddenly jumps up, it would have been better to buy the coins, if the price and difficulty drops, mining would be better. This way you cover yourself a little bit better than investing in a single aspect of Crypto-Currencies.

 

Cards like the 7950, and 7970 currently offer the best price to hash.

how much money can one make out of this and what the odds/chances of making a time worthy profit?

[Hirad123]

I may be wrong but it seems like it's a little late now

[Lays]

Mining Litecoin would be much better due to it being done on consumer grade hardware.

 

For a mining rig, you generally need high end AMD GPU's. Nvidia is very poor when it comes to mining and may cost you more in electricity.

Here's a comparison guide for hardware https://litecoin.info/Mining_Hardware_Comparison

Add up your hash and add it into a calculator.https://www.litecoinpool.org/calc calculations aren't valid for very long, difficulty changes every 3 days, and prices can jump around.

 

If you're looking to invest in Crypto-Currencies, I'd suggest splitting your investment amount between buying coins directly, and mining hardware. If the price suddenly jumps up, it would have been better to buy the coins, if the price and difficulty drops, mining would be better. This way you cover yourself a little bit better than investing in a single aspect of Crypto-Currencies.

 

Cards like the 7950, and 7970 currently offer the best price to hash.

 

That still doesn't answer the question stated in the OP, he wants to know how, not just about

 

ex: Where to get the program to mine, how to use it, how to sell the coins, etc..

[Guest]

you need to be in the market years ago to make some real dough though

something an 11 year old (me) counldn't do 5 years ago =[ shame that though

[RuecanOnRails]

That still doesn't answer the question stated in the OP, he wants to know how, not just about

 

ex: Where to get the program to mine, how to use it, how to sell the coins, etc..

 

Mining tools are pretty basic. You need a single program CGminer https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=28402.0 (Nvidia cards require Cudaminer, but Nvidia cards are not great at mining) Sign up to a mining pool, and point you're miner towards it. https://www.litecoinpool.org/pools

Using the coins. Buying/Selling the coins work by signing up to a local exchange, becoming verified, then transferring funds in and out. http://howtobuybitcoins.info/ Litecoin currently is only available on a few exchanges to purchase/sell it's easier to exchange them into BTC on a different exchange then send them to your local exchange.

For general knowledge it's best to do a fair bit of research then ask specific questions. http://www.weusecoins.com/en/

 

how much money can one make out of this and what the odds/chances of making a time worthy profit?

 

Right now, If you were to already have a 7970 and to turn it to mine Litecoins you could get around 730 K/hash and that would amount to something like this. (Difficulty will be increasing in a few hours by 2.5%)

https://www.litecoinpool.org/calc?hashrate=730&difficulty=1486.12414801&power=&energycost=0.10&currency=USD

Currently 0.474 Litecoins per day = $9.87

 

This is from a single 7970 with recent price increases, mining difficulty will increase lowering profits slightly. You can watch the Litecoin difficulty (and Bitcoin) here http://bitcoinwisdom.com/litecoin/difficulty

[Lays]

snip

 

 

If the charts are correct and if cudaminer works with 2 cards at once I'd make ~220$ a month with power being .10~ usd kw/h

[RuecanOnRails]

If the charts are correct and if cudaminer works with 2 cards at once I'd make ~220$ a month with power being .10~ usd kw/h

 

At the moment yes that's a rough estimate. A 780 can do 320 K/hash, two of them will get you 640. About the same as a single 7950, which is why AMD cards are greatly preferred for price and much higher hash rate. 

[ChillKyle]

So would it be profitable to me using a NVIDIA card? Or did I luck out?

[algoat]

Mining LTC should be looked at as a hobby, not something to bank on.  Although I thought it was going to take me a year to get a return on my initial startup cost, but i have quadrupled that in about 5 months.  I have 2 rigs running at about 2700 kH/h with $1400 initial cost.  I'm pulling 1250 Watts from the wall and electricity at 8 cents/kWh, pool donation of 1%.  Using this calculator, it works out to $1025 of pure profit per month at the current rate with the machines running 24/7.  Incidentally, if you purchased $1000 worth of litecoins a month ago, it would be worth ~$10000 today.

 

If you're curious on the hardware requirements, check out this chart: https://litecoin.info/Mining_Hardware_Comparison

As you can see from the chart, the AMD cards are the ones you would want.  The 7850, 7950 and 7970 have the best hashrate/W.

 

Edit: with your current rig I estimate that it would pull about 250-300W from the wall, with an 85% efficient PSU.  At a conservative 9c/kWh for power, and hash rate of 160kH from your 760 running 24/7, it would give you a profit of $46/month.

[ChillKyle]

Thanks for the info. It actually might not be worth mining for me after all.

[RuecanOnRails]

Thanks for the info. It actually might not be worth mining for me after all.

 

You won't get the same returns as someone with a high end AMD GPU, but profit is profit. Not trying it is essentially throwing away a potential $45 per month. If you watch the price and difficulty, once it no longer remains profitable you can stop mining.

Who knows, you might like mining and want to expand your hashrate by upgrading your rig sooner instead of later with an AMD GPU.

[ForeseenVisionz]

Read below post.

[ForeseenVisionz]

At the moment yes that's a rough estimate. A 780 can do 320 K/hash, two of them will get you 640. About the same as a single 7950, which is why AMD cards are greatly preferred for price and much higher hash rate. 

Im just about to buy the rig in my sig but its nvidia based.... if I were to later down the road start mining would it be better to build a miniitx amd system or just mine with current one. Id say it would be better to buy a seperate system and mining looks interesting and I really would like to get into it. Plus I could then also run it 24 7 aswell.

[RuecanOnRails]

Im just about to buy the rig in my sig but its nvidia based.... if I were to later down the road start mining would it be better to build a miniitx amd system or just mine with current one. Id say it would be better to buy a seperate system and mining looks interesting and I really would like to get into it. Plus I could then also run it 24 7 aswell.

 

The best time to plant a tree is 20 years ago, The second best time is today.

 

You would get a better experience by swapping your Nvidia GPU for 2, or even 3 7970's. You can run your miner 24/7 without having a dedicated rig. By jumping on the mining now, you can get your desired Nvidia GPU later on when it's cheaper and having mined more coins than what would be possible in the future. The gaming capabilities on a 7970 is great, you would also get multiple free games you could sell, or use.

 

For arguments sake right now 3 7970's at 730 K/hash each gives you 2190 K/hash. If you were mining right now, it would earn you 1.388 LTC per day = $31.

[algoat]

For arguments sake right now 3 7970's at 730 K/hash each gives you 2190 K/hash. If you were mining right now, it would earn you 1.388 LTC per day = $31.

 

Just checked the price and it is still skyrocketing.  In less than 24 hours the LTC price went from $20 to $30/coin this morning.  It was $2 just a month ago!

[Oskarw90]

At the moment yes that's a rough estimate. A 780 can do 320 K/hash, two of them will get you 640. About the same as a single 7950, which is why AMD cards are greatly preferred for price and much higher hash rate. 

 Im doing closer to 470-570 on a 780 gtx 

[RuecanOnRails]

 Im doing closer to 470-570 on a 780 gtx 

 

 

 

That's a pretty high hash rate for a 780. You should add your config to https://litecoin.info/Mining_Hardware_Comparison Currently the highest reported 780 is 320 K/hash. Make sure to include gpu brand an model number, bios version, driver, and settings in cudaminer.