3000 & 5000 series basically have same performance for most mining algorithms. Ryzen 1000 just might work if you get them for free as I see people offloading them for real cheap these days. But power consumption might not be optimal for the performance.
They are usually cheap enough for it to be "manageable" if you are adventurous to take a potential no win scenario but just break even.
Don't buy the newest stuff because you will never get back the investment in time.
I don't do this myself but looked into it briefly at times. It's never profitable to put in as a investment but if you have a large cache of used parts it could be done as a side hobby.
If you are upgrading your main PC just for the latest & greatest, your old PC's could be used for this unless you want to hand it over to someone else to be sold or such as parts.
Used parts market have a large supply of potential cheap processors to be used these days with decent performance per unit to be much better than buying the newest generation.
Though GPU mining is much easier to setup & get a return faster.
Exactly.You can only profit if you have already build computers with such processors that for example like I have permission to use work PC-s to do whatever I like as long as I get the job done,you may have also permission of doing so and this means you are mining free of cost and you can try any CPU coins,I have gone with Raptoreum and this is a gamble I am more than willing to make as if this coin hits its previous all time high of almost 0.09 I would be a very happy man and I would be a super happy man if it reaches a new all time high in the next bull run.
I would probably pay my employee an extra $30 a month so that he does not do extraneous business on working PCs, which after mining will need more frequent cleaning and replacement of thermal paste and of course a good cooling system.
Not only mining,I have also virtual machines running and other financial programs that I monitor as I am the IT so it is like a Operation Center room my office and no one says a thing to me as long as I get the job done and bring money to the company by having their systems in uptime and working as much as possible .
I am mining with the CPU so not a lot of maintenance is need for CPU mining and I don't see any decrease in performance,I don't do mining because I am badly in need of money but why don't do it when I can and at 0 cost,it is a no brainer I will do it.
I understand that if the CPU power is not used even by half, then you can start mining to get coins, but it's a big difference when mining on ownerless equipment and when mining on a PC or server that performs work processes in the company.