Topic: First time/Small miner reference for getting started. (Read 32467 times)

Many thanks for this mini-wiki!

Addition:

A crypto investor buddy is considering mining. I want to clarify a few preliminary items that I could not find in the Child Board “Mining Support Getting Started”:

1. Confirm: If solo mining: Full Node + mining software; mining via pool: mining software only.
2. Do GUI mining software programs exist or are they all on the BASH terminal, Powershell, etc. ?
6. Assume arbitrarily 5K miners for the entire BTC network: Does that mean that for a given block, 4,999 are NOT rewarded?

Thanks for that latest post about the competitive hardware.
I enjoyed reading all the other information and it was good to see that some people are in the same stage as I am.
There is an enormous amount of information on this forum.

Steamtyme has not been active for a very long time now, I hope he is alive and well.

It's worth mentioning that much info on this thread is outdated and shouldn't be used for reference as of today (10-17-2023) unless Steamtyme shows up to update it, some info stands correct regardless of all the things that have changed ever since but the things that changed make the overall of this topic outdated and inaccurate.

The most important outdated part of information would be the reference to the "Current list of competitive hardware", sadly with how fast things change, even the most efficient model mentioned in that article is now unprofitable to 99% of people, this topic used to be a great guide for newbies I wish Steamtyme would show up again to update it.

I am writing this a warning because I would hate for a newbie to come to view the outdated info and make decisions based on it, like buying an old S17 that runs at a loss now thinking it is the most efficient gear in the market.


 

Well for 1, see what the Beginners & Help section has...

I read all your words but still lost, I'm a bad miner i think

Sorry for the late reply. I'm not as active as I once was.
The rule of thumb would be to get as much hashrate as you can pointed to a pool, for as low a cost on electricity as you can. That is very simplistic, but you would also pick the pool that suits your needs best and point everything(all machines) there. As time goes on you may decide to split your hash but that's a future consideration.

new to BTC mining
This might be a stupid question but

What are the rules or the right way to mine???

1 miner PER POOL depending ,on the hash??

I appreciate any help

Thanks

You can go to nicehash.  Mine ETC or raven it will auto convert to btc

so technically you are not mining btc you are mining etc or raven and then automatically converting it to btc.

this section of the forum is for direct mining of btc

 not raven then btc

Read the 1st post in this thread... Specifically Mining BTC with anything other than an ASIC-based miner is out of the question.
For minable altcoins, well ask in the altcoin area of the Forum...

Hi there,

 I am just getting interested in crypto (especially Bitcoin as it's most well known) now. I have a decent (but few years old) gaming laptop...

I was wondering, is it possible to slowly mine in the background on such a computer, as a way to very slowly create my own wallet and gain I dunno... like maybe 0.001 Bitcoin at a time or something? (I understand you can sell/trade with partial Bitcoin, now)... I'm looking for a way to start small with the equipment I already have - as I'm super broke - beyond broke - and am hoping to make even a couple hundred dollars only with this (even if it takes months).

I'm regretting not purchasing bitcoin way back when I first heard about it in my University days, something like 2005~2007.... *sighs* If only!

Previously I did a light dabble into some other coin... I can't remember if it was Etherium or something else more experimental --- it had a browser addon and looked kind of like a crystal fox, maybe? Might've started with a Q? Reminds me of the GIMP (GNU/Gnome Linux free, open-source Photoshop) logo...  But I never got anywhere with that, and that was at least a few years back. My uncle had also recommended some new phone app mining program/cryptocurrency dealio that was purple, but it was so new I didn't trust it (?).

I'm not a programmer, but have often been programmer-adjacent. I'm fairly decent with computers, but still not very deep into things, though I can skim through some code, have a basic grasp of copy-paste-modify...

Basically, is there something people can point me to, a software or a wallet, that I can just turn on and have running in the background... perhaps with sliders "use 80% of resources" for when I'm doing something like writing, but then lower it down to like 10% or 5% if I'm busy gaming, streaming, editing video or something else more processor-heavy? then "100%" or even 110% if I'm just setting up and walking away?

I neither have the space nor money to set up any kind of fancy server tower.


TL;DR - Total novice when it comes to crypto, want to mine bitcoin easily to make a little cash on a LAPTOP, as insane as that might sound. Is that even possible?

If not, can someone recommend or point me to another crypto or two to look into, or another resource/website that might know something about mining the SUPER SUPER slow way with old gear?



Thanks!

There could be. I'm sure there is a slew of people out there willing to charge for this information. Biggest thing from the start, cut the AC equation that will burn all profits. It's all about taking in cooler air on one side and removing the same mass of warm air from the otherside with minimal recycle.

Electrical, anything to that scale in almost every jurisdiction I can think of would require you to have someone liscenced pull a permit for the build. It will require some back and forth with your energy provider as well to ensure you can pull that load from the grid.

The calculations are fairly easy for the rest. Depends on the miner and their stated draw. Then once you figure out your voltage you will know amperage per device then it's a game of efficiently laying them out to spread the load, while maintaining the 80% safety rule for max amps.

This would really just be a superpowered data center, so that could be a good thing to look into to get an idea. Some older threads here also have images from when businesses started up. Maybe try searching old service threads for "hosting services". Best of luck

I would like to ask a few questions on this subject.

If I want to start a small minning operation, let's say with like 100 miners or even 500 miners, I bet there are tons of calculations to perform on wattage, amperage, air flow to keep the warehouse relatively cool, obtain licences, hire specific people to "validate" electrical installation, to "validate" the A/C system, to put up a contingency plan regarding fires, like extinguishers and other means of security, hire security for the location, etc, etc.

Is there some more formal information on this? I know this will depend a lot on the country one is intending to start the mining operation, but still, I wanted to know about some generic guide or so about what might be needed for such operation!

Using profit switching outside of the pool and without being able to convert the other coins to BTC automatically is just a gamble, you may earn more or less than what you expect, another pool that offers this auto-switching + auto conversion to BTC is viabtc, in general, this whole profit switching is pretty useless as it gets saturated because millions of miners are auto-switching and thus creating that equilibrium which makes switching and no switching pretty much the same.

However, there is one expectation to this, which is rental services like nicehash, sometimes (rarely to be more accurate) nicehash can pay some crazy high amounts, I remember 2-3 years ago, the payout was like 5 times higher on their sha256 algo, ya I mean 500% more profit, it lasted for a day or two before everyone jumped in and brought the profit back to normal and then whoever was paying that much to get all the hashrate just stopped, someone was outbidding someone else who was also eager to get some hashrate (I can't recall what were they fighting over, but they were paying an outstanding amount just to get hashrate.

So if you can code something like or use Awesomeminer (no pun intended) with a threshold of say 10-20% difference, it will be worth the switch, aside from that, I don't think profit swtichng is going be worth it.

Using profit switching means you don't understand mining.

Mining on Bitcoin pools, the only difference will be the fees you pay.
You can't switch to 'lucky' pools, since luck is a measure of history and has nothing to do with the future.
There is no such thing a a pool that 'will be' lucky - that's just completely misunderstanding how mining works.

If instead you are talking about switching coins, then that's off topic here and discussion will have your posts deleted.

Hi! Thanks for taking the time to help beginners! It's truly appreciated 

I have been mining for ~2 months now with a S19j Pro 104TH and a Z15 (sorry I know this is a Bitcoin Forum so I will leave that one alone).

I have tried many pools/stratum servers/controllers but have yet to find what I'm looking for. I basically have 2 seperate questions or areas of interest:

1. Overclocking or Tweaking my hashboards to get the most optimal performance for my miner. I was super hyped to see the BrainsOS+ features for tweaking individual hash chips (3 x 126 for my miner) but the software is not compatible with my board (AMLogic).... but is compatible with Xilinx or Beaglebone. If necessary, I will just buy the 80$ control board, but would like to hear what you guys have to say about this.

2. Controlling my miner's real-time pool/coin to maximize the real-time value of my hashrate. On this subject I've gotten as far as any non-code proficient individual can... by I am not that individual. With 10 yrs coding experience, CS/Physics Degree, and amateur electronics enthusiast; I should be able to do better that to let Minerstat profit switch stupidly try to control my machine or create a stratum server that needs to be manually switched -> Stratu.ms (what's the use of having a stratum server if not to profit switch in real-time automatically... it's kind of useless if I have to be at the helm all day all night).

It's also noteable that to use profit-switching, one MUST understand what metrics are being used to evaluate switching coins. From what I can gather, most profit-switching algos (Minerstat's for sure) use the Difficulty, Network hashrate AND the real-time coin value which means that unless you are selling your mined coin in real-time this metric can be dangerously deceiving! On this note I have found Dutch Mining to at least solve that problem using the auto-convert function (at a price of 1.5%).

Soooooo, not to be tooooo gready, but here's what I would LOVE!

1. A stratum server with an API so I can write as little or as much into my own profit switching algo as I choose to. I think coupling the stratum server with the profit switcher is the most logical choice but I'd like to know if I am on the right track here.

2. An exchange service that will allow me to sell/swap/trade in real-time programatically so that the profit switching algo can use the coin value metric more precisely. And as an aside could allow me to develop a trading bot that could hedge/leverage my available margins to profit during bear/bull market fluctuations.

3. On my first question: the ability to maximize my machine's hashrate; and please don't refer me to Awsome Miner because it just isn't... awesome.

Thanks in advance for anyone that could help me along the way. I love to learn new things, and I know all the info I want is out there, but I am 45 years old with 2 children so re-inventing the wheel is really out of the question!

Thanks people!

PS: I noticed that there is a 4th com port on my Control Board... can I add a 4th Hashboard?

 @jbeckham42
17-generation is old news already.
The quality with the 17-gen. has been pretty bad...

Antminer S19 series is the current generation.

Awesome - thanks!!!  Looks like the Bitmain S17 Pro isn't available yet:  https://shop.bitmain.com/promote/antminer_s17pro/overview

Any idea when it's coming out?

For a start -- the opening post of this thread should point you in the right directions....

Can someone tell me where I can find complete information about mining, thanks

A perfect setup for me would be 100 acres of ground mounted solar panels in New Jersey.

This is around 20mega watts  divide by 6  it is 3.33 megawatts 24/7 use 80 percent safety factor it is 2.66 megawatts.

I would have only s17 pros set to low power  which is 42 th at 37 watts = 1.55 kwatts a unit.

that is  1400 pieces    1400 x 1.55 =  2.17 mega watts  gives me 0.5 mega watts spare .

I would have all antbox n5   set up   with 180 units in each.  I would have 6 of these in 1 row with 6 in a second row.

But this is all fantasy.    Would be nice to own.