Topic: Mining with a late 2012 iMac (NVIDIA GeForce GT 650M 512MB) (Read 11798 times)

e4xit,

I give this mission to you. Go on and do your homework, then comeback here and make the sticky thread. You lead the torchlight for all the newbies.

Cool?

BFL ASIC still does not exist, and other producer so far shipped only a handful of ASICs. So, by the time more will be delivered and you receive one, difficulty will skyrocket and the profit drop

CrazyBlane - Yeah thanks, I have been reading up on this last night and see that I am massively behind the times 

Do you think it would still be worth trying to get involved with an Avalon batch #3, as - as I said, I can get the capital for the unit no problem, but I guess you just have to be one of the first to recieve them right?

cheers again for your help.


Nemesis - Yes, it could be a good idea for a sticky, perhaps an index-like post, called something like: "A complete guide to mining bitcoins from 2013 onwards"

Then inside I guess you would want a few links to stickys outlining mining principles, then a few links to posts telling you how to calculate the hashrate of your hardware (roughly), perhaps with links to a few common ASICs/GPUs to give people a rough idea of where they lie in the grand scheme of things...
Then a few links to mining profitability calculators so that people can guestimate their ROI. Following this, a couple of links to mining pools with a limited outline of the pros and cons of that pool (methods of operation).

Then, once readers have got all excited (as I did) a few disclaimer points describing caveats such as the general difficulty/total network hash rate increases which follow release of a batch of new (more powerful) mining equipment, giving those that recieve new equipment first a significant advantage in the short run, general ASIC delays/scams    A re-iteration of the effect of power consumption and how it can impact 'profits' gained by mining etc..

If it is undesirable to to create a sticky which is largely links to other posts, Im sure the posts linked to could be copy-pasta-ed and then appropriately linked to under the pasted text, or w/e...

/ramble

Wait time for an ASIC is 3+ months. By then difficulty will be much higher. Nobody really knows what the network hashrate will be by then but a good guess is 1-1.5 years to make your money back.

I think its time for a new sticky. With the price hit record high, tons of newbies will come here looking to make some gold with their laptop.

Soon we will have a thread " Help me mining with my Tegra 3 "

BBQKorv - OK, I know all machines are good for different things, I am just working with what I've got

CrazyBlane/Gabi - I think I may well try to hop on the ASIC train... So I am looking at this http://products.butterflylabs.com/60gh-bitcoin-miner.html (I can raise the capital to get one of these) and when I stick all the info into BitCoin mining calculators, e.g. http://www.bitcoinx.com/profit/ I am looking at ~$300/day and therefore break even in 5 days...! WHUT!

Is this realistic at all? Even if break even was 30 days I would still be pretty stoked! Do you think this is a reasonable return for this ASIC? If not, why not?

Thanks for all your help, I would really like to give back to the community, and, you know, make a few BTC on the side

Seriously buy an asic

I think they work fine with singles, order a BFL jalapeño and you're set.

I'm highly biased on this, but I must say Mac and Bitcoin don't really work together. Sure you can bootcamp some other OS on it but why would anyone pay so much extra money for the "i"-components while you can get the same and even better hardware with a cheaper pricetag for win/linux side? And mining is not a CPU competition so whatever low-end works fine if you can stick many GPUs to it.

Please people, don't crash me down on my happy though of Macs being bad for mining rigs 

Fair enough then!

So when are they going to release an external GPU which I can connect to thunderbolt and then daisychain 

That's pretty much why it's not considered worth it. You could eventually mine 1 -2 BTC over a very long period of time, but when the GPU craps out 3 years before it's supposed to, you're now out looking for a new computer.

CrazyBlane thanks for the reply... OK, perhaps it's not worth it, is there any way for me to limit resources dedicated to mining in any of the clients?

Like I said, I have the machine, I have the power, even if I am earning nearly nothing, its greater than nothing, right? Unless its going to cause my mac an early death that is...

It's a bad idea and definitely not worth it. I've read about a few people ruining their MacBooks by mining with them. They are too compact and not meant to be run at high temperatures for long periods of time. you are not going to get a decent hashrate anyways...

Hi,

I have used the search function, but there are only a few old 2011 threads about mining on iMacs... Basically I have a late 2012 iMac which has a NVIDIA GeForce GT 650M 512MB ram graphics card, which I know isn't the best for mining...

What I am wondering is if anyone had any advice on which mining programs to use or basically any infor to me (as I am quite a n00b at this). Whilst I understand that I will not be getting 3TH/s with this setup, I do get free power and I am willing to leave my machine on so I may as well get involved eh?

Also, if there is any difference, which might be the best mining pool for me to join, if I should join one at all...?

Also, not sure if relevant, but I have a 3.1GHz quad core i7 in that machine...not sure if you can mine using both CPU and GPU at the same thyme, or even if using that CPU for mining is worth it at all any more these days...?

I have read mining principles and info, but just unsure of best setup for my system.

All feedback welcome 

Thanks