Topic: Recommended Mining Tools For Beginners (Read 1362 times)

ATM Eth is king for GPU mining,but Feathercoin is doin ok & several others,you'll have read that section thoroughly though (Each coin needs to be studied to make a good decision)  

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?board=159.0

Some good coins come to light over here too

https://forum.ethereum.org/categories/mining

Which altcoin will be good to invest in at present?

There are so many scam coins popping up every month, you don't know which one has potential and for how long it will last.

Look as litecoin for instance... not sure how the story will end though.

If you use usb asic miner you are late and you will not making a profit with those hardware right now we have s5 s7 s9 miners rigth now and even those hardware are not so profitable this year.. and yeah its better to mine in altcoin gpu and cpu is the best right now build a hard ware that has multi GPU PCI socket. and i think altcoin is the best to choose if you really want to mine.. because some altcoin are still profitable now a days...
sgminer one of the tool that i use when i was mining  premined altcoins..

The most recent usb miners are the compacs.  They are good lotto miners, but not really going to turn a ROI.  It is not the fault of the compacs though, it is just with USB miners there is a lot of cost's for very few chips/one chip depending on stick miner.    So it is much much cheaper as far as price per hash to get a full size miner.  There then is possible noise/heat that 1 usb stick will not have but it is much better cost for your hashing power.

To help recommend what is your electrical price (including taxes/fees), and what is your starting budget? Those two things are very important in knowing is there is a viable solution for you to mine.

You really need free power if you want to have a shot at actually making more money than you spend.  Nothing is actually free, however, some people have electric costs included in their home or office leasing agreement.  The problem with this route is that the electrical infrastructure in these types of places doesn't allow you to scale your mining operation.  As the power density of these machines grows it becomes much more difficult to cool so noise has become an issue as well in these types of setups.

If you'd just like to tinker around with mining bitcoin you *may* be able to find a dirt cheap Antminer S7 after this Saturday.  On free electricity you can make about 0.8 btc (or ~$500) in 6 months using the S7.  I would guess that you could find a miner and PSU combo for roughly 0.5 btc (~$320) if you search hard enough (stay away from eBay! Use escrow if buying on forums!).  So, if you have free power, can stomach the vacuum-like noise, and stumble into a great deal then you could make as much as 0.3 btc (~$192) in 6 months.  Not much, and remember, you generally can't scale using free power.

If you don't have free power then you need several of the newest generation models to even have a prayer at getting your money back.  With $0.06/kWh (6 cents per kilowatt-hour) your monthly electricity cost per unit is around $60.  Looking at the numbers above that makes the break-even on a cheap S7 mathematically impossible.  With ever increasing difficulty the unit produces less and less each day.  Eventually the unit will produce less than the $60 per month that it costs to run.  With an S7 that is at about day 230 (assuming 4% network growth per interval).  You will have earned 1 btc, but paid 0.6 btc in energy and 0.5 btc for the gear.  At this point you have lost 0.1 btc and every day you run the S7 you lose more.  You really need the most efficient gear if you aren't on free electricity.  The problem now is that the efficient gear is ridiculously over-priced.  The initial investment Bitmain is asking for makes ROI impossible.  After 500 days of mining you will still be in the hole. 

You need tens or hundreds of units to actually make money and you need dirt cheap electricity.  As posted before, alt-coins are really the only option for home miners who don't want to throw money down the drain.  You may be able to jump on ETH before it gets out of hand.


You also need to be real careful when evaluating your ROI.  If a miner returns less BTC than it costs you to buy it, then you should simply hold the coin.  Why pay 4 btc for a miner that will return 3 btc a year down the road?  You could just hold the 4 btc and still have 4 btc in a year.  Sounds like common sense, and you may even be wondering why I'd bother to mention it.  You'll notice above I tried to stay in btc.  I did this to hopefully get people to start thinking about ROI in btc rather than fiat currency (usd, gbp, etc).  There are plenty of people who will try to tell you that the price of btc is increasing and so you'll make your money back no problem if buying an S7 or S9.  Using the example in this paragraph, you may break even in dollars on a 4 btc miner than returns 3 btc since the 3 btc has become more valuable.  In this case though, had you held the coin, you'd still have 4 btc that has now gained value.  Instead of breaking even, you are now profiting the increased amount.  Never let anyone tell you btc price will help you ROI.  If your miner can't ROI in btc then you should simply hold the coin as an investment.

If you want to mine SOMETHING,try GPU mining altcoins & sell them for Bitcoins on an exchange like I do  

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?board=159.0

Dig through this section & do your homework & you can do ok with vid cards  


Mining Bitcoin in any environment other than commercial with EXTREMELY cheap power is not worth squat  

I doubt you could earn any profit from less than $10,000 dollars investment on ASIC which mine  better than anything else.
You should know that bitcoin was designed so first comers could easily mine with normal computers and getting more difficult day by day.
Those who mined first BTC10 millions are the real winners also those companies that sell dedicated special machines so you can mine
Bitcoin just to come back later with those mined coins to buy more machines to then just mine the same amount as before.
Any one with advance machines are mining for themselves and just sell you outdated and old and used ones with lowest profitability.

I'm sorry to crush your fantasy world but it's the truth, now only way to profit from mining is to have 90% solar energy for electricity
Which requires large investment to set it up and another large amount to buy or produce the best mining gears.

As a beginner to bitcoin mining, I've come to realize the impracticality of mining on my PC alone and have expressed desires to invest in hardware to enhance the process. However, I'm incapable of affording anything relatively expensive and would like a more compact and proficient setup. I was thinking about working with USB Miners, but haven't been able to find any that I could purchase that would be up to date. I'd appreciate any help or recommendations for efficient mining hardware or shopping sites for future hardware.