Author

Topic: USB Mining Hardware any good ? (Read 1726 times)

legendary
Activity: 3416
Merit: 1865
Curmudgeonly hardware guy
March 24, 2017, 11:11:27 PM
#10
The Bitfury stick is in active development right now. It should in theory get about 30GH from stock USB 2.5W up to 130GH off 15W or so (with cooling), putting it on par for efficiency with the current top-of-the-line gear from any manufacturer. The efficiency may match, but not the cost per hashrate, due to all the support components necessary for any miner. The support parts don't really change much whether the thing has one chip or ten, so a larger miner (more of a fraction of whose cost is the chips themselves) will always beat a USB miner on cost efficiency.

I am working on larger miners using Bitfury chips as well though, whose performance and cost will be noticeably superior to the USB stick. With my gear you also get the benefit of undervolting, which can greatly increase the viable lifetime of the miner by increasing system efficiency and which no major manufacturer has implemented in two or three generations because planned obsolescence pads their bottom line.

But yeah, it's basically impossible to profit with a USB stick miner. They're lottery tickets or low-investment tools to learn the basics of mining without making a lot of noise and heat.
legendary
Activity: 4326
Merit: 8950
'The right to privacy matters'
March 11, 2017, 07:52:30 PM
#9
just by coincidence, i've just dusted off my old geccoscience this weekend, ran it for +24 hours on slush's pool.
My earning were between 60 satoshi's and 90 satoshi's per block found....

About 10 blocks a day, earning you less than 900 satoshi's for a full day of mining.

I would strongly advise against faucetting, because i think it's a waste of time, but you'd literally earn more by claiming from 10 faucets than you would earn by mining 24 hours with a geccoscience stick.

Sad but true

newer bit fury sticks may be done by sidehack  60 gh per stick vs 15-17gh a stick.

If he builds them I would start the solo pool club back up.

gives a decent chance at a profit not a big chance.

I ran it a year or more ago we did not hit a block after 3 months and stopped the club.


https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.18149077
legendary
Activity: 3612
Merit: 5297
https://merel.mobi => buy facemasks with BTC/LTC
March 06, 2017, 02:06:46 AM
#8
just by coincidence, i've just dusted off my old geccoscience this weekend, ran it for +24 hours on slush's pool.
My earning were between 60 satoshi's and 90 satoshi's per block found....

About 10 blocks a day, earning you less than 900 satoshi's for a full day of mining.

I would strongly advise against faucetting, because i think it's a waste of time, but you'd literally earn more by claiming from 10 faucets than you would earn by mining 24 hours with a geccoscience stick.

Sad but true
legendary
Activity: 3248
Merit: 1070
March 06, 2017, 02:01:55 AM
#7
Thanks for reply


But these are better than mining using expensive graphic card which are power hungry as well ? Right ?

are there any good usb miner for start mining...

being power hungry is relative to their earning, don't look only at that value

if something consume more it's because either they are inefficient or they are more efficient, but if they are compared to a relic of the past it's because they earn you more

a gpu can not compete with a usb stick for bitcoin mining for example...
legendary
Activity: 1624
Merit: 1130
Bitcoin FTW!
March 05, 2017, 06:27:12 PM
#6
Well Sidehack is coming out with a new USB miner based off of the BF chips so that might make you a little bit of $$$, but chances are that still won't make roi even with the efficiency of those chips. The time for these miners is long over.
legendary
Activity: 1288
Merit: 1087
March 05, 2017, 06:21:58 PM
#5
they probably wouldn't even cover the costs of the extra electricity drawn by the usb socket, let alone actually pay their own purchase cost.

it might be fun to see mining in action on your own machine but throw away any idea of making money.

there are alts you could mine but bear in mind there are people with obsolete asics who might be doing the same. you could be outgunned no matter what you do.
newbie
Activity: 57
Merit: 0
March 05, 2017, 01:52:15 PM
#4
Thanks for reply


But these are better than mining using expensive graphic card which are power hungry as well ? Right ?

are there any good usb miner for start mining...
They're certainly a good step up from a graphics card, however if you actually want to be making any profit you'll want to look at getting a few of something like the Antminer S9 which goes at about 14 TH/s each (14000 GH/s or 1750x faster than that wimpy USB miner).

You really need to be doing a lot of research before you invest a lot of money in something. For example 8GH/s at the current difficulty could be giving you around 0.00013288 BTC per month which probably only just covers the electricity bill. You could also try mining on your own, but with 8GH/s at the current difficulty you should be expecting to find a block every 7844 years.
newbie
Activity: 2
Merit: 0
March 05, 2017, 12:47:57 PM
#3
Thanks for reply


But these are better than mining using expensive graphic card which are power hungry as well ? Right ?

are there any good usb miner for start mining...
newbie
Activity: 57
Merit: 0
March 05, 2017, 10:57:37 AM
#2
1:)Is it profitable?

Not at this scale, these miners are slow and outdated.

2:) Can it be used to mine other currencies like litecoin etc ??

Only other cryptocurrencies with the same PoW algorithm as Bitcoin.
newbie
Activity: 2
Merit: 0
March 05, 2017, 10:56:01 AM
#1
HI, I am new to this crypto currency mining ..
after some research i found out that my pc is not good enough for mining ...... so i have to look into alternative.... instead of buying a expensive gpu i found that little usb based miner perform quite good link is... please look at this link..

https://www.hobbymining.com/usb-bitcoin-miners/

For instance GekkoScience priced @ $50 and hashrate of 8 GH/s.

my questions are

1:)Is it profitable?

2:) Can it be used to mine other currencies like litecoin etc ??

Thanks for reading and i am waiting for reply
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