Bitcoin Forum

I'm relatively new to bitcoin, currently researching more and more every day, and mining has sparked my interests tremendously! I do realize it's a bit late in the game to start now and be competitive and and turn a profit. My question is, what is a good decently priced piece of mining hardware  for a greenhorn miner? I run Windows 10 and Ubuntu dual boot so I would need the software that could run the hardware aswell. Thanks ahead of time!

Hi,

The mining subforum should contain more than enough topics to cover every question you might have...

Just a couple of preliminary questions before people start giving advice:

• you've indicated you know you're quite late in the game... will you be mining for fun, or for profit?
• do you know your electricity price
• what's the budget
• do you have sufficient technical knowledge
• in case somebody points you towards bigger mining rigs, do you have a place for them? They produce a lot of heat and noise, and consume quite some power
• what is your country?

without your electricity we cannot know, if your bills cost is very cheap you can buy s3 or s5, because efficiency does not matter anymore and initial investment become more important

otherwise you must go with the s7

I'm just really looking to do mining for fun. Electricity is relatively cheap in Florida, US. I do have the space for a larger rig if it peaks my interests. Price range $0-$500. Technological knowledge should be sufficient, if I have problems usually I resort to Google or forums such as these! Thank you for the quick response!

well then go for s3 or s5, you can find one s5 for 300-350 used or around that price, i've already spotted one on ebay

or search here on the market, if you don't trust ebay

I agree with Amph.
You can't really go wrong if you're mining for fun, and buy one or two S3 or S5's...
If it's really for fun and has nothing to do with profit, you could also consider a couple compaq stickminers. You'll need to keep a PC running in order to use them tough, and you'll also need a powered USB hub. Their hashrate will be lower than an S3 tough (you'll need  20-40 stickminers to replace 1 S3 when talking about hashrate. Their power consumption is really low tough, but you have to keep a PC or raspberry pi running).
I do advise them if you're a homeminer for fun because: they are easily transportable, silent, safe, power efficient, cheap.

Btw: as a new user, i would also encourage you to buy from this forum, but always use an escrow!

A lot of the miners are standalone.  So with it you not need special software or use your computer on them.  That is the majority of new miners at this point (S7, Avalon 6(uses RPI)).

Yes if you use smaller ones like compacs, or U3's then you would need to use something as a controller.  This is a different section though more what I consider to be lotto miners.

We do need to know more though. What miner are you looking at, or budget, etc.  And electricity as others indicated.  Also I would warn you mention profit, when going into it never invest what you can't lose.  There is no guarantee of ROI.

ROI is the biggest problem these days, but if you want to mine for fun and learn something new, go with S5 :)

If you want to do it for fun then go ahead, if you want to do it for profits then forget about it, unless you have free electricity!

I'd start with something simple, like the Compac BTC Miner, which is just an USB stick after all.
And from there, after you know better what you want, you can try something "bigger".

I'd also say that you should read a little about altcoins. The mining goes by the same principles and you may be able to get something even with CPU or GPU mining, as long as you are not on a laptop.