Bitcoin Forum

Ok, first off. I'm new, been reading site all over the web for the last week regarding mining. Trying to learn as much as possible to avoid daft questions here.

So I don't have the money to go out and buy a 10 GPU mining rig or 2 or 3 ASIC miners, but i wanna mine. The general idea and concept of cryptocurrency fascinates me.

From the information I've seen online so far, I know already that even leaving my home PC's on 24/7 will result in nothing (3 PC's and a laptop).

So, my options?

Please, You guys know a lot more about this stuff than a noob like me. Would be great if somebody could point me in the right direction to get my foot on the first step of the ladder. I'm absolutely not ruling out the future possibility of GPU/ASIC rigs in the future.

Fire away on some advice please.... thanks in advance.

Your post will receive more attention and replies if you move it to the Mining > Mining Support board[1].
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[1] https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?board=40.0

I waa thinking to run them, mining a "lesser" coin.

As for my budget, Ive put $30 in to a very well known mining cloud, which i will probably add to 10 times before the week is out looking at the 6 month forcast

If you don't have the funds to build out your own mining operation why don't you try cloud Mining? I use Genesis Mining as well as others but consider Genesis to be the best. The URL is http://www.genesis-mining.com and you can use this promo code to get 3% off "ZOHNkL".

Sweet thanks, the $30 i did yesterday was on Hashflare.io... i intend on adding to my investment on a weekly basis and might pop some on Genesis too

Not sure you're going to find any way to efficiently mine bitcoin itself without ASICs being involved somehow; I'm not sure if cloud mining allows for that and what kind of profit rates to expect. Other than that, your best bet might be to use your GPU or even your CPU to mine something ASIC-resistant like Ethereum or Monero, though of course that discussion doesn't entirely belong in the Bitcoin mining forum. Any coin that has ASICs developed for it will be inefficient to mine with anything else; trying to mine bitcoin with a GPU is like throwing your money at the power company and asking them to burn it for you because you can't be bothered spending it, though.

Please dont laugh too hard...

But my Gfx card is an Nvidia Gtx 260 and my CPU is an Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600

Ouch. Yeah, that's a little out of date. I can't find any benchmarks on Monero for the 260; I did find someone saying he's receiving 32.5 MH/s on Ethereum mining with a GTX 290, which seems great considering the rates more powerful graphics cards are getting. That's roughly the same hashrate I found on an old benchmark chart showing GPU efficiency in Bitcoin mining for the 260. Obviously 30 MH/s wouldn't be worth the power it costs with the current Bitcoin difficulty, but if it can really pull 20+ MH/s on Ethereum that's fairly solid, enough to mine 1.75 ETH a year at the current difficulty. The 260's reasonably low on electric costs at ~180 watts, which would put your profits at about $4-500 a year. If it performs similarly well with Monero, at a 500+ H/s rate and that power draw it would be about the same profit rate. Depends if those hashrates are accurate or not though, I'm curious if they are.

can anyone tell me where to use the ccminer command when trying solo mining?

don't mine in cloud site. It will never give you profit most of the get the work and use to scam the users who have been work for it. I would ask you to try antminer u2 at least and atmost you can s9 to the amount you can invest  on it. It will give you the more amount you see in cloud mining apart from electricity bill.

Ok, a few questions spring to mind from you post.

1) GUIMiner tells me my GTX 260 cant be used to mine with?
2) Which mining software would you recommend for casual/hobby mining of Eth/Mon on my GTX 260
3) I see lots of different variations of ETH... which is still GPU mining on a home PC?

1) I've never heard of GUIMiner, can't help you on that one. It seems like people used to mine with the 260 from the brief research I did on benchmarks, so maybe that particular software just isn't configured for it? If there's a way to contact the developers you could try that, or just try other mining software.
2) I haven't personally mined Ethereum, but a quick google search led me to this: https://steemit.com/ethereum/@gobbahfett/easiest-guide-to-mining-ethereum-eth-windows-amd-nvidia-part-1 (https://steemit.com/ethereum/@gobbahfett/easiest-guide-to-mining-ethereum-eth-windows-amd-nvidia-part-1). If it doesn't work, there are Ethereum-specific forums you could check on to get a much more comprehensive answer, I'm sure. For Monero, the most popular software is Xmr-Stak: https://github.com/fireice-uk/xmr-stak-nvidia (https://github.com/fireice-uk/xmr-stak-nvidia).
3) ETC is Ethereum Classic, which is not used all that much anymore. It still trades, but for a far lower rate than ETH. Most people are mining ETH over ETC because it's more popular, more expensive and therefore usually more profitable. As far as I know both versions are still using GPU mining, since Ethereum's blockchain is ASIC-resistant. Monero is as well, which is why those are the two coins I recommended. There may be other ASIC-resistant coins that I don't know about, of course, but ETH and XMR (Monero) are trading relatively high recently and should always be profitable with GPUs, though power costs may eat into that depending on your price per kWh and the efficiency of your GPU. If the benchmarks I saw for the GTX 260 are accurate, you shouldn't have to worry, but the best way to actually test your hash rate would be to install a miner and check the rate after a few hours.

Followed linked guide.

Downloaded the full ETH blockchain/node update.

Ran 2 or 3 different GPU mining programs. None want to start mining with my GTX 260.

Looks like its just cloud mining for me

Ethereum requires a card with 3gb of RAM or more. If you want to mine ETH you need at least a GTX 960 or so bare minimum

Any idea what coins got mined on gtx 260's 'back in the day'?

You can start using NiceHash or Winminer
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=200 (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=200)4875.0