Bitcoin Forum

Hi all,

I`m probably "The newbie" around here but anyway, i have done some reading lately and decided to have my first post. Believe me or not, i heard BTC for the first time from my economics profesor, talking about 2008 financial crisis. That was few monts ago and I was shocked that something so big is going on without me knowing anything about it, regardless of being a graduate student who studies economics. But, heeey, don`t judge too hard on me cause most of the people i meet are still like "Whaaaat coin? or "Don`t you mean BitTorrent?"

Anyway, no more jiber jaber, here`s my ask:

I have a Desktop PC which i use only for nothing. It`s graphics card burned out long time ago, maybe by the time when it would have been wise to buy new one and start mining BTC but whatever. As i see it of today i can do the same but mine for LTC, right? Here is what i have, altought not really sure what it is actually :)

DualCore AMD Athlon 64 X2, 2000 MHz (10 x 200) 3800+

Asus M2N-MX, 1 Socket AM2, 2 PCI, 1 PCI-E x1, 1 PCI-E x16 with integrated video - nForce6100-430

2 GB RAM, some SATA hard drive and etc.

Im a little bit lazy to open and check for the power supply but i think its something like 450-500W Fortron. I am trying to figure what ATI GPU can i add while keeping the other stuff (maybe not the supply), for max Kh/s. For example, can i put some 7850 and start right away or it is not that simple. You know, im trying to spend some 200-300 bucks just to make some use of the PC. I am very much interested in any suggestions and ofcourse any donations as i see begging for money here is conventional enought  ;D

Thank you

You should read these two articles:

http://bitcoinsbs.wordpress.com/2013/02/09/btc-mining-considerations/
and
http://bitcoinsbs.wordpress.com/2013/06/27/quick-math-what-will-my-mining-rig-bring-in/

People usually recommend 7950. I think your power supply is just about enough for it.

Well seeing as you suggested spending 200-300 bucks. I would recommend getting an AMD Radeon HD 7950 as well. The recommended power supply is 500 watts, but considering your CPU's power usage I think you will be fine. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814150590

With your budget of 200-300, You can go for a 7950, or try to look for  a used 7970. But with current difficulties, you wont be getting much coins. Not very profitable at all.
If you're just looking to amuse yourself and have fun mining coins/trading, I suggest investing that $300 into ASIC miners. But if you are the occasional gamer, i'd go for the 7950.
You can pick up about 7 USB Block Eruptors in this group buy at 0.45BTC each with that $300: bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=263587.0
That would give you roughly 2300 MH/s compared to the 600 kH/s a 7950 would give you.
If you want to compute these hashrates into real-time mining profit. That would come out to $3.71 mining Bitcoins and $1.96 mining Litecoins today according to coinwarz.com
Take your pick, but either way you wont profit.

mobo: biostar h61b
card: 6*7850 hark
PSU: >1200 W

The OP is asking for something he can afford for $300. The PSU alone would cost that much.

i personally like the 5970 or 6990 good hash rates

The last few months rapid increase in difficulty has virtually killed GPU mining. You simply pay more for electricity than the value of the bitcoincs generated, unless you get your electricity for free. If you can't afford ASIC miners and need bitcoins for something specific, it's now cheaper to just buy them.

What about a Sapphire 7970 3GB?

Faster but user more power. (Will get you something like  ~0.2 BTC per month if it's a dedicated machines and uses about 360W at full load I think) Play around with this: http://www.bitcoinx.com/profit/

I agree with relazyfo.

Im also new to mining so I was thinking getting a video card 7970 But after running the number you will never get your investment back.


So What I did I purchase a USB Erupter Block last week and got it 3 days ago, so I been playing with.

It been mining for around 20+ Hours. I have been able to mine 0.00653996 BTC - Its not allot -but being that I'm not using energy its money coming back.


I posted the results of 1 Hour test.
--->     https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=265616.msg2843768


I figure I should have my money back around a month. Then after that its pure profits.

ALSO another thing that Bitcoin price could Jump back to 200$ each like it did afew months ago. OR I could drop down to 0$... Its a chance.



and welcome...

I was running 7 7970's for a couple of days and have been slowly buying ASICminers to replace them since I dont care much for the heat and power use of the 7970's. But I figure if I cant get the ASICminers below 60.00 each I would be doing ok. It just takes some looking arround a resisting the urge to buy everything I see in order to build up GHZ.

with 7 7970's - Not overclocked - I am geting about 3.1-3.4 ghz.

Wow, that's huge ! I've been slowly mining ftc with a hd7770 @ 160-180kh/s (and found out myself "intensity 16" was the best for this card, like in those links couple posts ago)

Mining Bitcoin on a GPU won't be too profitable, if at all

I suggest a 7950 as its the most bang for the buck and power consumption. You can usually overclock and undervolt to achieve 15-20% more hash for 15-20% less power. Mine are running 550 k/h using 170W  vs 430k/h at 220W on stock settings.

I'd probably suggest 7950s; if you shop around you can find them on sale. When I got mine I also got 3 free games and a $30 mail in rebate (in addition to a sale price).
Your power supply should be able to handle it, I think the card uses about 300 watts under max load.
I've been using them mostly for bitcoin mining, not litecoin so I'm not 100% familiar with how they'd perform in that case. But I can say that in terms of bitcoin mining they appear to have the best price / performance ratio (keeping in mind that with the way difficulty has been skyrocketing it doesn't make sense to GPU mine bitcoins for anything other then fun).

Good luck!

For altcoins I'd rather get two 7790 than one 7950, because the price and the hasrate would be the same, but the power consumption would be only 1/2.
For SHA256d coins (Bitcoin, PPCoin, Terracoin, Bytecoin, etc.) you better invest your money in ASICs like Block Eruptors.

That power supply will blow in no time if it is a standard useless  low quality psu.

7950's are they way to go without doubt, they keep their value fairly well if you want to sell them in the future (or use them for gaming).

sapphire 7950's: running 3 per rig, pulling 900Watts at the wall for an average of 1.9MH/s.  Current price on newegg is $269 after $20 rebate (with additional 10% promo thru August 8th).

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814202026 (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814202026)

i've got 36 of these running in 12 rigs with no cards over 85C.

There is no way a person can buy a 7950 for $269 and hope to make a profit mining bitcoins. The card costs about 2.7 BTC and will only generate about 0.9 BTC over its lifetime, and that is before subtracting the cost of power.

Anyone considering mining BTC with a GPU will be much better off just buying the bitcoins instead.

I recommend that anyone thinking about mining take a look at the Genesis Block mining dashboard (http://mining.thegenesisblock.com/) before spending any money. You can see what is available and how much profit to expect.

I personally like the 5970 and 7970...  ;)

i had a 12 ati 7970 in 3 rig, before i sold it. Now mining on GPU is not actually: a lot of power consumption and very hot.

No GPU will ever pay back for mining bitcoin. You could buy a 7950/7970 for mining litecoin, but please include the hidden costs. Are you a geek? do you enjoy playing with computer hardware? Do you like spending time on your computer? Do you want to support litecoin network security? Probably not. Don't buy a GPU then.

Invest in bitcoin directly and/or buy an ASIC miner to support the bitcoin network in the future. The world needs bitcoin and bitcoin needs you!

Buy cheap 5830 or 5850.
Thats what I use for scrypt mining