Bitcoin Forum

Could I theoretically just buy one or two external GPUS and plug them into an old laptop I no longer use and then mine on that laptop?

This as an alternative to buying all the other components of a rig like the ram, and monitor, and cpu and all that stuff.

Yes. I've considered doing this as well. Primarily because of the portability and especially because my office is very generous with electricity.

I was about to pull the trigger and buy an external GPU enclosure (i was looking at Razer's) but I realized that my spare laptop did not have a thunderbolt 3 connection. Since there is no other way to support external GPUs without this, you would have to own a laptop that has this thunderbolt connection (or buy an adapter?). Given that other components are cheaper than a spare laptop for mining, I just decided to build a normal desktop based mining rig.

You asked about the "cheapest possible way to mine".

If you're on a tight budget, don't want to wait for hard-to-find hardware, you could always do some hashing by hand using pencil and paper. 

see: http://www.righto.com/2014/09/mining-bitcoin-with-pencil-and-paper.html

LOL youre so wrong for this

Is there a pool for this?  :P

cheapest way might likely not seem to be the efficient way

Cool link! But I doubt it'd be profitable considering the amount of pencils and paper you would use  ;D

On topic: Check out some CPU-only coins. You wont need to buy any new hardware to mine those and laptops are quite power efficient.

Lol, funny.

Basically I'm just asking if I could make the same amount by plugging an external GPU into a laptop as I would by building a rig with that same GPU and the other components.

What type of laptop do you have that lets you plug one or two external GPUs into it?  Seems like a rare one.

Maybe you've already seen the info at:
https://www.itnews.com/article/2984716/laptop-computers/how-to-transform-your-laptop-into-a-gaming-powerhouse-with-an-external-graphics-card.html (https://www.itnews.com/article/2984716/laptop-computers/how-to-transform-your-laptop-into-a-gaming-powerhouse-with-an-external-graphics-card.html)

If you go that route, get a GPU that makes sense to eventually install in a 'standard' mining rig someday.

It only took me 600 days to solve my first block, beat that!

The short answer to your question is "yes". Usually bandwidth tends to be the bottleneck for gamers that want to use another GPU via an external connection. (Before thunderbolt & USB-C options were available, some people would mess around connecting desktop graphics cards to their laptops via mPCIe.) However, for mining purposes, bandwidth usually isn't a big concern.

However, most of the external GPU solutions are expensive, so I would hardly consider them cost-effective methods of mining.

You dont necessarily need GPUs or ASICs to mine, some coins are CPU mineable, like BiblePay

you can connect gpu to a laptop easy , without any thunderbolt 3 ports. What you need is ,  remove the wifi mini card from your laptop, and plug a mPcie to Pcie adapter (http://www.hwtools.net/Adapter/PE4C%20V3.0.html) to the mPcie port .
you going to need a externap computer PSU , the adapter card and some work ;)
if you want to do more than 1 extarnal vga card , you can try to use any pcie splitter (https://www.amazon.com/Cablecc-Express-Switch-Multiplier-Splitter/dp/B073QNW3L9/ref=sr_1_5?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1514701324&sr=1-5&keywords=PCIe+Splitter) there is no guarantee those splitters going to work and support all 3-4 slots , but you have a good chance to run 2 cards with those splitter / mPcie to Pcie adapter combination . You have to make sure your external psu can handle the load :)

Why not consider POS mining?

Imagine what you can spend in hardware and electricity.

Buy directly cheap coins having POS keep the wallet open and you get profit by the POS or Masternode if you invest more. You pay just to keep wallet open.

The issue can be if a project is a scam or fail for any reason, if you decide to invest in that manner be really carefully and sell if you notice something going wrong.

Yes, its in India.