Bitcoin Forum

From reading about mining, it seems that the NVIDIA will not work for mining.
When I did try mining, the GUIminer program said there was 'NOTHING TO MINE ON' and would not mine.

So what is the easiest and cheapest way for me to sample or try out mining?


I want the easiest and cheapest way to actually do some mining for a beginner.

thanks

It is not completely true that nVidia card will not work, but it is true that nVidia cards without support of OpenCL will not.
For example, if you try nVidia GT240 it will work.
You have to check if you card supports OpenCL.
Other thing is that architecture of AMD video cards is much better can be used for mining, so even very powerful gaming nVidia cards have lower hash speed than mid range AMD cards.


P.S. I recommend you to mine litecoins, as mining bitcoins using video card is not profitable anymore.

My nvidia care has no support for OpenCL, and cannot use CUDA either.


I was reading about these raspberry pi things that cost $25-$35 or so, and use very little electricity.
What about those? ( I noticed that these raspberry pi things don't use windows operating system though, so I would need to get a different operating system it seems in order to use this for mining bitcoins).

I don't know much about the block erupters. I read a bit about that too.

If I exchange my Nvidia card for one of the amd ati cards that is good for mining, would my pc then be able to mine bitcoins, with just putting in an amd ati radeon graphics card?

As I said, bitcoin mining is not profitable using video cards anymore, you can try just for fun though.
I switched to litecoins, because it is 2.5 times more profitable. Then I exchange litecoins to bitcoins. I just wish I switched earlier. Lost a lot of time mining bitcoins. Still my video card is not completely paid of.

Erupters can not mine litecoins. Video card can.
Erupters can not do anything except mining, and good luck to sell it when it become not profitable. Video card can be useful in games and you can also sell it if for some reason mining would be not profitable anymore.

What is this, 2010?

To answer your question -

Erupter USB.  10-20 dollars depending on where you get your BTC

Now, whether it is a good idea or not ... that's the rest of the responses.

Dude your are 2 years behind on mining gear aspect of bitcoin.

Your GT240 is too old, I believe you can try look for the old driver with OpenCL. Otherwise I dont think it would work.

Pick up a couple USB Erupter sticks if you'd like to get started with mining. You are wasting your time mining Bitcoins with graphics cards at this stage.

I can mine LTC.

So, the cheapest and easiest way for me to start mining litecoins, is what?

So I need to get a different video card. What video card will mine 10 litecoins per day for me?

Thanks for your help

A few 7970's will get you 10 litecoins a day.  :D :D :D

All in good fun, it would take at least 15, probably more. That's assuming you have free power  ;)

*Video cards are useless now*

*Hey buy a bloc erupter*

lol.

EFA.

nvidia cards were never good for mining

Who told you he has a GT240?

I am not sure if even a few 7970 will give 10 LTC a day.
One 7850 gives only 0.27-0.31 LTC per day, so I assume 7970 will have about 0.6-0.8 LTC a day max
So he will need to run about 12-15 cards.

This is my anecdotal experience.

Buy an erupter, they're cool and easy to use.

You can pick one up on amazon for like 16 bucks free shipping.

"All in good fun, it would take at least 15, probably more."

You must not have read my post very clearly, pretty funny because you even quoted it  ;D

for all intents and purposes 2.5 Times 40 cents is still only One Dollar. 

Stop asking questions and start doing research. If you can't do your own research do everyone a favor, and forget about mining.

Buy a 2nd hand HD 7950 or HD 7850 to try out. Please take note you will unlikely to ROI.

Just get you a pair of Raspberry Pi units, and install Pi-Miner. Sync the two units with PI-Miner so the first one is on a phase shift of 180 degrees. Use a heatsink on the first, but NOT the 2nd raspberry Pi.

Cheapest HD7850 second hand is around 100 bucks and it get to around 350 with a cheap ass cooler and with a Asus DCII I get 420 kh/s.

Edit: 400 kh/s is 25 bucks a month without electricity, with litecoin being 550% more profitable than BTC.

So in 5 months you will payoff a card which costs 100 bucks considering the diff will rise.

I am quite pessimistic now after the drop of litecoin price.

I stuck a 7870 on LTC a few months back (purchased 6/6/13 for $229)

Hashes right around 400kh/s. It still hasn't paid for itself, but I could sell and make money back yet.

If you have Windows 8, try http://www.groupfabric.com/bitcoin-miner/. It's DirectCompute (DirectX) based and since you're Intel+NVidia, it should work better for you than OpenCL based miners.  It requires zero technical knowledge to start mining.

Disclaimer: I'm the author of Bitcoin Miner.

Good luck, and let me know if you have questions.

Start mining altcoins

Dont mine bitcoins really waste of time using nvidia cards

Nvidia is useless, you are paying more electricity then what you get. Best way is trade it for HD 7950 or HD 7970..

Thanks everyone for the info.

Initially, I think I just want to try out mining, and I don't want to spend all that much on hardware.

Therefore, the USB erupters or the raspberry pi things, are likely more economical, so I will likely

just research those, and maybe try those out.

I was talking to a local computer store worker, and he was telling me that my pc likely doesn't have enough electrical power for the

newer AMD graphics cards, so it seems I would need to buy new parts, or perhaps a new computer, to make it compliant with the AMD graphics cards.


USB erupters or raspberry pi.

Thanks again :)

if you must then
USB Erupters + decent powered USB HUB [i.e. 2Amp / 4 port] and a raspberry Pi to tun it all

A block erupter you'd buy today would only give you about 4-6$ in revenue, for a 15$ cost. Plus the cost of the Pi and all the rest.

Block erupters are a waste. You need to invest a descent amount of money for btc mining at this point. If you want to ltc mine you need to spend about $1000 or more. Get 4x 7950's and the correct parts to run them. Maybe just build yourself a gaming pc that can mine as well. That way when you don't break even you at least have a cheap gaming rig.

What? That even worse.

To sum up the entire rest of the content of this thread. Unless you have $4000 you want to gamble on this there isn't much hope of great profits.

What if I mine one of the other alt-coins?
I am thinking that some of those coins may not be as competitive, so even with a smaller investment in mining hardware, maybe I can still get some decent returns off of my investment in the hardware.

Currently, I am just thinking of a really low way to try out mining, in the first place, and if/when I actually get the mining functioning,
then I will decide whether to upgrade or not. I will not spend $1000 or more, simply to test out mining, as it might be a complete waste of my time, when in fact I still have not gotten any mining to function at all for me as yet.

Well, if you really wanna try it, just buy 1 USB eruptor and nothing else...

You need a Gpu to mine alt coins. You could buy one card and a power supply large enough to support it. Your still looking at a descent amount of money.

Maybe if your power rates are really high. I only pay 2 cents a kwh, so I'm doing just fine.

I recently built a quad 7970 gaming rig, no way in hell I'd be able to cover it's costs, though at 5.4¢. Even at 2¢ I don't see it.

You should be able to. A roi in less then a year is pretty good. Only about 1 in 5 of my video cards still work properly after a couple years of mining though. I wouldn't count on being able to sell them later on.

Beans,
sorry, to ask here, but what actually happened to your video cards: fans problems or you burned them? If burned, what average mining temperature was? 

A few just don't work, but a lot can still mine btc but don't work for anything else really. A few number of the cards will still mine ltc. I'm pretty sure the vrm, memory is the most common failure. It's hard to tell anything is wrong until you run some benchmarks one card at a time.

I try to run them in the low 60's if possible. If you run them at 70-80 it doesn't take long before the cards are just not stable anymore.

If anyone needs some half functional 5970's, 5870's I have plenty.