Bitcoin Forum

Hi, I mostly use firefox for work on my pc and the most intense it gets is watching downloaded videos or youtube, I don't game.  I want to know what program to get to mine bitcoins while using my PC with little intensity so that it doesn't affect anything im doing.  I'm a total newbie to mining so any additional info that I would need to know to pull it off would be great.. thanks  :D

Below is my PC specs it's ancient I know but it works just fine for what I'm using it for.
Pentium 4 - 3.0 Ghz
2 GB Ram Kingston
Nvidia Gefore 7800 GT
700W Power Supply

Thanks again...

Not that I want to discourage you from mining but with an NVIDIA card you would be better off looking at scrypt coins like Litecoins, Feathercoins, Digitalcoins or something along that line, the reason I say this is I started the same place you are back in August and over 3+ months of mining on BTC on a very similar card as yours and 11 block erupters I only had .5 BTC and an increased power bill.

I have updated my hardware to ATI cards and am working on different scrypt coins and doing a decent profit after electrical and the cost of the cards.

The app I use for mining is cgminer 3.7 which I run from the command line (http://ck.kolivas.org/apps/cgminer/)

If you are looking for a GUI application I would check out guiminer (http://guiminer.org/)

Again if you are just wanting to do BTC just for fun and see what its like you will probably do a couple of cents a day in BTC but if you are looking to make decent money on it your not going to with the hardware you currently have.

Did you join a pool?

I don't want to be cruel but honestly that hardware is so dated you can't mine anything with it.  Not even CPU mining which needs at least a C2D level CPU to beat electricity costs.

What is your motivation to mine?  Mining is there to support the network.  If you want to make $ you need to spend money.

Yes I have been in pools since I started both with BTC and other alt coins that I mine now.

Hey,

Are you seriously asking this question?

Ok, Mine alt coins with your config.

Wait for sometime. The coin price will raise. Sell it. Buy advanced gcard or mining rig based on the amount you have.

Continue mining. Meanwhile, you would have gained potential experience with mining.

I have to agree with everyone else... its simply too late in the game.  Your specs make it less like a drop in the bucket and more like a drop in the ocean.

Don't worry, I recently came to terms with the same disappointing information.

Thanks for your reply, I live in an apartment where the electricity is included so the electricity bill part doesn't concern me.  Did you make that 0.5 BTC while using your PC at the same time as I described?  If so that's great approx $400 worth today for doing nothing.  I have a long term view on this because if I can run this along side using my computer that I use daily anyway and no electricity bill, then why not over a year might earn 1 btc even that's fine with me.  However the other way using scrypt coins like you described is appealing too.  Do you think can brief me on skype or email about how to setup a profitable scrypt coin mining rig? Like be my mentor?   BTW thanks I will check those you mentioned to start mining btc.  Also why I chose bitcoins is because when I tried to buy litecoins, it seems that btc-e is the only exchange and I don't trust those guys at all.  One day they'll just run with peoples money, I know from experience with sites that operate they way they do.  


Hey thanks for your reply, I have no electricity cost, my motivation is to earn whatever I can over a year time frame, so if in a year I make 1 bitcoin at todays value while being able to normally use my PC that's $400 I would have otherwise not have had.....hope it makes sense now...

I've been mining w/ a laptop and though it's been slow going, here is what I do:

During the day, when I am actively using my computer, I CPU mine alts like IFC, NET, QRK, DOGE, etc... I use CPUminer w/ a stratum proxy for this.

At night, before I go to bed, I shut down CPUminer and fire up CGminer for some GPU mining. I'm in a merged mining pool that mines BTC, IXC, DVC, and NMC concurrently. I'm only earning minor duckets GPU mining, but - as you yourself said, it is coin (and $$) I would not have otherwise had.

Hope this helps!

Cynthia

Now it is not worth to use cpu to mine for any coin. It would only damage your computer and increase your electricity cost.

Looking over the different sites with specs on cards and kh/s and mh/s values I can not even find your card listed, I know one of my sons is just doing it for fun on an older GTX 250 and is getting around a 100 kh/s on scrypt coins and jack on BTC. Personally if you can I would say get some new hardware currently the card to get if you can find them is ATI 290x but of course they are sold out everywhere..

Why not solo mine?  You might get 25 coins if your lucky.  Like playing the lottery every day, for free!

Mine CPU alt coins with your computer and convert to Bitcoin immediatelly. This way you maximize the amount of BTC you can mine

I think your best bet, is to get some ASIC USB Miners.

You can mine with it normally but you won't earn much, you'll just get your components too warm for nothing :)

the way to mine bitcoins with a normal computer is to plug in an ASIC into it. :)

In short you will easily mine a Bitcoin from this setup from yours in about 200-300 years.
I'm serious, go calculate.

Dont even bother man, you wont live enough to profit from it :D

As all the other guys said don't bother with Bitcoin. You may be better off mining the more speculative currencies in the offchance that they take off. With my desktop for example mining Bitcoin I was getting and equivalent of 3 cents US per day LOL.

You're way better off using that processing power for something like Primecoin (CPU) and one of the newer, lower difficulty Scrypt based coins on the GPU.  DogeCoin comes to mind as it's (for some reason) caught on pretty quickly with people already trading it for BTC on the forums.

So if I get an ATI 290x or something close to it, would that be all I need given my PC specs or would I have to upgrade my PC too?  How much can I expect to make if I follow your advice and run scrypt coins?  Thanks


What do you mean by solo mine?


Which scrypt coin is best to mine right now?
I looked into some, they claim to process 50GH/s, if I try to mine a litecoin with one of those what can I expect in a month given todays price / difficulty?


Looking into it...

i have been reading for the last 2 hours on block eruptors they are pretty much worthless now as well unless you have stacks of the bitfurys you wont get anywhere looks like its only gonna be profitable for the super rich to even get in on the mining game now to be efficient you need to be into the th range and that will only last a good 8 months tops until these mega powerhouses are only pulling in a blocks worth a week.

not recommended given specs...