Bitcoin Forum

Just got into reading about Bitcoin today at work, and now for the past oh...
 7-8 hours I have been studying up and reading articles on everything about Bitcoins.
I have decided I want to start mining, I have allowed myself 500$ in hardward funds.
I know majority will say, just invest that into Bitcoins, because with 500 bucks you will only be able buy maybe 10 gh/s equipment.
So the difficulty that is arising from mining will eventually make 10 gh/s useless.

So, What is the best hardware for 500.00.

Wow this forum is having some issues in posting - let's try this again....

Any ASIC hardware for mining SHA-256 (Bitcoin) won't likely pay off at today's prices/difficulty, nor in the foreseeable future.  See this explanation, or there are several others out there - http://www.holynerdvana.com/2013/12/bitcoin-asic-roi.html (http://www.holynerdvana.com/2013/12/bitcoin-asic-roi.html)


If I was to only throw $500 into mining (and not buy and holding coin) I would get an ATI GPU card and place it in a computer I already have.  You can use this as a starting reference of what cards to look for: https://litecoin.info/Mining_hardware_comparison (https://litecoin.info/Mining_hardware_comparison)  Find some scrypt mining profitability calculators, and run the numbers on what cards you can afford.  un-shortened link to calculator: http://www.coinwarz.com/cryptocurrency/?sha256HashRate=0&sha256Power=0&sha256PowerCost=0.1000&scryptHashRate=600.00&scryptPower=400.00&scryptPowerCost=0.1000&sha256Check=false&scryptCheck=true (http://www.coinwarz.com/cryptocurrency/?sha256HashRate=0&sha256Power=0&sha256PowerCost=0.1000&scryptHashRate=600.00&scryptPower=400.00&scryptPowerCost=0.1000&sha256Check=false&scryptCheck=true) (Coinwarz.com)  

Here's some really rough numbers:
Say you find a deal on an ATI card that can do 600 kh/s, and the card and whole computer consumes 400w.  

If you mine at Multipool or Middlecoin, etc that switches coin mined based on profitability at current exchange rate, then you may be able to get $7-$10/day, with power at $.10/kWh it would cost $.96/day.   Not a bad turn on investment for power consumption, but you won't pay for the card for 55-83 days, at current exchange rates.   If mining profitability goes up or down, this can change wildly.   I have in the past month seen time-to-payoff times vary from 20 days to 120 days, assuming then-current exchange rates and not holding for speculation of higher cashout rates.

YMMV, I hope this helps.

That's great! $7/$10 per day return on $500 investment beats anything else out there!

Which is why the ATI cards are scarce, and those to be found are much higher than their original MSRPs - they weren't originally priced to be printing presses. 

Now, but the situation could change quickly

Unfortunately BTC is today so "occupied" that it's not remarkably profitable with anything less than around 40 gH/s.

All I will say is that people are right when they say that Bitcoin mining isn't really profitable anymore for the average person, you'll get nowhere if you spend $500 on a card etc. if you're going to do mining, mine for the long term and go for coins with low difficulties and study how they're different from Bitcoin and decide which one is going to outlast the others.

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I find blade erupters quit useful for mining only at 400-500 for 10 GH/S.

I would strongly advise against investing in hardware to mine BTC now.  It simply is not profitable enough for an independent miner to ever make his investment back.  The difficulty is going to continue to rise for the forseeable future, and that means that the amount of BTC you produce is going to get smaller and smaller each day.

I agree completely with Nmonic.  If you're looking to get into mining now, a scrypt coin using an AMD video card is the way to go.

Shop around, prices have gone up a lot lately for AMD cards.  As of yesterday, an R9 270x was going for $200-$300, and R9 280x (if you can find one) for about $400-$500.  The 270x should produce around 420+ khash/sec each, and the 280x around 700+ khash/sec (Your results will vary a bit depending on your configuration).   So 2 270x's would be in your budget if you can put them in an existing computer, and they would produce a little more output than one 280x, however the two together would consume more power than one 280x.

Also, before you buy anything, you need to confirm that your mobo has available PCIe slots for your cards, and you need to make sure your power supply can handle these cards running at full power, and that you have the right PCI power connectors or adapters from the power supply.

Keep in mind, you need a little experience (or a lot of patience) to install these cards and configure them to mine coins.  But do some research, there are plenty of tutorials out there that can help you get a system set up and running.  Good luck with it.

Speed does not matter, you may buy TH/s miner and still be unprofitable