Bitcoin Forum

So yeah I am a geek who likes to play around with equipment. So far I have stuck to a couple of single GPU card systems and a HP G7 server. Nothing new and pricey. Now I bought a new gaming PC and I got a Zotac 1080 with it and 8th generation I7. I grabbed a copy of the latest crypto dredge and started testing out what the new box could do. Started by mining a bunch of X-cash. Next, I pointed to Zpool and tried out lyra2rev2, phi, polytimos, and bcd. BCD seems the most profitable but also it is hard to "find". Polytimos is easy to find but 1/3 the profit.  Based on my rough calculations I think I can generate about $9 -$10 of bitcoin in about three weeks with this 1 new PC. It has been fun to get back into the mix. I would consider grabbing some asic based setup, but would not be willing to spend thousands of dollars to do it; and also would prefer 120v so it could just heat my man cave. Any advice for my hobby would be much appreciated. I am not trying to make a bunch of money and I would be happy just paying for my hobby over a reasonable time frame. Thanks in advance for any help. 

Buying asics as a hobby that's weird , no fun at all in a running asic it's a plug n play , also no reasonable timeframes in mining now you need 90 hours in 24 hours day to make a reasonable profit in mining right now

The only real options for you are the Futurebit asics, especially the new Apollo, which might not ROI this side of eternity, but are relatively cheap, relatively quiet and 'fun' to play with.

Real asics are generally very loud, not cheap, and plug-play, plus not very profitable right now.

ASIC is good if you are mining with altcoin but if you are mining with bitcoin you can make a profit but it takes years before you break your ROI.
Since you are in altcoin section almost people here are mining with GPU it is more flexible compared to ASIC.

Just like the above said ASIC is for people who looking for investment and profit and GPU mining are good for people who want to learn and contribute on the network.

If you are truly doing it as a hobby then continue doing what you have been up until now. Hop around to a bunch of different coins and accumulate a small stack of each. When the market returns in 1-2 years hopefully some of the coins you mined become winners.

Just be sure to mine coins with either low difficulties or large block rewards so you can accumulate a reasonable amount of each in a short amount of time. Maybe spend 1-2 weeks on each coin then move on.

I would not worry about the current profitability as whatever you pick it is going to be crap in the current market. Instead just focus on having fun and trying to accumulate a bunch of different coins that look like they may have future potential.

Basically with ASICs you need to remember a few things. They are crazy loud. If you want to know how loud, go turn on your vacuum cleaner and see if you can live with the noise. They do have a few benefits such as being compact and right now very cheap however.

Whether you get more GPUs or ASICs, remember that unless conditions change you will most likely never make a profit to pay off your rig. You also should state how much you pay for electricity as anything over 0.08c per kwh results in a net income of 0 these days.

I pay 5 cents a kwh. Thanks everyone for the ideas and advice. For those of you who mention the noise level of asic based solutions there is a cheap solution. My brother use to have a bitmain mining bitcoin and he built a sound suppression chamber using and igloo cooler, duct tape, and some flexible duct work. Worked like a charm and cut the noise level to about 50% less. He ended up building some for a few of his friends.

yeaaaah. TBH there are better, quieter options to mine with. You'll end up with holes in the walls, inline extractor fans and duct tape everywhere, then realise it'll take months just to pay for the tape out of your profits...

I've also used the cooler method for reducing noise levels in the past, and I can say that it just increases the time it'll take to break even, and the noise from an ASIC even after modifications is still pretty great, though sound levels are definitely lower than without any modifications. Such a setup also takes up quite a bit of space and isn't the prettiest thing to look at, though as you mentioned, it's a cheap way to make a miner quieter.

There are basically 2 ways one could approach the mining game — efficient and adventurous.

The efficient way is to mine whatever is most profitable at the moment, and then buy whatever it is you think is worth having. So, for example, let's say you think that monero is worth keeping in the long run. But with the current difficulties and exchange rates, mining some other coin is giving you more in terms of BTC value (let's say it's Alloy vs XMR). So you're mining Alloy then, and exchanging the coins you're getting to XMR: this way you're getting more XMR than you'd get by mining it directly with the same hardware.

The other approach, the adventurous one, is to mine coins that you can't buy anywhere. That's usually new coins that haven not been traded on any exchanges yet. This is a lot riskier since the coin doesn't have an actual market "value", but might also be more "fun" (and more profitable in the long run). So, try both approaches and see what makes more sense to you.