Bitcoin Forum

Yo,

New to mining, did some tests this weekend to see if I could get up and running with my GPU's using GUIMiner - looks like I'm mining!  But, with such a low hashrate, that's not the way to go these days.  So, in order to get some good hashrate, here are my questions:

1. What are some hardware recommendations?  USB sticks?  Erurptors?
2. What software should I use?
3. Pool recommendations?
4. Mine another type of coin?

I have a 1000W rig, 1090 x6 CPU, dual 5870 gpus.

I appreciate all feedback.  No high cost / $10k system recommendations please!  I see those USB sticks are ~$40 and that seems like a good place to start...

Thanks,
Nick

Try antminer s1.
But the electricity cost is high :)

OK, I'll look into it, thanks for the recommendation!  

Anything else come to mind?  I see something like this is out there: http://minerscube.com/ ; Great hash rate for the price - Might be a little out of my price range, but anything in the $100-$1000 price range?

I'm guessing some of this stuff isn't plug and play?  Also, as difficulty increases, hardware can become outdated fairly quickly??

On with the comments, thanks in advance!

EDIT: sounds like that minerscube is a scam! :)

EDIT#2: with my current set up, I could probably mine some Litecoin?

Yes, Minerscube is probably is a scam. Also, you can try out Cloud Mining, with services such as cex.io (http://cex.io/r/1/byt411/0/) or PBMining (http://pbmining.com?ref=byt411).

Minerscube is a scam, you can try an s1 but i warn you that it won't easy to achieve ROI, unless you have free power

Yea, I understand!

Seems like mining for BTC is very difficult these days, even if you do it in a pool.

I'm still interested, just not sure if I want to mine BTC now.... maybe something else would be worth it??

Try cex.io (http://cex.io/r/1/byt411/0/) or PBMining (http://pbmining.com?ref=byt411). You might not make that much of a profit, but it's a nice way to get into mining.

I am not trying to discourage you from mining, you should use a mining profit calcuator to review the potential profits before you buy a miner. It may not be as profitable as you might expect.

I don't really know what to advise. Any calculator will tell you that probably you should stay out of mining unless you plan to give away at least a few hundred bucks for hardware. Doesn't matter which coin really. But to my knowledge any of those calculators only take the current value of BTC into consideration and work on the assumption that any mined bitcoins are meant to be traded for dollars right away. I myself keep mining with my 2 Antminer U2 USB Sticks because any Bitcoin fraction I mine now while I still get something from letting them run might be worth thousand times more ten years from now.

GPU mining generally is a good way to get started when one owns the cards already. BUT ONLY to have a look into the technical side of mining and to see how pools work and stuff. Because of the power consumption of GPUs it is definetly not advisable as it is the most ineffictive way possible and also yields the risk of burning your cards faster than normal leaving you there with nothing to game on.

Thanks for the info!  I finally got up and running!  Yay!  Not that I'm going to make any BTC, but I'm good to go now. 

I did crash at one point and had to re-download the entire block chain again (Still DLing as of this moring, ~30 weeks left.  I forget the error message, but it was a weird one and looked it up, said that's what I had to do on the forums).

Anyways, with the hash rate I'm getting, could I be mining litecoins?

http://www.imagesup.net/dm-314005424083.png (http://www.imagesup.net/pm-314005424083.png)

http://www.imagesup.net/dm-1214005424087.png (http://www.imagesup.net/pm-1214005424087.png)

All feedback welcomed!

You can mine litecoins, but beware of power consumption if you are mining with GPUs (they are very power hungry)

Will do ... using a calculator, says I would be in the positive??  I just don't know if my hashrate would be the same using GUIMiner for BTC v GUIMiner-scrypt for LTC??  I'll be testing that tonight...

Also, looked into PBmining.com - 1000 GH/s = 5.00002120 for 5 years --> that's only ~0.105 BTC per week looking at their list - I don't think the payback is there?

EDIT - maybe the payback doesn't look like it's there because "Weekly payouts are scheduled for every Sunday before Midnight ( 24:00 GMT -6 )."?  I'll have to check at the end of the week...

EDIT2 - lastly if I want to get some more BTC in my wallet, any good recommendations on where to buy some from the USA?

Nope as scrypt is a different algorithm your hashrate when mining scrypt coins will be shown in KH/s. I got two 5750s. When I let them mine LTC using BFGMiner 3.10 they get about 150 KH/s each. Not exactly sure but I guess your 5870s should land around the 170 to 180 mark? Somewhere around there.

Here's a hardware comparison list for GPUs mining Litecoin: https://litecoin.info/Mining_hardware_comparison (https://litecoin.info/Mining_hardware_comparison)

I was afraid of that... Guess I'll be mining in the kh/s v mh/s, at least in regards to LTC mining.   I'll see what I get tonight and let you know.  (No -f flag to use to bump that hash rate? I see there is an intensity field...)

I just re-read this - what hardware do you suggest that's a good hashrate/$ ??

A really good exchange that I use is ANXPRO (http://bit.ly/anxprobyt). 0% Trading Fee, and it now also supports SEPA withdrawals.

If you want to mine litecoin or other scrypt coin, maybe you can find some used gridseed (lowest power consumption) at a decent price

I am looking for that too, but I'm in EU and it's like impossible to do so.

I think that now, brand new staff is quite overpriced (especially gridseed stuff at minereu.com). I've heard some rumors about project prime from GAWminer, that probably will change the standards in scrypt mining (like bitmain, before they launched their products ALL the asic market was based on preorders).

Care to expand on that? I only know about the new series of miners that Gawminers is launching...

Right now GAWMiner hasn't released additional details on their future plan, i just think that in this moment is worth to wait a little bit for best scrypt asic sales (not only normal price drops of a few bucks)

Yo,

Back again - didn't have much time to get at it last night.  Tried to mine some LTC with GUIMiner-scrypt and I couldn't get it to work (that's all I need, right?  I don't need cgminer as well?)

Anyways, in doing so, I couldn't get GUIMiner for BTC working again, lol! 

I'll try some more tonight...if anyone has any advice, let me know please!  Like easier software, someone PM me/FB me, etc...

Late,
Nick

really depends on where you live and how much you pay for electricity. I'd recommend altcoins, preferably a new one with an active dev.

I live in the USA, Michigan
Looks like I pay ~0.121883/KWH
Still need some help getting up and running - I'm learning that these GUIMiners are "front-ends" while something else is really actually powering/running the mining?

I'm down for mining anything, just gotta be pointed in the right direction - profitability would be nice :)

electricity price is good :)
You are correct, GUIminer is a front-end of other miners like cgminer/bfgminer: with these you can set a lot of other options to better customize your current configuration.

project prime is in the rumor stage right now.  best guess is a better method of cloud mining.  I have asked about and no one has yet to tell me a clear picture of what it will be.

So far I like GAW miners as a company so I hope  they have a rabbit or two up their sleeves.

Afaik isn't just a project for better prices on scrypt ASICs, but also for better selling conditions (trade-in of your old miner, RMA handled more faster and w/o cost/hassless, these kind of things)

OK, so when I downloaded GUIminer I actually got cgminer with it? 

Yes, is "the kernel" of GUIminer (not only cgminer, it has also bfg, cudaminer, the old and unused reaper, etc...)

Its just an implementation to make a newbie-friendly GUI, so that it's easy to use. The underlying CGMiner looks like a command prompt, and loads of people are scared about these sort of windows since they relate it to hacking.

Some antivirus even report cgminer/bfgminer as a virus (of course is a false positive)

If you use Bitcoin Core, it's also a virus too, since someone put the header of a virus into the blockchain, lol, what a huge troll.

BOOM!  Up and running again mining BTC with GUIMiner and LTC with GUIMiner-scrypt!

I figured out what went wrong, here's what I did to fix it:
- GUIMiner didn't like the folder name where I had the Bitcoin Core located - I put it on my D: drive because I was out of room on my other SSD - Make sure folder name is Bitcoin and no spaces in the folder above it! :)
- Once I changed the folder name and pointed GUIMiner there I was up and running again.
- I also added the -system flag to the startup .exe for Bitcoin Core Wallet.
- Doing all the above, I was able to launch the Bitcoin Core from GUIMiner.

- For GUIMiner-scrypt and Litecoin, I basically did the same thing
- Made sure my litecoin.conf file had the right settings

Thanks for all the info about the actual miners running in the background... I opened up the folders and can see all the different ones that come with the GUI download.

Anyways, now, what to do with all this power... (not) :)  Mining LTC atm, maybe I'll get one by the time I get home...

Last few questions:
- Any BTC pool recommendations?  
- A pool that picks the coin for you?
- Can I use GUIMiner to run something like a ASICMiner Block Erupter USB?  Or will I have to use something else?

Late,
Nick

BTC Pool? ghash.io for maximum profit, p2pool to protect the network.
Multipool? Many out there, just google.
GUIMiner can only run your GPU, since it's shitty. Use CGMiner.
How much hash do you have? 10Mhash/s?

I have about 500Mhash/s when mining BTC and about 800khash/s when mining LTC atm...

I suggest you mine LTC, it's much more profitable than BTC. Or point it at multipools.
And if you are going to mine LTC, DO NOT join Coinotron.

Yea, I think so too...

...won't Cointron make my income less volatile though?  I heard of some 51% rule...

Any suggestion for LTC and/or multis?

Try CoinShift or CleverMining for multipools. Also, the thing about making your income less volatile is true, but coinotron was at 51% a few days ago, and they could've partially destroyed the entire network.

http://bitstamp.net

try colorbit 1T hosted miner price is only 2.85btc, the total host fee 0.25btc/month(include electricity ).
mining is so easy ,the miner start to work for you within 10 minutes.

 you can check the detail of the miner through the following link
http://eligius.st/~wizkid057/newstats/userstats.php/131gBm2SsBjWBLePCVQpSB4gYwbA7e9vS1

and see the worker detail by clicking the tag "toggle display of worker details"

if you want to buy one such miner, just tell me which worker you want to pick and give me your btc address, then we will point it to your btc address on eligius pool

more infomation https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=624118.0 (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=624118.0)

the hosted miner is better. You can remote monitoring miner and btc Directly to your wallet。

You can also save freight cost and the transportation time.