Bitcoin Forum

Hey Everyone!

Total newbie here.  I've been checking out the forums and I still have a few questions.  I've read that bitcoin/litecoin mining on laptops is a completely stupid move.  That being said, if I invested in some bitcoin or litecoin mining hardware & ran it on my laptop would it still destroy my computer?  If so, why?  Does it have to do with how much power my laptop can generate or its basic internal graphics card? 

Likewise, would it be wiser to invest in litecoin mining hardware considering that I am getting into the Bitcoin market so late?  (not that I'm diving into the Litecoin market at any better time)

Thanks!

It's utterly pointless mining on a laptop for either bitcoins or litecoins. The only thing you could mine on a laptop is probably a crappy altcoin. I really wouldnt bother with mining and find alternative ways to earn some coins.

Try the altcoin

If you buy dedicated hardware in order to mine (ASIC miners) you can run that hardware on your computer. Even on a slow notebook computer. The computer just takes care of the communication with the pool and tells the mining hardware what to do. It won't destroy your computer more than it would if you just let it idle.
Some bitcoin miners even can run on their own! Please ask if you have additional questions!

Using the components of a laptop to mine is ridiculous, but using a laptop to control a miner is perfectly fine.  Some miners like the S1 don't even need a PC or Pi to control them.  Some miners can be run off a low power raspberry Pi.

If you want to mine bitcoin or litecoin, you will need to buy a sha256 ASIC (for bitcoin) or scrypt ASIC (for litecoin). The profitability will depends on a number of different factors such as your electricity cost and the future difficulty increasing rate. Please make sure you have done some calculation on that before buying the equipment. :)

Mining on a laptop is just fine if the laptop is connected to some external ASIC's of some sort.  For example, I have my laptop currently hashing with a nanofury on an external USB hub.  Way too much heat for my poor little laptop to handle when I plugged USB stick directly into USB port.  If your talking about some old BFL gear you will be fine hashing on those from your laptop.  The mining software in and of itself doesn't burn your laptop out.  It's the actual process of using your CPU for hashing (as opposed to running a program that outsources that hashing) to someone else.

A lot of the current hardware does not take a PC even.  You might look but there are quite a few options that have their own network connection and you just really need to set it up on computer.

As far as set up normally it just takes a computer that is able to pull up a website.  In this case a IP address.  So not much computing power needed at all.

I tried to mine bitcoin but it's almost impossible with a personal computer, even if it's a gaming station like mine.

For the average Joe bitcoin mining is finished since years, altcoin mining is still profitable if you have a rig with a great hashpower.
If you are skilled (and lucky) enough to instamine some of the new promising coins, you may have some decent profit.

Sadly GPU mining is VERY hard to be profitable.  For most it will take a ASIC mining device.   And do roi electricity price has a lot to do with it.   Some are better off hosting some at home.

Yeah man, the thing is people don't seem to understand that even if their machines are new and all poweful for gaming purposes. They are all-purpose machines. If you build a dedicated machine that can only do one thing and optimize it on doing that (an ASIC) it's like 100x as effective (not exaggerating!!)

You are probably already too late for mining. Bitcoin mining is very very unlikely to ROI, but possible depending on electrical fees, lifespan, difficulty increase. For litecoin or scrypt, some of those are pre-order scams which does not deliver. The price can drop very very fast, resulting in you wasting your time trying to mine that coin. It usually isn't as stable as bitcoin.

But it's interesting to mine a coin. It can be fun, watching your miner do the calculations, maybe some light flashes once in a while :D It's almost like a nice little Disco, man! But you're right, you won't get a positive ROI by mining with small miners at home.

Yeah, you may want to buy some USB hubs in case you have USB Mining Sticks (they also draw a metric ton of power) or just an USB-extension-cord for the notebook computer to stay cool.
If you don't want your computer to run 24/7 (which also draws a lot of energy) You may want to get a raspberry pi!

Do some ROI most usb sticks are either old or on new ones pretty overpriced compared to the more all in one miners. 

I would love if they made one that was worth it again, but it's mainly for someone to play with one miner and not a mining operation now on sticks.

I do miss my BE's blinking in dark though thinking about this thread :)

You have no idea what you are talking about.

Actually what he said is correctly - although lack it might be lacking a little grammatical correctness  :P

ASICs (the dedicated machines he was referring to) are 100 to 1000x more efficient than GPUs and certainly more so than CPUs.  What part did you not understand?

For comparison of efficiency, you can check the bitcoin wiki https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Mining_hardware_comparison.
You can find a number of new generation ASICs with "Mhash/J" at over 1000 while the best GPU can only do slightly better than 2.
So, the 100x figure is an understatement. :)

Space would also be an factor to concern about. An ASIC is much much smaller than a computer whereas ASIC requires less space with higher speeds. If you have less space, ASIC would obviously be your choice here.

Ideally you would want to buy a host machine if the ASIC equipment you're wanting to purchase requires a serial connection (typically a mini usb) -- if you buy what most miners do an AntMiner the s1 series has a wireless card and also a NIC  to connect directly to your router.  You will need at least a 800 watt PSU on your 12v rails for PCI-E (6-pin) connectors.  Do not use a piggy backed 6-pin connector feeding off another like some lower quality PSU's have else the cables will literally melt because it cannot support that much power.   I use a 1200 watt gold rated high efficiency PSU that is also modular so that extra cables aren't an issue.  Bitmain now carrys an adapter so that you don't have to 'jump' the PSU and can plug the 24-pin connector directly into it with an on and off toggle switch.

The S3 is the current one out at about 480 GH/s by default, though over clocking is well worth looking into.  If that's out of your price range I'd look at the S1 since you can pick them up fairly cheap these days but any of the AntMiners would not require you to have a host computer to run them.

If you do get an ASIC, I wouldn't use a laptop, as that will cause you issues inherently since a laptop is used for its mobility. So in that case a tower/desktop would be the better solution.

If you get into Bitcoin mining and you're looking for a pool.  Please check out my signature below as we run a very unique pool with 2.5 BTC payout, randomly chosen for every block found.

Hope that information was useful to you and hope to see you along with anyone else join our pool!

Good luck and if you have any questions you can PM me directly.

Adaryian

Do you have cheap electricity? If not, you may not get a profit from buying those ASIC (sha256 or scrypt), and you should simply buy some bitcoin IMO.

I doubt even with free electric, you may certainly ROI. It totally depends on the price, lifespan and difficulty. Currently, the only way for it to be profitable is to own a very efficient ASIC that not much people have. If it is released in large quantities, the difficulty would increase to very high.