Bitcoin Forum

Hi guys! I'm new in the Bitcoin business. I built a PC from old components wich I got from other people who didn't use them anymore. After the Christmas I want to buy an ASIC Miner to start mining. Should I connect it to that very weak PC (CPU: Single Core with unknown frequency; GPU: Integrated on the motherboard, 32MB of RAM.) or to my better and new PC?  :-\

What Operating System are you running with 32MB of RAM?

It don't matter, a PC and a Bitcoin miner is completely different.

You can't use an ASIC miner to increase a PC's performance and vice versa.

A Bitcoin miner would not reside within your PC, for most part anyways.

You can invest in graphics cards but those aren't really feasible for mining unless you get an army of them.

However, the graphics card retains a better value and can be used for gaming and video rendering but also get obsolete quite quickly.

An ASIC miner has one job, perform cryptology services, nothing else... well that and make heat is a valid argument for Canadians ::)

Essentially, when you mine Bitcoin via ASIC, the device alone does the all work, neither a PC is involved or not.

The PC component (Control Board) is usually built in the miner... well, the good builders do.

However if you mine via GPU then having a computer as controller is always a good idea since GPU's don't have a built in mining software.

In other words, you only need a PC in ASIC mining to set up your pools and change IP / DCHP.

You could even ask the builder to preset your pools and then you don't even need a PC.

Other than that, most modern ASIC miners are rather hands free.

My recommendation, start with an AntMiner S3 ($250 - 440GH/s), don't bother with GPU mining.

If you want to spend less, try the U3, which is a USB miner which I beleive is under $100

Best of luck to you and welcome to the game :)



I cannot for the life of me imagine a motherboard that can adapt for such small amount of ram... myThinkPad has 32GB RAM lol

I think the question has already been answere but just a tl;dr it doesnt matter what grade of computer you use to monitor the work of your miner (s ) because you are only doing just that monitoring.

 My phone has either 2 or 4gb (note 4) i cant imagine a full size pc with less than that haha

Hi, most of asics miner now come with own controller or using small linux box like TPLINK TL-MR3020 as the controller.
Your PC only for configuration & monitoring purpose only. You even can use your phone or tablet  :D

I certainly hope you built this "PC" only as a learning experience. It's not useful for anything. You can buy a Beaglebone Black for $50 and it has 4GB of memory or a Raspberry Pi for $35 with 512MB of on-board memory. These two devices are the size of a deck of cards and are often used as controllers for ASIC miners.

I suggest looking at SP20 and S4 currently.  Neither one requires a computer except for setup.    Days of needing a computer for GPU/CPU are dead for most.