Just starting out with CryptoCurrencies couple of questions

[KalistoCA]

Hi Everyone;

So i'm pretty new to this whole thing, i've done a bit of mining with a pool off and on but nothing really serious.

However I i have an opportunity to pick up some ASIC miners for what i think is a good price and was looking for some feedback.

1. The ASIC Miners I can get are based on the GC3355??!>! if that makes sense and i'm getting them for 25.00/each. (5 in total)
the claim is these are ~330 kh/s for scrypt and ~8GB/s for sha256 and run anywhere from 7watts to 60watts for dual mining.
Are these miners considered decent for starting out? in both SHA and Scrypt mining?

2. Why is anyone considering GPU mining as it seems ASIC's are extremely cost effective these days.

3. if i am ASIC mining, does the specs of the computer matter.
I have an old P4 with a gig of ram running ubuntu 13.10 it has plenty of USB slots to hook these up to.
my thought is that since the ASIC miners are doing all the work, the computer is really just managing it, am i correct in this assumption?

4. will it be possible to configure each of the miners to mine separate coins if possible via different pools, i guess that might mean running 5 separate instances of mining software each with it's own configuration file is this correct or am i stupid for thinking such things.

Hopefully these questions are not wholly stupid.

and i appreciate your help in advance!

Cheers,

Kali

[tripppn]

Hi Everyone;

So i'm pretty new to this whole thing, i've done a bit of mining with a pool off and on but nothing really serious.

However I i have an opportunity to pick up some ASIC miners for what i think is a good price and was looking for some feedback.

1. The ASIC Miners I can get are based on the GC3355??!>! if that makes sense and i'm getting them for 25.00/each. (5 in total)
the claim is these are ~330 kh/s for scrypt and ~8GB/s for sha256 and run anywhere from 7watts to 60watts for dual mining.
Are these miners considered decent for starting out? in both SHA and Scrypt mining?

2. Why is anyone considering GPU mining as it seems ASIC's are extremely cost effective these days.

3. if i am ASIC mining, does the specs of the computer matter.
I have an old P4 with a gig of ram running ubuntu 13.10 it has plenty of USB slots to hook these up to.
my thought is that since the ASIC miners are doing all the work, the computer is really just managing it, am i correct in this assumption?

4. will it be possible to configure each of the miners to mine separate coins if possible via different pools, i guess that might mean running 5 separate instances of mining software each with it's own configuration file is this correct or am i stupid for thinking such things.

Hopefully these questions are not wholly stupid.

and i appreciate your help in advance!

Cheers,

Kali

1) If you have enough for 5 of those you will be much better off with something like the U3 from bitmain or the "New" R-box.  The best place to get these would prob be here:  https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?board=137.0  depending on where you live of course.

2) People GPU mine alt coins with different algorithms then Sha 256 or Scrypt.  The X algos (X11, X13) can only be mined with GPUs for now.

3) I would really recomand grabbing a Raspberry Pi and load minepeon on it.  It's WAY more power efficient then running a laptop or old pc.

4) Honestly at the speed your looking at mining it really won't benefit you to split them up.  Pick a pool and go at it with full force.

No such thing as a stupid question my friend.  We all had to start somewhere and we all had questions at some point.

[KalistoCA]

1) If you have enough for 5 of those you will be much better off with something like the U3 from bitmain or the "New" R-box.  The best place to get these would prob be here:  https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?board=137.0  depending on where you live of course.

2) People GPU mine alt coins with different algorithms then Sha 256 or Scrypt.  The X algos (X11, X13) can only be mined with GPUs for now.

3) I would really recomand grabbing a Raspberry Pi and load minepeon on it.  It's WAY more power efficient then running a laptop or old pc.

4) Honestly at the speed your looking at mining it really won't benefit you to split them up.  Pick a pool and go at it with full force.

No such thing as a stupid question my friend.  We all had to start somewhere and we all had questions at some point.

1. ok, sounds good looks like that is sha256 only and i liked the idea of having both scrypt and sha256 unless your telling me that it isn't worth while.
as i did notice that u3 does like 60GH/s which isn't bad.

2. ok that is a fair argument, i guess my newness hasn't afforded me much knowledge outside of SHA256 and Scrypt mining.  I guess that spurs a new question.  are those other mining algorithms worth while? well i'm assuming so.

3. I actually have a PI that i use as media server, thats a good thought i'll look at getting another one. they are pretty inexpensive.

4. ok my thought was originally with this to mine lowered end coins in a speculative fashion, but perhaps that is a silly plan.

Thanks for the feedback and any other feedback would be appreciated.

Oh there is a guy selling those USB i think they are Antminers that do ~335mh/s for like $15.00/each is that a waste of time given the higher difficulty and their slow speeds, or are those handy for lower end coins.

Learning here i think.

Cheers,
Kali

[tripppn]

1. ok, sounds good looks like that is sha256 only and i liked the idea of having both scrypt and sha256 unless your telling me that it isn't worth while.
as i did notice that u3 does like 60GH/s which isn't bad.

2. ok that is a fair argument, i guess my newness hasn't afforded me much knowledge outside of SHA256 and Scrypt mining.  I guess that spurs a new question.  are those other mining algorithms worth while? well i'm assuming so.

3. I actually have a PI that i use as media server, thats a good thought i'll look at getting another one. they are pretty inexpensive.

4. ok my thought was originally with this to mine lowered end coins in a speculative fashion, but perhaps that is a silly plan.

Thanks for the feedback and any other feedback would be appreciated.

Oh there is a guy selling those USB i think they are Antminers that do ~335mh/s for like $15.00/each is that a waste of time given the higher difficulty and their slow speeds, or are those handy for lower end coins.

Learning here i think.

Cheers,
Kali

Those dual miners are truley pretty much usless at this point. They were one of the first scrypt asics and quickly went out of style.  Really there aren't any worthwhile "stick" miners these days. It's hard enough to find any hardware that's worth wile with the price of BTC being so low but seems like you want to pick something up to play with and see how it goes.  Get yourself AT LEAST 100Gh SHA or 10Mh Srcypt worth of hash to even be a relevant blip these days when your talking about asics.

The nice thing about the GPU rigs is people keep making new algos for them so they have a much longer life span so they will ROI eventually.  I built a GPU rig right as asics were starting to come out and didn't know I could switch to scrypt and make a nice profit, I sold the rig for a big loss, really wish I hadn't done that.

Mining the smaller speculative coins is a great idea with that hash your looking at buying.  It can and will be disappointing at first because 90% of coins that launch these days are shit but 1 in 10 will be a win and make up for it.  Just a piece of advice, If your looking at mining freshly launched coins, mine for the first hour then quit and come back 3-5 days later when the rush has ended.  If you get in REALLY early you can do well but after 1 hour or so everyone and their mom will be mining it and kill any chance of profit you have.  Luckily they all go away as soon as the next "GREAT" coin comes along.

[Centaurus]

welcome KalistoCA
Some people don't consider the increases in difficulty when calculating ROI, be smart with this

[ferdinant]

I hope you are doing this for hobby, because you can earn almost nothing with miners you have.

[tripppn]

I hope you are doing this for hobby, because you can earn almost nothing with miners you have.

Agree.  At the level your looking to get in this is a hobby not an income source or a solid investment.  But if you wanna try out mining and see how it does go for it.  I started mining about a year ago and fell in love with it even though it's not very profitable its a hobby that pays for itself at least and I've done pretty well and got a profit which of course I immediately bought more hardware with.  

I started with 2 S1s and have done well enough that I now have 6 S3s and a GAW Black Widow (The BW is on the verge of retirement) But I'm VERY lucky to have done as well as I have.

[cashmoney]

I hope you are doing this for hobby, because you can earn almost nothing with miners you have.

Correct. Might as well do services for BTC.