Mining on 40 computers

[viktorism]

Hello, I'm totally new to BitCoins, but figured I should start mining during the nights at my university. I have 40 computers with NVIDIA Quadro FX 4800 at my hands. Is that a good graphic card to mine with?
Which software would you recommend me to use? All the computers have Windows 7 on them, and I have no admin access, so I can't install anything on them. It would be neat with some application that could be stored on a USB-stick.
I've tried bitcoinplus.com, but I have a feeling it isn't optimal.

Thanks in advance, and sorry if my questions are nooby. 

[MiningBuddy]

Not worth it, you will make virtually nothing and is it worth risking your university placement for a few coins?

[xenon481]

That is theft of university resources.

[Genrobo]

Hello, I'm totally new to BitCoins, but figured I should start mining during the nights at my university. I have 40 computers with NVIDIA Quadro FX 4800 at my hands. Is that a good graphic card to mine with?
Which software would you recommend me to use? All the computers have Windows 7 on them, and I have no admin access, so I can't install anything on them. It would be neat with some application that could be stored on a USB-stick.
I've tried bitcoinplus.com, but I have a feeling it isn't optimal.

Thanks in advance, and sorry if my questions are nooby. 

Nvidia cards are notorious for being garbage at mining.
So it would really suck.
At best, you'd pull about as much as someone with a single 6990.
You'd be using about 40x as much power, and you'd also probably get royally screwed.

[viktorism]

Thanks for the replies! I thought it was worth a try, but ok - now I know. Maybe it wouldn't be so nice to use the university's resources for this purpose anyway (but hey, these computers are on 24/7 anyway).

[RyNinDaCleM]

Idleing 24/7 is WAYY different than 100%/100% The electric bill auto-magically jumped $800 a month?

[V2-V3]

I recommended using GUIMiner as it is very convenient to setup and use.
There is a full guide available here: http://bitclockers.com/forums/index.php?topic=3.0

[irishmick]

I work at a school that has 4000 computers. They are not on all the time. Not saying yours are not, but figure out what bare cpu * (hours of operation) is going to gain you and then figure in the % chance that you will be fired or dismissed from your studies/job and determine yourself whether it is a worthwhile risk or not ;o)

I have complete 100% admin access (I am the admin) but their measly 2-4 and a few 10-20 MH/s are most definitely not worth it... lmao though I wish they were...

[PcChip]

Don't do it.

But if you did, use PuddinPop's CUDA Miner, and set the process to above-normal priority.

What mainstream NVidia card is your Quadro similar to?

My 8800GT got 24 MH/s, and my GTX570 gets 112 MH/s

[warrensgun]

I remember seeing one Lab admin's poster of his SETI @HOME achievement because he set it as the screen saver for all the lab machines.  No one at the University who made decisions seemed to care, but I also doubt they check things like the power bill.

[ataranlen]

I remember seeing one Lab admin's poster of his SETI @HOME achievement because he set it as the screen saver for all the lab machines.  No one at the University who made decisions seemed to care, but I also doubt they check things like the power bill.

pshhhh, its government money, who cares, right?

No really, Universities are some of the most wasteful spenders of money. For crying out loud, I'll bet those pc's are all Dell's (or similar)! Such a waste!

[Atroxes]

Mine (any program) when a PC is idle:

http://forum.bitcoin.org/index.php?topic=9851.0

I use this nice little program at work (I'm the admin) and have 3x i5 machines doing 13Mh/s each. It's not alot, but 39Mh/s for free, on machines that noone will notice is doing mining, that's fine by me

[supa]

I would recommend grabbing revisor (Fedora LiveCD creator) and creating a 32 bit image with the NVIDIA drivers on it.  If you can't figure out how to install them properly on the image.... just copy the package over and install it manually.

Make a USB image.

Boot the USB image and start a good miner - on old NVIDIA machines you should be able to get at least 5 MHs out of the GPU and up to 8 MHs out of the CPU.  That's 13 x 20 ~ 260 MHs "for free."

You can use at/cron to set a reboot at a certain hour.  Say the lab opens at 8A - reboot at 7:45A.

Move to the next machine, repeat.

If you manage to do it right, no one will ever know you were there....

[PcChip]

I would recommend grabbing revisor (Fedora LiveCD creator) and creating a 32 bit image with the NVIDIA drivers on it.  If you can't figure out how to install them properly on the image.... just copy the package over and install it manually.

Make a USB image.

Boot the USB image and start a good miner - on old NVIDIA machines you should be able to get at least 5 MHs out of the GPU and up to 8 MHs out of the CPU.  That's 13 x 20 ~ 260 MHs "for free."

You can use at/cron to set a reboot at a certain hour.  Say the lab opens at 8A - reboot at 7:45A.

Move to the next machine, repeat.

If you manage to do it right, no one will ever know you were there....

So much work (making and configuring that CD, burning 20 copies, starting it up 20 times EACH NIGHT) for the equivalent of one HD5830 hashing for 12 hours per night.

[supa]

So much work (making and configuring that CD, burning 20 copies, starting it up 20 times EACH NIGHT) for the equivalent of one HD5830 hashing for 12 hours per night.

I think you missed the "Make a USB image" part.

There are better ways - a bit of finesse could set up a PXE server and off you go.

You *will* find SETI/Folding@home already present at most institutions on at least a few machines.  Institutions that use nonsense like DeepFreeze or SteadyState.... even sillier things present....

For relatively decently sized schools the power fluctuation isn't noticeable and I doubt they would care as long as the machines remain usable.

edit -

Oh, also, don't forget to take the most obvious path:  Just ask the lab admins if you can "borrow" a lab over the weekend for an experiment with cryptography.  If you are a student there's no reason they should say no.  Morals, ethics, yadda yadda taken care of.

[Litt]

lol at this guy and so many recently who tries to use public resources for their own good. Gotter love the leaches of the society.

[viktorism]

Idleing 24/7 is WAYY different than 100%/100% The electric bill auto-magically jumped $800 a month?

Yeah, but these computers are used for rendering 3D graphics, and sometimes the students leave them on whole nights just to render, we're allowed to.

[Vladimir]

Idleing 24/7 is WAYY different than 100%/100% The electric bill auto-magically jumped $800 a month?

Yeah, but these computers are used for rendering 3D graphics, and sometimes the students leave them on whole nights just to render, we're allowed to.

theft is theft

[supa]

lol at this guy and so many recently who tries to use public resources for their own good. Gotter love the leaches of the society.

"Recently," eh? 

Again, the guy can go ask if he can borrow a lab.  As he's already said, students use the machines for over-night 3D processing.  There is no difference.

The "Jump to Conclusions" crew can argue amongst themselves now - "it's theft," "you'll get fired," "you'll be expelled," "power bills will spike," "playing violins is fun," "I are teh savior by telling you a $300 investment is better than free resources!"

None of these are even valid if, as a student, those resources are a shared resource that he has privilege to and permission to use overnight.

A few points to consider:
- Large Uni's will often pay a bulk power charge and NOT pay by the Kwh.  Why?  Lights, heating, X-ray machines, etc would cause wild fluctuations in billing cycles.  An extra 3000W is a joke (40 computers @ 75W) to most institutions.

- If power was even a concern.... don't you think most Uni's would be putting exceptional effort into power efficient machines that properly standby, hibernate, rigidly Power-On-LAN/shutdown around a schedule, etc?

- Power shmower, see above.

- You can't steal what you've been given permission to use.

- Your campus Admins are probably already trying it.

- He could potentially use his experience mining at a low hashrate to collect data about cryptography, P2P infrastructures, economics, pools, returns, ROI, etc, etc and actually use BitCoin for a pretty awesome report/thesis.

[Vladimir]

None of these are even valid if, as a student, those resources are a shared resource that he has privilege to and permission to use overnight.

For educational purposes maybe, but surely not for resale or commercial gain.