Getting into Mining: Hopefully simple answer to simple q

[bradbrad]

OK so its pretty obvious I can't use my macbook to mine... (alt or BTC)... SO:

What exactly do I need to start mining (BTC or ALT coin recommendations welcome).

Do I need to buy a pre-made (and prob over-priced rig)?

Can I build a rig myself? (I have alot of friends in the hardware dept)?

That being said, not wanting to spend a fortune, and dont really care about $ return on investment (wont be running multiple miners), but want to make some coins.

In your recommendation/suggestion/advice/potential-insult-about-me-being-a-nube please also let me know realistically how many coins I can expect to gain a month.

FYI: NOT INTERESTED IN CLOUD MINING.

Really hoping for some helpful advice! thanks guys

[1715281820]

1715281820

[1715281820]

1715281820

[dquancey]

I wrote this the other night, give it a check over: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1983948.msg19789189#msg19789189

If you want a mining software easy to use, then check out Nicehash: https://www.nicehash.com/?p=gstarted it's very easy to use.

Take a few hours and read through the forums, gives really good advice and this gets asked a lot(especially now). Good luck.

[leowonderful]

I'll try to keep this clean and concise, although there will probably be a few gaps which I do not usually leave out.

For BTC: As long as electrical costs are below $.10/kWh-

Bitmain:
S9
R4 (Quiet but prone to breaking)
T9
 
Avalon:
A721/741 (Essentially both the same miner)

Ebit:

Ebit E9 (Chinese 14/16nm miner, alternative to the 'big two')

To start mining BTC, you'll need to buy an ASIC. For alts, there are X11 ASICs and Litecoin ASICs.

For BTC and some alts you must buy directly or from a reseller and it is not really possible to make your own unless you have millions of dollars (or buy chips, which is difficult, and have extensive electronics and software knowledge). For other bigger alts like ZEC and ETH, you can buy premade which is a huge ripoff or try to get the still-overpriced GTX 1060/1070/1080/1080TI cards or Radeon RX570/80 or RX 470/80. For a motherboard you want a good quality mobo (don't cheap out too much!), Biostar makes boards for mining like this but other ones work. CPUs like the G3900 for LGA1151 or G1820/1840 for 1150 work, other platforms like Ryzen are more expensive or consume too much electricity (1155). You can boot from USB with pretty much any OS you want and run off of that, but you must have RAM (usually around 2GB for best performance, Linux may run with less). Finally, make sure you DO NOT buy a cheap-ass no name PSU. Server PSUs with breakout boards usually offer great efficiency (usually 90+% efficiency), although Corsair and EVGA also make great 80+ PSUs at higher prices which look good and run well. LEPA is one brand to ALWAYS avoid as their PSUs are generally garbage for any purpose.

Be careful not to get ripped off with GPUs. RX cards which I listed above should not be bought for above 400 except for special cards (I.E Golden Sample). 4GB is OK but the DAG is expanding for ETH and it will cause you to not be able to mine, although ETH will switch to POS anyways. For nVidia cards the rate varies a lot, shop around and find the lowest price. Be aware all cards are experiencing price inflation except for the lowest and highest end cards (and even the high end cards are being bought up fast).

Depending on the rig, you will have wildly varying amounts of profit. Keep in mind you aren't really making profit until you break even. Whattomine.com lets you see which coin is most profitable to mine, although some smaller coins will vary wildly (just a site that I can think off the top of my head). Nicehash offers a compact and quick GUI which lets you mine the most profitable coin with your rig, but they do take a ~3% fee IIRC. Not that big for the ease of use you get.