HELP: TOTAL Mining N00b

[johnniewalker]

Hi everybody,
Well I have been immersed in the world of bitcoins for years now, I never got into the mining side of it. All I have is a general understanding of how it works.
Anyways, I'm moving into a new place soon (free electricity!) so I was wondering about setting up a rig. I don't want to spend a ton ($100 or less). I don't need it to do a ton, either-I'm just looking at it as whatever it produces are bitcoins I wouldn't have had otherwise. Which brings me to my next question-is it smarter to mine litecoins?
I have a MacBook Pro for personal use and DO NOT want to use it at all for mining. Is there anyway I could mine using a Rasberry Pi?
I appreciate any help/advice. Excited to get into this.

[Kaepora]

Hi everybody,
Well I have been immersed in the world of bitcoins for years now, I never got into the mining side of it. All I have is a general understanding of how it works.
Anyways, I'm moving into a new place soon (free electricity!) so I was wondering about setting up a rig. I don't want to spend a ton ($100 or less). I don't need it to do a ton, either-I'm just looking at it as whatever it produces are bitcoins I wouldn't have had otherwise. Which brings me to my next question-is it smarter to mine litecoins?
I have a MacBook Pro for personal use and DO NOT want to use it at all for mining. Is there anyway I could mine using a Rasberry Pi?
I appreciate any help/advice. Excited to get into this.

If you are on a small budget like you I would recommend alt coins because their difficulty is much lower but be careful of all the dozens of new coins coming out. I personally would recommend Litecoin as it is somewhat stable and pretty profitable. I mine it and I pay 14c Kw/H.

[johnniewalker]

Is it possible to set up a rig w/a Rasberry Pi?

[Achastar]

You know that might be crazy enough to try actually. You could get a "Block Erupter"(Just google it haha) and plug it in the Pi if it has the USB port. But, a decent card to get you started in altcoin mining(alternative cryptocurrencies) would be a 5830 or even a 5850 if you can find it @ $100.

[J35st3r]

Is it possible to set up a rig w/a Rasberry Pi?

Take a look here, lots of useful info ... https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=137934.0
And here too https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=220905.0

But don't bother cpu mining, 200kHash/sec (yes kilo-hash) max (even with overclocking). Just mining dust (probably won't even reach the minimum pool payout threshold over its entire life).

[Welsh]

Raspberry pi? Well, you could go for the Usb ASIC miners, which are expensive to begin with, and it is a risk, because there will be so many people getting into it.
But, it doesn't take to much power (which doesn't matter to you I suppose) and you can use it on any hardware you like and it will preform at the same rate.

Maybe you should look into that, the budget is a little over $100 though, I believe some are selling for around $200-$300.

[J35st3r]

Maybe you should look into that, the budget is a little over $100 though, I believe some are selling for around $200-$300.

The Block Eruptor is currently 2.0BTC, but it will never return that investment over its lifetime. Possibly one on the Klondike group buys would be profitable (look in the Mining/Custom Hardware threads) , but you'' be a latecomer so even that is dubious now.

[Eva Braun]

IMO stay out of mining and just go to work and buy Bitcoins, you'll make more.

[Eva Braun]

I made about 5 Bitcoins from mining my laptop for 2 days in 2010... If only I could go back in time.

[J35st3r]

I made about 5 Bitcoins from mining my laptop for 2 days in 2010... If only I could go back in time.

You could have a lot more fun than mining BTC if you had a time machine. But there are some risks ... Primer ... http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0390384/