So I'm very new to mining and yesterday attempted a bit of bitcoin mining via nicehash and found that my GPU and processor were getting super hot and after several hours or so had only mined $1.30 or so....
You were not mining Bitcoin with nicehash cause there's absolutely no GPUs and CPUs in existence that would make you $1.3 worth of BTC in only a few hours. With nicehash you're mining alt coins, just like monero, but you get paid in BTC. What exactly you were mining with nicehash is an open question, no one knows except you. By default, I think, nicehash automatically selects the algo they consider the most profitable at the moment, and points your hashrate towards it. But yeah, in general most of the stuff worth mining makes your hardware run hot.