Should I Mine? Can I mine? Helllllllllllp

[smit9352]

Hello Everyone, thank you for taking a second to read this! I've got a couple computers laying around that I get free power for so I thought about putting them to work but at the same time I wondered if it's even worth it. The specs are listed below for each one.
PC1:  Windows 10 64bit - Intel i5-3570 @ 3.4GHz - NVidia 650Ti - Currently Mining Monero for SupportXMR and gets roughly 300 H/s
PC2: Windows 10 64-Bit - Intel i5-2300 @ 2.8GHz - NVidia GTX 560 - Currently Mining Monero for SupportXMR and gets roughly 150-300 H/s

I've got them both mining Monero with SupportXMR pools using just the "out of the box" settings with no tweaking and will include what they're hashing below.
https://imgur.com/a/xEFKR.

I'll assume as per a lot of what I'm reading that I'm wasting my time and if I want to get into the coins I should simply buy them or purchase new hardware. I don't believe the hardware I have is completely worthless as I've seen threads of people using it to mine in some instances but the gains aren't much (sub 1,000 a year). I'd just like to find out if the hardware I have could support some farming which may make me some additional income through the year.

I'm mining monero as it's the one I found easiest to understand and the configuration was fairly easy. I'm hoping to get to .300 for the payout on Monero and push to something else if it's more worthwhile. If you got this far, thank you for taking the time to review this and any input would be greatly appreciated.

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[smit9352]

Still looking for answers, thanks everyone!

[AdolfinWolf]

Still looking for answers, thanks everyone!

Why wouldn't you if you have free power? If you simply make sure your rig doesn't overheat, every $ is profit ( if you weren't going to do anything anyway with the pc's.

600 H/s would get you ~ 62$ a month, which could be a lot depending on where you are from. See https://www.cryptocompare.com/mining/calculator/xmr?HashingPower=600&HashingUnit=H%2Fs&PowerConsumption=200&CostPerkWh=0.0

That's ~720$ per year. Might not be much, but depending on the effort you need to put in, it might just be worth it.

[smit9352]

Still looking for answers, thanks everyone!

Why wouldn't you if you have free power? If you simply make sure your rig doesn't overheat, every $ is profit ( if you weren't going to do anything anyway with the pc's.

600 H/s would get you ~ 62$ a month, which could be a lot depending on where you are from. See https://www.cryptocompare.com/mining/calculator/xmr?HashingPower=600&HashingUnit=H%2Fs&PowerConsumption=200&CostPerkWh=0.0

That's ~720$ per year. Might not be much, but depending on the effort you need to put in, it might just be worth it.

Thanks AdolfinWolf, I say that because what I'm wondering is if my hardware is running at its most optimal setting or if I could squeeze more out of it by using a different miner or a different coin. I was hoping to really just have someone say "Yep, that's about the best it can do" or "no, you can improve if you change this and this". Free power makes any penny worth it, I agree. I just can't find a good calculator that addresses hardware as outdated as mine.

[alexandrecs]

there are a lot of calculators where you input info like your hash power, electricity costs and so on and you'll have the values...

The only problem is that this calculators doesnt consider the price that the coins will reach... I honestly think if you consider the price the coins can reach in the long run, mining could be really profitable... But if you're doing that as your mainsource of money, maybe it's not the best way to invest your  time and money...

[smit9352]

there are a lot of calculators where you input info like your hash power, electricity costs and so on and you'll have the values...

The only problem is that this calculators doesnt consider the price that the coins will reach... I honestly think if you consider the price the coins can reach in the long run, mining could be really profitable... But if you're doing that as your mainsource of money, maybe it's not the best way to invest your  time and money...

Nah, this is just two machines we have doing nothing at my home that I turned on and tested mining possibilities on them. At this point I'm considering biting the bullet and buying some 570's and throwing together a couple of mining rigs. Just wanted to really get any advice on my current setup and if there was more I could sqeeze out of it before giving up and expanding.

[Redbackone]

As mentioned before, if you get free power and the gear is just laying around. Of course you should be mining!

Getting into mining is a great education journey as well. Use the experience to learn about the different algorithms and the challenges and benefits of mining different coins.

Just make sure to stick to downloading mining software from github!

Enjoy the education. It's all a journey.

[Mark Promo]

With such computers, you will pay more for electricity than earn, as a result there will be losses. If there is no access to free electricity, then you can not even try.

[lprytk]

if you have free power then you should mine but my advice dont mine bitcoin. try other mineable coins. they are easy to mine and very much profitable than mining bitcoin.

[RominaViewly]

if you have free power then you should mine but my advice dont mine bitcoin. try other mineable coins. they are easy to mine and very much profitable than mining bitcoin.

You are correct , mining Bitcoin is pretty much useless on a PC , you need ASIC for that.
https://whattomine.com is the best place to check based on GPU, CPU, ASIC

You can also check https://electroneum.com, which tries to bring mining to smartphones

[smit9352]

if you have free power then you should mine but my advice dont mine bitcoin. try other mineable coins. they are easy to mine and very much profitable than mining bitcoin.

You are correct , mining Bitcoin is pretty much useless on a PC , you need ASIC for that.
https://whattomine.com is the best place to check based on GPU, CPU, ASIC

You can also check https://electroneum.com, which tries to bring mining to smartphones

Thanks! I'm really thinking about investing in a middle of the line rig with a pair of 1060s in it just to see where it takes me. I could simply place both of the Nvidia in one pc  then purchase new cards and put them in one of the pcs I have now.

[jhackers]

Hello Everyone, thank you for taking a second to read this! I've got a couple computers laying around that I get free power for so I thought about putting them to work but at the same time I wondered if it's even worth it. The specs are listed below for each one.
PC1:  Windows 10 64bit - Intel i5-3570 @ 3.4GHz - NVidia 650Ti - Currently Mining Monero for SupportXMR and gets roughly 300 H/s
PC2: Windows 10 64-Bit - Intel i5-2300 @ 2.8GHz - NVidia GTX 560 - Currently Mining Monero for SupportXMR and gets roughly 150-300 H/s

I've got them both mining Monero with SupportXMR pools using just the "out of the box" settings with no tweaking and will include what they're hashing below.
https://imgur.com/a/xEFKR.

I'll assume as per a lot of what I'm reading that I'm wasting my time and if I want to get into the coins I should simply buy them or purchase new hardware. I don't believe the hardware I have is completely worthless as I've seen threads of people using it to mine in some instances but the gains aren't much (sub 1,000 a year). I'd just like to find out if the hardware I have could support some farming which may make me some additional income through the year.

I'm mining monero as it's the one I found easiest to understand and the configuration was fairly easy. I'm hoping to get to .300 for the payout on Monero and push to something else if it's more worthwhile. If you got this far, thank you for taking the time to review this and any input would be greatly appreciated.

What i did was... I installed admin mode miner in all computers at my work.. because i have the power to do that. i am the I.t in our company..  .. but this is not advisable and legal.. so its still in your own risk.

[shitcoiner]

i also have free electrycity and i would like for some legendary dude to tell what should i mine. a shitcoin is probably more profitable.

[smit9352]

In your CPU screenshots you appear to be running on all 4 threads, while in the GPU screenshots you appear to be running correctly on only 3 threads, since you have 6MB of L3 cache and Monero requires 2MB per instance, you should only mine in the latter configuration.

Nothing wrong with mining on free electricity and hardware you already have, since it's pure profit. I'd suggest diversifying your portfolio a bit with other CryptoNight currencies, such as SUMO, KRB and already mention ETN. There are ways to marginally optimize your setup by compiling the miners for your own architecture and overclocking your components, but it's not worth it if you're not familiar with stability issues involved.

Getting GTX 1060's is a solid option as well, but in that case you should be at least mining Ethereum or looking into dual mining Ethereum.

Thanks @Abhorrent_Anger, I'll adjust to mining on 3 threads immediately for the CPU. I simply started the XMR software and it determined the cores in which it was going to use for the GPU so I figured it was correct and needed no changes. Would you recommend mining a alt-coin while mining the monero as well.

[breadginger56]

In your CPU screenshots you appear to be running on all 4 threads, while in the GPU screenshots you appear to be running correctly on only 3 threads, since you have 6MB of L3 cache and Monero requires 2MB per instance, you should only mine in the latter configuration.

Nothing wrong with mining on free electricity and hardware you already have, since it's pure profit. I'd suggest diversifying your portfolio a bit with other CryptoNight currencies, such as SUMO, KRB and already mention ETN. There are ways to marginally optimize your setup by compiling the miners for your own architecture and overclocking your components, but it's not worth it if you're not familiar with stability issues involved.

Getting GTX 1060's is a solid option as well, but in that case you should be at least mining Ethereum or looking into dual mining Ethereum.

Thanks @Abhorrent_Anger, I'll adjust to mining on 3 threads immediately for the CPU. I simply started the XMR software and it determined the cores in which it was going to use for the GPU so I figured it was correct and needed no changes. Would you recommend mining a alt-coin while mining the monero as well.

Yeah, a good decision there and it is really good mining some Ethereum and other altcoins like Monero on GTX 1060's as it has good efficiency and balance on Power-to-Hash ratio and pair it with free power then you can have a good payout. Also use GTX 1060 6GB/s versions as it has more potential on mining Ethereum than those 3GB/s versions that only recommends mining on zCash.

[smit9352]

Yeah, a good decision there and it is really good mining some Ethereum and other altcoins like Monero on GTX 1060's as it has good efficiency and balance on Power-to-Hash ratio and pair it with free power then you can have a good payout. Also use GTX 1060 6GB/s versions as it has more potential on mining Ethereum than those 3GB/s versions that only recommends mining on zCash.

Thank you Breadginger56, would you recommend the EVGA GeForce GTX 1060 6GB's? I can find them for roughly $300 ea (25 +/-) on Newegg it seems so start out with a couple of those? I have some spare i5's and ssd's laying around so I won't have to come up with that money which is good. If I scrap the spare PC (pc2) and toss it's video card into PC1 I can scavenge the mb/psu/hdd out of that machine which will save me some money right now.

It seems everyone recommends ETH mining with a alt-coin but I wasn't certain I could do that using XMR-Stak, I'm using it as it's the one I'm semi-familiar with how to setup. With the difficulty rising at a steady rate I just don't want to buy miners then it be obsolete before I'm able to get a good ROI.

[deadthings]

If you want to mine individualy just stop thinking about this in my opinion, for me mining nowadays has only something to say if you have your own team!

[smit9352]

If you want to mine individualy just stop thinking about this in my opinion, for me mining nowadays has only something to say if you have your own team!

No, I want to pool mine and will pool mine, I just wanted to see what the "vets" thought my options were or if it was even worth doing on these machines. I've done the calculations and the hardware I have is nowhere near efficient but like everyones saying if it's easy money then it's a no-brainer.

[breadginger56]

Yeah, a good decision there and it is really good mining some Ethereum and other altcoins like Monero on GTX 1060's as it has good efficiency and balance on Power-to-Hash ratio and pair it with free power then you can have a good payout. Also use GTX 1060 6GB/s versions as it has more potential on mining Ethereum than those 3GB/s versions that only recommends mining on zCash.

Thank you Breadginger56, would you recommend the EVGA GeForce GTX 1060 6GB's? I can find them for roughly $300 ea (25 +/-) on Newegg it seems so start out with a couple of those? I have some spare i5's and ssd's laying around so I won't have to come up with that money which is good. If I scrap the spare PC (pc2) and toss it's video card into PC1 I can scavenge the mb/psu/hdd out of that machine which will save me some money right now.

It seems everyone recommends ETH mining with a alt-coin but I wasn't certain I could do that using XMR-Stak, I'm using it as it's the one I'm semi-familiar with how to setup. With the difficulty rising at a steady rate I just don't want to buy miners then it be obsolete before I'm able to get a good ROI.

Yes, I would recommend EVGA  GeForce GTX 1060 6GB's and it would work well with your i5's and SSD's so you can save some money and also I am so impressed on your plan that you will scavenge some parts of the machine so you can have some spare for that. Good Luck on your setup!!

[smit9352]

Yes, I would recommend EVGA  GeForce GTX 1060 6GB's and it would work well with your i5's and SSD's so you can save some money and also I am so impressed on your plan that you will scavenge some parts of the machine so you can have some spare for that. Good Luck on your setup!!

EVGA offers a $299.99 unit that's a full size card with 2 fans or the EVGA (SC) which is only $274.99. The clock speeds and other things are identical, but I feel that the larger card with two fans is preferred. Is that correct?

[breadginger56]

Yes, I would recommend EVGA  GeForce GTX 1060 6GB's and it would work well with your i5's and SSD's so you can save some money and also I am so impressed on your plan that you will scavenge some parts of the machine so you can have some spare for that. Good Luck on your setup!!

EVGA offers a $299.99 unit that's a full size card with 2 fans or the EVGA (SC) which is only $274.99. The clock speeds and other things are identical, but I feel that the larger card with two fans is preferred. Is that correct?

Yes, Most GPU miners today use dual fans for excellent cooling while benchmarking as it gives the cards to work more efficient than single fans for mining, also triple-fanned graphic cards are overkill and bulky so dual-fanned cards are exceptional and efficient at the most.