Is it worth it on my hard ware?

[bigjake52]

I have some older computers and Im running the software to mine with the cpu as the gpus are crappy ones from intell
Im running the mine-ing software on three computers of the same specs 512mb ram 866 intell p3, all three computer are on anyways as they are my dedi servers
My main server runs ftp,smb,vpn .ect
the other two are just smb and backups of my data

any ways on all the three system I get about 180khash / system so 540khash/second if they are all running with no problems,

I do run guiminer on my tower as its a 2.4 intell 6600core and I get about 9.6m/hash out of it.

I"ve been running for a few days and got 0.00124055 BTC so far.

any ways is it worth it as the servers are being ran anyways?

also after I get my first bitcoin how can I put in in my paypal acount? as I would like to spend my hard farmed bitcoins

also im wondering is there a cpu miner for mac osx 10.3? I have a ton of g3 power macs running aswell, and a few g4s that act as file servers.

I am geting some more used computers soon and going to get them running aswell to server and help my bitcoin mining operation.

any ways whats a bitcoin worth in Cad as I plan to spend my money in my backyard as the expression goes.

[JONW2012]

Depends... do you pay the electric bill yourself?  If so, then sadly the answer is probably that you are paying more to run the PCs than you are generating in bitcoin.  BUT, if you were going to run those PCs anyways, then really you are making out better by producing _some_ bitcoin in the process.  OR, if someone else is footing the bill, then mine away my friend - PURE PROFIT!

You don't need to convert your bitcoins to PayPal, etc - just find some local merchants that accept bitcoin as payment.  If there are some local "mom & pop" type shops near you that you shop at, you should talk to them about bitcoin.  If they don't accept it yet, maybe after learning about it from you, they will decide to.  This is very much a grassroots movement at this stage - spread the word!

Jon

[incognegro]

Right now you are spending much more in power cost than you are getting by about 10-1.
You need at minimum an ATI 6970 card overclocked to about 400 megahash. That's what I got.
I get 1 coin every 3 days and it goes down consistently because of the increase in network power and difficulty increase.
I might end up with 50 BTC. It costs me $18/month in power and $400 for the card.
Paypal doesn't deal with BTC. You would need to trade it on an exchange.
You can look up current prices here:
http://bitcoincharts.com/markets/
Last I looked it was around $14/BTC and I expect it could go down to $9 in the next week.
I plan to buy around $300 worth and if you want to accumulate some this is the route I would suggest for you as well until you get a 6970 or 6990.
CPU doesn't matter...at all. NVIDIA cards are also crap for mining as I found out with my 450 gts getting 39 megahash overclocked.
My UPS says my system burns 513 watts with CPU near zero and mining full blast.
You would at some point seriously need to consider wallet management and security.
I have multiple wallets with the main one never hitting the system and all are locked up in triple cascaded truecrypt volumes.
My mining wallet is the only one open to any hacking attempt and it always has zero in it until I transfer 1 BTC to the main one.
There are too many security un-savy people trying to do bitcoins and lots of them are getting their wallets stolen so be aware and make a solid security method to protect any investment you might make. Always consider that your computer already IS hacked.

[bigjake52]

eh my wallet file is in a tc volume, on a cf card I keep in a drawr. not to concered there.

I am paying for power but the servers are running anyways.
most people in my town do not even know what a torrent is so im not going to bother to tell them about bitcoin.

any ways. is there a good site to do the bitcoin to paypal transaction as paypal wont do it as of yet

[gjy4ygfds]

You need at minimum an ATI 6970 card overclocked to about 400 megahash. That's what I got.

Hardly. Any 5000 series ati card will easily make a profit. The 5770 is a decent buy, costing roughly $100 or so, and can get around 230 mhash/sec.

OP, even if you're running the computers constantly anyway, the strain on the cpu isn't even worth 180 khashes. Don't forget that a fully loaded cpu also uses more electricity than an idle one. I highly doubt you'll actually see any profit.

[JONW2012]

BigJake,

If you really want to convert your bitcoins back into your local currency, you are going to have to sell them to someone or use an online exchange.

This page on the bitcoin wiki lists many exhanges: https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Buying_bitcoins
I noticed Virtex converts BTC to CAD.  ( https://www.cavirtex.com/home )

I am using Dwolla as an intermediary, sort of a PayPal equivalent, then I can use my dwolla eWallet with one of the online exchanges, rather than a bank wire transfer, etc.


Jon

[bigjake52]

I looked in to that site. it seems good. but Im thinking its just going to be easer to use some sort of paypal system as im going to be buying parts from the usa in the long run its cheap as im on the boarder. any ways

what about mining on osx 10.3? ppc?

also I notice this is a giant linux driven thing could I run linux on a pcc system and use guiminer?or something like that?

[naukop]

Bigjake, take it from someone who has been running pitiful ~200Mh/s for a month on a Radeon 5770: it really is not worth it anymore(after substracting electricity costs of running my PC 24h at full blast, I end up with about $15 a month) mining is moving towards most efficient producers - meaning those who can build the most cost effective mining rigs and who have to pay the least on electricity.

Rest of us would basically be mining for the fun of it. You would fall in this category, since if it takes you a few days to get 0.001BTC figure on a few years to get 1BTC even if no difficulty changes, which is highly unlikely. CPU mining is not really viable anymore, especially considering the power demands. The current golden standard is GPU mining.

If you live near cheap electricity, then you may consider building your own high power rig.
Take a look at this page:
https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Mining_hardware_comparison

Pretty much anything else is currently not viable (except those lucky few with access to already paid for FPGAs).

If you want a bare minimum starting graphics card to stick in your computer I would say go with 5770 or 5830, worst case scenario you got a good graphics card for your computer.

IMHO, getting 6970 is kind of risky right now, unless you are a hard core game who can utilize it otherwise.

[Deaddy]

I am paying for power but the servers are running anyways.

However, the CPUs will likely draw much more power when mining bitcoins than when idling. Given these values, you'll have about 50W more power usage. Thus you'll use 1.2kWh more energy per day, which is at least where I live about $0.3, and even if you only pay $0.1 for this amount, you'd still need to mine about 0.01 Bitcoins per day to break even. However, since you need some days to even mine 0.001 bitcoins, it's not worth it.

[bigjake52]

I am going to be buying a new graphics card for my pc as I cant run hackintosh on my tower with my intell card properly.  So I am looking at buying a new graphics card. I need a good one with dual displays as I have two screens I like to use on my old tower. I never could use its graphics in my tower and kind of said fk it.

Now im wanting to move ove back to dual screens again as I started to video edit more and my current intell thing sucks...

any ways the video cards I checked out dont seem to have two vga heads or dvi heads.  just dvi and hdmi together and I rather not convirt hdmi to dvi as well thats another cable I have to buy

my mother board (p5k-vm) takes pci-e 16x cards and pci-1 slot cards

I am looking for something that can play gta4 aswell

Anything under 300 should be good.
I just suck at knowing what parts are good,
any help in the graphics department

Also I know my orgial xbox is hacked and I dont use it alot do what im thinking is I can run linux on it and mine with it aswell if so how can i?

[bogeyman]

Depends... do you pay the electric bill yourself?  If so, then sadly the answer is probably that you are paying more to run the PCs than you are generating in bitcoin.  BUT, if you were going to run those PCs anyways, then really you are making out better by producing _some_ bitcoin in the process.  OR, if someone else is footing the bill, then mine away my friend - PURE PROFIT!
[...]
Jon

Hi,

do not forget, that someone will have to pay for the electricity, and a minig GPU will consume more power than an idle one...

[bigjake52]

I under stand that miniing will cost money any ways, I am going to get a killawat and see how much usage I am using with my servers,

[bigjake52]

bump