How to go from mining idiot to aficionado?

[SatOhShe_KnockAMoto]

Hello people. I want to mine, but I am not very knowledgeable about all this stuff. I'm just about to get my CompTIA A+ Certification, so that's about my level of technological literacy. I only have about $400 to spend on mining, and I just want to mine crypto to learn stuff, preferably not losing too much money. But it is so confusing! There's Proof-of-Work and Proof-of-Capacity and SHA-256 and CryptoNight and BOINC and Scrypt and whatever else, but those don't have a reasonable guarantee of reaching ROI, let alone generating profit. In fact, I might get a better ROI investing in stocks than mining, but I don't really care so long as I learn something without losing money. I would rather mine something novel and less mainstream, but those kinds of tokens usually have few resources on how to mine.

*HELP*—how can I go from absolute noob to lvl. 1,000,000 pro cryptominer?

[xxcsu]

*HELP*—how can I go from absolute noob to lvl. 1,000,000 pro cryptominer?

Answer :
You dont need : "CompTIA A+ Certification"
You going to need : a brain,  your own research,  learn a lot,  need some kind of basic knowledge about computer, firewall, networking,  Mining Algorithms, power usage calculation, what is the different between ASIC/GPU/CPU/FPGA/ hardware, and a lot more...

And you need to understand a few things :

I DONT UNDERSTAND WHY NEWBIES KEEP ASKING THE SAME QUESTION " ITS TO LATE TO START MINING , IT IS STILL PROFITABLE ? WHY MY EARNING IS LESS THAN ALL THOSE ONLINE CALCULATORS TELLING ME? WHAT IS THE BEST COIN TO MINE ? WHAT IS THE MOST PROFITABLE COIN TO MINE"

No one can tell you !
Always going to be a 2 group of ppl who telling you it's ok go for it , or dont bc you just wasting ur money and time !
You have to make a decision for yourself !
Do your own research !
No one can tell you for sure what's going to happen with cryptocurrency !
No one can tell you it's going to be profitable for you or not !
No one can tell you how much profit you going to be able to make ! ( if you can make any at all )
No one can tell you the ROI ( return of investment) time !
No one can tell you what is the best coin to mine !
No one can tell you what is the most profitable coin to mine! Coins profitability always changing, what is best to mine today, maybe going to be the worst to mine tomorrow !
None of those calculators you are seeing on the web can tell you what's coming tomorrow , months later or 6 months later !
Those calculators telling you about today , at that moment when you typing in your information !
None of those online calculators calculating pool luck !
None of those online calculators calculating your stale/rejected or invalid shares !
None of those online calculators able to predict difficulty growth !
None of those online calculators can predict what would be the coin/$ exchanges rates a minutes later, a hour later,  tomorrow, next week,  months later, 6 months later or a year later !
It's little bit of gambling , you must to decide you want to play on the lottery or not  
YES some of us got lucky , made some money with mining
YES some of us got unlucky , lost some money , bc when price started to fall , sold they coins , miners...

! INVEST ONLY WHAT YOU'RE WILLING AND ABLE TO LOSE !
! INVEST WITH THE UNDERSTANDING , THAT YOU COULD LOSE EVERYTHING !

[Dotem]

You should post what computer equipment you have available currently so people can direct you to what you can mine.

[swogerino]

As a CompTIA A+ certified IT I can tell you that it will help a lot to have thorough understanding of every part of your PC and maintaining , troubleshooting and optimising your OS should be part of any person who will deal with mining.

You need to expand your knowledge a bit beyond CompTIA A+ though as you need to learn about modifying the bios of the graphic card which certainly isn't covered on the CompTIA A+ both exams.

Still if you qualify for a CompTIA certificate you should have no problems learning a bit in google about mining and immediately be on top compared to many average users who are into mining. Congratulations for your exam.

[leowonderful]

Yep, really doesn't take a lot to understand mining. Any ordinary Joe can understand the basics of mining, but with a CompTIA certification you're likely better off than the average starter.

It's absolutely okay to use calculators- everyone does sometimes for an approximation of break-even time, etc, but don't think that they're absolute by any means.

With $400, I would suggest looking at a GPU like the 1070, a decent motherboard, and perhaps 4GB of RAM and booting off a cheap, low capacity SSD or USB. The 1070s come for relatively cheap nowadays- heck, I just found one used for $250 + ~$12 shipping on eBay here.

As for mining less mainstream coins, they usually use more well-known algorithms so you can usually use a guide for mining another more popular coin if that other coin happens to use the same algorithm. Using a search engine like Google's extremely helpful too if you ever get stuck on how to do something like flashing a bios for a GPU, etc.

[SatOhShe_KnockAMoto]

*HELP*—how can I go from absolute noob to lvl. 1,000,000 pro cryptominer?

Answer :
You dont need : "CompTIA A+ Certification"
You going to need : a brain,  your own research,  learn a lot,  need some kind of basic knowledge about computer, firewall, networking,  Mining Algorithms, power usage calculation, what is the different between ASIC/GPU/CPU/FPGA/ hardware, and a lot more...

And you need to understand a few things :

I DONT UNDERSTAND WHY NEWBIES KEEP ASKING THE SAME QUESTION " ITS TO LATE TO START MINING , IT IS STILL PROFITABLE ? WHY MY EARNING IS LESS THAN ALL THOSE ONLINE CALCULATORS TELLING ME? WHAT IS THE BEST COIN TO MINE ? WHAT IS THE MOST PROFITABLE COIN TO MINE"

No one can tell you !
Always going to be a 2 group of ppl who telling you it's ok go for it , or dont bc you just wasting ur money and time !
You have to make a decision for yourself !
Do your own research !
No one can tell you for sure what's going to happen with cryptocurrency !
No one can tell you it's going to be profitable for you or not !
No one can tell you how much profit you going to be able to make ! ( if you can make any at all )
No one can tell you the ROI ( return of investment) time !
No one can tell you what is the best coin to mine !
No one can tell you what is the most profitable coin to mine! Coins profitability always changing, what is best to mine today, maybe going to be the worst to mine tomorrow !
None of those calculators you are seeing on the web can tell you what's coming tomorrow , months later or 6 months later !
Those calculators telling you about today , at that moment when you typing in your information !
None of those online calculators calculating pool luck !
None of those online calculators calculating your stale/rejected or invalid shares !
None of those online calculators able to predict difficulty growth !
None of those online calculators can predict what would be the coin/$ exchanges rates a minutes later, a hour later,  tomorrow, next week,  months later, 6 months later or a year later !
It's little bit of gambling , you must to decide you want to play on the lottery or not  
YES some of us got lucky , made some money with mining
YES some of us got unlucky , lost some money , bc when price started to fall , sold they coins , miners...

! INVEST ONLY WHAT YOU'RE WILLING AND ABLE TO LOSE !
! INVEST WITH THE UNDERSTANDING , THAT YOU COULD LOSE EVERYTHING !

Oh, I'm getting the CompTIA A+ for personal reasons unrelated to cryptocurrency. I just listed that as an example of about how little I know about this tech stuff.

[SatOhShe_KnockAMoto]

You should post what computer equipment you have available currently so people can direct you to what you can mine.

Well I have an AMD A6-5200 quad-core CPU and an AMD Radeon HD 8400/R3 Series for graphics, so they're not that great. I've tried using minergate and I only got 40h/s on CryptoNight, waaaay lower than what I need to pay for the electrical usage, let alone make mining worth the time it takes. And any PoW algorithm other than CryptoNight is too futile to try mining. Also, does RAM make a difference in hashrate for PoW (I'm thinking it only makes a difference for Proof-of-Capacity algorithms)?

[SatOhShe_KnockAMoto]

Yep, really doesn't take a lot to understand mining. Any ordinary Joe can understand the basics of mining, but with a CompTIA certification you're likely better off than the average starter.

It's absolutely okay to use calculators- everyone does sometimes for an approximation of break-even time, etc, but don't think that they're absolute by any means.

With $400, I would suggest looking at a GPU like the 1070, a decent motherboard, and perhaps 4GB of RAM and booting off a cheap, low capacity SSD or USB. The 1070s come for relatively cheap nowadays- heck, I just found one used for $250 + ~$12 shipping on eBay here.

As for mining less mainstream coins, they usually use more well-known algorithms so you can usually use a guide for mining another more popular coin if that other coin happens to use the same algorithm. Using a search engine like Google's extremely helpful too if you ever get stuck on how to do something like flashing a bios for a GPU, etc.

Thanks for the information. What about merge mining to maximize profits? How do I do that?

[emmiitbrown]

Try the new Gekko Science  Terminus R808 product which is about $200.

I bought some 2PAC in late 2016 @ $100 each. They are now $40 for two chips per USB stick. The Terminus R808 (BM1384) has 8 chips. It also has some SIGNIFICANT upgrades. The whole investment is largely a loss for me but I got them as a proof of concept for myself.

My current setup:
6700+ running hours @ $38
Avg 35-60GH\s
----------------------
*3x Gekko Science 2PAC @ $100 (Now $40)
*Raspberry PI3+ $35
*Si Polar 10 port USB hub @ $49
https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=9SIADBK5HR3044
*3x Eyeboot Mini 2-Port USB 2.0 Hub 15m Extender Splitter $10
https://www.eyeboot.com/eyeboot-2-port-usb-hub.html
----------------------
Total Return $14
Total investment (including $120 of cheap burned out USB hubs)
about $534

You get the idea.
===============================
Alternatively, you can point your miner to NiceHash and make 2cents a day and spend like 3 cents. (@0.08/Kwh avg.)
Basically you just hope to break even on running costs. Forget the return.