Question about mining on a laptop?

[300]

There is a laptop currently on sale here for about $340 USD. It has an AMD E1-2100 dual core processor and AMD Radeon HD Graphics. I've been told that laptops are bad for mining because they can overheat but I also remember hearing that AMD graphics cards are excellent for mining.

Is the AMD Radeon HD Graphics good for mining scrypt coins? I know it's too late to mine bitcoin with it because everyone uses asics for sha256 coins nowadays. Is it possible to run the miner at, say, 50 % performance to prevent overheating? I also want to use the laptop for other things like web browsing so I don't want to slow everything down to a crawl either.

And finally, I know that a lot of people here think that scrypt asics will render gpu mining obsolete. Is this true? Are scrypt asics currently in development? And how much time will I have left before gpu mining becomes obsolete?

Thanks!!

[atc1]

Yes,laptops can overheat very quickly and can spoil in no time. AMD is good for mining,but the 4000-5000 series can't mine jack.It's possible to run the mining at lower intensities but at that rate,you'll hardly make a profit by mining Scrypt coins. 1Mh/s barely makes $1.5 profit a day. And gpus have almost become obsolete profitwise for scrypt. You'll never make RoI,not for a year,at least judging by what you want. Asic's are in development. Heck,some of them have even been completed and are mining for the manufacturer as we speak.

So,unless you have something else you want to use the laptop for other than mining,don't take it.

[blacksails]

There is a laptop currently on sale here for about $340 USD. It has an AMD E1-2100 dual core processor and AMD Radeon HD Graphics. I've been told that laptops are bad for mining because they can overheat but I also remember hearing that AMD graphics cards are excellent for mining.

Is the AMD Radeon HD Graphics good for mining scrypt coins? I know it's too late to mine bitcoin with it because everyone uses asics for sha256 coins nowadays. Is it possible to run the miner at, say, 50 % performance to prevent overheating? I also want to use the laptop for other things like web browsing so I don't want to slow everything down to a crawl either.

And finally, I know that a lot of people here think that scrypt asics will render gpu mining obsolete. Is this true? Are scrypt asics currently in development? And how much time will I have left before gpu mining becomes obsolete?

Thanks!!

Nope, it will not be worth it. The GPU will eventually break and you won't earn enough to cover the costs (unless you mine a new crypto-currency and it gets worth a lot!).

And yes, there are Scrypt-asics in development. Not sure if any of them has been released to the public yet though.

[300]

Well thanks for the answers I guess.

[Holm]

how to tell you, except that just play

[zolace]

Im sure alienware laptops would be good for alt coin mining, what do you guys think about that one

[bryant.coleman]

Never do mining in laptops. Not worth the risk. I got one of my laptops fried a few months ago.

[blacksails]

Im sure alienware laptops would be good for alt coin mining, what do you guys think about that one

Depends on the GPU and the cooling system.

[Flashman]

Yah, you'll be lucky to get 50 kilohash/sec out of a low end laptop GPU.

IMO, modern laptops are a lot more resistant to heat than they used to be, BUT, people will still kill them by putting them on soft surfaces blocking the vents or allowing dust build up to clog up the cooling system, so you won't NECESSARILY kill one by mining on it, if you take sensible precautions. i.e. leave it in a cool part of your house, have it on a rack so it can breathe well, blow it out with the air duster regularly etc...

If you really want to mine on a ~340 budget and need a laptop, I'd recommend looking for a used/refurb Core2 Duo with 2GB or more of RAM, putting windows 7 on it and buying a gridseed miner to plug into the USB.... it will probably only just about pay back the gridseed portion of it, if the big dog scrypt miners like the Titan and the Viper arrive on the scene within 3 months, but hey, at least you have your laptop and are losing money more slowly

(C2D machines are still pretty capable, as fast as the low end cheapy laptops usually, might wanna try to get a 2.2 or 2.4GHz or better though, not a 1.6)

[b!z]

Im sure alienware laptops would be good for alt coin mining, what do you guys think about that one

no, of course not lol.

alienwares are overpriced trash

[superresistant]

At that price you can afford a PSU+Motherboard+CPU and mine the most profitable CPU coin.

It will be about 10 times better than this crap laptop.

[Prolifik]

Mining will DESTROY your laptop. Don't do it, they aren't designed to be run 100%

[Prolifik]

For $350 you could slap together a mining rig that could get somewhere around 200Kh/s making you somewhere around $50 a month.

[Flashman]

At that price you can afford a PSU+Motherboard+CPU and mine the most profitable CPU coin.

It will be about 10 times better than this crap laptop.

True, I'm finding "curb treasure" with PCIe slots now, so with a decent PSU and and a 1x to 16x riser cable you can run 2 GPUs at least on dirt cheap hardware. (Spec you'd find free or cheap would probably be socket 775 with prescott class/era CPUs)

Edit: whoops, to clarify, what I'm suggesting isn't much good for CPU coins but you can run GPUs on it. super's suggestion is probably to find something like a used i7 combo or fast i5 for cheap.

[softron]

Dont do it u will surely kill ur laptop. U can also find cheaper/faster asics e.g antminer u2

[nthunder]

The graphical processing units on laptops are usually less powerful compared to their desktop cousins. Same goes for CPU. You can get for example a laptop with a Intel Core i7-3667U CPU but a desktop Intel Core i7-3770 will run twice as fast. The difference is even bigger for the GPU. For example Radeon HD 7870M (I think this stands for "Mobile" version) will consume less current and run slower than Radeon HD 7870 (which is 3 times faster).

It's possible to mine on a laptop but you'll have the problem of overheating and performance will be poor. It's a bit late to mine sha256 without ASICs.

I don't think scrypt ASICs will be the game changer sha256 ASICs were.

Happy mining!

[counter]

I also would say if you are planning to mine some alt coins then I guess sure give it a shot.  However I would not waste the time and money if you plan to mine BTC.

[Flashman]

I don't think scrypt ASICs will be the game changer sha256 ASICs were.

I didn't at first, I thought they were only going to be like FPGAs coming into bitcoin, but when KNC announced at 100 MH then bumped it to 250, then I knew GPUs were on a time limit...

[Domino]

I don't think scrypt ASICs will be the game changer sha256 ASICs were.

I didn't at first, I thought they were only going to be like FPGAs coming into bitcoin, but when KNC announced at 100 MH then bumped it to 250, then I knew GPUs were on a time limit...

The real problem now is can these products be delivered in Q2/Q3 as advertised.

[Onews1990]

I would say CPU-only currencies might bring some profit with a laptop like this one, of course you aren't going to get even but a laptop can be useful for other things and although mining consumes it this might be a good deal.