Is it worth to consider mining at this moment

[Nataj]

A year ago my dad bought me a gaming pc (I am 17 years old). I discover Bitcoin a few days ago , and seems very interesting. I read about mining and would it be worthwhile with my current pc?

Atm my spec are following...

Core i7 cpu at 2.6 gherts (1366)
3 gigs of ram
GPU 4770 (planning to upgrade though)

If this rig could potentialy be a good mining rig . What should I add to it (i.e new GPUs etc)

Btw do you need a large hard drive for mining?

And will there be any complications for being under 18 years?

And what would be better , pooling or solo?

And what are the stricking differences between windows and linux when it comes to minning? If Linux is better are there any guides wich i could get acces too wich are friendly to one who hasnt got a clue about the OS?

thank you for reading

[keybaud]

A year ago my dad bought me a gaming pc (I am 17 years old). I discover Bitcoin a few days ago , and seems very interesting. I read about mining and would it be worthwhile with my current pc?

Atm my spec are following...

Core i7 cpu at 2.6 gherts (1366)
3 gigs of ram
GPU 4770 (planning to upgrade though)

If this rig could potentialy be a good mining rig . What should I add to it (i.e new GPUs etc)

Btw do you need a large hard drive for mining?

And will there be any complications for being under 18 years?

And what would be better , pooling or solo?

And what are the stricking differences between windows and linux when it comes to minning? If Linux is better are there any guides wich i could get acces too wich are friendly to one who hasnt got a clue about the OS?

thank you for reading

My advice would be to read all the great advice that already exists here, too avoid looking lazy, but someone with more time may answer you in more detail.

[gigabytecoin]

What is your motherboard?

That is the most important part here... if your motherboard has multiple pcie slots, you can add multiple GPUs.

If you already have the hardware and don't want to upgrade, sure, it is always worth it to mine a few bitcoins through a pool (search for "slush bitcoin pool" on google).

[Nataj]

I try but it is very overwhelming the amount of information . If by some means I manage to get direct answers then i think I made life a tad easier for me . And I am  a lil lazy...

[Nataj]

P6T SE
Is the mobo

Edit : 2 PCIe Slots

[at0m]

To save power:
Dump the i7
Buy a less power hungry CPU
Dump 2/3 of the RAM (Assuming it's 3x1Gb. If not, keep as little as possible)
Remove extra hard drives
Remove peripherals once you've installed the required software and got it setup and running.

To increase hashing speeds:
Buy 2 powerful graphics cards


Disregard the above if this is your main rig and you also use it for computering. In that case, just look at 2 powerful GPUs.

[goatpig]

edit: wrong thread ='(.

Also, mining is getting crazy competitive, if you're gonna join, don't go spending money you can't afford to lose.

[hiVe]

If I were you OP, I'd move along, nothing to see here.

[MrGaSp]

If you're on the side of not wanting to change anything, it'd get you a little bitcoins, your hash rate would be around 70mh/s. It's decent to get a few bitcoins to fool around.  We need your motherboard information to tell you if it has potential, but you still got that one slot. 

You can run an os and the mining stuff on a flash drive, so, no it doesn't take much hard drive space. 

IF there are going to be any complications for mining, it wont mater if you're under or above 18.  Although you'd need a bank account to turn the bitcoins into usd or other currencies. 

Linux gets you about 5% hashing increase.  Your hash speed wouldn't be too great to really bother with it.  But Ubuntu would be good to look into.

And you're welcome for reading.

[Nataj]

I am planning to get a 6950 . Btw is it possible to run 2 different cards for mining? From videos i saw that the cards werent connected with xfire or sli bridges... Also could I instal Ubuntu in a  4 gig flash drive/mining software? And what are dummy plugs used for(read about them alot in forums).


Thanks for all the helpfull replys so far.

[SomeoneWeird]

I am planning to get a 6950 . Btw is it possible to run 2 different cards for mining? From videos i saw that the cards werent connected with xfire or sli bridges... Also could I instal Ubuntu in a  4 gig flash drive/mining software? And what are dummy plugs used for(read about them alot in forums).


Thanks for all the helpfull replys so far.

Yes, yes and im pretty sure they're for tricking the cards into thinking a monitors plugged in, in not sure why though as I don't use them.

[JayC]

I am planning to get a 6950 . Btw is it possible to run 2 different cards for mining? From videos i saw that the cards werent connected with xfire or sli bridges... Also could I instal Ubuntu in a  4 gig flash drive/mining software? And what are dummy plugs used for(read about them alot in forums).


Thanks for all the helpfull replys so far.

If you use linux for mining, you shouldn't need dummy plugs...  Windows only problem.

[Ian Maxwell]

If you have to buy hardware, is basically a low-risk, low-reward way to invest in bitcoins. It's low-risk because even if the value of bitfoins crashes tomorrow, at least you have the hardware and can resell it. It's low-reward compared to just buying bitcoins, because if the exchange rate improves the difficulty will soon follow---which doesn't matter if you already have your bitcoins, but matters a lot if you're still mining them.

Even with the current profit margin, I still think buying bitcoins is the better choice. If you're worried about the downside risk, you might see if someone will write you a call option.

[Freakin]

Even with the current profit margin, I still think buying bitcoins is the better choice. If you're worried about the downside risk, you might see if someone will write you a call option.

Is that just because of hugely increasing difficultly with all the recent publicity?

I'm in the same boat as OP.  Looked into mining 2-3 months ago and decided it wasn't worth my time ATM.  Now I'm kicking myself with the 1000% value increase in BTC.

Considering trying to find a pair of 5850 (sold out everywhere) or a 5870 and get them mining.  I just set up my 5750 on Slush's pool and getting a boring 145mh/s, which I calculated to be worth ~.8BTC/day.

Pretty sure I have a box with an Antec 620W in it that would hopefully do the job and plan on setting it up on Ubuntu to be headless... someone talk me into or out of it?

[Ian Maxwell]

I'm in the same boat as OP.  Looked into mining 2-3 months ago and decided it wasn't worth my time ATM.  Now I'm kicking myself with the 1000% value increase in BTC.

If the exchange rate goes up doesn't that mean you should have just bought outright instead of mining? If you'd spent the money on a $1000 mining rig, you might have produced as much as 700 bitcoins by now. You'd have a pretty tidy profit---but at the time you could have bought about 1400 bitcoins with that money!