Mining cryptocurrency on a home computer

Mining cryptocurrency, what do you think of? What do you know about it? Worry not, we will learn lots!

Everything CJ

Just now·10 min read

Contents

Mining cryptocurrency

Currently, almost everyone has a laptop connected to the Internet. Each, even the oldest of them, has approximately the same components designed for calculating and storing data.

This is a processor, long-lasting storage device, RAM and graphics card that can sometimes be built into the PROCESSOR (more often) or integrated on the motherboard (less often).

Theoretically, these components can be used for the work needed to extract cryptocurrencies.

On this basis, many think about it and can their home computer buy cryptocurrency without buying additional equipment?

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Yes, most modern home computers can be used to mine cryptocurrencies. This is possible due to the wide variety of algorithms used to build blockchain of thousands of coins that are currently in existence.

However, the answer is whether it will be a cost-effective extraction of specific equipment, requiring a more detailed study of the existing hardware configuration and the choice of optimal computing algorithms that will get the most productive.

Let’s take a closer look at how to start mining bitcoins and other cryptocurrency assets on your home computer.

To start mining, you need to make sure that the available equipment is suitable for mining cryptocurrencies.

In addition, you need to open a wallet where the won cryptocurrency will be transferred (the easiestway to do this is on the cryptocurrency exchange ) select a mining coin, a suitable pool, download and configure the miner program and you can start mining.

The easiest way for beginners to use the Nicehash miner program, which allows mining at home in automatic mode by mining the most profitable cryptocurrency and converting it into bitcoins ( the user only needs to open a bitcoin wallet).

In this case, you do not need to choose a pool, know the intricacies of program settings, but you will have to pay a commission for this.

It should be noted that the creation of a mining farm from home computer, which will be able to bring tangible income, is unlikely to work without additional investment in the purchase of components.

If you have a modern gaming PC with a powerful video card and good power supply, then you can mine a fairly large number of cryptocurrencies, provided the computer is sufficiently ventilated.

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Cryptocurrency Mining

MINING

When using budget video cards for mining, it should be considered that support for multi-level parallel calculations should be a mandatory condition.

This mode is only available for video cards installed in PCI-Express slots and supporting Open Cl technology for AMD and CUDA products from Nvidia.

Thus, theoretically the minimum video card for mining from AMD, which supports Open Cl version 1.0, is radeon HD5450 (and other Evergreen series cards), and Nvidia has video cards with Tesla microarchitity: GeForce 8400, which supports CUDA 1.1 and GeForce 8800, Quadro FX 5600 (CUDA 1.0).

Video adapters below the level Rx 560 and GTX 1050Ti, no one uses for mining… Each pool has a certain threshold. I mean, until you make enough money, no one’s going to pay anything. Even if you are connected to a free store with a low hash rate, it will take a long time to wait for payments.

You need to understand that old video accelerators theoretically they can perform calculations for the mining of some cryptocurrencies (they do not support a large number of algorithms), but the performance of such a mining farm will be minimal.

In fact, they can only be used to study the mining process a limited number of cryptocurrencies using old mining programs that support these cards.

Limited shelf life (depending on the price for power and computing algorithm) for mining are currently AMD HD6000 series and later, and from NVidia — with microarchitation Fermi (support for CUDA 2.1 and higher) — GTX560Ti series and more modern.

In fact, you can earn money on video cards from level R9 280/290 and above, and on NVidia — gtx750Ti series and later (from kepler microarchit architecture and later).

Outdated gpu devices can generally show quite a decent hash. For example, AMD Radeon R9 390x of Ethash overclocks up to 30 Mh/s, but high energy consumption reduces yield profitability. And buying used mining cards is not worth it.

To start mining cryptocurrencies on a mining processor, the minimum mining requirement is to maintain instructions for SSE2 and to mine at an acceptable rate must support instructions for AES. In processors, these instructions appeared in 2011:

In Intel processors with Sandy Bridge architecture, as well as in server processors starting from the Xeon E3–12xx series;
In AMD — starting with the processors of the Bulldozer FX41xx series.

CPU input performance depends on clock rate and number of cores. The Xeon line is considered a promising option. AMD Ryzen and Intel i3, i5, i7 processors proved pretty good.

The more powerful the processor, the higher the profitability of crypto mining.

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Mining income

The greatest influence on the ability to earn cryptocurrencies on a home computer has a graphics card… Graphics processors with performance graphic cards have a large number of flow processors and powerful video memory, which, as a rule, have much greater total cpu power than the PROCESSOR.

Based on this, the more powerful and modern the video card is installed on the computer, the more profitable it is to dig on a computer at home.

However, after the transition of the cryptocurrency Monero (XMR) and some cryptonight forks for the RandomX mining algorithm, cpu mining became more relevant. In the RandomX protocol, top-end central processors are more efficient than video cards.

At the current profit, it makes no sense to use XMR gpu platforms, but the pools continue to work, which means that the CPU yield is profitable. Moreover, over the past week, the percentage of coins has increased significantly.

You can slightly increase the mining speed to optimize the operating system by disabling unnecessary programs and services, but this will not lead to a drastic increase in performance.

In particular, productivity is influenced by overclocking parameters as well as the quality of the extraction program.

On a home computer for mining, you can simultaneously use several components to earn cryptocurrencies:

Video card — to perform algorithm calculations substantiation of the work performed, requiring high performance, parallel use of many computing units of the GPU and a large amount of high-performance memory (several gigabytes) — ether, extension, ZCash and many others, as well as all cryptocurrencies that can be mined on the processor;
processor — for calculations requiring high speed, using high-efficiency low-volume cache (several megabytes) — cryptocurrencies such as Monero, Electroneum, HODL and others are mined;
A storage device usually a hard drive that allows you to earn cryptocurrency to rent out your space (you can mine cryptocurrencies such as Siacoin, Storj, Burst and others).

The best coins for mining can be found using calculators on the sites of Nicehash, What to mine and others.

All ways to earn in most cases require a constant internet connection on a computer that produces cryptocurrencies.

In addition to mining your own equipment, there is an opportunity to earn cryptocurrencies by renting the facilities of companies that provide cloud mining services.

For the majority of consumers Cloud mining remains the best option for bitcoin mining in 2020, thanks to contract flexibility and more favourable operating conditions from the extraction of its own equipment.

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Conventional mining

Cloud mining is a profit model that creates groups (mining pools) for one purpose: to generate more income than conventional distributed mining, due to the management of equipment by a contractor that solves all issues related to technical and software components.

In this case, the user simply pays the work of the rented equipment for a certain period of time.

The cloud mining provider for the received payment must ensure 24/7 operation of its equipment with the specified capacity, ensuring that the cryptocurrency won is credited to the portfolio of the lessee who has paid for cloud mining services.

The cloud mining setting does not require productive computer or knowledge in blockchain and cryptocurrencies in general. The setting in this case consists in going through the standard procedure for registering in the pool, depositing money (usually ordinary money or bitcoins) and choosing a tariff plan.

The user then indicates the address (personal wallet) where the cryptocurrency, withdrawal limits and other parameters will be displayed. Cloud mining starts after filling the balance sheet.

You should then periodically check the balance and funds received from the cloud provider.

According to statistics, 80% of cloud mining sites are fraudulent projects, so use only proven and reliable services (the current rating is available here).

And keep in mind that none of the services of this type will require installing software, everything happens through your personal account, if you are offered a software installation, these are 100% scammers.

If you have the necessary performance to start digging, the question arises, how to start digging on a home computer or laptop?

To mining a processor on a regular computer, you can use the following programs:

Claymore CryptoNote processor miner;
XMRig;
Miner of Nicehash;
Hodlminer.

Typically, the following programs are used to extract a video card:

Claymore’s Dual Ethereum Miner;
EWBF;
Miner of Nicehash;
Miner Phoenix;
XMrig-AMD / NVidia;
SRBMiner;
Teamredminer and many others.

To make money from renting a hard drive, you need to use special software from the developers’ sites of these cryptocurrencies.

All listed programs must be downloaded from developer pages or trusted resources, for example through links from Bitcointalk, Github.

The answer to the question of how to start digging on a computer is different for each specific program. First of all, you need to study the pool help section and in the program itself.

Choosing a mining program at home is quite an important element for maximum performance and security.

You need to be as secure as possible of the source from which this program will be downloaded, because there are many unscrupulous people who distribute programs with embedded viruses, which is why you can lose not only the source of cryptocurrency, but also important personal information.

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Laptops, even those with high performance processors, video cards and large hard drives are not very good for mining.

This is due to the fact that their cooling systems and power circuits are not designed for 24/7 critical operation, which is usually used in mining calculations.

The laptop for a long time will not be able to work with great performance and will simply burn.

On a laptop, you can start mining in a short time, if you want to study the process itself, set up mining programs, but you should not use mobile devices for 24/7 mining.

Mining a home computer that is not specially adapted for 24/7 work on complex and energy-intensive calculations, it is associated with some features that novice miners sometimes forget about.

They are related to the fact that the conditions under which digging is carried out, they require good ventilation, high-quality and reliable power supply, which often does not correspond to the parameters set in conventional computers, namely:

Home computers, even in most the best ventilated and spacious boxes can not provide the level of cooling that extractive farms have, assembled in special cases for extraction with high-efficiency forced cooling or assembled on frame structures with good ventilation;
Power supplies installed in conventional computers generally do not have the necessary power reserve required for 24/7 operation to perform cryptocurrency mining calculations, so they can fail faster;
Even the largest computer boxes are not will allow you to install several video cards in them. The most advanced game cases allow you to use two video cards at the same time, but if they are used around the clock for mining, overheating of the components in the computer is guaranteed, the operation of all coolers in maximum mode and a quick failure of the computer. In the new games, the equipment carries loads that are quite comparable to the cryptocurrency mining process, but does not work 24/7.

Mining farms at home can generate the income from cryptocurrency mining if there is equipment released in recent years.

When using your home computer to dig around the clock, be sure to remove the side cover from its housing for better cooling. Do not try to push maximum performance out of it by overclocking.

This will not bring much benefit, but will greatly increase the possibility of its failure.

If you recently purchased a Nvidia RTX 3000 graphics processor from the series, your PC is like a budget mining farm.

An RTX 3070 graphics card develops 100 Mh / s on the air, and if you do not have the power supply, then by removing the casing cover or even better by putting gpu in the riser, you can extract the cryptocurrency.

Not everyone is willing to pay such a sum for a video card and then drive it around the clock.

However, the occupation is quite profitable and the money will be returned in about a year. Well, if you understand that mining is not your theme, you can use the game card or sell it.