A few days before writing this article I proposed to mine bitcoins with my own computer. Months before I told you my experience riding a PC by pieces, because I did, but the truth is that with an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070 as a GPU, and not a GTX 1060, which was originally my idea. The case is that with this GPU, a priori, it seems enough to consider mining bitcoins in full 2017, due to its power. But is it worth it?
You have to start on the basis that to mine, it is best to have a 'computer' dedicated to it. Why? Because if you use the same computer to mine bitcoins for work or play, then you will have problems. This work, that of 'mining', requires all the power of our computer's hardware to solve complex operations in a constant way. And this means that we will not be able to take advantage of the performance of our computer for other tasks. In addition, if we try, we will cause that the mining is slower and, therefore, the options of 'profitability' with respect to the cost of energy fall dramatically.
¿Is it difficult to start mining bitcoins with your own computer?
Although it may seem complicated, the truth is that it is incredibly simple. Personally I opted for NiceHash Miner, a program with a simple interface and also completely complete configuration options. The program makes a benchmark on the CPU and the GPU -or only one of them-, it requires us a portfolio of bitcoins to work with 'real money', and then it offers us to press 'Start' to start. Yes, it's as simple as that.
We will see the interface of the program in the foreground, and in the background a system symbol window that shows all the operations in execution and those resolved, with data such as the speed of calculation or the algorithm used for each operation. On the other hand, from this interface we can access the complete statistics in the web browser, where performance graphs per minute are shown according to the operations and the algorithm used. And of course, how much we have accumulated in bitcoins 'earned', and the daily and monthly extrapolation according to the bitcoin mining average.
You will win little, or nothing, and you may end up losing your computer
Calculate the 'inversion' and, simply, you will get rid of the idea of mining. Or at least, the idea of mining bitcoins. In just over an hour I barely got 5 cents, according to the change to bitcoin, and yet I could see how the GPU reached 85 ° C and remained stable at this temperature. This, by the way, with a really ventilated CPU and a GPU with double cooling system.
The work of mining bitcoins requires maintaining the computer at full capacity on an ongoing basis, with an excessively high temperature - although it can be controlled - and consuming almost maximum energy. It is the GPU with the highest return we can get, but a graph of these technical specifications is around 400 euros. If in a month we can win with it just 45 euros, we would have to be almost 10 months to pay only the graphics card, and that without counting the electricity cost of keeping the computer running 24 hours a day, and at such a level of job.